It's just dumb how strong Caustic Arrow + Toxic Rain are with 0 investment

After having played PoE last in ~2015 I came back several weeks ago and played several builds in SSF until the end of act 10, and no build even comes close to the ridiculous power of Caustic Arrow/Toxic Rain with nothing but passive DoT/Chaos damage nodes.

I understand that chaos as a damage type is supposed to be strong, but the disparity to every other skill is just too big:
- Physical cyclone Scion is stuck at lvl 55 as I desperately need a stronger weapon, and cycloning bosses to death is tedious
- Lvl 67 and 84 Spell Totem builds are doing ok, but I always have to fight against the quite big drawbacks of Spell Totem itself, the almost obligatory requirement of a Soul Mantle to counter that, and the fact that only a few spell gem are seemingly good enough to perform decent on a Spell Totem(I still can't come up with a half-decent Spark totem build)
- Lvl 73 Shock Nova/Lightning Trap trapper is good, but when I compare it to playing my 52 Caustic Arrow/Toxic Rain Trickster he doesn't even come close
- The only other build I've played so far which similar non-existent requirements + a good clear is my spellslinging minion bomber with skeletons + SRS with Infernal Legion

Caustic Arrow/Toxic Rain could use a small nerf as I can e.g. kill Kitava in act 5 without even trying on throw-away gear, but I'd rather have more viable skill gem options with a similar impressive performance with 0 requirements other than using a 3/4 link.

Lol.

Probably true. But they don’t balance the game around acts 1-10, things are balanced with mapping and end game in mind.

Toxic Rain is a very good skill. It just got its single-target damage nerfed, actually, because now only about 4 pods overlap while endgame gear/stacking aoe used to allow 6 or so.

But I do want to point out that you’re at a very low level. When running acts, skill balance is significantly worse than at endgame. Toxic Rain is certainly one of the stronger skills in the game, but it’s not really broken in the endgame anymore compared to some other choices.

We need more skills that have as many scaling options (dot damage, gem levels, speed, duration, optional poison) and ascendancy options (all 3 Rangers, Trickster, Occultist) as Toxic Rain has. I hope it’s a model for skill reworks rather than something that gets thoughtlessly nerfed or limited.

CA/TR imba with zero investments ?

That's lol indeed.

The saddest truth is, CA is mediocre endgame no matter the investments, TR may shine but only with great items.

Caustic Arrow is at its lowest point in years, nowadays...
Barely viable in endgame...

I've been waiting for GGG to buff it for several leagues now, please god don't let this thread make them believe it's not needed.

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patirce wrote:

Caustic Arrow is at its lowest point in years, nowadays...
Barely viable in endgame...

I've been waiting for GGG to buff it for several leagues now, please god don't let this thread make them believe it's not needed.

If they go to General Discussion for balance decisions then we are all fucked. I don’t think you need to worry about this thread.

"

Nubatron wrote:

"

patirce wrote:

Caustic Arrow is at its lowest point in years, nowadays...
Barely viable in endgame...

I've been waiting for GGG to buff it for several leagues now, please god don't let this thread make them believe it's not needed.

If they go to General Discussion for balance decisions then we are all fucked. I don’t think you need to worry about this thread.

+1

It's endeed barely viable "late" endgame, why argue.

It scales up easy and earlier than other skills, but at the end it hits its limits and either requires full glass cannon or mirror tier items to do anything with endgame bosses.

Wow man, you guys ripping on CA. I've been playing CA trickster every league for a few leagues now, and I think it's one of the simplest league starters. Easy to gear, easy upgrade paths, does all map mods, and the dps ceiling is high enough to do end game bosses. Did my first SSFHC Sirus with CA. The only thing you really need is the +3 double dot bow, which you can craft on your own.

1 mil Sirus dps is more than enough for the end game and it is extremely easy to get while remaining fairly tanky. Unfortunately, a lot of people think you need 10s of millions of dps, that if your build doesn't kill end game bosses in 5 seconds, it's a bad build.