Caustic Arrow

You mean redundancy? Yes, sorry

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soul4hdwn wrote:

You mean redundancy? Yes, sorry

No, thematic.

Once you trap it, it stops being poison arrow, something that you shoot from your bow, and starts being poison trap, something you throw. Doesn't feel right having a bow but be throwing traps instead. Or setting mines.

Could just be me tho.

No i understand, i just have the practical logic than realism, both gave same answer. It is the same with spells.

Just cant deny the damage difference though.

Stop derailing the thread. And can we drop this trap nonsense already? It is a sad state of affairs when you are restricted to using poison arrow traps to do just mediocre damage in map groups. We shouldn't have to. Simple as that. It is a completely different play style for one.

While I am here, has anyone got their PA gem to level 20 in a +3 bow with a level 3 Empower? Am interested to see what kind of numbers you are pulling on the poison cloud. State your other supports as well please.

My level 18 PA in a +3 bow linked to slower projectiles, culling strike and conc. effect (empower is still only level 1) is doing ~1790 DPS. Pretty mediocre for soloing maps at level 82 and downright useless in a full group. It really needs to be doing 3 times that to be endgame viable.

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Waves_blade wrote:

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soul4hdwn wrote:

You mean redundancy? Yes, sorry

No, thematic.

Once you trap it, it stops being poison arrow, something that you shoot from your bow, and starts being poison trap, something you throw. Doesn't feel right having a bow but be throwing traps instead. Or setting mines.

Could just be me tho.

Yes you are right, but the point of traps is to make the poison cloud deal as much damage as possible, since there are very limited ways of increasing its damage.

Filling a map with poison clouds that you shoot out of your bow definitely feels better though.

Not really related but;
I recently switched my poison arrow traps to poison arrow remote mines, it feels similar to shooting poison arrows with my bow (but obviously not as much control over it).

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Waves_blade wrote:

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soul4hdwn wrote:

You mean redundancy? Yes, sorry

No, thematic.

Once you trap it, it stops being poison arrow, something that you shoot from your bow, and starts being poison trap, something you throw. Doesn't feel right having a bow but be throwing traps instead. Or setting mines.

Could just be me tho.

Agreed.

There is hardly any risk in PA cloud damage builds. Corrupted blood is a non-factor as you do not have to hit a monster to kill it. Storm heralds can safely be dispatched at max range and kiting. The same kiting and range applies to volatile, fraction, and even proximity shields mean nothing as the cloud is considered to be inside the bubble.

What I'm saying is simply that PA is one of the safest if not the safest skill to use in the entire game. The lack of punishment for poor use of this kill is likely a factor in why it should not deal a great amount of damage.

That being said the skill still is extremely potent against pretty much anything that isn't chaos resistant. The lack of chaos penetration becomes really annoying in merciless. It is so bad that I often skip over magic packs that are chaos resist with a life regen, or extra life affix. The best way i can think of it is that if every normal monster had a chance to roll a Camouflaged Predator affix and they removed resolute technique from the game, that is what it would feel like playing a PA build at higher levels.

Even with a focus on single target dps my PA damage is still about 75% chaos damage and to have 75% of my damage reduced with no means of countering that reduction is about as fun as a swift kick in the nuts.

Minus golems and bears, just about everything dies in the duration of one of my PA clouds. Then you throw in chaos resist and it takes 3 or 4 sometimes 5 clouds to get rid of them.

If you don't want to add a chaos penetration gem then at least add some reduction on the passive tree.

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Resistance penetration has no effect on damage over time, so adding chaos penetration would do nothing for Poison Arrow.

Unless on the base damage of the Poison Arrow. Ok, everyone play it for the cloud... only I did play on it before the damage was scaled, at low level. But it's something for a Chaos Penetration Gem. I also want one for my incinerate-added chaos damage-infernal mantle-witch.

Unless if the resistance penetration is on a curse / debuff (like Elemental Equilibrium). I realise that there is no "offensive" keystone on the dexterity part of the passive tree between vaal pact and ghost reaver, except for point blank... Why not add a Chaos related one ? (e.g. you cannot deal non-damage-over-time damage and your damage over time penetrate ~half enemy resistance). A new curse with only chaos penetration would be too niche... and there is already a lot of curse... maybe with fancy other effect...

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Resistance penetration has no effect on damage over time, so adding chaos penetration would do nothing for Poison Arrow.

Thanks for that, Daniel. Considering PA is unlikely to get buffs, do you guys have any new chaos damage skills in the works? PA is not viable for group play and VS doesn't do enough damage to offset the risk of going melee. A lot of us really like the play style and appreciated the effort you guys put into the new passives. Would be a shame to see the skills go unused.