[3.5] Caustic Arrow - How to melt maps with an Occultist - The guide

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Emnelrith wrote:

That being said I wonder what's the quality of life here without a 2nd projectile and without piercing

QoL is never quite good in close-combat against swarm of mobs :D
But in maps, i use pierce and Inc AOE. If i'm surrounded, i just hit right before my feet to get a good caustic ground for everyone rushing at me. Does the job, most of the time.

You can also use Mirror Archer, of course.

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Emnelrith wrote:

So that looks very, VERY promising in 3.5. New non-ailment chaos damage multipliers are outright ridiculous and if PoB is to be believed you're pushing 1kk dps here with new ascendency node.

That being said I wonder what's the quality of life here without a 2nd projectile and without piercing, especially in delve where you are being swarmed have have to hit things both close and far away from you. Also defense is not exactly the same as 95% evasion rate with Raider.

To what depth were you able to safely and deathlessly delve?

Also since the new ascendency node provides 60% chaos resistance have you considered going LL over CI for some additional auras, perhaps? Probably a bad idea, considering how chaos damage heavy incursion is and how mediocre Shavronne's Wrappings are, but still, kinda hate for 60% chaos damage to go to waste :/

The damage boost in 3.5 is insane (from 650k to 850k dps with mt PoB) !

Additionnal arrow is close to useless for CA (clouds don't stack and the AoE gain is small). I tried the jewel giving an additionnal pierce, it didn't feed greeat. If you need to hit both close and far away, there is (in 3.4) a craftable mode to make you arrow come back, creating 2 clouds (but that's not worth it imo)

LL can be an option, but it mean losing a very powerful ascendancy node, so not worth it imo.

I reached depth 320 (I died a couple of time but I'm a SC player), didn"t have the energy to farm sulphite and go deeper

A couple things

I really prefer keeping malediction over void beacon, personally. Mostly because in deeper delves, having temporal chains + enfeeble & still having Despair was really a boon (only went 450-500 with the CA occ, but without enfeeble I'd have mostly blown up.)

I also like going for the full 75% curse effect, even though it means dropping a couple nodes here and there. Intuitive leap also helps getting both essence surge & hex without getting the annoying travel nodes

I assume you know, but you can also get chaos damage on your belt, so I recommend crafting a shaper crystal belt with dense + aberrant :)

And the new chaos dot multiplier might appear on shaped rings / ammies (fingers crossed) and probably on jewels too ; I PoB'd them with 2-3% increases in that mult and it was still awesome x)

I am, however, surprised that you don't use double spreading rot + allelopathy ; I've found it extremely nice to single-tap Blight just to get that huge multiplier as a fight opener!

Anyone playing this? How did you level it? ( Got a tabula but not sure which bow to use ) how bout the new ascendancy point that gives freeze immunity?

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Nonaco wrote:

Anyone playing this? How did you level it? ( Got a tabula but not sure which bow to use ) how bout the new ascendancy point that gives freeze immunity?

Caustic arrow is great for leveling, with a tabula it should be pretty fast. The new ascendency is not as good as the old one imo (freeze immunity is nice, but you can use Dream Fragments to achieve the same result).

Currently playing the build again in 3.5, will update soon !
Spoiler : its cheaper and stronger !

This build struggles a little bit, or a lot bit until around L70 is what I am gathering.