Explosive Arrow vs Toxic Rain

DoT-scaling Toxic Rain is a fantastic, proven build that can get going with a pretty modest gear investment. Definitely more stable as a league starter than Explosive Arrow. EA may turn out to be amazeballs, but honestly the mechanics seem to work against it.

EA is less backloaded now, but it's still pretty backloaded. Yeah, it can theoretically generate some huge gorram hits and thus some equally spicy Ignites, but nobody yet has managed a build that can reliably focus on both those things. There's also Burning Arrow to consider, which kinda has to be better for Ignite regardless because Burning Arrow. EA also doesn't like to pierce or chain, which can limit its ability to sweep through large packs. Theoretically you can do something about that with stuff like Arrow Nova, but Explosive Arrow Nova just...just kinda sounds jank.

It's also worth noting that Toxic Rain Ballistas should work just fine, but the stiff attack speed penalty on Ballista Support means Explosive Arrow does not Ballista well. EA wants as many charges going off at once as it can, and even multiple totems spraying arrows everywhere doesn't sound like a better option for doing that than simply using Barrage Support and investing in a few extra projectiles.

Theoretically it's easier to scale elemental damage than chaos damage, but this is less the case for bows since there's a ton of extra "Chaos DOT with Bows" modifiers out there kinda specifically because of Toxic Rain. TR can also spec a Caustic Arrow secondary skill to apply a second, larger source of chaos DOT on heavy targets.

I don't foresee Explosive Arrow being a stronger skill than Toxic Rain, sadly. The mechanics just don't work in its favor. Fun factor, absolutely. Sheer efficacy, not so much.