[2.4] Poison Ballista Berserker, Endgame on a budget

Siege Ballista, a skill that on it's own regard is nothing amazing. Iron Commander builds give it the meme factor, but I see it as a vehicle for a very powerful mechanic: Poison.

How it works:

Poison is affected by certain modifiers as well as the base skill attached to it. This is called "Double-Dipping" and makes these specific stats very powerful.

The mods that this build uses that allows us double-dipping are: Projectile, Totem, and chaos.

So how do we maximize these mods? Well, in a few ways. First and foremost, let's look over the tree.

LVL 80 Tree:


First and foremost: Point Blank. 50% more damage when up close and personal, perfect for totems to do because they're expendable! It double dips with poison, which is great!

Second: Aspect of Carnage, 40% more damage, again, double dips, again, GREAT!

Third: Blood Magic. Why? We're stacking chaos multipliers for poison, and physical damage for poison. Hatred and Herald of Ash really don't do a lot for the build as do pretty much any other aura. So, to allow us to net 35% increased life while also ignoring mana cost, we get BM.

Finally: Iron Grip. It doesn't double dip, and it ultimately isn't a huge boon to damage, but it is plenty for an extremely cheap cost of 2 nodes, considering we're taking Blood Magic. It's only 1 node if you consider we're grabbing Bloodless right above it.

From the tree we net 82% increased totem damage and 121% increased projectile damage. This is hampered a bit by a very necessary jewel, but not by too much:


Rain of Splinters is very much necessary for any totem build that uses projectiles. Luckily, the negative isn't too hard, but it does effectively double dip as well, it's pretty much the worst part, but it's far, FAR better than the alternative of LMP/GMP.

So with everything considered, even with the worst Rain of Splinters gem available, your total increased damage should be around 253% increased (when you factor in another piece of gear). This applies to the initial hit AND the poison damage which comes from:


Support Gems:

The crux of the build. There are ways to get poison on Siege ballista without it, namely the Snakebite gloves, but unless you're going to get three Pacifism jewels and the sockets for them, it's not reliable enough, besides, we've got better gloves in mind (to be discussed later).

Other support gems are:


Added Chaos gives us a great bonus to damage without needing a lot of base physical damage from gear, and it does double dip with another skill that will be described later.

Slower Projectiles is Double dipping more damage and hardly affects the build at all, due to the high speed of Siege Ballista's projectiles to begin with.

Void Manipulation is a great multiplier for the chaos damage from poison, and for the additional damage from Added Chaos. It pretty much makes the skill do 45% total chaos damage on the initial hit, which is very nice for physical reflect maps (the totems don't one-shot themselves!)

Now onto...

Gear:

Chin Sol is fantastic considering we're already using Point blank to net 50% more damage. The modifier from Chin Sol doesn't double dip, but who cares, 100% MORE DAMGE?! Yes please! The knockback is troubling though. It'll push the enemies away, right? Wrong because we have...


Empire's Grasp! Instead of pushing your enemies away, your totems will now pull them into a sweet poisonous embrace of doom. Lovely!


Ahh, Drill Neck. Siege Ballista always pierces, so Drill Neck is 100% icnreased damage, which double dips! Score. They're easy to find cheap as well, especially since the implicit modifier really isn't important to the build.


That's it for "required" gear, but here's the full set of my current gear:


Supporting Skills:


Vulnerability: More damage from physical and 33% more damage to the poison. Great! Another option is Slower Projectiles. If you can work double curse into the build, go right ahead! There's plenty of room to do so, I just haven't done it myself.


Here we go! Wither? On something other than Essence Drain? Whaaaat? Yes!

It causes the enemy to take increased damage, which is effectively a more multiplier. 7% per stack means 15 stacks nets 105% more damage from chaos, that means the chaos from your initial hit, and the poison damage, pretty much another double dip. Drop your totems, slap on the curse, and go to town with Wither. Really only necessary for big tanky single targets, but very helpful when it's in play.


Progression:
Here's the Tricky bit: Leveling sucks as this build. Not because it doesn't function, it does, but because pretty much all the gems required are not available to the marauder, and because the gear is very Dex and Int heavy. Those +30 nodes are essential!


Bandits:
Oak, Kraityn, Kill

+40 life is nice considering how much increased we're getting from the tree, and Attack speed from Kraityn is far more important than the physical damage from Oak, or a skill point.

Links:
5L: Siege Ballista - Poison - Added Chaos Damage - Slower Projectiles - Void Manipulation

6L: + Pierce
We don't need pierce, we really don't. But we want it, because the multiplier from pierce double dips!

Videos:
None just yet, but I'll make some ASAP.

Notable Achievments:
Cleared all map tiers, though some map bosses are still a bit scary.
Killed Uber Izaro.
Killed Reg Atziri.

Aiming for:
Abaxoth kill (Should be easy)
Uber Atziri (Definitely doable with skill)
Pale Council (should be very easy)
Guardians (Can't kill two of them with poison, but the phys damage is plenty, in that case, we use Pierce instead of Added Chaos.)
Shaper (AFAIK Poison works fine, so it'll be doable, but challenging)


Final Thoughts:
After the Ancestral Warchief took off, especially the berserker version, it kind of lost it's appeal to me. Especially with the cost of Abyssus Skyrocketing. I'm a bit of a build hipster, sue me! =P

I figured I'd try something out that worked off of as many multipliers as I could possibly find. The other option for the build was Rain of Arrows, as I could use AoE mods as well. I tossed that Idea when I realized I'd need to use Traps or self-case the skill, and totems are far far more appealing. I could've used totems with Rain of arrows as well, but that would've been an extra gem slot, screw that!

Anyways, thanks for reading!

Version History:


10-23-16: Build Posted

[Reserved for FAQ + Q&A]

Hello!
Nice guide,have add video t14+? thx