So Caustic Arrow... Scale the hit or scale the cloud??

Been looking at this since they highlighted the changes in the video...

With the changes to bow gems and their effect on chaos damage w/ attacks or damage over time, is there a time where the cloud scaling should take presidence?

Since we need poison for herald of agony, it seems like scaling the hit would be the way to go.

Also ascendancies: Pathfinder, Trickster, and Occultist have a lot going for it... but deadeye will give tons of speed if the damage scaling is fine without an OP ascendancy.

What are you guys planning?

I think GGG is actually, really pushing the idea that you're supposed to scale both hit damage *and* DoT when doing Poison builds. ...or at least trying to.

Actually, with the initial hit of Caustic Arrow, I think I still mostly scale the cloud, but maybe throw in a Decay support to boost the base damage a bit, too, especially against quicker monsters that don't nicely sit in green death fields like they're supposed to.

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XCodesLIVE a écrit :

I think GGG is actually, really pushing the idea that you're supposed to scale both hit damage *and* DoT when doing Poison builds. ...or at least trying to.

Actually, with the initial hit of Caustic Arrow, I think I still mostly scale the cloud, but maybe throw in a Decay support to boost the base damage a bit, too, especially against quicker monsters that don't nicely sit in green death fields like they're supposed to.

The thing is that the Herald of Agony seem super strong for single target help. My understanding is that the cloud doesn't "hit" so it can't poison.

The new herald of agony requires that you are poisoning enemies to gain virulence stacks which keeps your minion out.



That's why i'm trying to think of a time where you would only want to scale generic chaos damage instead of taking all of the phys/bow nodes that oftentimes ALSO scale chaos damage and/or damage over time.

It seems like a no brainer to scale the hit and get whatever damage the cloud gets automatically from the chaos/dot damage on those nodes.

Maybe someone has a better opinion?

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XCodesLIVE a écrit :

I think GGG is actually, really pushing the idea that you're supposed to scale both hit damage *and* DoT when doing Poison builds. ...or at least trying to.

Which is weird cuz that's what poison, bleed, and ignite all did before they nerfed the hell out of 'double dipping' instead of just rebalancing them. So now they are all trying to find ways to make poison at least do what it already did before they F'd it up - and make ways to scale both the hit and poison in tandem.

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Prizy a écrit :

The thing is that the Herald of Agony seem super strong for single target help. My understanding is that the cloud doesn't "hit" so it can't poison.

The patch notes suggest they're changing it so there's an initial hit when you use Caustic Arrow which should be enough to apply the Decay.

As for Herald of Agony... eh, maybe. I think I'd want something that hits faster to stack poisons if I was going for that, rather than trying to apply poison via the initial hit on Caustic Arrow (which I expect will still be low). The thing about all these new minion skills is that I really want to see what they're about and put them through their paces before I make a build that really relies on them.

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GoldDragon32 a écrit :

Which is weird cuz that's what poison, bleed, and ignite all did before they nerfed the hell out of 'double dipping' instead of just rebalancing them. So now they are all trying to find ways to make poison at least do what it already did before they F'd it up - and make ways to scale both the hit and poison in tandem.

Sometimes. While these builds definitely wanted to get some double-dipping in, they didn't want to stack their hit damage *too* high or they'd expose themselves to reflect oneshots. Of course, considerations for reflect oneshots stopped being a thing when Poison got introduced and everyone started running Voltaxic Rift and/or Essence Drain.

Also, I actually really agree with the direction GGG went with removing double-dipping. The new DoT mechanics are still interesting and GGG can balance them better without worrying about recreating the environment where shit like Poison Essence Drain and Drillneck Puncture Traps can happen again.

Furthermore, I *also* like that GGG is trying to make the different DoT ailments work differently from each other. Ignite goes back to the low-hit-high-DoT playstyle that stuff like top Ignite Fireblast builds strove for, Bleed works like Ignite does with a hard hit then walk away or extra DPS with the notable, and Poison right now works in more of a utility application triggering effects that work based on how many poison stacks you got on an enemy. Maybe in 3.4 it will go back to being an effective damage multiplier for Physical/Chaos damage, especially if said damage comes from an attack-based source.

If there's a way to scale the hit without gimping the dot then it might be nice for single target. With a skill like ca (at least how it is on live) you need to scale the shit out of the dot with +level and all reachable chaos/projectile/aoe/dot damage or you gimp yourself especially single target.

I will wait to see if the dot damage numbers stay as quoted in the patch notes.. I wasn't planning on ca but if those values don't change I am doing it.

CA looks like it'll be great for the Atlas, but seriously limited in Delve. With the darkness around the cart in Delve you're going to have limited room to kite, and the lack of hit stun/chill/freeze from the low hit/high DoT cloud I think is going to be *really* rough on the survivability of CA characters.

Some interesting posts here.

Emmbu (which is a streamer) did some math on reddit that indicated a lvl 20 new Caustic Arrow is approximately the equivalent of a 28.5 level current CA gem.

If that scaling is correct, then I'm going to scale the hit and take all of the residual damage over time stuff that comes with the new "double dip" nodes like Heavy Draw/Deadly Draw.

It seems that even with no chaos damage on tree that the DOT will scale reasonably enough to justify focusing on the hit.

Poisons should apply quickly with the overlaps of AOE as well. Those poisons are furthered buffed by stuff like Heavy Draw as well. Not to mention most of the poison nodes also adds additional "Chaos Damage to Attacks".

I think you can't go wrong with this skill no matter how you scale it.

Just scale whatever.

It's busted no mather what direction you go with it.

Base dps value is of a lvl 29 current gem now and people where already clearing "ok" with 24 lvl gems.

Now what will happen if you push this new caustic arrow to lvl 24.

Peace,

-Boem-

edit : i find it sort of hilarious that they first do a big "we are removing shotgunning!" balance change and then two years later they give "certain skills" the posibility to AOE overlap (read=shotgun) and prevent in on others, pushing those skills far beyond all others.(like molten strike has been for ages)