3.9 JUGG CAUSTIC ARROW another unorthadox build
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I started this league with a vortex build simply because of the new unique ring Astral Projector which lets you cast nova spells anywhere on the screen instead of on yourself. It was fun and did good dps but it kept dying to hard content and metamorphs. So I thought "how can I survive everything and still do reasonable damage?"
And here we are. Juggernaut covers almost all the weaknesses every other class has, and only mildly skimps on damage. Pros: HOGM Viable Very tanky, easily hitting 7-8k life 29k armour with no buffs Immune to crits 5 endurance charges 85-87% chaos resistance and 50% of elemental damage taken as chaos 1.5-2m dps with caustic arrow, depending on investment. Enough to do all content very easily Ranged so you don't have to get close to deal damage Nearby enemies are blind thanks to flesh and stone Pretty fast clear speed Dies to extremely few combinations of metamorphs. Has never died in Tane's lab Very good at farming all end game bosses Cons: Not cheap, roughly 25ex to get myself to 2m dps, however you can achieve 1.5m for less than half that. Weakness to extreme degen Yes it is genuinely HOGM viable if you keep a balefire in your offhand slots for the CI people. You need to be a little careful, mostly of the vaal BV, scorching ray, and (I think) one lightning arrow character but you can just throw a caustic behind you and walk backwards. POB
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https://pastebin.com/WX0ngTKb
The pseudo timeless is because POB cannot calculate the timeless jewel and the level 22 caustic is because the amulet does not apply yet for some reason. Items
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The bows is obviously the most important. You can get a +3 bow gems bow but you will lose a little dps from the extra support levels. The helmet can be any combination of -9% to nearby chaos res, 40% caustic damage, good life/res to cap yourself if you need it. Not being able to be crit is a huge boost to survivability. You can swap this for other body armour to do more damage but I find it invaluable in this heavy one shot meta. It doesn't need to be 6 green I just got incredibly lucky. If you want lots of off colours look up the jeweller method. I have made 3 of these so far this league, 2 of which have 6 off colours, the 3rd currently has 5. Another item that can have anything on it but more damage will come from chaos multi and minion damage. Very standard boots, not much to talk about. More life, res, chaos damage. Quivers can be a huge benefit to all parts of the build. You can get up to 18% damage multi and 25% chaos multi. As well as +1 to max chaos which is excellent for more defense. This can quickly become the most expensive part of the build. +1 to chaos/dex gems is the basic one. It will cost 1ex and is a nice boost to damage. The next step up is +1 and chaos multi, preferably 13% or better so it can be divined to a maximum of 16%. Then you get to the extremes of +1 dex and +1 chaos, possibly with chaos multi. This is what starts really powering your build past 2m dps. Generic stats ring. I needed a lot of lightning resistance and dexterity so I added stat catalysts to it. Very useful ring. Herald of agony does not innately help the build but with this ring it is the best choice. The chaos res and chaos damage are very nice and finding one with some good implicits is always a bonus. Flasks are fairly flexible so I will just explain my choices. The Forbidden Taste is a fairly obvious choice with the huge chaos resistance I have. Dying sun is because the build would usually have to swap out concentrated effect with efficacy or increased area for clear, but with this the area is just fine. Anti curse quicksilver for any vulnerability maps. Can be swapped out for an anti shock/duration quicksilver if need be. I also have an anti burn quicksilver just for the Enslaver. If Cinderswallow is up when you clear maps you will never even come close to dying. Witchfire for more damage. Glorious vanity jewel for an enormous amount of survivability and a good amount of damage if rolled well. I slot mine above RT so that I can use RT to get Divine Flesh. This gives us +10% to max chaos resistance and 50% of all incoming elemental hits taken as chaos. And since the jewel can also change notable passives to minion damage, chaos damage and +1% max chaos resistance it is a great choice. This is why I have the staff nodes selected. Newer, more expensive gear changes Skill tree choices
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Why Spiritual Aid? Overall it will give more damage and more survivability because you're not pathing over to the ranger side.
Glorious vanity explained above. I have a custom rare jewel in Pob that gives all of my stats. Reduced mana reservation because Flesh and Stone is an invaluable defensive aura and it can't be used without these. Skills and links
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For the main (bow) links
Caustic Arrow - Vicious Projectiles - Swift Affliction - Void Manipulation - Concentrated Effect - Empower Any of the supports can be changed for their awakened variant for more damage, and obviously empower 4. Helmet Herald of Agony - Enhance 3 - Malevolence - Clarity All good aura choices. Very few auras improve CA's damage. Body Blink Arrow - Faster Attacks - Faster Projectiles - Culling Strike - Blood Rage - Despair Obviously these are less important but blood rage is very good and having cull on blink arrow gives you some extra overall damage on bosses. Gloves Vaal Blight - Wither - Faster Casting - Spell Totem Wither is pretty standard for all chaos dot builds, same with vaal blight. Boots Withering Step - CWDT - Increased Duration - Vaal Molten Shell Withering step should be maxed so it can be self cast. It gives a juge speed and survivability boost for a short time and makes it very easy to run down side areas in delve since it also gives you phasing. Vaal molten shell is a huge shield. I leave the cwdt at level 2 and VMS at 11 since the only things that scale are the flat armour and the damage reflection. Since we already have 29k armour the flat does not matter at all. The regular triggered shell will shield you for 6.6k, effectively doubling your life for a time. And when you pop VMS it will give you 17k or 30k with an armoured granite flask. Ascendancy and Pantheon
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Ascendancy, in order, is Unstoppable, Unflinching, Unrelenting, Unbreakable. Undeniable is useless and Unyielding just isn't good enough to justify taking defensive points away.
Pantheon is Arakaali for major because the degen reduction is good and the first 2 upgrades are very useful. For minor, Ralakesh to stop maim and because there isn't really a better choice. We're already virtually immune to poison because of the high chaos res and most of thew time you will be phys capped. If you have any questions or suggestions feel free to post them! Last edited by Killertortilla#2678 on Jan 22, 2020, 2:38:59 AM Last bumped on Feb 6, 2020, 3:41:56 AM
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Interesting build. I would try it next league.
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Hi my good sir can i make this build i have 2 itens for this and like a 600c
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Yeah those will work just fine
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Could you please explain the counterweight and smashing strikes from the skilltree in your pastebin
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Bottom of the items section:
Glorious vanity jewel for an enormous amount of survivability and a good amount of damage if rolled well. I slot mine above RT so that I can use RT to get Divine Flesh. This gives us +10% to max chaos resistance and 50% of all incoming elemental hits taken as chaos. And since the jewel can also change notable passives to minion damage, chaos damage and +1% max chaos resistance it is a great choice. This is why I have the staff nodes selected. POB doesn't have all the stats for timeless jewels which is why the pseudo timeless jewel has so many custom stats. Last edited by Killertortilla#2678 on Jan 11, 2020, 9:00:26 AM
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Hi, interesting take on Caustic Arrow.
I was unsure on what build to try between molten strike jugg and CA Raider. Then I found your build and said to myself why not. It seems the perfect blend!! I've got two questions good sir: how do you deal with bleeding, shock, freeze, etc? I put a Glorious Vanity jewel on the tree as you did, but mine has different node modifiers. There is one called "Revitalising darkness" that gives 29% increased chaos damage and 0.2% of chaos damage leeched as life. The chaos damage refers to the base value or the total DPS damage? (I'm currently at 400k Shaper DPS and struggling to have more damage). Thx. P.S. My 6 link bow took 2000 fusings. Feels bad man!! |
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Bleed doesn't really do much damage because phys reduction is always capped, but I also take minor Soul of Ralakesh to reduce the damage they do further. Shock also isn't a huge problem because all incoming damage is mitigated so heavily. But in situations like Sirus or T16's with shocking ground I swap out for a duration grounded basalt so I have 7 seconds of shock immunity. Freeze isn't an issue because Jug can't be lowered below base movement speed so even if you are frozen you can still do whatever you want.
"Increased chaos damage" is the base damage. "More chaos damage" and "chaos damage over time multiplier" is multiplicative damage. My bow took 2700 fusings haha Last edited by Killertortilla#2678 on Jan 12, 2020, 6:32:18 AM
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Thank you for the detailed answer.
In my case I didn't go with Brass Dome because I needed life and res. I deal with critical strikes by using Solaris upgraded. I know it's not as having Brass Dome on but you think it's a good enough alternative? I mentioned in the early post the line "0.2% of chaos damage leeched as life" asking if the leech is referring to the total DoT damage or just the way inferior initial chaos damage hit. Which one should I refer to? Instead of using Witchfire Brew I opted for the following setup: Curse on Hit + Despair + Frenzy + GMP. I know we already generate frenzy charges with blood rage. Do you think it is a good alternative? |
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You can replace it with Solaris but in this league the metamorphs crit strong enough to 1 hit my build as it is now. You could go for a belly of the beast or kaoms heart but that would remove a couple of skill slots.
Ah no, leech only applies to hits. There is currently no way to leech from damage over time. That should work. You could also link blink arrow to curse on hit, faster attacks, despair and culling strike. In fact I think I might try that. It would be more consistent boss damage and you could have another flask up. |
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