[2.3]Theorycraft occultist Null's inclination Non-conversion chaos bow build

This thread will probably be updated pretty regularly as I do tests and calculate things

The concept is pretty simple. I drew inspiration watching of Hegemony's(I love you) witch doctor video. I realized he was scaling poison and clearing pretty much with no help from his minions So I wanted to try and tweak the build a bit for a more chaos/poison focused build.

Why occultist?

Its synergy with chaos damage, pretty simple. Void beacon reduces chaos resist of nearby enemies by 20% that is a really significant damage multiplier because literally all (99% our bow has a small flat phys roll) of our damage is chaos. The next passive we will go with is Profane Bloom. From this we get cursed enemies take 10% increased damage; Since we will be running Vuln + temp chains this is a nice little bonus, but the best part of this node is that cursed enemies have a 20% chance to explode dealing 25% of their life as chaos. This is further amplified by all the chaos damage nodes on the tree we will be taking.

The next two notables are by far my favorite are Wicked ward and Vile bastion Wicked ward gives us 100 flat ES and prevents Regeneration from being stopped by damage. Vile bastion Gives us 0.5% regen for every enemy we have killed in the last 4 seconds and stun immunity on full ES. This is a HUGE survivability boost. Combined with ZO and regen from the tree and or shavs ring this gives us an incredible amount of sustain.

If you are feeling particularly yolo or are playing on SC you can drop Wicked ward and Vile bastion for Malediction and Forbidden power

Why Null's inclination?
It is quite simple; I like bow and chaos damage and I hate reflect.

The real reason is because of this baby


It is no secret by now that poison is opieop because of the way it double dips. This build works for two reasons;

1. The decent flat chaos base on nulls that allows us to scale our poison.
2. Poison is just op

The way poison scales is that it deals 10% of the combined physical and chaos damage of the initial hit as a dot. Our initial hit is scaled by our %damage, %proj damage, % chaos damage. 10% of this damage is then converted into a poison dot that is further increased by our %proj damage, %chaos damage, %damage, %damage over time, and %poison damage

The other thing is that poison stacks! With a rapid hitting skill like barrage and some attack speed we can stack multiple dots very quickly. Most things should die before the poison stacks get going but for bosses this makes our damage ramp up to silly levels very quickly.

Skill tree:
Spoiler
https://www.pathofexile.com/passive-skill-tree/AAAABAMBAN-Ku_x88H6h6QIVfpEHadhLrsb3GyWSdNlbbRkRUCL0NblsC6crHU-TJy0fXIq-in_GTLPK08HF0B-0DOwY7-vqukZxj_pwuyy_Ow0NfDQKgwlcQNkTFdcRDzdmb56Hyy9vhq6smCymykqnm1Zj99em61-wdZ6ESJuhUq83g5u1zxVcaxhqu03DOsNtOVLdX4ngGYoki1gHZ_zmWJcG-wkPq5MfxKL22ha_SROhIhqPaoy00fT49W_IDKJAyBR2ggHRotm1SK_rsNjrYwMeH0ErCl3yDki3MBQJE20miA==

There is a lot of flex room here I feel. If you go malediction it is possible to drop whispers of doom. Curse corruption on amulet of doedre's ring are also options
You can also spec out of the aura nodes depending on what auras you choose to run. Note I chose to run vaal pact for single target but it IS very possible to run this build without it.

Edit: CI is also totally optional i feel. With all the chaos resist you can pick up from the chaos damage/damage over time clusters. May be possible to go life ES hybrid and sub the CI cluster for purity of flesh.


Necessary gear:
Spoiler


Yep, that is it. TBH a drillneck with pierce gem would probably be optimal? But I haven't gotten ahold of one to test.
Both of these combined cost me 5c on standard


Links:

In 6L chest in order of importance:
Split arrow + poison + void manipulation + added chaos + pierce + (haven't figured this one out yet)
For bosses swap out split arrow for barrage

6L bow:
SRS + animate weapon + increased duration
This part is totally preference. The summons are here for the sole benefit of being a wall between you and monsters

4L:
Blasphemy + temp chains + vulnerability + discipline


4L:
Vaal haste + Vaal disc + inc duration + rallying cry

4L:
Blink arrow + Golem + whatever else you want

Gear:
A lot of this depends on how you want to go about this build; Like I said there is a lot of flex room. If you want to run an extra curse with an amulet corruption Heretic's veil as well as a doedre ring is an option. I still haven't looked for uniques that would synergize yet but i'm sure there are some.

Helm : Rare ES base with resists
Chest: High ES base with resists
Belt: Rare chain belt with resists
Gloves: Rare gloves with +dex and aspd if you can and resists
Boots: move speed and resists, dex if you can get it but you can do without
Amulet: Rare turquoise amulet with + dex flat ES resists and + flat chaos elreon craft
Rings: moonstone base would be best + es and resists and + flat chaos elreon craft
Weapon: Nulls inclination, duh
Quiver: Soul strike or Drillneck, I haven't tested which is better

The gear section is still a very much a work in progress. I will do more research and testing after I get up tomorrow.

So yeah that is the very basic build idea, I would be grateful for any comments and suggestions.
Last edited by boogboi on Jun 1, 2016, 2:31:48 PM
Last bumped on Sep 10, 2016, 12:31:39 AM
I'm quite interested in this, have you tried it out yet?
It does indeed but nobody seemed interested. If we have more people that want this I'll update.
Hey boog - why not go about this as a life build? I know man - I think the occultist is cool as hell too, but as I see it there is the hexproof map mod which can become a very big issue for the occultist (and hexproof monsters for that matter). The reason I'm mentioning this is because of this chestpiece:


It also saves you the poison gem/or snakebite gloves (whatever you choose), gives you an additional curse, and some nice chaos resistance.

I'm levelling a witch right now to try out the inclination and chaos/poison stacker seam ideal for this kind of setup. I heard mention that the necromancer passive Beacon of corruption work with minions that expire (Summon raging spirits etc) so that it will spawn the cloud upon expiration. Here is a detailed explanation https://www.reddit.com/r/pathofexile/comments/47cqtn/discussion_necromancers_beacon_of_corruption/?st=iq1io9kq&sh=31f56074

So I'm trying these things out for now.
I was just looking at ideas for a ward/soulstrike build. Wondering how yours turned out. Never thought of going with a nulls
I did not import this into a bilder to check numbers, but I jotted some optimizations which might help:

https://www.pathofexile.com/fullscreen-passive-skill-tree/AAAABAMBAQHRAx4HHg18DkgPqxEPES8RUBGWE20UCRV-FdcWvxhqGYoajxslHU8fQSL0JIsmiCsKLKYsvy0fL280CjW5N2Y3gzlSOw1JE0lRSbFLrkyzUq9WY1gHXEBca13yZ_xp2GqMbAttGXC7dZ52gnzwfqF_xoRIhq6Hy4ngj_qRB5J0kx-TJ5UulwaboaEioS-iQKLZpuunK6ebrJiv67DYtAy00bVItzC7Tbv8vorDOsNtxKLG98gMyBTK088V0B_Xz9kT2VvdX9-K5ljpAuq662PsGO-I7-vw1fT49W_22vfX-Tf7CQ==

The new Jewel slot between Witch and Shadow should be socketed with the Energy from within jewel. This way you should have a TON more ES sacrificing a little cast/attack speed. Hope this helps =)

Edit: If you need the dex, maybe you can compensate with gear choice. Side note: You go CI but have not chosen Zealots oath or ghost reaver, maybe you need one of those, maybe you got this covered with ascendancy/gear ;)
Last edited by Pendulu on Jul 7, 2016, 11:01:13 PM
Hello! I've been thinking about making a curse-based character based on Doedre and seeing how the Echo of Doedre from the prophecy spawns SRS, I thought it'd be neat to use Null's to do the same. I hope you'll add more information and ideas, it'd be much appreciated :)
Looks pretty interesting to me. I'm wondering now if Null's mechanic actually works in sense of increasing the clearspeed or if the whole minion thing is just a useless gimmic because everything is dead already by the time they reach their target. If so, I feel like you could just use a standard Voltaxic build, especially with the new lightning damage ring mod's in essence league. Also, the mechanic is "on kill" so wouldn't really help for boss fights. I wish chaos damage could just roll on bows as it can on wands.

Has anyone tried it yet or compared the math with a Voltaxic build?


Currently building a Caustic arrow Occultist using that same quiver and the high es and recharge mechanics from soul strike and synergy of wicked ward are quite good at keeping old hunters like me alive :) I like the idea of swapping in this bow now and then for higher on hit damage with poison for some bosses, Caustic arrows DoT is amazing but the on hit is lacking alot for specific mobs,,there is also Darkscorn to consider and a CI build would get 25% damage reduction with the immunity to chaos which seems like a good swap n for survivability,,so 4 bows that can benefit from this tree if you count a +3 to gems bow and CA.

Seems like a good variety of early leveling bows around as well with the fated Silverbough and Deaths Opus with 2 additional arrows is quite strong now also and could probably do maps as well as the others mentioned if not better, Keep planning on doing a non bow build but until ive tried them all I wont stop collecting these essential weapons,,,,im not a hoarder of bows I really need each of them to survive as a poor Exile,,,,thats my story and im sticking to it :)


Grizz
Remember when high end gear was really high end !
Classic Audio all the way,olderthandirt and twice as
Grizzly :)

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