[3.4] Toxic Trick (8K EHP Hybrid Toxic Rain Agony Bleedsplosions)
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Disclaimer:
* I'm still only in T13 maps, so can't yet confirm that it is Shaper viable. I've never done Shaper on any build, so this is just that I'm a weak player, not a comment on the build. * This is my first build guide, so please be nice. Basic concept: Ever since the Escape Artist Ascendency notable was announced, I've wanted to make a hybrid build that combines this and the hybrid recovery of Patient Reaper, for a EV/ES/life hybrid that's hard to hit, has a decent EHP pool and quick recovery. This does that: 6.5k min at level 70; 8k+ by level 90, while keeping 50% attack avoidance before flasks, 60% avoidance with flask. An easy, cheap league starter using the new Toxic Rain and Herald of Agony, that can be boosted with a some investment. With a Watcher's Eye ES-on-hit (warning: expensive!), this is very tanky for a bow build, thanks to the large number of hits per second Toxic Rain can manage. Option to use a Presence of Chayula (also expensive!) for stun immunity, chaos res near cap, and 8.5k+ EHP. Pros:
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* Cheap to start, cheap to invest in upgrades, scope for further investment. Start levelling for 3C; all yellow maps on ~75C. * Mandatory uniques are very cheap. Flexible about others. * Layered defenses - About 6.5-7k EHP at level 86, up to 7.5k+ at 90 geared. - 50% attack/projectile avoidance - 80%+ faster start of ES recharge. (ES is >2/3 of EHP) - ES gain on hit coupled with many many hits per second = old-style insta-Vaal Pact equivalent (expensive: 5ex option). - 20% Stun avoidance or (4ex option) stun immunity. - Shoot around corners. - Multiple slow mechanics: from Toxic Rain, from Withering Touch, and potentially from Temp Chains on Hit too. - RAT totem can distract bosses; not a true taunt, but often the vital couple of seconds you need. * Both active and passive recovery mechanics. * Inpulsa-style explosions scale damage with trash mob health (and give a satisfying pop-pop sound!). * Explosions rapidly delete packs: the safety of upfront damage, with the sustained powered of DoT * DoT and poison scaling for bosses/high HP rares. * Quill Rain QoL. Cons:
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* Mana can be an issue on bosses; consider bringing a hybrid flask.
* Spell dodge only 10-20%, no block, and not much opportunity for raising resistance cap. * Movement speed poor for a bow build: ~35%. This might be something that could be improved; please post ideas. * Probably not HC viable. * Not SSF viable. Pastebin and skill tree Links
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Primary clear skill 5L on weapon:
Toxic Rain - Vicious Projectiles - Added Chaos Damage - Void Manipulation - Swift Affliction Possibilities for 6th gem for 6L: Mirage Archer, Increased AoE, Vile Toxins, Faster Attacks, Poison, Unbound Ailments, Empower Comments:
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I've only just got a 6-link, so I'm still experimenting. At the moment I'm using Inc-AoE: I'm told this scales the range of the pods' degen effect, which can then overlap for extra DPS as well as coverage. Please let me know below if you think this is a good/bad idea. Toxic Rain scaling is complicated and very opaque because it has multiple tiers of effects. For example, does the de-gen from the pods count as an ailment? (probably not) Do pod explosions spread poison (probably), and if so does that poison scale with supports, or is it a secondary effect that does not? Debuff totem: Ranged Attack Totem - Rain of Arrows - Withering Touch - Faster Attacks - Added Chaos - Lesser Poison For high-tier bossing, perhaps swap Barrage in for Rain of Arrows (not necessary in yellow maps). Rain of Arrows also works very nicely in delves. Alternatively, have Barrage instead of Toxic Rain on a weapon swap. Minion clear: Herald of Agony - Minion Damage - Damage on Full Life - Vicious Projectiles Defense / Utility: Discipline CWDT - Immortal Call - Increased Duration - Phase Run Blink Arrow Summon Ice Golem Up to you whether to self-cast Phase Run (nice for Delves), or trigger it with CWDT for a "vanish" effect. Gear
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Mandatory
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Nothing is truly mandatory, in the sense that an Inpulsa's, a Poet's Pen or a Shav's is mandatory for many builds, except
But I highly recommend: I Vaal'd this myself. Haemophilia are a 1C item. Buy a bunch of them, quality them, 4-link them (make sure you've got the right colours) and Vaal. Either Despair-on-Hit or Temporal Chains-on-Hit are good options. I managed to hit Despair in about 10 gloves, but it's a 1-in-60 chance (1-in-6 to corrupt an implicit, 1-in-20 to hit Despair or 2-in-20 for either Despair or Temp Chains). Quill Rain has super quality of life. Alternatively, for a slower but harder hitting option, try Other gear Body
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or or Queen of the Forest. or Rare with exceptionally high EV. BiS would probably be a Delve-crafted Shaped Zodiac Leather or Assassin's Garb with the #% of Energy Shield on Kill suffix (the Elder equivalent, with % Life Recovered on Kill, wouldn't suck either). Helm
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Rare, as high ES as you can get.
Boots
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High EV/ES with 30% move too. Amulet, Rings, Belt
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All rare.
* You're going to be tight for resistances at first, especially for making up chaos res, so that's the priority. * ES% on amulet, flat life and ES everywhere you can. * You'll need some strength from somewhere: most easily from the belt. * Luxury items for the wealthy would be added flat phys, increased chaos damage (envy essence mod), delerium rings, and many shaper/elder dps mods (e.g. % chance to gain a power/frenzy/endurance charge on kill, non-chaos as extra chaos etc) And to finish:
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Watcher's Eye with +Energy Shield from hits while affected by Discipline. This is expensive (about 5ex in DSC), but is absolutely not needed until top-tier content. It will synergise beautifully with Toxic Rain in Delve, due to the large number of hits-per-second Toxic Rain achieves. (NB: At T8, I don't have this yet, nor do I need one). Ascendancies and Bandits
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Patient Reaper - for both 50% in DoT, and life and ES recovery on kill - great to get both in a hybrid build.
Ghost Dance Escape Artist Prolonged Pain (I assume, but haven't done Uber Lab yet) Kill all the bandits. Levelling
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* I didn't get Haemophilia until I was in maps. * Don't worry too much about the Despair-on-Hit: yes, it's big DPS boost, but the real reason for it is because you need the bleed-splosions from Haemophilia to cope with the mob density in Delve, and because Haemophilia is so cheap why wouldn't you corrupt it? With a 1C item, by the time you need Despair, you'll have certainly have the currency for it. * I levelled with Caustic Arrow and a
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* But levelling Toxic Arrow Quill Rain may well be possible. End Game (T16+) expectations
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This is just guesswork, but
* I would think the Watcher's Eye will be necessary for T16+ as we can't run our flasks like a PF and don't have the dodge a pure EV build would pick up with Acrobatics/Phase Acrobatics. * I haven't bothered with a Witchfire Brew because of the Despair-on-Hit gloves. But for top-tier content, Temp-Chains on hit and a Witchfire Brew may be a better way to go. * Ideally, corrupt the amulet for +1 curses, temp chains gloves and despair-on-hit ring. Last edited by Potenz0 on Oct 3, 2018, 10:04:45 AM Last bumped on Oct 3, 2018, 10:01:38 AM
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Looks like I may have undersold this.
Swapped out the Dusktoes for Sin Treks, and it turns out the added flat damage isn't missed. Sin Trek have 30% MS, solving the movement speed concern, and the EHP goes up to over 8k. Not so many EV-bow builds that can say that! I am a little concerned about stuns: hasn't been a problem in maps, but I did get stunlocked in a Delve Vaal City encounter once. There is room to incorporate a Presence of Chayula (pushing EHP close to 8.5k), although this build would no longer be cheap. Thanks to a lucky Timeworn Relic drop, I can now afford either a Presence of Chayula or a Watcher's Eye with ES-on-hit. Anyone want to recommend which I should go for? | |
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So, from my own experiments with Toxic Rain:
1. The explosion of the pods counts as a hit, and applies on hit effects. I've seen my HP shoot up from life on hit, i've seen the counter for poison with the new herald go up from applying poison. Both were controlled events; I fired once, and waited for the explosion. Tested single shots multiple times. 2. The DoT does not scale with added damage. It's not poison, it is a second effect of the gem. If you want to scale the Chaos Dot itself, do not use added damage gems/effects. Added damage will apply to the original arrows and the spore explosion though. Edit to add: I see zero reason the DoT portion of it would be an ailment. It's not applying something, it's doing damage over time. Last edited by Kragbot on Sep 18, 2018, 1:02:53 AM
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Are you mixing Avoidance with Dodge??
Avoidance is very rare, for general hits only obtainable from Soul of Lunaris, and mostly only for stun and ailment. About high evasion+dodge my CI Trickster is going that way with 85% evasion and capped 75% dodge/spell dodge in fight but ES is pathetic 3500. Either nothing happens or oneshot but that happens once top in a red map https://pastebin.com/khqvUfe2 | |
" Avoidance is (mostly) a pseudo-value that means "the chance a hit doesn't land", and is the combined effect of evasion, dodge and block (this build doesn't have block). With flasks up and while I've got full energy shield I have 60% evade chance and 20% attack and spell dodge, which works out at 68% melee/projectile avoidance and 20% spell avoidance - i.e. 32% for melee hits to land. That's before Soul of Lunaris which (when fully upgraded, will take to to 22% for projectiles, 0% for projectiles that have chained, 30% for melee and 75% for spells). " Going Acrobatics with CI is unusual. Sure, with such a high avoidance melee hits only land 3.75%. But as you say, you're probably going to get one-shot. One thing I was wondering about was trying out The Perfect Form. That'd give me Phase Acrobatics without the penalty from Acrobatic, at a cost of about 525 EHP and more pressure on my resists, and my 7th-link pseudo-link from Dendrobate. | |
" Yes. Also note, that while scaling poison doesn't scale the DoT from the pods, scaling generic DoT damage scales both. " Because the spore explosions and apply poisons, the Added Chaos support boost both the explosion's base hit damage and the resulting poison. Last edited by Potenz0 on Sep 18, 2018, 6:14:09 AM
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" I switched to non Acrobatics and my ES doubled but I die a lot more often especially from aoe I don't manually dodge. Go Ghost Reaver and leech improve sustainability but deem recharge interaction bonus useless. Perfect Form is trading a lot ES for 10% dodge and resist for evasion and AA. All of these contradict with each other so ES for Trickster is so dead | |
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Just a quick update to say that I'm into red maps, doing T13, and it's doing fine with the Watcher's Eye. Just passed Delve 210 no problems, will post back when I max out.
Setting up my Atlas has proven real slow as Elder keeps spawning in the most useless locations :-( But the farming is going well otherwise. I don't know how it'll do against Shaper, I've never done Shaper on any build, but this build is fully viable for most content, and looks like it will be viable for all content. Still focussing on defense over DPS, I swapped my Haemophilia with Despair Corruption (lvl 11), for ones with Temp Chains on Hit corruption, and got a ring that did lvl 5 Despair on hit. (Corrupted amulet +1 curse). Next steps will be to try to increase DPS a bit. I wonder if using fewer links on the herald to squeeze in a lvl20 Despair Blasphemy might be a better way to go? What would be really nice now would be * Corrupting Soul Strike for +1 projectile; or * Getting the Toxic Rain Lab enchantment. Given the vast number of possible lab enchantments these days, I think the latter is out. Buying a high ES helm with some resists is already many exalts; getting a specific enchantment on it usually can't be had at any price. |
