[3.13]🏹 Poison Barrage-VF / Scourge Arrow / TR PF | Bottled Fortify | The Tankiest Ranger + High DPS
Update: SA vs poison TR
Introducing PoisonToxic Rain variant of our build. This variant has becombe viable. I guess I accidentally crafted a good poison bow with increased AoE, so let's try poison TR then. :)
Video:
T19 100% Delirious juiced map x Beyond (the hardest challenge): video, description.
17.9mil combined DPS (>90% poison), ~7.5k HP (lvl100), poison deals damage 32% faster (would be 42% with the boots that has 10% faster poison mod).
Share the same gears with poison Scourge Arrow. For less budget, check out the Scourge Arrow PoBs.
TR costs 0 mana.
Assuming 5 overlapping explosions for 10 arrows.
Key notes:
The defense is the same as our Scourge Arrow main build, i.e. super tanky.
The offense is based on inflicting as many poison stacks on enemies as possible, i.e. damage scaling, gearing and gem setup are completely different from the conventional chaos DoT Toxic Rain builds.
Scale poison from pod explosions and arrow hits instead of the pod's chaos DoT.
Poison-focused TR relies on chance to poison (quite easy to cap) and poison duration, so with a reasonably long poison duration, we can scale the poison damage to high potential.
On contradictory to non-poison TR, we would like as little pod's duration/lifetime as possible so that we get more explosion hits on the moving target.
No hybrid poison/non-poison Toxic Rain will work because their damaging mechanisms are at odd with each other.
Quite satisfied (mapping and boss fight). Extremely high survivability.
Final gears:
Click me
Pros vs Cons of poison TR vs non-poison (pod's chaos DoT) TR
Spoiler
Pros:
Native to Pathfinder ascendency, i.e. easy to scale with PF, lots of poison nodes in Ranger region of the tree.
Scaling poison from arrow hits and pod explosions: easy to gear, gems, no need corrupted gems and gears for +1, +2, etc. Flat chaos damage and more poison/ailment damage, from gems, tree, are abundant.
Both arrow hits and explosions can be scaled at the same time by same effects. Good for clearing. Most mobs on a non-100% deli map get killed by the big arrow hits. Explosions clear the remnants.
Clearing with poison is more effective with the help of poison spread granted by Nature's Reprisal, a.k.a poison prolif.
Use Toxic Rain for both clearing and single targets with on-the-fly withered generator, i.e. Blast Rain-MiA which deals good DPS as well.
Easy to scale poison duration. Plethora of poison duration sources: tree, gems, flask, gears, etc. With enough increased flask effects, poison duration from flask can be scaled even better.
Getting 100% chance to poison is simple. Just grab the major poison DPS wheels and a Coralito. There're mods on various gears that grant chance to poison as well (not mandatory).
No need to scale skill effect duration(SED). We want SED to be low actually. On a different note, consider big SED buffs got removed/nerf'ed from multiple major chaos cluster jewels, it has become non-trivial to scale in 3.11 without opportunity cost.
With proper gearing, TR costs zero mana. Free up mana flask slot for either an offensive or defensive flask. Having to carry a mana flask in the end-game is not optimal imo.
Share the same gears and tree with our SA build: guaranteed tankiness. Can switch between the two if one gets bored with either.
Possible to further increase poison DPS with faster poison mods (poisons deal damage 25-60% faster) on gears, cluster jewel, tree. Can't say the same for non-poison.
Cons:
Poison has a ramp up time for single target. But it is easier to shoot and move to dodge attack or reallocate, thanks to the long poison duration (5.5-7sec).
People often tried to scale both poison and non-poison TR at the same time, resulting in a mediocre build at best. Many of your decently non-poison-TR gears/gems are not suitable for poison TR, unfortunately.
Need to scale multiple things: poison chance, poison duration, poison damage, flat chaos damage, APS, hit chance, etc. Therefore, the poison TR is more sophisticated than the non-poison one, but it's not hard if done properly.
Poison as a league starter is not practical because it requires multiple aspects to be satisfied before feeling good. However, it'd be practically easier to start with a neutral attacks such as Barrage/RoA or Caustic Arrow then adding poison flavor before switching to poison TR.[*]
That's funny Wolfie, I've been experimenting with poison TR as well today :).
I think poison TR is less damage than a perfectly-played scourge arrow, but it is mechanically easier, safer, and works better with HH. So it might better overall?
BTW, How are you getting your POB to display combined DPS for toxic rain? Mine was showing combined DPS, then I did something and now it refuses to calculate that and only shows damage per poison.
I think poison TR is less damage than a perfectly-played scourge arrow, but it is mechanically easier, safer, and works better with HH. So it might better overall?
It might be personal preference. I find that TR inherently has longer require stationary duration than SA. So in the events of constant threats, such as in 100% delirious maps, Sirus A8, Uber Elder, etc., SA offers better mobility, given we have enough APS.
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BTW, How are you getting your POB to display combined DPS for toxic rain? Mine was showing combined DPS, then I did something and now it refuses to calculate that and only shows damage per poison.
It just works for me. The combined DPS is the combination of the total poison DPS plus the chaos DoT.
On a side note, the combined DPS may not offer the best interpretation for poison TR, but meaningful enough, I think.
It might be personal preference. I find that TR inherently has longer require stationary duration than SA. So in the events of constant threats, such as in 100% delirious maps, Sirus A8, Uber Elder, etc., SA offers better mobility, given we have enough APS.
That’s why I personally love the mirage archer TR with CA version as you mostly just shoot once every 10 seconds or so and then just shoot the occasional caustic arrow to cover the ground.
I may give trying to scale both poison and chaos dot damage with TR as I just made this chest which lets me get pretty nice gem levels while using the poison bow.
I may give trying to scale both poison and chaos dot damage with TR as I just made this chest which lets me get pretty nice gem levels while using the poison bow.
Just a little heads-up. I had tried to make a hybrid poison/non-poison(chaos DoT) TR build, but I decided to focus on poison only. The reason is that the scaling mechanic of poison and non-poison TR are at odds with each other. Here's the reasoning.
The non-poison, i.e. chaos DoT, TR relies on overlapping pods that extend vines to the target when planted. Each vine deals chaos DoT to the target individually, so damage from multiple vines stack. Therefore, the (chaos DoT) DPS window of a single pod ties directly to the lifetime of said pod, which starts when it is planted on the ground until it explodes. The longer the pods survive, the higher DoT they deal to the target.
The poison build, however, relies on rapid accumulation of stackable poisons from the arrow hits and pod explosions. Therefore, the sooner the pods explode, i.e. lifetime expires, the better because it allows us to have more explosion during a given poison duration. A Less Duration support linking to TR facilitate the poison stacking process.
As a result, for non-poison/chaos DoT TR, we want to make the pods survive as long as possible to maximize the DoT DPS. On the other hand, reducing the pods' lifetime as little as possible is the goal of poison TR. In this particular regard, the scalers for non-poison and poison TR are, in fact, at odds at each other.
Just a little heads-up. I had tried to make a hybrid poison/non-poison(chaos DoT) TR build, but I decided to focus on poison only. The reason is that the scaling mechanic of poison and non-poison TR are at odds with each other. Here's the reasoning.
The non-poison, i.e. chaos DoT, TR relies on overlapping pods that extend vines to the target when planted. Each vine deals chaos DoT to the target individually, so damage from multiple vines stack. Therefore, the (chaos DoT) DPS window of a single pod ties directly to the lifetime of said pod, which starts when it is planted on the ground until it explodes. The longer the pods survive, the higher DoT they deal to the target.
The poison build, however, relies on rapid accumulation of stackable poisons from the arrow hits and pod explosions. Therefore, the sooner the pods explode, i.e. lifetime expires, the better because it allows us to have more explosion during a given poison duration. A Less Duration support linking to TR facilitate the poison stacking process.
As a result, for non-poison/chaos DoT TR, we want to make the pods survive as long as possible to maximize the DoT DPS. On the other hand, reducing the pods' lifetime as little as possible is the goal of poison TR. In this particular regard, the scalers for non-poison and poison TR are, in fact, at odds at each other.
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Nice chest btw
Yeah I came to a similar conclusion pretty quickly myself and just switched back to TR/CA as the chest was still a solid boost for that as I now got level 33 toxic rain and level 30 caustic arrow which gives me pretty damn nice damage as my CA now does similar damage with arrow nova support as it did with void manipulation before.
I will try and double corrupt it however to see if I can hit some more skill levels. Edit: Well, that chest is no more.
Last edited by fleckens on Aug 5, 2020, 3:58:14 AM
I've seen Wolfie's early Voltaxic videos, but how does one progress up to that point on day 1 or 2 of league? Does anyone have VODs of early, I'm talking within first week of Harvest progression? I'm really curious to see natural progression of this build on league start.
