Why is poacher's mark underused ?

I do want to hear people's opinions about it.

Sure here are better curses out there in terms of raw dps increase or defensive reduction, obviously, and its not really for bossing...

but for a lot of people who embrace the clear speed meta (usually consisting of running the same shaped map with no real dangers of death) and dont plan to kill bosses (although dont know why, pre-t16 bosses still melt quick as fuck), very few of them seem to use the curse.

lets recap what it gives for an attacking build:

frenzy on kill. great if you use VP and arent a raider because blood rage is pretty dangerous. as we all know, unless you're a summoner frenzy charges are more multipliers to any damage and they still obviously give attack speed

100% increased flask charges. usually people can sustain flasks between packs, but this makes sure you always have tons of charges even in reduced charges map and low density maps. unless you're PF, this is great for clear speed

less accuracy for enemies, which is huge. this means lycosidae isnt an absolute must-have for melee attack builds anymore (even if you're crit heavy - although if youre super invested in crit lycosidae is still better, as well as in enfeeble maps lycosidae will be much better), and you can dual-wield/get rare shield/unique shield or have a huge accuracy boost if you're bows and not using lioneyes

LGOH and MGOH without needing a claw. if you attack with multiple projectiles, for example, you'll get plenty of life/mana gained on hit on top of your leech

overall while this curse doesnt 'fill' in a niche in a way that warlords may for a non-berserker caster, it's extremely well-rounded for general clear attack builds, especially non-raider VP attack builds.

Thoughts ?

Exactly what you said - Poacher's Mark is good but it's not Best In Niche for any given build. Everything it does except its backwards accuracy buff, something else in the game does.

Frenzy generation? BLood Dance, Blood Rage, being a Raider, any of a number of other options.

L/MGoH? People prefer leech to *GoH anyways.

Flask charges? Nobody tends to be concerned with flask maintenance.

Poacher's Mark is a great solution for a bunch of problems which people generally have better solutions for, individually. Why use your precious curse slot on a good-answer suite when you could get something that only a given curse can do (i.e. Enfeeble doubling your EHP score, Warlord's giving you spell leech without bullshit, Temp Chains going ham on debuff durations, so on and so forth)?

In order for Poacher's to appeal, you have to want the accuracy very badly AND ALSO be in a position where the rest of what Poacher's Mark does is also highly applicable to your build. I've seen some good builds utilizing it with left-side Lioneye bow builds (the jewel, not the bow) that don't get enough accuracy or crit without Poacher's Mark, but most right-side builds can manage just fine without it.

Given how hugely impactful curses can be and how precious any given curse slot is, Poacher's Mark being good-but-not-great just doesn't cut it against gamechanger curses.

I would agree if we're including bossing here, but to me it seems like a great complement to clear speed builds *shrugs*.

Id say something like enfeeble is actually severely underused for its sheer power, but thats another story- clear speed builds rarely use defensive curses, which is my point.

I think a build Im playing now falls within that range you're talking about (BLS molten strike berserker) on the left side of the tree and converting all dex to strength.

comparing my build to other similar ones, they always use flammability, which is just a deeps toolpenistip enhancement on PoB...and its clearly inferior to poachers in any non-t16+ content but then I guess theyre playing ST or sunder (not molten strike) for non-bosses.

For sheer clearspeed I can see the argument, but I've never done raw clearspeed builds. From a general theorycrafting perspective I can see why Poacher's Mark falls off - it doesn't do anything really unique. The various elemental curses are resistance reductions i.e. Poor Man's Pen, and increased ailment application. Warlord's is free* spell leech. Assassin's Mark is...vastly overrated.

For your particular build, though? Brutus' Lead Sprinkler left-side Zerker focused on clear? I could see Poacher's Mark being quite good. *GoH supplements Berserker leech, Molten Ball Pen generates a metric butt-ton of hits for it to work with if you go 110% ham on projectile count, and the effective accuracy boost is sorely needed for left-side builds with null Dex.

Heh, that said, you asked why people don't use it more often. The best notion I can come up with is that it just doesn't have the ritzy glam of more popular skills. I'd almost always prefer Poacher's to AssMark, but I don't actually use offensive curses very often so ehhh. Enfeeble is just too damn good at what it does for me to lightly give up.

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1453R wrote:

For sheer clearspeed I can see the argument, but I've never done raw clearspeed builds. From a general theorycrafting perspective I can see why Poacher's Mark falls off - it doesn't do anything really unique. The various elemental curses are resistance reductions i.e. Poor Man's Pen, and increased ailment application. Warlord's is free* spell leech. Assassin's Mark is...vastly overrated.

For your particular build, though? Brutus' Lead Sprinkler left-side Zerker focused on clear? I could see Poacher's Mark being quite good. *GoH supplements Berserker leech, Molten Ball Pen generates a metric butt-ton of hits for it to work with if you go 110% ham on projectile count, and the effective accuracy boost is sorely needed for left-side builds with null Dex.

Heh, that said, you asked why people don't use it more often. The best notion I can come up with is that it just doesn't have the ritzy glam of more popular skills. I'd almost always prefer Poacher's to AssMark, but I don't actually use offensive curses very often so ehhh. Enfeeble is just too damn good at what it does for me to lightly give up.

fair enough, thanks for comprehensive answers.

I agree generally with enfeeble. its by far the most powerful curse in the game imo, especially for toons who can evade.

It is underrated. It is a great curse on hit gem for casters that abuse heralds for map clears. Frenzy + sustain is better than assasin mark when you throw in a diamond flask.

i actually made a few builds that completely utilized poacher's mark as a staple.

i was possibly the very first person to theorycraft the blade vortex pathfinder (a month before ascendancy was released, while i was on my honeymoon) but i never made one myself, even tho its known to be one of the strongest builds in all of history.
why?
because pathfinder sucks. the reason why i have always said pathfinder is horrible and sucks so much is because anybody can become a pathfinder, essentially.

with plenty of builds you can grab up a good flask belt and arcane chemistry which will give you 3 flask usages (tho not required). you can also grab up the now slightly nerfed alchemist nodes, and you can use poacher's mark for the flask sustain. boom, you're a pathfinder without being a pathfinder.

while using raider ascendancy, or even assassin back when it was super OP as fk, you could have all flasks up 100% of the time through almost every single fight except certain bosses. mostly ones that have phases without any adds, like daresso.
you had 3 uses of all flasks (at the time including vinktar's) and your flasks would be topped up after about 4 or 5 mobs.

but now-a-days it isn't necessary to use for flask sustain like it used to be, because density is so high, and the power of those OP flasks has been nerfed down so they're not overly used. they are still strong and used, but not essentially required

There are other reasons to use Pathfinder. Though admittedly, the triple-dip cherrybomb nerf of A.) unique flasks, B.) Poison, and C.) the Pathfinder Ascendancy itself has made the class a lot less potent than it used to be. Simple, hassle-free access to Poison isn't nearly as important as it used to be and was one of the big selling points of pathfinder, alongside enough flask duration/power to make some builds work outright. Pathfinder was the only class that could reliably make a Low-Life build work on Coruscating Elixir rather than Shav's, for example. Not that Shav's is exactly hard to get these days, but the unique option Pathfinders have of doing a Low-Life build with a non-Shav chest is still cool.

That said, nothing's stopping Pathfinder from doing everything you mentioned as well for ULTIMATE FLASK SUPREMACY. In fact a number of Pathfinder builds I'm aware of did exactly that. Do also note that Poacher's Mark is pretty strictly an attack build curse; three quarters of what it does is pointless for spells, so it doesn't work well with Blade Vortex. Depending on method of application, your best use for Poacher's Mark is an attack skill that fires a large number of total hits close to you, to maximize its gain-on-hit properties. Molten Strike with all its various extra projectiles mods is a good fit. Frost Blades almost works but it generally hits outside a Blasphemy radius so not so much. Maybe some weird Multistrike/Melee Splash combo, too.

Alternatively, Poacher's Mark could actually be very nice for summoners who have to deal with the inherent inaccuracy of minion attacks. I've seen folks use Necromantic Aegis' Lycosidae in a few builds to counteract minion accuracy suckitude, but Poacher's Mark could also be used to combat critter inaccuracy issues without sacrificing your shield. Or without having to sacrifice NA Victario's Charity and its crazy minion damage bonuses. if you use minions that care about their life totals (i.e. not SRS), the LGoH could help, too.

Poacher's Mark is a very nice curse, but you gotta have a couple of specific problems in conjunction in order for it to make a lot of sense. Either that or you have to decide from the outset that Poacher's Mark is a thing you're using and build around the presence of that curse, rather than deciding two thirds of the way through a build "hey, I should curse something too. What to use..." Poacher's Mark is almost never going to be a 'splash' curse; either it's an integral part of how your build works or there's going to be better options.

Herald of Ice + Curse on Hit + Poacher's Mark

is probably the best setup for any elemental damage build that can shatter. I use it on anything I know that scales crit and ele.

Not because of accuracy or lgoh...the main purpose is the flask charges. It makes every class I have feel similar to a pathfinder. Not exactly like a pathfinder, but flasks are up between packs pretty much consistently.

If you take a few flask nodes in tree, have a flask charge belt, and the CoH setup I mentioned it is pretty much unmatched for charge gain for non-pathfinder builds.

Sorry I know this is an older thread but I was wondering if using a level 8 poachers mark on hit would be enough LGoH for a molten strike build?

Thanks