Chaos builds need some love

In the event anyone from GGG sees this...


Critique:

I made it to level 46 with a chaos build witch before it became essentially bricked.

Then I started over with a cold build sorc. Which seems appropriately balanced at least in low levels.

I noticed that using pure chaos skills, from ED to hexes ramps up in power really slowly, before hitting a peak that just can't carry to later acts.

One of the things I noticed is how far apart all of the passive tree chaos skills are compared to the spell damage and elemental nodes.

The early level cold sorc feels like it is the proper power for the level with early skill synergies.

Comparitively, there are no really effective chaos synergies and I even paid to respect to a fire witch build before I gave up on the witch.

I did not use a minion build, on the witch, though I did have the hell hound ascendency.

I noticed many of the bosses, especially in act III were fire resistant. Which really nerfs the ability of a fire build ascendency.

Solutions:

I would hope that in a future patch passive tree choas nodes would be closer to the witch starting point and be as close together with each other in a path similar to the elemental skills.

Even if they were closer to other DoT poison or bleed skills it would be helpful.

Less fire resistant monsters.

Skill synergies with chaos skills, like the cold skills.

Thank you for your efforts and attention.

Have you tried to use Fire weakness debuff? It lowers resistances by around 30% I think. I have even put a support gem that does 30% of my int as dps to affected targets. But I'm only freshly in act 3 now.

Yeah you should have like 30% fire penetration and the curse if you go fire. It solves all problems, except that fire is currently extremely awful outside of raging spirit.

How did it brick? What were your gems and their supports? Contagion carried me pretty handily.

I ran (and am currently mapping with) blood mage chaos witch and besides some turbulence in act 2 that I could've avoided by taking some early minion passives to protect me, it was fine. Contagion (with swift affliction) and profane ritual melted maps especially when mobs clumped up at chokes. I took every chaos damage node available until close to the 50s when I dipped into aura and curse ones for blasphemy + despair to do hexblast spam. I also took Blood Magic, which is quite out of the way on the tree.

I do agree and wish the tree had more interesting nodes than just increasing chaos damage, but I wouldn't say they're out of the way besides maybe Void. Even then it's fine really.

Weak boss damage is probably its pain point. Or at least it's mine so far. It's consistent but slow, which would be great if there weren't hard DPS checks.

I tried not only the fire damage support gem, but also the passive penetrates fire resistance nodes.

In terms of the chaos build, I took all the chaos nodes I could reach on the passive tree.

The main attack skills I used was essence drain, with penetration and swift affliction support.

I tried both the chaos vulnerability and fire vulnerability curses, depending on whether I was chaos or respected as fire respectively.

Of course I had contagion with increased radious support.

I also tried the profane ritual and dark effigy.

My standard play was to curse (with a spell cascade support to get the 3 echos for larger area) then drop a contagion followed by a a dark effigy with poison and poison explosion support, then dark pack as soon as the first enemy falls.

It worked great for mobs and would melt them into act III, but it was extremely weak for bossing. Most bosses could be defeated up to are level 43, but it took a long time and completely fell apart on the timed forgemaster. The damage output just wasn't there.

(edit: I added hexblast as my first level 12 gem, but even that didn't help with bosses.)

So...I spent the gold and respected to fire, with the fire vulnerability curse, fire wall, post nerf flamming skulls, and changed my ED support to penetration, whatever the ignite gem was, and tried both 25% increased fire damage as well as proliferation alternately.

I kept contagion and dark pact into the fire spec.

Again it was great for killing mobs, but dealt even less damage to bosses.

I finally spent all my gold on skill tree respects and decided to give it up for an ice sorc. Which even at low level destroys mobs faster than chaos ever did, have an immediate increased extra damage path on the passive tree, and the ice nova on frost bolt is just devastating mobs. With high damage frost bomb to throw at bosses.

Compared to the chaos build, it just devastates.

But I like chaos, poison, bleed, etc. as a personal choice much better from PoE 1. So I hope it becomes viable again.