[3.25] Toxic Rain Girl - All hail to our pod Overlords

Toxic Rain:
We use toxic rain as our only Damage skill. To scale the Damage we have 5 different levers:

Skill duration: The longer a pod exists, the more pods you can stack, increasing not only damage instances on a single mob but also help with clear as your damage areas increase as well. This also increases Curse uptime (30 Seconds!) as well as the duration of vaal skills and Steelskin. Current pod lifetime: 4.5 seconds

Damage over time Multiplier: The strongest scaling mechanic outside Gemlevel. Also very hard to obtain. Can Mostly be found as crafts or on jewels or jewelry.

Skill Gem Level: Gem level increases are done with Amulets with +gem level enchants, and Bow prefixes(+1 to socketed gems, +2 to bow gems) or the catharina enchant if you're packing Empower. Max level here should be 30 as levels above only give linear damage and other investments are usually better.

Flat (Chaos/Projectile) Damage: Standard Damage increases, mostly done with Hunter slam on belt or essence craft on jewelry or jewels on the skill tree.

Attackspeed: This increases the number of pods we have active at the same time as well as adding defense layers as you are more free to move with better attack times.

Area of effect and Overlapping:
As we can read here The optimal area of effect is 36%-43% This guarantees to maximum overlap of pots. This requires bow mastery and the aura enchant(either two or passive skill tree).

Despair and punishment:
Our selfcast Curses. Thanks to hexpbloom it isn't as annoing as you would think. Just cast it on a pack and with the right chaining it follows you through the whole map. On Bosses the curse stays up for 30 seconds thanks to increased duration mods. Our casttime for curses is 0.24 seconds, its well worth it and the deliberate effect holds out for 4 seconds.

Withering Step:
Stacks up to 14 Withered Debuffs on all mobs inside range. this is an instant 14*6% damage multiplier (84% increased damage taken) Duration of those wither stacks is 8 seconds.

Manaforged Arrows link
Frenzy for charge generation plus toxic rain of wihtering to stack that last possible witherstack.

As usual in POE we employ different layers of defense to survive:

Life/ES on Kill This is our Main Source of substain in large Packs and maps. We get 2% of life and ES with every Kill. We also leech a small amount. To maximize this, we invest a little bit into hit.

Flasks: Mageblood, done. If you don't have one yet, you can easly get at least two flask clusters directly. In progress times i would skip one of the clester jewels to automate flasks.

Evasion:
This Build uses Evasion as its Physical hit mitigation. ~60k with one evasion flask, 95k with both. You will always have 95% dodge. (and 15 seconds vaal grace ;) )

Spell Suppression:
We aim for 100% chance to spell suppression. Together with Suppression mastery and Scion skill nodes we can reduce the suppressed damage to 38% in the best case. You will need only one item with spell suppression chance to cap the chance. We also have a 15 seconds vaal grace which gives unlucky SpellDamage to enemies

Energy shield:
We use energy shield as a buffer to protect our low life(only 4.4k). Try to get enough ES to fully utilize Ghostshrouds(3% of your Evasion) Real As soon as ES+ Life reaches 6k the build begins to feel immortal. Currently sitting at 2.5k ES which are fully replenished with ghost shrouds and leech. In case of danger, trigger vaal Discipline which also holds out for 8 Seconds

Armour: While this build can potentially run Determination, its weaker than before. Even flesh and stone outperforms it now.
You could go full on Armor with eva/armor bases through. But I feel that ghostdance > armor

Chaos Resist: Unfortunately chaos masteries were nerfed hard. But we still can and should stack this. Thanks to scion starting area we get a lot if resistances on the passive tree, so we have enough item budget for chaos resist.

Steelskin and Automation:
We use Steelskin, with gives a 2.6k Shield and makes us immune to bleed. Uptime of the buff is ~6 seconds with a 2 seconds cd.


Elemental Ailments:
Thanks to essence craft, Elder mod and the unique Jewel Ancrestal Vision we are now immune to elemental ailments yay.

Speed:
Last but not least, this build is quite fast with permanent onslaught and rage and about 0.25 secs attack time. You can shoot and dodge at mostly the same time. You can make a killing field of flowers and enjoy them offscreen.

How To Die:
1. Degen fields. While we migitate with phanteon and chaos damage is not a problem other Degens will hit us hard as we haven't any real regen outside Enduring call. So stay out of it.
3. Ubers and T17 - need special tactics to manage their damage(Like singel ress flasks)

Just kill all bandits.
Major is Arakali
Minor god is hands down abberath. Burning ground is insane in POE. Just skip that shit. Other Option would be shakari if you believe chaos will be in your near future.

Mainlink in Bow: Toxic Rain - (Awakened) Void Manipulation - (Awakened) Vicious Projectiles - Efficacy - (Divergent or anomalous) Mirage Archer - (Empower) Damage on full Life
All costly Choices can be found in brackets. As first choice update to awakened void manipulation, the plus one to chaosgems is insane.

Auralink: Vaal Discipline - Vaal Grace - Malediction - Enlighten lvl3(lvl4 only gives a little quality of life)
Main aura link, but it in the armor slot you have +1 to auragems/area increse crafted.

Support Link(4link): Steelskin - Enhance(lvl4) lvl4 - More Duration - Automation
Defense Link: Socket location is not important.

Support Link(6link):
Despair - Hexbloom -Punishment - Enhance(lvl4) lvl4 - Withering Step - Enduring Cry
Curse link etc. If you want, you can also drop enduring Cry for Vaal Haste to get another DPS CD for bossing. But dps is fine.


Support Link(4link): Frenzy - Toxic Rain of Withering - Manaforged Arrows - Flame Dash

Shoot away in front of you, mobs will die behind you - loot.
At bosses pop your Cds (vaal haste and vaal Grace) and shoot away. Thanks to a lot of movement speed, dodging most shit is as easy as pie.
Most mapmods don't pose a problem,but be aware that increased accuracy will be dangerous and reduced aura efffect will be annoying.
Try to dodge Charge steal and hexproof too. On a positive note, All reflect modes, all leech and regen modes etc don't pose any problem.

Learn the fights, and bring the right flasks:
Maven: Frost Resist flask
Exarch: Fire Resist flask
Shaper: no need for flask switch, get out of degen and slam. ultimate chaos can be easily tanked.
uberuber elder: same as above, care for degens and slams, and ignore the rest.
sirus: DEEEGEN,
uber cortex: freeloot?
uber eater: pure movement

Current Target: https://pobb.in/UINyZ-zOa3si

Most of our uniques are gems.
The rest is craftgear.

With crafted gear try to get as much defense and life as you can while still having resists capped. Remember that we need one item with Spell suppression

Example Items:
Body Armor:

Helmet:

Gloves:

Boots:


Weapons:



On a sidenote: If you have too much money(for a Lock) you could Double corrupt chest to get +3 to duration gem. Then the best bow would be Widowhail.

First off, i would not recommend to leaguestart with this. Damage is low throughout the story if you don't luck into a quillrain early. With a quill rain the build gets a lot stronger but you will need a lot of mana at bosses, so plan with two slots for mana flasks in the worst scenarios.


List of the best Level Uniques:
Bow: https://www.poewiki.net/wiki/Quill_Rain
This Baby carries you to endgame. The Insane Attackspeed guarantees high stacks of Pods. You will only switch it with a +3 skillgem Bow with attackspeed. Its worth the chaos you need to invest in the first days!

Ring: https://www.poewiki.net/wiki/Praxis This bad boy has helped many an exile to reach maps. And it clear why. Cost reduction paired with regen. You will likely use the ring until you have eleron ring crafts.


Here is a PoB for leveling(work in progress):
https://pastebin.com/LkQ7DnBi