[3.16] g00fy_goober's Toxic Rain Occultist (Easily clear all content)

Note: If you have any questions pertaining to the build. Please post them here or if you want feel free to ask in stream. Please do not PM me in game or on forum as you will not get a response.

Stream: Feel free to stop by my stream at twitch.tv/goof1313 if you have any questions about builds or guides. Always happy to discuss them on stream or answer any questions you may have.

ALWAYS READ THIS FIRST!!
ChangeLog
3.16 - Due to the massive amount of changes listed in the unreveal and patch notes it will be impossible to update right now. Generally most things should be a little bit BUFFED (like passives/masterys) then before. Best I can say at this moment is with a little bit of experimenting on your guys end the build should work as good or better than it did previously. Full update in guide won't come until much later after launch when everything can be thoroughly planned and tested.

3.15 - Global damage nerfs from flasks/supports effect this build like any other. Mirage archer may now be much better to use instead of swift affliction. Mana cost multiplier and triggers went up as well so mana might become a decent issue with this build and something will have to be figured out. Without harvest crafting and veiled mod changes and such the crafting methods have probably changed so BE AWARE before you try and make an item. For example the damage over time multiplier on 2-hand weapons has changed from a prefix to a suffix.

3.14 - AOE now increases the pod spread, meaning it is not optimal to go any inc aoe. Overall without aoe the pod spread was slightly lowered meaning it is actually a buff for this build. Carcass jack would NOT be the way to go anymore because of the 50% inc aoe. Clear would end up being a bit larger radius and single target would be a bit less. Could still use carcass just not the best option to carry you through the whole game anymore. Wicked Pail cluster jewel notable also received a bit of a nerf. Overall build will still dominate everything and little has changed.

Also the timeless jewel notable chainbreaker and berserk are pretty much dead now while attacking. With berserk up you lose full rage in about a single second.


Intro
Toxic Rain is probably the best skill/build I have ever played. It's pro's obliterate any of the cons and it is incredibly fun. While being both strong in single target and clear this build shines in almost any situation. Gearing is amazing and can be done on a very budget friendly playstyle or can really push to min/max and do crazy amounts of output.


Pros
Very fun and engaging build to play
Purple flower MTX is awesome
Very fast pace build
Stacking skill effect makes things AMAZING
4 blink arrow charges and higher than ever cdr for blink arrow
Amazing dot damage bypasses pesky annoyances like prox shields
Amazing Single Target capabilities
Super high attack speeds
Immune to Chill/Freeze (and either ignite or shock)
0 mana cost skill
Easy Chaos Resistance available
Can do all map mods
Able to do all content (All Maps, Uber Atziri, Labs, Shaper & Guardians, Uber Elder, Sirius, All Invitations, Maven)
Easy/Cheap to gear with room for lots of improvements as you get more currency


Cons
A lot of gems early on are not available for witch
Not overly defensive but not really an issue
Can be very expensive to fully min/max yourself for end game gear


Tree
https://bit.ly/3s87dPM
*Note* Rest of passive points go into cluster jewels for all 3 outside cluster jewel nodes. Best to look at POB.


Quick Leveling Guide

- Definitely league start capable

- Early on Caustic arrow is the way to start. Link Caustic Arrow with arrow nova support + vicious projectiles + void manipulation. This will carry you for a very long time. If you get a 5th link throw in swift affliction and a lucky 6th link would be efficacy.

- Toxic rain can be linked with ballista totem support and vicious projectiles + void manipulation and can be helpful for added damage on bosses.

- Any early bow with + chaos levels or +bow gems is super helpful.

- For armor pieces (helm/chest/boots/gloves etc) just try to get a good amount of res and any life you can.

- Use normal leveling uniques if not at start of league: Tabula/Goldrim/-mana cost Jewelry.

- Obviously most of the tree/end game dmg comes from cluster jewels which you will not have early. Just pick up some life nodes and the basic chaos dmg/attack speed clusters and you can respec them later once you get cluster jewels.


Gear breakdown & Stat Prioritization

Helm
Asenath's Chant. Allows you to socket others pells in here that get triggered automatically when you attack. Easy to throw golem in here along with essence drain for some leech/added dmg and your curse, 2nd curse once you get the right ascendancy node. Feel free to buy the prophecy, buy the helm, buy the cards, however you want to do it. Best helm by far.

Weapon
Probably one of you first big pieces and one of your first things you should save/spring for. Needs quite a few end game crafts like multimod, + level of support gems, and chaos dmg over time multi. You can craft this entire weapon from start or buy it at any of the steps and continue or just buy it straight out. Personally I did not feel like alt spamming for the damage over time multiplier and annuling off w/e regal mod and repeating that step however many times it took. I ended up buying a 6l thicket bow rare with just the 35% dmg over time multiplier early on for like 4 exalts. The best overview I can give you of crafting comes down to this picture: https://i.imgur.com/3W9HvOP.png. Assuming you have right ilvl (82+), right base (thicket bow) and have it 6l'd up (or can do that after, but I suggest doing it first). In all it takes about 7-8 exalts in crafts + however many alts to roll + w/e jews/fuse to get 6s/6l. As I said I personally skipped the linking and rolling and just spent 4 exalts and then proceeded from there. To finish this beauty off you can augment and r/a attack until you get attack speed (T1 preferred). The cherry on top is to synthesize the bow after and hope for something good, or if you really want you can buy a good synthesise bow first and then do all the linking/crafting. The amount of dps this bow will add to your build is literally insane.

Quiver
Maloneys Mechanism is the quiver you want to start with. After you have beat the game and killed kitava and get to maps... I used a 5l caustic arrow setup for a LONG time literally until red tier maps. It is so strong early with almost no gear at all. You can use any quiver you want for just life/res/attack speed or w/e. Once you make your swap over to toxic rain though, maloneys should come next so you can put frenzy + caustic arrow + arrow nova support. Everytime you blink arrow or use toxic rain it constantly casts caustic arrow + frenzy. Giving you more clear, more damage, and infinite frenzy charges. This will easily carry you through whole games. If you plan to go END END game min/max style though. A rare quiver with double multi, life, additional arrow, move + attack speed is the way to go. Warning this quiver takes a LOT of currency to craft, a LOT of luck, or almost a couple hundred exalts. Getting an ornate quiver bases is prty big here as you can then add increased duration into your 6l chest setup.

Chest
Carcass Jack will carry you for the entire game. The only thing that SLIGHTLY beats it, is a super godly rare harvest crafted + elevated mod chest. For 99.9% of players, just stick with the carcass. For thos pushing the dps to it's max go for the elevated explody (allows you to swap ascendancies) and gives explody + inc aoe, and then get frenzy on hit, along with a buttload of life and res. Now that you can't augment mods on influenced items I don't even know how rare/possible a chest like this is...

Gloves
Rare gripped gloves. The projectile ATTACK damage does not add to your toxic rain dps however it is the coolest looking gloves and the highest evasion base. Best bet is to just awakener orb chaos dmg over time multi + increased damage over time. Try to get some life/res/attack speed but again upcoming harvest changes will make this MUCH harder to do.

Boots
Good rare pair of boots is the best option here. Until I switched my ascendancy very very late game. I simply got two-toned boots with life + res + res and multimoded them and added cannot be frozen and the 20 movespeed+cannot be chilled hybrid mod. Much much later on I changed ascendancy to get the cannot be chilled/frozen and decided to go for some crazy elusive/tailwind elevated mod boots. However they both go off of our crit, which for the most part is super low. If your really running trhough super high density maps with bunch of mobs added it goes off quite frequently, but very little on bossing. Still, what else are you going to go eh? Probably the very last piece of gear I grabbed just because I wanted to blow another 100 exalts and see how things went.

Belt
Godly rare only way to go. Honestly super easy belt to harvest craft but now that you cannot do so on influenced items your best bet is to probably skip the % max life roll, and try to hunter exalt slam it at end. Aug life, r/a life until t1 (or just buy), then you can aug cold/light/fire and r/a them till you get 40+ or 42+ or 46+ or w/e tier you are going for. Just make sure when you do the cold/lightning/fire that only suffixes remain and you will get res 100% of time. Once you have all your suffixes/res... I would just hunter orb slam and hope for chaos dmg or % max life. Only 4 mods you can get and 2 of them are lower weighting and they the crappier ones. Then you can aug influence mod or r/a influence to get a good t1 and then aug last. Probably will be pretty hard to get t1 of both hunter mods though.

Jewelry
Amulet used to be pretty simple. Would just go for +1 dexterity skill gems on w/e base you wanted and then aug chaos 2-3x to get chaos dmg over time multi and +1 level of chaos skill gems. Now that in 3.14 they changing harvest so you can't augment influenced items except for the influence crafts themselves im not sure what the easiest way will be. Probably try to be super lucky and fossil spam or alt/chaos spam to try to get both mods. There are so many hunter amulet mods I don't think it will be possible to r/a influence mod or w/e until you hit unless you are extremely lucky. Anyway your best bet is to probably go with just either chaos gems or dex gems, with a bunch of life and some other decent mods. Craft aspect of the spider on it and then bench craft - mana cost of skills. For rings just get chaos dmg + life and try to have 2 open prefixes and an open suffix. Can multimod on % dmg and -mana cost on both. Going for an end game ring with despair on hit with 32% inc effect changes your dmg in POB by a good amount. I THINK the way this works is that the despair is applies with 32% inc effect and since the level of your despair curse is higher it uses that one instead but you still benefit from the 32% inc effect. Not sure if this is a bug or intended but it is pretty significant damage change.



Jewels
First grab a watcher's eye. Start with just a malevolance dmg one and then a HUGE upgrade for any TR build is getting the clarity -mana cost and malevolence one. However it is around 40 exalts or so. It is huge and essential in giving your character 0 mana cost though. I never used one for quite awhile and had like a 6-7 mana cost toxic rain which was fine mostly until I started attacking really fast and did certain bosses where I would run out of mana.... or got a cursed no regen map. 40 exalts is a lot for an extra - mana cost roll but really is worth it.

Next is.... CLUSTER JEWELS. There is a lot of info I can pour out here to talk about what mods, and what types to go etc etc, but just look at the POB. It is literally 100x easier to see/understand so I will just throw out a few pointers here.... The large clusters are not to bad to grab/buy. The medium jewels HAVE to have wicked pall, the next best node is one that gives 10% Dot Multi. You can either get exposure therapy (also gives 30% chaos res against damage over time) or brush with death (also gives 1% life and es on kill). Brush with death is 10x better and if you get a bunch of them, gives you amazing clearing potential, where every enemy you kill ends up giving you like 4%-5% life on kill. However only 1-2 are really needed. However these jewels are more like 6-7ex and prty hard to find instead of the cheapo like 50c exposure therapy jewels.

Next get all your regular jewels with % max life, chaos dmg multi, attack speed with bows. Honestly your best bet for these jewels is to buy max life + attack speed + attack speed with bows and then aug chaos and r/a chaos until you hit chaos dmg multi. Turns a 12-15 ex 4 mod jewel into a 2-3 ex inital buy an aug chaos and usually a handful of r/a chaos's.

Finally grab a Lethal pride akoya timeless jewel. This let's you generate rage on tree and is super useful for using berserk for end game bosses and such.


Gems & Links
4L Setup (use for leveling): Caustic Arrow - Arrow Nova Support - Vicious Projectiles - Void Manipulation
5L add Swift Affliction
6L add Efficacy
*NOTE* Once you swap Caustic arrow for toxic rain drop arrow nova support and add empower instead



4L Setup(Helm): Anomalous Lightning Golem - Despair - ED - Enfeeble
4L Setup: Clarity (level 1) - Malevolence - Flesh & Stone - Enlighten 4
4L Setup: Portal - Blood Rage - Phantasmal Blink Arrow - Anomalous Second Wind
6l Setup: Anomalous CWDT (level 1) - Immortal Call (level 3) - Vaal Blight - Vaal Haste - Vaal Grace - Berserk
*NOTE* If you have ornate quiver base you should put the berserk in the quiver and add increased duration to the 6l setup to give your vaal skills even more uptime along with your immortal call. If you are absolutely insane and have a perfect 3 mod watchers eye, you should instead place precision into the quiver.


Flasks
Dying Sun. This simply gives you more AOE overlap increasing damage, and gives more projectiles for clear

Bottled Faith of course is next because it is the most amzing flask in game. Even for dot builds this is one of the best flasks in the game. Giving increased damage taken to enemies is huge and increasing crit helps still too if you are doing tailwind/elusives boots. Sulphur flask base so 40% inc damage on top of all this as well.

Cinderswallow with regen life. This helps drastically for blood rage and dot build in general as you don't rly leech anywhere except for ED damage. Also having more life/mana/es on kill is pretty huge and of course the onslaught base is amazing.

Quicky Quick Quick Flask. Yup, go faster, always. Blink arrow is great when you have no flask charges or to move cliffs/walls and all that or reposition your guy but for basic running through maps, quicksilver flask (Preferably alchemist's of adrenaline) is what you want.

Lastly I use a Catalysed Eternal Life Flask of Staunching. Feel free to roll/use something else if you want as most of times life flask doesn't have much meaning especially if you are already immune to corrupting blood from jewel.


Playstyle
So toxic rain is pretty amazing and easy to use. Your basic style is going to be to shoot and move shoot and move shoot and move. A lot of times for bosses you will shoot and move in a ring around them. Since we are not overly tanky you will not do much where you are standing completely still just holding down your TR button. You can do this to precast on things, but usually click move click move click move is the playstyle.

When it comes to bosses or end game bosses, you should vaal grace/blight with the skill effect duration we get from tree and such our skill uptime on vaal skills is ridic. Even without inc duration gem.... grace lats almost 20 seconds, haste lasts almost 13, and then vaal blight slows enemies further, and makes them take inc chaos damage and deals quite a bit of dmg itself especially to trash mobs. This also lasts almost 10 full seconds that they take increased damage and are slowed for.


No No Map Mods
None. No regen is a complete pain if you do not have 0 mana cost, but if you do.... 100% all map mods are doable and easy.


Annointment
Corruption. 25% chaos dmg, some es leech and 20% inc effect of withered (which is pretty huge).


Enchants
Gloves - Any you want.
Boots - Any you want.
Helm - Despair curse effect which actually out damages toxic rain % dmg and the +1 proj doesn't do anything damage wise, only helps with clear a bit.


Bandit

+2 Passives/Kill all


Ascendancy Points

Void Beacon - Withering Presence - Malediction - Profane Bloom (I swap out of profane bloom once I have an explody chest and go frigid wake just for the cannot be chilled/cannot be frozen)


Pantheon

Minor God - Abberath. I Like being immune to burning ground especially with a low life pool and ignites and burning damage hurt like hell.

Major God - Soul of Lunaris is my favorite. Avoid projectiles, more dodge, some movespeed/phys dmg reduction, and avoid projectiles that have chained is super nice especially when you have just you and your golem buddy walking down a map and get bazooka'd by archers and instantly blow the eff up.

Feel free to change this as needed or use whatever other Major god you would like.


PoB link
https://pastebin.com/HbQyZFf1

*NOTE* POB is absolutely crazy min/maxed hundreds and hundreds of exalts and in the case of watchers eye probably doesn't even really exist. This is the ultimate end game edition and is 1000% NOT NEEDED in any way shape or form.




FAQ
Why does my damage feel low? Honestly it shoudldn't. Everything adds up really quick and dot damage scaling now is one of the best leveling experiences for clear. Single Target can be a bit meh depending on gear but with a few uniques and once swapped to toxic rain main, everything should mow down really fast.

How does increased aoe work? Increased aoe with toxic rain increases the spore pod aoe, meaning the more aoe you have the more the pods overlap thus increasing your single target damage. More increased aoe = awesome.

How do additional projectiles work Additional projectiles actually increase the aoe radius of toxic rain itself, thus making the circle they land in larger. This is great for clearing but does LITTLE TO NO single target damage. I don't want to say additional projectiles are bad but hardly worth heavily investing into.

Why do I keep running out of mana? At low levels you WILL run out of mana. Either use -mana jewelry if it is not start of league, or just run a mana flask. Once you have - mana cost on your jewelry and the -mana cost clarity watchers eye you will have 0 mana cost.

Why do we use bottled fiath? While we do not do crit or care about crit (unless running tailwind/elusive boots) bottled faith still makes enemies take 10% more damage which is a 10% MORE multiplier. Ontop of the base of 40% inc damage because it is a sulphur flask it is still a huge damage boost.

Why Occultist? Honestly it is the best by far. Trickster was nerfed yet again, losing 50% inc damage, and having shrouds getting hit AGAIN. Honestly the go to trickster TR is dead IMO. Sure it is not completely useless, has okay sustain from enemy kill and a tad of defences and ONE solid node for damage. Pathfinder is also okay but only for ONE major offensive node and then things like bleed/ailment immunity and flask uptime and such. However Occultist has such amazing nodes and received yet another buff in 3.13. Changing 20% chaos multi to 15% MORE chaos damage. Honestly ppl really need to lay out and compare the ascendency notables and see how OP and awesome occultist is ESPECIALLY with toxic rain. Honestly there is no comparison it is superior in every way.





Hope you all enjoyed the guide and hope it allows many players to enjoy this wonderful game even more. If you have any questions/comments/vouches you are encouraged to post up as long as you have FULLY read the guide. Again you are also encourage to come ask questions on my stream. Happy farming my fellow exiles!
Last edited by g00fy_goober on Oct 15, 2021, 8:44:28 AM
Last bumped on Nov 10, 2021, 12:38:20 PM
Was playing with starting this in PoB. Would you basically just do the pathfinder version, as Witch to start?
"
Was playing with starting this in PoB. Would you basically just do the pathfinder version, as Witch to start?


For skill points? Not really sure what you are asking.

I THINK your asking what you would do to start before going all cluster jewels. If that is the case I would go something like this:

https://bit.ly/2PxE6I8

Not min/maxed by any means but just until clusters, just life/chaos nodes and bow dmg over time and attack speed stuff.
Yep, that is what I was asking.

Just for reference if anyone wants a starting point, and this is not a finished product, but I made a PoB for leveling based on GGoobers above post. https://pastebin.com/DeNLesBj

Again, I have not set any settings, I just threw on some cheapo generic gear you would have by 60 and a quill rain. Set up CA and TR Ballista. For jewels I just did damage/life & Attkspd/life. I opted for more life than damage, because well, Im a scrub.

Will tweak it more. Thanks for the initial guide, Goofy.

Last edited by Tainted_Turkey on Apr 5, 2021, 8:27:30 AM
This is the build I will definetly start with next league. Simple, straight, easy to gear up. It's always a pleasure going with a fast pace, all content build :)
Whats the reason behind more people playing this on Occ now over Trick or PF?
"
Whats the reason behind more people playing this on Occ now over Trick or PF?


In simple trickster is complete garbage and has been nerfed so many times now, ppl just do it as the go to because half the guides haven't been updated or ppl are used to it so they just do it again. Pathfinder has a really nice node for poison but the rest is like ailment immune, flask stuff, remove bleed and has nothing to do with TR itself.

Even shorter answer: Answered in the guide.
If there are no big changes to this build (exept mayby berserk) I'll most likely league start with this.
Any recommendations how to go about the start of the league? Because some gems are gated for witch.
Thanks for the well written guide btw
"
_Shini_Gami_ wrote:
If there are no big changes to this build (exept mayby berserk) I'll most likely league start with this.
Any recommendations how to go about the start of the league? Because some gems are gated for witch.
Thanks for the well written guide btw


Berserk was a very end game option just to push dps on boss. I wasn't sold on it for a very long time, but after picking up the timeless jewel and popping in berserk, the amount of rage/berserk you get for phased fights like maven and sirus is through the roof.

Gems are rough if you don't have friends/guild a lot of them are not obtainable until a6 for witch. You can always ask around in town in local chat if you have no guildies/friends.
"
_Shini_Gami_ wrote:
If there are no big changes to this build (exept mayby berserk) I'll most likely league start with this.
Any recommendations how to go about the start of the league? Because some gems are gated for witch.
Thanks for the well written guide btw


If your gonna league start, go ranger, get to town. Put bow + CA (From Quest Reward) into stash. Make witch. Use CA + Whatever until A6. I just used Skellies in a 3/4 link until A6 as a supplement to CA for damage on Bosses. Also pretty good meat shield as well.

Last edited by Tainted_Turkey on Apr 7, 2021, 2:36:37 PM

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