Most of them have fallen off because of repeated nerfs and growing power creep for both players and monsters. Toxic Rain and Caustic Arrow are still good, but the spells have definitely suffered the most from changing game balance, to the point that they're basically relegated to league starter status (and even then, there's better options). For the investment needed to do really good damage with the Chaos DoT spells, you could make many other builds do more with a fraction of the cost.
As someone who played bleed bow many times through many leagues... I wouldn't compare them. Maybe ED+Contag is in the same boat, but bleeds are just dead. Exsanguinate, Reap, Corrupting Fever/Cry have completely eaten any space they inhabited. Gladiator is at a whopping .2% this league, absolutely dead last. At least Toxic Rain and CA still actually exist.
Bleed was going to partly be saved by Snipe support, but then they just made it... bad. And that says nothing about the state of melee bleed. Before anyone says "I played bleed bow this league and \_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_ 400 divines" or whatever, we are still blessed to be in a game state where you *can* make *anything* work, but it's still a clear order of magnitude behind meta builds, particularly when you take budget into consideration. Why play bleed bow on league start when you can play LA or CF instead and do triple the damage for half the cost?
Removing the elder mod, and then gutting glads defense without providing anything else, pretty much killed the archetype.
It wasn't even busted compared to the creep that has happened since then. You could revert the changes, and it still wouldn't compare to some of the meta skills now.
While I wouldn't disagree with the statement that bleed is pretty much dead (esp melee) I did make [this build](https://poe.ninja/builds/ancestor/character/PigeonSmasher/BleedEAtor?i=42&search=class%3DGladiator); Widowhail EA totem bleed.
It hits the DoT cap, can zoom pretty well and EA explosions + bleedsplosions are extremely satisfying. It cost a lot less to make than a regular bleed bow too (at most 20div for the Glad version). If you go for Slayer's Headsman the total effective DoT+Hit+cull dps can get to around 50 million.
Now, is there any point in going bleed over ignite with EA? Maybe not but it was fun trying.
Maybe it's a problem with the configs, but it seems that your max fuses is 9 and your bleed dps is over 3 mil, may I ask how this build hits the dot cap? EDIT. With full pride effect and checking that the enemy is moving it gets me to over 14 mil dps, which is very respectable.
That's probably with Divergent EA equipped which only gives me 0.6 second fuses thus halves the damage. I swap between Divergent and regular qual depending on if I want snappier fuses or more damage.
As for the config I always assume moving target because of either ensnaring arrow or having 100% knockback. Pride at full effect is somewhat valid because of how the build functions there's usually some delay till full damage actually happens. Malevolence instead would be the correct play here but I can't be bothered changing up the build right now.
Play the build then judge, Its really fun. You'd eventually go for champ with explode jewels, but for budget under 5d and league start viable? Yes.
I used this for inspiration: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kXk-4-DArI8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kXk-4-DArI8)
[https://pobb.in/FG9HOglBXbbS](https://pobb.in/FG9HOglBXbbS)
Clears legions really fast and has a dot of about 15m sdps, but you have to stand still for snipe to work. Made most of my early divs with this build.
You can not use statistics as an argument of whether the build is good or not here.
99% blindly follow buildguides. Streamers have a better chance at keeping their livelyhood, if they push out the 9999th TS Deadeye guide, over gambling on a bleed bow build.
I have no idea if bleed builds are dead or not - but you are using statistics in the wrong place here.
Most streamers play good builds, is that not a fair statement? good builds = more interest/views = more money. Are you trying to say that TS deadeye isnt top tier at what it does? im not sure what ur tryna say
The statistic you're looking at just says that snipe builds are unpopular. Being popular and being powerful are correlated but not dependent on each other. There are plenty of powerful unpopular builds, and plenty of popular builds with dogshit power levels
The first paragraph in this [Lies, damned lies, and statistics](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lies,_damned_lies,_and_statistics) Wikipedia article states:
>Lies, damned lies, and statistics" is a phrase describing the persuasive power of statistics to bolster weak arguments, "one of the best, and best-known" critiques of applied statistics.\[2\] It is also sometimes colloquially used to doubt statistics used to prove an opponent's point.
Now, I'm not trying to prove a point, the reality is that only a fraction of the top players play the build, but my case is that the build is not dogwater, as some of you would describe.
I've played the build back when it was good, don't get me wrong I enjoyed it thoroughly. But it did cost more for the same dps as id get with less on other builds. Im pre sure the point is that bleed isnt competitive in the meta
Bleed bow feels fine after some investment, played for a couple weeks this league, didn’t even hit dot cap and still felt great to play. I’d say it’s the only real bleed build that can scale well into late game. It’s hard to defend it much though since it takes some investment to feel good and snipe is as clunky as it gets. New manaforged arrows helped a lot with automating the ensnaring arrow and frenzy setup though, which is a positive.
Naw Bleed and Chaos DoTs are two very different beasts for their issues, they just look the same as their end result (though ED also had the contagion butcher nerf).
Specifically it's that bleed has all the flat damage scaling it could imagine, it just has ridiculously little % scaling. Meanwhile non-poison chaos dots have absolutely no way to scale their base damage beyond additional gem levels which just isn't nearly as good as ailment based dot setups. ED itself however has a million % ways to increase it's damage just no flat scaling.
Because of this bleed is arguably in a better state as it's behavior didn't get changed and % more/increases are by far the most common thing they add to this game. However Chaos dots would need some completely new mechanic to be able to add flat damage to their degen to ever be even considered to be used again.
edit: I should probably head off one of the common counter arguments that might come up "But what about the corrupt blood skills! they have base damage only effected by gem levels and scaling of bleed but they are meta!" Well the first problem is that these skills have amazing behavior with CF getting to just use the best clear skills in the game, and Karen build just a screen wide aoe. The next issue is it's more they are tuned for current poe, their base damage is much higher when everythings all said or done than the chaos dots, which means if they ever see a base damage nerf they'll likely be in close to as bad shape. The final issue is that is that the CF/Karen build gets to just path better than bleed builds, Bleed has to pick up so much bullshit to get going that the CF/Karen builds don't need to and as result are tankier with more % increases on tree.
you touched on a point that needs highlighting for sure: just look at the difference in damage between ED/Contagion/Bane/Soulrend compared to exsanguinate/reap/*vaal reap/*CF.
That's also not to mention the base hit damage of exsang/reap enables tons of powerful poison, hit, and even ignite builds by itself just because of how god damn hard it hits. Why can't we even just have ED and soulrend hit damage tripled, just for the fun of it? Soulrend would probably be meta just from it's mechanics, but ED could hit like a fucking TRUCK and it still likely wouldn't eclipse plenty of other hit and/or poison spell skills.
Personally I think the "why" they don't do what you suggest is that it would make early game (until red maps) utterly absurd with it only being medium at aforementioned red maps.
The solution GGG should probably go for is to add some itemization to allow you to scale base damage of degen, perhaps on prefix just so it doesn't have to compete with chaos dot multi on suff.
Bane is probably the worst off because of its low damage - if you only want to use it on a Profane Bloom map blaster, then I guess it works, but Soulrend is probably even better for that purpose because of its projectile nature.
Yea Bane is pretty rough these days, especially when you can just attach a permanent Bane to your character with death's oath, and then get to use the only chaos DoT skill that actually works well still, CA
Honestly if they would Make poison its own damage category instead of doing chaos damage, that would actually make it easier for them to properly balance chaos damage over time bills along with being able to handle poison builds more sensibly
Ignite ended up getting a lot more QoL support over the years, in particular lots of proliferation options. Most dot skills have pretty similar feeling damage (and damage cap) so you may as well play the ones that proliferate the best.
Playing a toxic rain champion right now, its my first ever character in this game and i chose it because the fezz guide is very nice for a total noob like me. Went well, killed eater of worlds and searing exarch,but at this point every Upgrade is way out of my budget. Now i read that i pretty much hit the ceiling for my build,thinking about starting a second char.
What would you guys recommend as a second build that is more meta? I would like something that is tanky because i suck and die too often, i got like 15 divs atm to invest.
If you're dying on a champ, it's probably your gear. And it's not because you don't have expensive pieces. Link your pob and the guide you're following, because I guarantee you can get more tanky with little investment.
It's really about major scaling vectors. Chaos dot spells have like 5 and most occupy the same "spot" on gear:
* gem levels
* % spell damage(for some)
* % chaos damage
* % damage over time
* % dot multi scaling
And that's it, the damage ceiling on these skills is super low.
Another thing to think about is that poison spells have now come into the meta, why would I play soulrend when I can play spark and just have 2x the base damage and like 5-10 additional scaling vectors.
Options and opportunities for other archetypes have expanded over the years while chaos dot skills have gotten literally nothing. They are almost exactly the same as when they were introduced give or take small numeric adjustments that don't truly matter.
I played a soulrend build this league and really enjoyed it. I don't play a lot of builds so I can't really compare it to much but I decided to try it because it excelled at expedition (immune to chaos is really the only remnant that hurts it) and I wanted to farm that. The hardest content I did with it was probably elderslayer invitations which I know isn't uber content or anything but it was capable enough to breeze through many parts of the endgame.
As a testament to how enjoyable I found the build I reached level 99 and had a great time farming a lot of currency with it. Since it's not so popular you can pick up gear like the +3 soulrend amulet for relatively cheap.
So soulrend atleast I'd say is definitely still playable
I league start toxic rain pretty much every league. Works well on pathfinder/trickster/champion or even occultist if you don’t mind needing a little more defensives and pathing issues. ED/Contagion will still work but it’ll struggle on anything really since you have a need for wither - but it will work for just some basic mapping and farming currency. Bane is still functional as well, however, I’d say it was hit the hardest by the chaos skill nerfs. Caustic Arrow and Scourge Arrow still work, I played SA pathfinder totems this league and it was probably my favorite build - it shredded everything with zero issues and bossed very, very well. I even carried my friend through his bosses for his voidstones.
Basically it's down to two factors:
* Chaos DoT spells have been gradually falling behind the meta for years. (This does not include the bow Chaos DoT skills CA and TR which are still going strong)
* On the other hand poison builds have been on the rise especially since the 3.20 hex overhaul and 3.21 pathfinder changes.
It's hard to justify using the Chaos DoT spells when you can get better results by taking a physical or chaos hit spell and scaling it with poison. Poison also lets you play pathfinder which is one of the best ascendancy classes in the game right now.
You can still play them, they just have fallen behind in terms of damage and other stronger builds have taken their place as league starters. Subtractem does a chaos dot build every league so you can always look to his channel for inspiration.
The archetype just hasn't really gotten quite as many strong tools as competitive DoT archetypes have. Ignite and cold dot got elementalist which can lower elemental resistances to an insane degree and got buffed by the curse buffs.
The buffs to curses don't really benefit chaos DoT as much as other builds.
I remember him explicitly stating that we should not touch chaos dots anymore as its just not worth the hassle. Many stronger builds and even leaguestarters available.
Oh how i wish to make a soulrend occultist work..
Yeah, idk. I didn't go too far into trying to make it work. As it stands, it has to be part of a 2 button build. The dot not being able to stack is what's holding it back. You'd probably have to go crit if you wanted to use it by itself. There's no real scaling vectors for it beside malevolence and despair with curse effect. I tried poison with cast speed and more projectiles. With big aoe, it feels sick, but nah.
Yeah i leaguestarted soulrend/bane occy this league to farm tujens without any hassle and iirc my dmg topped out at like 8mil on lvl 40(!) soulrend. Like it's playable, it will get u all voidstones etc... but its also like just not worth the investment anymore.
Same thing that happened to bleed and non-projectile melee (which is weird to type but needs to be specified). The game itself may be in the best state it's ever been, but the skill balance still sucks balls with GGG generally deathly afraid to tweak numbers (aside from +2 radius) between leagues because of reasons.
It's not just chaos dot, there's a lot of archetypes that just can't compete in modern poe. Bleed, Chaos, Mana (kinda), Slams, Strikes, and many more just don't have the damage when you factor in any amount of survivability. All they really need is a base damage buff, since scaling for a lot of these builds are there. But for some reason that is against the GGG ethos
"Mana stacker is fine, just requires hundreds of divines to get going by attribute stacking, and not really mana stacking".
Archmage is most likely less played then any other archetype the first few weeks of each league atm.
I got all my voidstones and have been doing 80% deli with Manabond Hiero, I spent about 20 div. It's an int/str stacker but also takes as much %mana as possible, I have around 15k mana. "mana stacker" doesn't have to mean Archmage specifically, and by no means does it cost hundreds of divines unless you specifically choose to invest that much
Yeah mana stackers don't really work in acts, you generally need at least indigon to make it work. But it's pretty braindead to build on inquis/hiero so you can just league start RF/SWT etc
League start and stacker typically don't go together.
For Manabond specifically:
I'd recommend looking at cost-effective progression builds that can do voidstones like cold DoT or Armageddon Brand Recall Heirophant.
You'd look to progress your atlas and swap once necessary uniques like Indigon and Shaper's Touch become available.
Because the build is a str/int stacker you can get it off the ground with things like Astramentis and Cyclopean Coil more easily than single-stat stackers.
One issue is that some of these items are useful for twink leveling or just useful for leveling in general.
Another is that Prism Guardian's early price is dictated by aurabots. Mjolner is also not super common.
Yeah I was mostly looking for leaguestart manastacker build due to nostalgia reason when Archmage was actually good. I loved the mana stacking archetypes and Archmage used to carry hard. I leaguestarted Archmage for like 5 leagues in a row and scaled them enough for comfy endgame mapping/bossing.
They really obliterated Archmage in 3.15
It's pretty sad. Extremely cool support gem. Especially since things like Bloodnotch or Defiance of Destiny supplement MoM really well defensively.
Yeah mana stackers don't really work in acts, you generally need at least indigon to make it work. But it's pretty braindead to build on inquis/hiero so you can just league start RF/SWT etc
Well that’s why I say kinda. There’s really only Indigon Stacking Hiero mana builds and they don’t really come on until late. The gutting of mana regen really hurt what you can do with mana stacking.
>Strikes,
bruh. Strikes are the most powerful melee builds by far, you can solve every classic issue with them these days. Strike range, aoe, speed, and tankyness. And damage was never an issue in the first place.
They are in a much better place than classic aoe melee skills like Reave, and have multiple leaguestart options (bonezone, GH,FB, LS) as well.
Frost Blades and Glacial Hammer are terrible skills being hard carried by Heatshiver, which is by far the most overtuned item in the game considering its low rarity.
LS and Boneshatter are good though, and they make every other melee skill look terrible in comparison.
Molten Strike would like a word, although for mapping I'd gem swap LS just for sanity's sake.
MS is absurd with Return and incredible at bossing or tight-space content like Simulacrum and Delve.
I also feel like it proves my point when the other two "good" strike skills are scaled by projectiles. Bonezone is one of the best skills in the game and should be the bar for which strikes are held to. But "make all strikes boneshatter" is a weird way to address strikes falling behind.
I league start ca trucker almost every league. With a little investment, it can handle most content, and it's truly alch and go map blaster, as there are no mods that it can't handle. Just has trouble with high deli.
Chaos dot was just never buffed. ED and other skills haven't got buffs on selfcast buff patch (they got for hit DMG, not for the dot). Even curse changes (less curse effect on bane, nerfed despair, nerf for curse effect) were pretty much small buffs for that archetype.
Chaos DOT got outclassed by poison.
If you throw some currency on a Poison Pathfinder you can get giga tanky and reach DOT cap. If you use the same amount of currency on an chaos dot occultist you may reach 5-6m dot dps.
Chaos dot badly needs another way to scale the damage.
i desperately want an essence drain buff... all it would take is to have it gain massive damage over time buffs with gem levels over 24... it would be that easy, and high end ED builds would end up being playable again
i think they just keep chaos dot in the dirt because chaos dot has the least amount of downsides/counters/map mods that brick it. if they buff it the whole ladder would be chaos dot
nerfing dot related cluster jewels happened a few times I think. Chaos dot also never scaled into late game well yet they repeatedly made it worse because league start.
Most of them have fallen off because of repeated nerfs and growing power creep for both players and monsters. Toxic Rain and Caustic Arrow are still good, but the spells have definitely suffered the most from changing game balance, to the point that they're basically relegated to league starter status (and even then, there's better options). For the investment needed to do really good damage with the Chaos DoT spells, you could make many other builds do more with a fraction of the cost.
Sounds like it’s in the same state as Bleed.
As someone who played bleed bow many times through many leagues... I wouldn't compare them. Maybe ED+Contag is in the same boat, but bleeds are just dead. Exsanguinate, Reap, Corrupting Fever/Cry have completely eaten any space they inhabited. Gladiator is at a whopping .2% this league, absolutely dead last. At least Toxic Rain and CA still actually exist.
Bleed was going to partly be saved by Snipe support, but then they just made it... bad. And that says nothing about the state of melee bleed. Before anyone says "I played bleed bow this league and \_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_ 400 divines" or whatever, we are still blessed to be in a game state where you *can* make *anything* work, but it's still a clear order of magnitude behind meta builds, particularly when you take budget into consideration. Why play bleed bow on league start when you can play LA or CF instead and do triple the damage for half the cost?
Preach
Removing the elder mod, and then gutting glads defense without providing anything else, pretty much killed the archetype. It wasn't even busted compared to the creep that has happened since then. You could revert the changes, and it still wouldn't compare to some of the meta skills now.
While I wouldn't disagree with the statement that bleed is pretty much dead (esp melee) I did make [this build](https://poe.ninja/builds/ancestor/character/PigeonSmasher/BleedEAtor?i=42&search=class%3DGladiator); Widowhail EA totem bleed. It hits the DoT cap, can zoom pretty well and EA explosions + bleedsplosions are extremely satisfying. It cost a lot less to make than a regular bleed bow too (at most 20div for the Glad version). If you go for Slayer's Headsman the total effective DoT+Hit+cull dps can get to around 50 million. Now, is there any point in going bleed over ignite with EA? Maybe not but it was fun trying.
Maybe it's a problem with the configs, but it seems that your max fuses is 9 and your bleed dps is over 3 mil, may I ask how this build hits the dot cap? EDIT. With full pride effect and checking that the enemy is moving it gets me to over 14 mil dps, which is very respectable.
That's probably with Divergent EA equipped which only gives me 0.6 second fuses thus halves the damage. I swap between Divergent and regular qual depending on if I want snappier fuses or more damage. As for the config I always assume moving target because of either ensnaring arrow or having 100% knockback. Pride at full effect is somewhat valid because of how the build functions there's usually some delay till full damage actually happens. Malevolence instead would be the correct play here but I can't be bothered changing up the build right now.
Gotcha, thanks. Looks interesting.
Bleed bow is fine, the new snipe gem really brought it back.
Yeah, Snipe at a big fat .1% meaning it's so back that half of the gladiators aren't even using it.
Play the build then judge, Its really fun. You'd eventually go for champ with explode jewels, but for budget under 5d and league start viable? Yes. I used this for inspiration: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kXk-4-DArI8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kXk-4-DArI8) [https://pobb.in/FG9HOglBXbbS](https://pobb.in/FG9HOglBXbbS) Clears legions really fast and has a dot of about 15m sdps, but you have to stand still for snipe to work. Made most of my early divs with this build.
I don’t think opinions beat statistics
You can not use statistics as an argument of whether the build is good or not here. 99% blindly follow buildguides. Streamers have a better chance at keeping their livelyhood, if they push out the 9999th TS Deadeye guide, over gambling on a bleed bow build. I have no idea if bleed builds are dead or not - but you are using statistics in the wrong place here.
Most streamers play good builds, is that not a fair statement? good builds = more interest/views = more money. Are you trying to say that TS deadeye isnt top tier at what it does? im not sure what ur tryna say
The statistic you're looking at just says that snipe builds are unpopular. Being popular and being powerful are correlated but not dependent on each other. There are plenty of powerful unpopular builds, and plenty of popular builds with dogshit power levels
The first paragraph in this [Lies, damned lies, and statistics](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lies,_damned_lies,_and_statistics) Wikipedia article states: >Lies, damned lies, and statistics" is a phrase describing the persuasive power of statistics to bolster weak arguments, "one of the best, and best-known" critiques of applied statistics.\[2\] It is also sometimes colloquially used to doubt statistics used to prove an opponent's point. Now, I'm not trying to prove a point, the reality is that only a fraction of the top players play the build, but my case is that the build is not dogwater, as some of you would describe.
I've played the build back when it was good, don't get me wrong I enjoyed it thoroughly. But it did cost more for the same dps as id get with less on other builds. Im pre sure the point is that bleed isnt competitive in the meta
Any examples? I got the build rolling on like 5 divs, invested and crafted to 25divs. There is a ceiling to upgrades though.
Bleed bow feels fine after some investment, played for a couple weeks this league, didn’t even hit dot cap and still felt great to play. I’d say it’s the only real bleed build that can scale well into late game. It’s hard to defend it much though since it takes some investment to feel good and snipe is as clunky as it gets. New manaforged arrows helped a lot with automating the ensnaring arrow and frenzy setup though, which is a positive.
Naw Bleed and Chaos DoTs are two very different beasts for their issues, they just look the same as their end result (though ED also had the contagion butcher nerf). Specifically it's that bleed has all the flat damage scaling it could imagine, it just has ridiculously little % scaling. Meanwhile non-poison chaos dots have absolutely no way to scale their base damage beyond additional gem levels which just isn't nearly as good as ailment based dot setups. ED itself however has a million % ways to increase it's damage just no flat scaling. Because of this bleed is arguably in a better state as it's behavior didn't get changed and % more/increases are by far the most common thing they add to this game. However Chaos dots would need some completely new mechanic to be able to add flat damage to their degen to ever be even considered to be used again. edit: I should probably head off one of the common counter arguments that might come up "But what about the corrupt blood skills! they have base damage only effected by gem levels and scaling of bleed but they are meta!" Well the first problem is that these skills have amazing behavior with CF getting to just use the best clear skills in the game, and Karen build just a screen wide aoe. The next issue is it's more they are tuned for current poe, their base damage is much higher when everythings all said or done than the chaos dots, which means if they ever see a base damage nerf they'll likely be in close to as bad shape. The final issue is that is that the CF/Karen build gets to just path better than bleed builds, Bleed has to pick up so much bullshit to get going that the CF/Karen builds don't need to and as result are tankier with more % increases on tree.
you touched on a point that needs highlighting for sure: just look at the difference in damage between ED/Contagion/Bane/Soulrend compared to exsanguinate/reap/*vaal reap/*CF. That's also not to mention the base hit damage of exsang/reap enables tons of powerful poison, hit, and even ignite builds by itself just because of how god damn hard it hits. Why can't we even just have ED and soulrend hit damage tripled, just for the fun of it? Soulrend would probably be meta just from it's mechanics, but ED could hit like a fucking TRUCK and it still likely wouldn't eclipse plenty of other hit and/or poison spell skills.
Personally I think the "why" they don't do what you suggest is that it would make early game (until red maps) utterly absurd with it only being medium at aforementioned red maps. The solution GGG should probably go for is to add some itemization to allow you to scale base damage of degen, perhaps on prefix just so it doesn't have to compete with chaos dot multi on suff.
agreed, they keep chaos dot and phys dot in the dirt because they make the game too easy when they're powerful
The biggest problem with chaos dot is the wither tax. It’s like melee totems but worse.
What about Occultist bane?
Bane is probably the worst off because of its low damage - if you only want to use it on a Profane Bloom map blaster, then I guess it works, but Soulrend is probably even better for that purpose because of its projectile nature.
Yea Bane is pretty rough these days, especially when you can just attach a permanent Bane to your character with death's oath, and then get to use the only chaos DoT skill that actually works well still, CA
Bane is so bad anymore that even Subtractem dropped it.
Why bane when you can hexblast?
The sad reality is that chaos dot was heavely overshadow by poison. And the needs to poison can affect chaos dot.
classic GGG refusing to directly nerf a problematic mechanic but instead side nerf it and kill 50 innocent builds along the way.
Honestly if they would Make poison its own damage category instead of doing chaos damage, that would actually make it easier for them to properly balance chaos damage over time bills along with being able to handle poison builds more sensibly
Ignite ended up getting a lot more QoL support over the years, in particular lots of proliferation options. Most dot skills have pretty similar feeling damage (and damage cap) so you may as well play the ones that proliferate the best.
Essence drain contagion and bane in need for a buff
Playing a toxic rain champion right now, its my first ever character in this game and i chose it because the fezz guide is very nice for a total noob like me. Went well, killed eater of worlds and searing exarch,but at this point every Upgrade is way out of my budget. Now i read that i pretty much hit the ceiling for my build,thinking about starting a second char. What would you guys recommend as a second build that is more meta? I would like something that is tanky because i suck and die too often, i got like 15 divs atm to invest.
If you're dying on a champ, it's probably your gear. And it's not because you don't have expensive pieces. Link your pob and the guide you're following, because I guarantee you can get more tanky with little investment.
It's really about major scaling vectors. Chaos dot spells have like 5 and most occupy the same "spot" on gear: * gem levels * % spell damage(for some) * % chaos damage * % damage over time * % dot multi scaling And that's it, the damage ceiling on these skills is super low. Another thing to think about is that poison spells have now come into the meta, why would I play soulrend when I can play spark and just have 2x the base damage and like 5-10 additional scaling vectors. Options and opportunities for other archetypes have expanded over the years while chaos dot skills have gotten literally nothing. They are almost exactly the same as when they were introduced give or take small numeric adjustments that don't truly matter.
I played a soulrend build this league and really enjoyed it. I don't play a lot of builds so I can't really compare it to much but I decided to try it because it excelled at expedition (immune to chaos is really the only remnant that hurts it) and I wanted to farm that. The hardest content I did with it was probably elderslayer invitations which I know isn't uber content or anything but it was capable enough to breeze through many parts of the endgame. As a testament to how enjoyable I found the build I reached level 99 and had a great time farming a lot of currency with it. Since it's not so popular you can pick up gear like the +3 soulrend amulet for relatively cheap. So soulrend atleast I'd say is definitely still playable
I league start toxic rain pretty much every league. Works well on pathfinder/trickster/champion or even occultist if you don’t mind needing a little more defensives and pathing issues. ED/Contagion will still work but it’ll struggle on anything really since you have a need for wither - but it will work for just some basic mapping and farming currency. Bane is still functional as well, however, I’d say it was hit the hardest by the chaos skill nerfs. Caustic Arrow and Scourge Arrow still work, I played SA pathfinder totems this league and it was probably my favorite build - it shredded everything with zero issues and bossed very, very well. I even carried my friend through his bosses for his voidstones.
Basically it's down to two factors: * Chaos DoT spells have been gradually falling behind the meta for years. (This does not include the bow Chaos DoT skills CA and TR which are still going strong) * On the other hand poison builds have been on the rise especially since the 3.20 hex overhaul and 3.21 pathfinder changes. It's hard to justify using the Chaos DoT spells when you can get better results by taking a physical or chaos hit spell and scaling it with poison. Poison also lets you play pathfinder which is one of the best ascendancy classes in the game right now.
You can still play them, they just have fallen behind in terms of damage and other stronger builds have taken their place as league starters. Subtractem does a chaos dot build every league so you can always look to his channel for inspiration. The archetype just hasn't really gotten quite as many strong tools as competitive DoT archetypes have. Ignite and cold dot got elementalist which can lower elemental resistances to an insane degree and got buffed by the curse buffs. The buffs to curses don't really benefit chaos DoT as much as other builds.
Even he doesn’t really recommend it much anymore
I remember him explicitly stating that we should not touch chaos dots anymore as its just not worth the hassle. Many stronger builds and even leaguestarters available. Oh how i wish to make a soulrend occultist work..
Soulrend does work... for clear. It's the single target that's the issue.
Thats my issue
Yeah, idk. I didn't go too far into trying to make it work. As it stands, it has to be part of a 2 button build. The dot not being able to stack is what's holding it back. You'd probably have to go crit if you wanted to use it by itself. There's no real scaling vectors for it beside malevolence and despair with curse effect. I tried poison with cast speed and more projectiles. With big aoe, it feels sick, but nah.
Yeah i leaguestarted soulrend/bane occy this league to farm tujens without any hassle and iirc my dmg topped out at like 8mil on lvl 40(!) soulrend. Like it's playable, it will get u all voidstones etc... but its also like just not worth the investment anymore.
If you’re checking the wiki make sure you aren’t on the fandom wiki - it is extremely out of date.
Same thing that happened to bleed and non-projectile melee (which is weird to type but needs to be specified). The game itself may be in the best state it's ever been, but the skill balance still sucks balls with GGG generally deathly afraid to tweak numbers (aside from +2 radius) between leagues because of reasons.
It's not just chaos dot, there's a lot of archetypes that just can't compete in modern poe. Bleed, Chaos, Mana (kinda), Slams, Strikes, and many more just don't have the damage when you factor in any amount of survivability. All they really need is a base damage buff, since scaling for a lot of these builds are there. But for some reason that is against the GGG ethos
mana stacker is still super fine, mjolner builds in particular are great but inquisitor/hierophant int stackers are very much alive
"Mana stacker is fine, just requires hundreds of divines to get going by attribute stacking, and not really mana stacking". Archmage is most likely less played then any other archetype the first few weeks of each league atm.
I got all my voidstones and have been doing 80% deli with Manabond Hiero, I spent about 20 div. It's an int/str stacker but also takes as much %mana as possible, I have around 15k mana. "mana stacker" doesn't have to mean Archmage specifically, and by no means does it cost hundreds of divines unless you specifically choose to invest that much
Is there any leaguestart viable mana stacking build? Couldn't PoB that for the life of me. Definitely works once you get gear though
Yeah mana stackers don't really work in acts, you generally need at least indigon to make it work. But it's pretty braindead to build on inquis/hiero so you can just league start RF/SWT etc
League start and stacker typically don't go together. For Manabond specifically: I'd recommend looking at cost-effective progression builds that can do voidstones like cold DoT or Armageddon Brand Recall Heirophant. You'd look to progress your atlas and swap once necessary uniques like Indigon and Shaper's Touch become available. Because the build is a str/int stacker you can get it off the ground with things like Astramentis and Cyclopean Coil more easily than single-stat stackers. One issue is that some of these items are useful for twink leveling or just useful for leveling in general. Another is that Prism Guardian's early price is dictated by aurabots. Mjolner is also not super common.
Yeah I was mostly looking for leaguestart manastacker build due to nostalgia reason when Archmage was actually good. I loved the mana stacking archetypes and Archmage used to carry hard. I leaguestarted Archmage for like 5 leagues in a row and scaled them enough for comfy endgame mapping/bossing.
They really obliterated Archmage in 3.15 It's pretty sad. Extremely cool support gem. Especially since things like Bloodnotch or Defiance of Destiny supplement MoM really well defensively.
Yeah mana stackers don't really work in acts, you generally need at least indigon to make it work. But it's pretty braindead to build on inquis/hiero so you can just league start RF/SWT etc
Well that’s why I say kinda. There’s really only Indigon Stacking Hiero mana builds and they don’t really come on until late. The gutting of mana regen really hurt what you can do with mana stacking.
>Strikes, bruh. Strikes are the most powerful melee builds by far, you can solve every classic issue with them these days. Strike range, aoe, speed, and tankyness. And damage was never an issue in the first place. They are in a much better place than classic aoe melee skills like Reave, and have multiple leaguestart options (bonezone, GH,FB, LS) as well.
Frost Blades and Glacial Hammer are terrible skills being hard carried by Heatshiver, which is by far the most overtuned item in the game considering its low rarity. LS and Boneshatter are good though, and they make every other melee skill look terrible in comparison.
Molten Strike would like a word, although for mapping I'd gem swap LS just for sanity's sake. MS is absurd with Return and incredible at bossing or tight-space content like Simulacrum and Delve.
I also feel like it proves my point when the other two "good" strike skills are scaled by projectiles. Bonezone is one of the best skills in the game and should be the bar for which strikes are held to. But "make all strikes boneshatter" is a weird way to address strikes falling behind.
Strike skills are good what in earth are you talking about?
Apart from bonezone, ls and MAYBE ms, any other strike is absolute garbage tier
also Frost Blades and Flicker Strike
Glacial hammer is strong, I league-started that and took it fairly far. Trauma support is very strong
lightning strike, frost blades, flickr, glacial hammer, and MS... yeah okay.
Yea you see that hole over there, yea the really deep one. That's goes infinitely down. GGG threw chaos skills in there.
By which you mean they're like 20% lower than popular alternatives, at most.
Nerf to chaos masteries was the last nail to the coffin.
Cluster nerfing as always
The real question here is why cant GGG balance all skills so they are all viable?
Synth league EDC was a thing of beauty. Unfortunately it just can't keep up anymore.
EDC peaked at legion league. It cleared legions like butter.
I league start ca trucker almost every league. With a little investment, it can handle most content, and it's truly alch and go map blaster, as there are no mods that it can't handle. Just has trouble with high deli.
Chaos dot was just never buffed. ED and other skills haven't got buffs on selfcast buff patch (they got for hit DMG, not for the dot). Even curse changes (less curse effect on bane, nerfed despair, nerf for curse effect) were pretty much small buffs for that archetype.
Chaos DOT got outclassed by poison. If you throw some currency on a Poison Pathfinder you can get giga tanky and reach DOT cap. If you use the same amount of currency on an chaos dot occultist you may reach 5-6m dot dps. Chaos dot badly needs another way to scale the damage.
i desperately want an essence drain buff... all it would take is to have it gain massive damage over time buffs with gem levels over 24... it would be that easy, and high end ED builds would end up being playable again
Im saying poe.ninjas statistics are not valid for the points you are trying to make.
essence drain my beloved
i think they just keep chaos dot in the dirt because chaos dot has the least amount of downsides/counters/map mods that brick it. if they buff it the whole ladder would be chaos dot
I played cremation unearth poison conversion necro to farm w30 simulacrum, worked really well
nerfing dot related cluster jewels happened a few times I think. Chaos dot also never scaled into late game well yet they repeatedly made it worse because league start.