Dejuvenate's Quillrain Toxic Rain. Beastly AOE and single target. WIP.

Intro

First attempt for a draft/guide here. So no pretty pictures (yet). I only aim to bring this concept to the general players and let you guys and the more established streamers build and expand upon this.

Spoiler
I dont see many posts regarding the elemental hit of this league: Toxic Rain.

This skill, in my opinion, has the potential of being the most broken skill this patch, more so than caustic arrow.

I have tried CA using pathfinder, but after a while I figured that skill mechanic wise, toxic rain scales better than caustic arrow. Trickster synergize better with toxic rain, due to much higher attack speed and dot buffing, as well as mana sustain.

I am now 86 and started running red maps. A softcore pleb scrub so not really having much time to play these days.



TLDR POB LINK
Spoiler

latest as of Sep 9, 2018: https://pastebin.com/sjSfe23C
outdated: https://pastebin.com/yYyx5k7Y



PROS AND CONS
Spoiler

+++++
+ Starts off with very cheap gear. Can finish story campaign with just 4L and Quill Rain.
+ Run any map mods. I already run all corrupted map unid.
+ No worry about elemental or phys reflect
+ Shits on everyone in PvP (not like people do PvP seriously anyway)
+ Fast clear speed (less than KB/windripper as we do dots)
+ Massive single target DPS (around 1-2 million shaper DPS with Withering Touch barrage totem), in shit gear
+ Toxic Rain can let you shoot around corner, providing very safe play
+ Super fast movement speed, attack speed, and very good mana and life sustain as Trickster



- Not omegalul super high speed meta clear like KB or EH
- Not a facetank build like VDS Champion or RF Jugg
- Boss DPS is not as good as 5 million VDS builds
- Kinda squishy, no passive regen (RF/Death Oath) or massive leech (Vaal Pact)
- Reliant on RNG with vaal haste...
- Not the best Ascendancy for Bossing. If you are into boss killing, I'd recommend going Pathfinder instead.




TOXIC RAIN MECHANICS AND WHY IT IS GOOD
Spoiler
Toxic Rain releases 5 arrows, when they land, they drop spores that deal AOE dots around the landing. The AOE dots stack with one another. Concentrated effect works to improve the dot. The big circle has a fixed radius, while the area of spores are affected by increase and decrease of area effect.

The spores last 1 second base, affected by skill effect duration.

Mirage Archer deals 11% less damage and attacks 60% slower at gem lvl 20. So Mirage archer contributes (0.4)*(0.89) = 35.6% MORE damage.

With high enough attack speed, we can stack tens of pods on the ground. With enough increased AOE area, we can let the pods DOT stack with one another and allow us to reach absurd amount of DPS; and most of which are non reflect able.


GEM LINKS
Spoiler

TOXIC RAIN SETUP (in depth)

Spoiler
Toxic Rain - Void Manipulation - Vicious Projectiles - Mirage Archer - Inc AOE (*) - Swift Affliction (**) / Inc. Duration (***) / Empower(expensive)

* Increased AOE allows the pod aoe to overlap and leads to higher DPS despite no paper DPS increase shown. This, similar to how it interacts in Lightning Spire trap last league, makes this gem seemingly the highest DPS increase that you can't see on PoB or sheet DPS.

** Swift Affliction at gem lvl 20 gives 44% MORE DOT, but with 15% reduced duration. In the longer fights, this fluctuates depending on how many increased duration you have. In shorter fights or mapping, this is way better than increased duration.

*** Inc. Duration at lvl 20 gives 64% inc duration. This gives good QoL with Mirage Archer. In the longer fights, this support pulls ahead of Swift Affliction. However in shorter fights or mapping, Check if you are happy with Mirage Archer uptime. If running easy maps, might wanna use this instead of Swift Affliction, and just phase run thru shit.

**** Empower lvl ____ This will likely be the king (empower lvl 3/4).


6L, withering touch totem for single target/bosses



Spoiler
Barrage - Ranged Attack Totem - Withering Touch - GMP - Culling Strike - Faster Attack / LMP

Withering Touch is OP. Gives up to 90% chaos dmg, and with Barrage + GMP we shoot 9 arrows per hit. With around 5 APS, that's 45 arrows. With 25% chance to apply on hit, we'll reach the 15 stacks cap in less than 2 seconds.

Don't bother using it for mapping, we kill stuff so fast even without it.


Utilities and shit


Decoy Totem, Phase Run, Grace/Vaal Grace. Linked with Inc Duration
CWDT,Immortal Call, Enfeeble, and Golem


GEAR
Spoiler
Mandatory Gear
Quillrain bow
A +3 bow gems can potentially outdps quillrain, but quillrain offers very good QoL, in the shape of fast attack speed and faster projectiles.

Devoto / Starkonja
Devoto for maximum dps and speed. Starkonja for defense.

Witchfire Brew
Despair aura, and increased dot

Nice to have
Chest should be either Cospri's Will for extra curse, or any dex based armor. Our colors are 5G1B, so any pure reds or pure blues can be a bitch to color for.



ASCENDANCIES
Patient Reaper - Weave the Arcane - Prolonged Pain - Swift Killer


PANTHEONS
Spoiler
Mapping/Delving = Major - Lunaris, Minor - Gruthkul (upgrade as you like)

Bossing = Major - Solaris, Minor - Ryslatha/Gruthkul





Adding POB and other details as I type and test. Please be patient.

Turns out the dps is not something like old Elemental hit. However the pros of it (coming soon) kinda skews me towards using it for delving and shit this league.
discord id: dejuvenate#5828
Guides
[3.13 Ritual] Flameslinger - https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/3009295
[3.5 Betrayal] Brutus AW Chieftain - https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/2320224
[3.4 Delve] Toxic Rain - https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/2207700
Last edited by dejuvenate on Sep 9, 2018, 6:34:27 AM
Last bumped on Jan 1, 2019, 11:53:52 AM
Updated with POB and rough DPS calculation using molten strike estimation (which may or may not be accurate)
discord id: dejuvenate#5828
Guides
[3.13 Ritual] Flameslinger - https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/3009295
[3.5 Betrayal] Brutus AW Chieftain - https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/2320224
[3.4 Delve] Toxic Rain - https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/2207700
Great work, dejuvenate. Very interested in seeing what else you figure out. I recall Pohx switching his Caustic Arrow trickster to Toxic Rain about 2 days into the league and thinking that was interesting. There are other obvious benefits too - you can have a 6L bow and a 6L chest and run both skills haha.

Was going to try leveling a character like this as Quill Rain are only about 1c on hardcore right now. How's your survivability so far?
Last edited by cdnza on Sep 4, 2018, 1:05:22 PM
Hi cdnza,


Yeah, watching pohx was also an inspiration to me. I flocked towards pathfinder and tried to build a poison and herald of agony build. It didnt work out as well as I anticipated. Either I miss the mechanics entirely, or I need really good gear to scale poison and stuff for pathfinder.

This trickster is really amazing. If you grab patient reaper, then weaving the arcane, you basically can sustain quill rain spam very well.

Not sure about hc, I dont plan on playing hc in my life lol. But this trickster is definitely tankier and more mobile than my pf.
discord id: dejuvenate#5828
Guides
[3.13 Ritual] Flameslinger - https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/3009295
[3.5 Betrayal] Brutus AW Chieftain - https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/2320224
[3.4 Delve] Toxic Rain - https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/2207700
Managed to play for a couple of hours tonight. I'm at around level 30. I've been switching back and forth between which skill to use as my "main" skill, and I'm not sure which setup is better. TR definitely has higher single target while leveling (since the DoTs stack) but I think CA might be better for just clearing. I haven't farmed tabula yet this league so just playing with 4Ls for now. Each link is:

TR
Void Manip
Conc Effect
Mirage Archer

CA
Void Manip
Vicious Proj
Pierce

I'm not sure what is optimal. I also should be able to use Swift Affliction starting next level, so that might affect both links too. PoB suggests that Void Manip is the worst contributor to DoT DPS, but that seems counterintuitive to me.
Last edited by cdnza on Sep 5, 2018, 1:12:05 AM
I think inc AoE is better on TR than Conc since it allows it to overlap more and increase the effective clear area.
"
dejuvenate wrote:
Hi cdnza,


Yeah, watching pohx was also an inspiration to me. I flocked towards pathfinder and tried to build a poison and herald of agony build. It didnt work out as well as I anticipated. Either I miss the mechanics entirely, or I need really good gear to scale poison and stuff for pathfinder.

This trickster is really amazing. If you grab patient reaper, then weaving the arcane, you basically can sustain quill rain spam very well.

Not sure about hc, I dont plan on playing hc in my life lol. But this trickster is definitely tankier and more mobile than my pf.



Im actually running a Toxic Rain Pathfinder, im only 70 and im not into map but my whole leveling was pretty smooth using only TR.

CA is getting overhyped, the real mvp is TR, the aoe is way better, way better damage and multiples ways to apply the damage.
Im really happy that someone is trying to make something with this skill !
"
cdnza wrote:
Managed to play for a couple of hours tonight. I'm at around level 30. I've been switching back and forth between which skill to use as my "main" skill, and I'm not sure which setup is better. TR definitely has higher single target while leveling (since the DoTs stack) but I think CA might be better for just clearing. I haven't farmed tabula yet this league so just playing with 4Ls for now. Each link is:

TR
Void Manip
Conc Effect
Mirage Archer

CA
Void Manip
Vicious Proj
Pierce

I'm not sure what is optimal. I also should be able to use Swift Affliction starting next level, so that might affect both links too. PoB suggests that Void Manip is the worst contributor to DoT DPS, but that seems counterintuitive to me.


I leveled with toxic rain fyi. Also try to get quill rain as it gives the very much needed QOL (faster attack, faster projectiles). In my experience, toxic rain felt clunky early on with slow attack and slow projectile.

Quill rain sells for 2c in softcore, get the projectile speed as high as possible.

The way toxic rain works is kinda wonky. As it is a ground based attack, pierce wont really work unless you click beyond your target or your target is behind something.
discord id: dejuvenate#5828
Guides
[3.13 Ritual] Flameslinger - https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/3009295
[3.5 Betrayal] Brutus AW Chieftain - https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/2320224
[3.4 Delve] Toxic Rain - https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/2207700
btw what you think about greater/less projectiles
"
Frozen_Goosy wrote:
btw what you think about greater/less projectiles


The less projectile multiplier reduces the dot of the toxic rain, so it is actually detrimental, in my opinion.
discord id: dejuvenate#5828
Guides
[3.13 Ritual] Flameslinger - https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/3009295
[3.5 Betrayal] Brutus AW Chieftain - https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/2320224
[3.4 Delve] Toxic Rain - https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/2207700

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