Caustic Arrow - DoT or More Damage per Frenzy.... ?

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JohnNamikaze wrote:

I see Trickster more of a defensive version of a CA build because of Ghost Dance and Patient Reaper (has an awesome life recovery rate) on top of mana management from weave of the arcane which makes it really easy to spam 6L CA. I actually made a CA build with this ascendancy class and it has very good cloud damage, but my focus was to be a bit more tanky. Good thing this class has the +1 max frenzy charge, so I do not have to go all the way down to the duelist class.



Raider is kinda okay, but avatar of the slaughter is not really going to help much with the cloud damage and will just make it harder for you to spam CA because of so much attack speed. I recommend Deadeye over Raider because of AoE and extra projectile which is huge for more coverage with packs and that alone makes a big difference.



Overall, you would get more out of Trickster than Raider offensively, but defensively both are solid choices. Deadeye would give you more offense than Trickster because of the AoE and the extra projectile.



Edit: The increase attack damage from avatar of the slaughter will not boost your cloud damage.

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AbdulAlhazred wrote:

I've done a lot of theory crafting after Ascendancy released.

Your "best" class for a Caustic Arrow build is Champion. Other options include Trickster and Ascendant(Deadeye/Occultist).

Champion's permanent fortify defense is nothing to laugh at for a bow build that can't get that in any other way, in addition to 40% increased damage or 75% increased damage if you do Uber Lab. This isn't counting the Intimidate function on Champion, which gives you a 10% increase in damage if you hit an enemy (your actual CA has to hit them, the cloud itself is a DoT AoE and does not "hit" - but you can always use Frenzy-Multiproj-CoH-Vuln to proc frenzy charges and cause hits)

Trickster's 40% increase in DoT damage is small in comparison to Champion's increase in damage, but there is the quality of life bonus that 15% chance to gain frenzy charges on kill gives you (in addition to a sweet +1 charge). The defensive aspects are, again, small in comparison to Champion's fortify, but dodge/spell dodge are very strong stats and if you planned on going Acro/Phase Acro, complement it greatly.

My last choice would be Ascendant. Going Deadeye and Occultist, you get a huge bonus to pierce chance (something you'd want to cap anyway for Drillneck's bonus) and an extra arrow to boot. With the tree alone you could hit 90% pierce and 10% from Drillneck, allowing an extra gem slot in your CA links! Occultist would double Vulnerability's versatility by not only increasing DoT damage on CA, but reducing enemy chaos resistance (which is impossible any other way outside of Occultist's aura, and while chaos resistance is rare, enemies with high chaos resistance will be your bane). Couple that with a Wither totem and enemies can drop into negative chaos resistances! This ascendancy doesn't give you any defensive options (unless you consider that 1% ES regen defensive - possibly go CI CA?), but there's a lot of utility there.