How do you properly scale Caustic Arrow damage?

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Tarille wrote:

For single target... Until 3.0 kills it, Essence Drain is pretty nifty.

Scales from Proj damage, DoT damage, Chaos Damage, Gem levels... Essentially all the things you are going for to make CA work.

Bonus of being able to whack your CA 6L on your bow for the +3 gems, with ED on a 6L chest, then swap to The Consuming Dark + some high scaling Spell Damage off-hand to fire off a sick ED to melt single targets.

I know that ED is sometimes used for ST by CA players/builds. But I have mathed it in the past and did not get competitive damage numbers out of it - in comparison with strong chaos/poison double dipping setups (ST, Molten Srike, Barrage, Blade Flurry, BV, AWC, Blast Rain, Vaal Burning Arrow, Firestorm, probably more, not all useful for CA build). Or do I miss some way to scale it or sth?
And its more expensive too because of its reliance on gem levels.
This is from a HC perspective though - so most of the passives go into defense for me.


Edit: ED does have the advantage that its better for kiting. Except for the slow cast speed.

why would that +3 bow be so important and not even use empower?

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Zrevnur wrote:

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Tarille wrote:

For single target... Until 3.0 kills it, Essence Drain is pretty nifty.

Scales from Proj damage, DoT damage, Chaos Damage, Gem levels... Essentially all the things you are going for to make CA work.

Bonus of being able to whack your CA 6L on your bow for the +3 gems, with ED on a 6L chest, then swap to The Consuming Dark + some high scaling Spell Damage off-hand to fire off a sick ED to melt single targets.

I know that ED is sometimes used for ST by CA players/builds. But I have mathed it in the past and did not get competitive damage numbers out of it - in comparison with strong chaos/poison double dipping setups (ST, Molten Srike, Barrage, Blade Flurry, BV, AWC, Blast Rain, Vaal Burning Arrow, Firestorm, probably more, not all useful for CA build). Or do I miss some way to scale it or sth?
And its more expensive too because of its reliance on gem levels.
This is from a HC perspective though - so most of the passives go into defense for me.


Edit: ED does have the advantage that its better for kiting. Except for the slow cast speed.

Well, for starters, it literally all scales with exactly what you're building for on CA. Unlike many skills. Projectile Damage, Chaos Damage, DoT Damage, Wither, Chaos Resist reduction, Vulnerability. All of that boosts not only CA's fart which is the main point of a CA build, but also the majority of what ED is. The only thing you don't have from an actual ED build is Spell Damage.

Then, you can make it poison for free with TCD. Leaving you with a full 6L to boost it (Unlike many skills which outside of being Flaskfinder or using specific Uniques that aren't useful for CA would require Poison Support)

So you're free to stack a bunch of More's.

Essence Drain
Empower
Void Manipulation
Controlled Destruction
Slower Projectiles
Rapid Decay

All of which will also double dip the Poison (Even if the initial hit isn't as amazing as most other skills, you're still multi-dipping on 4 More supports)

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Tarille wrote:

...

Ok, thanks, I am aware of these things though.

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Tarille wrote:

Essence Drain
Empower
Void Manipulation
Controlled Destruction
Slower Projectiles
Rapid Decay

All of which will also double dip the Poison (Even if the initial hit isn't as amazing as most other skills, you're still multi-dipping on 4 More supports)

3 double dippers: void, controlled, slower
or 4 if you use pierce which may be better than Empower