3.4 toxic rain build

Been running a Toxic Rain build as a league starter this time around, it's been fantastic thus far. It handles really well while leveling too.

I've been looking into just how to optimize my own build while not going too heavily into being a glass cannon.

Thus far, these are a few things I've found to be helpful or noteworthy for this build:

It's very playable without uniques.. but as mentioned by others, it's much more potent with 3 uniques specifically. Those being Dendrobate, Lioneye's Glare and Ming's Heart. Here's a little reason into why, or at least how it appears to me.

Spoiler
Dendrobate
This one is fairly straight forward, you get an effect 7 link for your main skill. You lose out on some raw Chaos damage from levels of Lesser poison, but you keep the important part.. the actual poison.
Dendrobate compensates you with enough of a poison damage boost that the small loss of raw chaos doesn't set you back at all.
The only downside is that a 5/6L is required for it to actually an effective upgrade.

Lioneye's Glare
The physical damage increases in combination with attack speed and the "Your hits cannot be Evaded" makes it incredibly potent. More hits means more poison, more poison means higher DPS.
Far Shot can come into play occasionally as well, but I'm not sure how much it really does or if it even interacts with the projectile rain.

Ming's Heart
This one is only really useful once you get Lioneye's Glare, or a Rare with high physical rolls that could compete with Lioneye's Glare. This is because the amount of damage increase it can provide increases with the physical damage you have.

You can use 2 of these, however just one is good enough. Use of 2 can really cut down your limited life pool, for much less gain than you get out of the first.


As for other Uniques that could be useful, Silverbranch, Silverbough and Darkscorn can all be decent bows to use until you get a Lioneye. For rares, a +2/3 Bow gems can be okay an okay alternative for not having 5/6L Lioneye or a 5/6L Dendrobate. Ideally, you want the Dendrobate to be 5/6L over the Lioneye, because it comes with the additional link in Lesser Poison.

Now the Skill's links actually change slightly based on what you have for gear as well, which is actually kind of interesting.
Spoiler
Generic Rare Bow (just used my currently equipped bow)
Toxic Rain - Added Chaos - Lesser Poison - Vile Toxins - Void Manipulation - Unbound Ailments

+2/3 Rare Bow Or Silverbough
Toxic Rain - Added Chaos - Lesser Poison - Vile Toxins - Vicious Projectiles - Void Manipulation

Lioneye's Glare
Toxic Rain - Added Chaos - Lesser Poison - Vile Toxins - Vicious Projectiles - Unbound Ailments

Dendrobate + Rare Bow
Toxic Rain - Added Chaos - Void Manipulation - Vile Toxins - Unbound Ailments - Deadly Ailments

Dendrobate + Lioneye
Toxic Rain - Added Chaos - Vicious Projectiles - Vile Toxins - Unbound Ailments - Deadly Ailments

Granted, these are all in "perfect" scenarios. 20/20 gems, POB crafted weapons, etc.

VP seems to only be used when enough Attack speed is present to at least offset the negative. VM is only used in situations where the raw damage isn't there or is just coming from the gems themselves.


Main links aside, I've been using these as supporting skills:

Spoiler
Wither Totem

Wither - Spell Totem - Faster Casting - Inc. AoE

Pretty standard Totem setup, gives a bit of safety and extra damage against packs or bosses.

Summons
Summon Lightning Golem - Summon Holy Relic - Minion Totem Ele Res - Inc AoE

Just an experimental setup that gives you two summons and makes them rather durable. AoE is for the Holy Relic's Nova, to make it more likely to hit the Golem or any other followers you may have. Relic and Golem both add a little extra damage with their attacks. Relic also gives a pretty decent amount of life regen, giving about 40-50/s extra which combined with Leech keeps you pretty healthy from minor hits.

Herald of Agony, socketed by itself.
Gives an extra summon that provides decent damage output as well as increasing chance to poison.

Curse on Hit
Frenzy - Greater Multiple Projectiles/Slower Projectiles - Curse on Hit - Despair

Mostly used for Blue and higher enemies, or anything with Chaos Res (be it map mods or otherwise). GMP or LMP can be used for packs, Slower is probably better for single targets like bosses just for a little extra damage, not necessary though. Could substitute Frenzy for another attack, but I find it to be quick and effective enough, as well as providing Frenzy charges for even more DPS on main skill.

Mobility
Blink Arrow - Faster Attacks

Pretty standard.


Passive Trees and Ascendancy Choices
Spoiler
POB Pastebin: https://pastebin.com/NrA6mqUs

This is my current tree. Haven't gotten to Endgame Lab yet, but will likely take Nature's Adrenaline as my final ascendancy point. There are some slight optimizations that could be made regarding my tree and ascendancy points when I eventually get Lioneye's Glare and Dendrobate.

For now I took Nature's Boon for additional safety and more uptime for utility flasks. I could take Master Alchemist as well, to have better/ more flexible flasks, only having to worry about Warding, Curing and Staunching Flasks.. But I'd rather have the extra DPS from Nature's Adrenaline as my last upgrade

Lioneye itself opens the tree to crit, but maybe not high enough to merit taking Master Surgeon. Crit tree would be about the same, just dropping points spent Atrophy to pick up crit nodes.

Modified tree would look like this, but could probably be optimized even further, and could potentially grab Perfect Agony as well. :
PoB Pastebin: https://pastebin.com/UbJLEqgD
So, at lvl 62 I switched to Darkscorn. My dps tripled, but I was killing slower in act 9. I went back to the Quill Rain and started killing fast again. It must have a mechanic better suited for Toxic Rain, though I'm not sure what that is . . .
"
Zab_Foh escribió:
So, at lvl 62 I switched to Darkscorn. My dps tripled, but I was killing slower in act 9. I went back to the Quill Rain and started killing fast again. It must have a mechanic better suited for Toxic Rain, though I'm not sure what that is . . .

When u will swap for Lioneyes Glare at 66 lvl (if u will do this) ur dps will be balanced between flat dps and poison dps + u will never miss ur hits.

About ur question above. When u use Quill Rain, u have a lot of flowers and stack poison very quick and compensate ur lack of flat damage. When u swapped to Darkscorn, u lost a bunch of attack speed and have not so much flat damage to compensate it. So u felt bad when u changed Quill Rain.

Try to use PoB to see what gear is better for ur build.
Editado por útlima vez por An4LPunishment#2939 en 5 sept. 2018 3:48:40
Quill Rain is really a wombo combo and probably BiS for Toxic Rain outside of some crazy crafted bows. Most of Toxic Rains damage comes from the pods exploding, the actual initial damage is really pitiful and hard to land such that an enemy is hit by more than one. More over, the pods exploding are flat effects, not unlike Caustic Arrows ground degen--which means our bow dps does not matter much and that the lowered damage of Quill Rain is not hurting its damage (its a secondary source).

Quill Rain is letting you unload tons of spores, and because of the extra projectile speed, the arrows also land much faster after being launched. Anotehr perk is according to the wiki, the exploding spores can apply on hit effects like poison and bleed, which means you can get some great damage with poison chance (with enough poison chance, your effectively doubling your Toxic Rain dps).

The downside here is Virulence. For some reason GGG made it so the poison effect from pods does not trigger virulence, only the initial hit, which is a big dampener.
"
faytte escribió:
Quill Rain is really a wombo combo and probably BiS for Toxic Rain outside of some crazy crafted bows. Most of Toxic Rains damage comes from the pods exploding, the actual initial damage is really pitiful and hard to land such that an enemy is hit by more than one. More over, the pods exploding are flat effects, not unlike Caustic Arrows ground degen--which means our bow dps does not matter much and that the lowered damage of Quill Rain is not hurting its damage (its a secondary source).

Quill Rain is letting you unload tons of spores, and because of the extra projectile speed, the arrows also land much faster after being launched. Anotehr perk is according to the wiki, the exploding spores can apply on hit effects like poison and bleed, which means you can get some great damage with poison chance (with enough poison chance, your effectively doubling your Toxic Rain dps).

The downside here is Virulence. For some reason GGG made it so the poison effect from pods does not trigger virulence, only the initial hit, which is a big dampener.

How about + 3 short bow with atsp mod, would it better than QR ?
"
An4LPunishment escribió:
"
shuruga2 escribió:

since I'll use snakebite and have many dex, Lioneyes Glare 100% hit may be useless.

Any idea ?

What is your reason for using snakebite? I think it's useless for this build since we have no frenzy charges.


When someone said that with Dendrobate we don't need conversion here is what got to my mind :

Dendrobate + sanebite + herald of agony = 100% chance to poison without taking any in the tree.

snakebite needs frenzy charge, frenzy charge gives a good buff for the build, so may be.

To get frenzy charge I can: cold spell (meh!), frenzy skill (totem work so may be), blood rage (good buff, but need physical dammage to keep up with degen)

I only have 60% convertion and I can put viscious projectile in my setup, I have room for herald of purity, go for bloodrage.

With the passive skill points I gain I can take frenzy charges and may be life leech. So I made a tree (quick and dirty), it look like this :

www.poeurl.com/b4mo


It looks good, all chaos/poison dammage available, near 170% to max life, AS, acrobatics, life leech, mana leech (2 points for no mana potion?), dex + accuracy (with this and snakebite I should be fine).


With all of this combined, what bow should I take :

- lioneye's glare still looks very good 1.7 AS, 330 pDPS. This goes very well with frenzy charges and blood rage

- rare bow with over 1.6 AS and 300 pDPS are already buyable, if I can get one with poison dammage It'll be great

- Reach of the concil, not sure about this one, 1.5 AS, 280 pDPS is big downgrade, but :
2 more arrows
=== 2 more hits & 2 more pods
=== 4 more hits & 2 more slow stacks
=== ~30% more damage & 4 more poisons stacks & 2 more slow stacks

each time I use my skill.

I'm not sure for now, but I like the last one.
toxic rain is a frickin fantastic skill. you can build it in so many different ways.

the DoT is good if you wanna base your dmg purely off that, with a quill rain and such.
the hit rate is great because it hits when you attack, and hits when the pods burst. this is essentially a mini chaos explosive arrow. its also good for poison because the hits will rack up so quickly.

im personally starting out with a quill rain DoT focused version. but i'd like to also try a dmg version with lioneye's and focusing on hit dmg, probably without poison. only thing there is the base damage is fairly low but the amount of times it hits and the overlapping aoe from the flowers may make it still pretty good
Really great stuff here. I'm learning a lot, thank you.

But, at the risk of sounding like a complete dweeb, is it safe to say that there are multiple build approaches to a Toxic Rain build?
1. DoT
2. initial damage
3. combo of 1 & 2

Quill Rain seems clearly the winner among uniques for #1. And it sounds like Darkscorn is good, but superseded by Lioneye's Glare, for #2.

I feel like a combo could be good, but harder for noobs like me to find an efficient balance.

In my humble ignorance DoT seems best for speed clearing, while intial damage seems best for bosses. Or, is barrage still superior?
"
Zab_Foh escribió:
Really great stuff here. I'm learning a lot, thank you.

But, at the risk of sounding like a complete dweeb, is it safe to say that there are multiple build approaches to a Toxic Rain build?
1. DoT
2. initial damage
3. combo of 1 & 2

Quill Rain seems clearly the winner among uniques for #1. And it sounds like Darkscorn is good, but superseded by Lioneye's Glare, for #2.

I feel like a combo could be good, but harder for noobs like me to find an efficient balance.

In my humble ignorance DoT seems best for speed clearing, while intial damage seems best for bosses. Or, is barrage still superior?


i'd say you're mostly right.
i would disagree that the third way to build toxic rain is a combination of DoT and initial hit damage. i don't think that would play out well. but i'd say the third way to build toxic rain is poison based.

its hard to say what would be best. DoT i think is probably the best for clear, and maybe the easiest to gear for, but it has a hard cap to its damage, as the DoT only goes so high, and you'll only be able to attack so fast. so its DPS will be (potentially) greatly outscaled by #2 and #3.
its hard to determine at what point it'll be surpassed though.

the reason why i feel a combo wouldn't work out too well, is because of the duration of the pods. they're duration based and have a duration tag. as a DoT based build, i use increased duration because that vastly scales how many pods i can have sitting on a given single target, which drastically increases my damage.
but as an initial hit char i think you'd benefit most from less duration, allowing the pods to explode faster, generating more hits is less time.

its hard to say if barrage is superior for single target. probably would be for poison, but not for actual hit damage.
Thank you, xMustard, that definitely helps clear things up. My build is a little broken, I think. I need to get some orbs of regret.

Now, for quivers, I've been using Maloney's, but am also trying to decide between Drillneck and Hyrri's Demise. Any thoughts, anyone?
Editado por útlima vez por Zab_Foh#7930 en 5 sept. 2018 13:41:40

Reportar publicación del foro

Reportar cuenta:

Tipo de reporte

Información adicional