3.5 Budget Caustic Arrow/Death's Oath Occultist, 8k ES, triple curse, chaos damage,

This unique chest plate is giving us the Death Aura skill. It scales from:

-chaos damage
-damage over time
-area damage
-effect of non-curse auras
-non-ailment chaos damage

1)6link doesn't required! All gem links straight to inbuilt skill
2)Coloring can be an issue, cause item requires 180 str, and we need only 1 red socket. Coloring with chromatics can cost comparable to 6linking. But there's a cheaper way, using jeweller's orbs. There's a short video (not mine), explaining the idea.

3)Make sure that u have enough strenght on your items, cause u need a total 180 minus the number that DO gives itself.
4)Since DO deals chaos damage to a character, we're forced to use keystone Chaos Inoculation, that removes all HP and makes us immune to chaos damage. So we can rely on ES only
5)Only important rolls are +to attributes and increased armour

Caustic Arrow is a bow attack that fires an arrow dealing chaos damage and exploding in a caustic cloud. Enemies standing within it receive a debuff that deals chaos damage over time. The caustic cloud does not poison and is therefore not affected by poison-related modifiers. (c) wiki

CA scales from:

-gem level
-chaos damage
-damage over time
-area damage
-non-ailment chaos damage
-projectile damage

Our main source of damage is caustic cloud, not the projectile itself.

1)Multiple clouds doesn't stack!
2)Even if projectile misses, the cloud appears anyway

So, we dont care about attack speed, accuracy, or piercing. All we need to fire one arrow to where the mobs are staying, an keep an eye on sustaing caustic cloud.

Increasing gem level can give the most significant damage gain. So if u have enough currency, buy a 21lvl CA, 4lvl Empower and get a +3lvl bow. But if u dont, u can use regular gems and a very cheap +2lvl bow - just buy any 6-link base for ~50chaos and an essence for +2lvl for ~10 chaos. Other bow mod rolls not that important.

They are Despair, Enfeeble and Temporal Chains. Despair gives us about 50% of all DPS and out of doubts. Others gives us tons of survival and allows to stay close to enemys safely, so DO can work.

Passive nod "+% to effect of your curses" give a lot dps, cause it's encreasing effect of despair. So it's just profitable to have another 2 curses, which also will be boosted by that nodes.

Blight is an auxiliary skill, that is used on bosses and extremly fat mobs. With two Spreading Rot jewels, it makes hindered enemys take 50% increased chaos damage. It scales from:
-chaos damage
-damage over time
-area damage
-non-ailment chaos damage
-spell damage

Discipline is an aura, that giving us another tons of ES. I highly reccomend u to use vaal version of that skill, and put it on the easiest-to-reach key, it will save your life a lot of times (ofc, if u have just a lilbit of reaction)

Scales from:
effect of non-curse auras

I bought that one for 3ex. I explain how to get cheap one in Core Ideas=>Caustic Arrow

No alternative for this quiver. Dex, ES, and extremely useful faster start of ES recharge, that makes shild start to recharge almost a second faster

OH, WHAT A SURPRISE

See Core Ideas=>Death's Oath

That one gives us nice ES and evasion values for low price. Also +1 lvl is useful in gem link, cause we're using Enhance in helmet

These are giving us level 21 Blight skill and improving our DPS at all. I've played without that gloves for a while, but finally put them back for damage boost. Blight doesn't need quality, and vaal blight not very useful, so these gloves are good choice.

Pariah with socketed Discipline gives us 100 flat ES by itself and 14 more by leveling Discipline. Not necessary, but looking nice

2nd ring, amulet, boots and belt are rare. Three main goals are:

1)Extra ES
2)Capped resists
3)Str and Dex for items

Other useful mods:
-increased chaos damage
-increased damage over time
-increased area damage
-increased movement speed (for boots mostly)
-increased armour/evasion
-mana gain for kill/hit by attacks - one mod like that, and u wont have to bring a mana flask on no-regen map
-faster start of ES recharge (1ex ring craft)

2x Spreading rot - for extra chaos damage and extra damage under blight debuff
Energy from within - for a lot of ES
One rare jewel - on your choice, see "rare" section

ALSO

If you are a very-very rich Pinnochio, and you've got your own exalt-tree in you Hideout, then u can use a Unnatural Instinct jewel instead of rare one. It will save u 8 passive points and grant a lot of extra mana (no big deal, but 8 passives are definetly are)

Unique flask is giving us a despair aura and extra dps. Aura have no quality, so I use it on map only, on bosses I cast curse from a gem.
Other flasks are pretty common. Movement speed is movement speed. On other flask u can choose base by your own, but make sure, that u are always have flasks that would:
1)Remove bleeding
2)Remove ignite
3)Remove freeze
First 2 ailments are blocking ES to recharge, 3rd is just deadly

Also keep in your stash one +all resistance flask and mana flask with any of theese 3 mods in case of map mods "cursed with elemental weakness" and "no mana regen"

This gem setup is what PoB reccomend me to. Just gems with the most dps. I dont use mirror archers, or other gems that somehow increasing the number of projectiles, AS or piercing, cause I rely only on caustic clound

Very common DO link. I remind again - u dont need gem sockets to be linked with each other.

Note: Concentrated Effect, Swift Affliction and Void Manipulation supports DA directly. Otherwise, Arcane surge doing nothing but making the game think, that DA has a duration. So Less Duration and Efficacy works only when Arcane Surge is linked. Consider it, if u have only 5 sockets on your DO.

Concentrated Effect can be replaced with Inreased area of effect, if u wanna keep some distance. May be useful in some bossfight, when u dont wanna stay close

Damage, damage, damage. Nothing specific, all like PoB tells me

Temporal Chains and Enfeeble are linked with Blasphemy and Enlighten support gems. Blasphemy is making them an auras. Enlighten is used not because we need it so much. Empower or Enhance would have scaled this link better, but in that case we gonna have unreserved mana just for 1 CA. It's possible to play that way, but i dont like it. I even respected some DPS passive to get some nodes, reducing reserved mana.

Here we go to the one I'm proud of. Decoy totem+Blink Arrow+Despair+Enchance.

Decoy totem is great boss-fighting skill. It allows us to stand close safely and use our blight skill, renewing CA from time to time.

Blink Arrow is our movement skill.

Despair is our attacking curse, we're using it on bosses.

And all these 3 skills are greatly scaling from quality. Totem get a lot of life. Blink arrow works faster, so it will be easy for us to dodge some oneshoting attacks. And despair gets us much more DPS with quality.

And like a cherry on the top, all of these are affected by +1 to gem levels from our Vertex unique helmet, including Enhance. Tadam.

It's an amulet that gives our despair zero mana reservation and some DoT damage.
I've been using it for a long time. It's a great item, but it has one significant minus - no defences. Also, if we use Despair like an aura, we're gonna link it with blasphemy, and it must be with Temporal Chains and Enfeeble socketed in Heretic's Veil helmet (which is also gives less defences, then Vertex). Otherwise we're gonna have no mana at all.

Using despair on bosses manually might look complicated, but it's not. Curse lasts for 10+ seconds, and being used with Enhance support, provides us even more solo target DPS, then like an aura. I dont have any regrets of selling my Impresence.

I've expained, why I dont use an ascendancy Withering Presence, now I'll explain, why I don't use it as a gem.

Reason is simple - Decoy Totem is just better, them Spell Totem, that we must use to stack Wither. On paper it is great - come to boss, put withering totem under his feet, fire CA and blowing Blight on him, 34509345304958 dps. But in practice we're hit&running bosses all the time to stay alive, and decoy totem actually gives us more dps by providing some time to stand still and cast blight. So, no room for wither in my build.