Please read below!

I'm pretty much done with the league but this was the build I was working on for the past few weeks. I tried recording a full showcase earlier this week but I'm not happy with how the build turned out, so I won't be making a full guide, even though it was the option that won in the poll (sorry!). Also, it turns out my pc cannot really handle it, sorry for the poor quality.

I mostly released this for those who want inspiration for future builds or want to know how some of the gear is crafted.

PoB (with crafting notes): https://pobb.in/1uvLhSEHiUJh

Inspired by Goratha's 3.23 Caustic Arrow build, one of my friends loved that build so I thought I'd see how I can make a 3.25 version. This version deviates quite a lot from what he did, especially since tinctures don't work the same way anymore. This isn't the perfect way to build this, my goal was to see if DoT cap was possible while not being insanely glass cannon.

Please feel free to leave questions. Huge thanks for the amount of support and kind words I got in the last video. This community is so wholesome sometimes ;)

Also, this is definitely not a gauntlet build despite the timing lol.

============================================================= TLDR: Do not copy this, there's too many issues to fix, some of which are inherent mechanically and cannot be fixed. I don't think it's worth it to invest more time and effort atm.

How the build works:

• Vinespike Cordial (annoint) and Inextricable Fate allows us to poison with ALL damage (similar to pneumatic daggers but with 100% poison chance). This is only during our Life Flask effect, so we must use Master Surgeon, which happens to give us A LOT of recovery.
• We stack projectiles and AoE because Caustic Arrow is one of the few skills that can shotgun. A huge amount of flask investment allows us to have ~100% uptime on Dying Sun.
• 100% crit with Perfect Agony, scale crit multi to the moon for damage. Crit also enables our curse setup (Manaforged Arrows and CoC) to trigger full power curses (lvl 20 instead of lvl 1) for a lot more damage. We can also avoid going the chaos mastery for 15 wither stacks and instead use the reworked Overwhelming Malice to get more wither chance (and a bit more flat damage). Along with Nature's Reprisal we have 50% chance to Wither with 11 max projectiles with 4aps, so we should be hitting wither cap. Also doesn't account for Manaforged hits.

Pros:

• Ele ailment, stun and crit immune (if an enemy is poisoned).
• Huge recovery from Life Flasks.
• DoT cap if played well.
• Perma-automatic flasks (except for Life Flask).
• Moderately zoomy, can be faster with a sacrifice in dps/damage (eg. Silver Flask) ft. PF poison proliferation
• Heavily reduce enemy action speed with vines and temp chains.
• Ranged playstyle, great with shrines (and probably inspired learning too if I could fit it in).
• Relive 3.23 but with a nerfed version of Affliction (rip).

Cons:

• Very expensive and extremely inefficient for what you get. The build in the PoB probably costed 300d or more. This is mostly due to the bow with the rune enchant. I just wanted to do this for science.
• Poison ramp/playstyle (swap crit immune mastery to faster poison can help). Needs 1 attack to inflict vines before doing damage.
• Must press Life Flask to do damage, which can get annoying.
• Requires very precise play to get optimal damage as the projectiles will shotgun heavily if you are shooting arrows on top of yourself. This causes a huge amount of variance in dps. It also means we're dying more because we are melee at times.
• Not particularly tanky and weak to many small hits. Becoming very tanky would require a full build rework (eg. Sublime Vision), is expensive and comes with a huge dps loss, which I wasn't really willing to do at this point in the league. Megalomaniac with Enduring Composure could help a bit but we need jewel sockets. Grace alone doesn't fix all our problems (and I used it originally, PB has synergy with Master Surgeon).
• Gets absolutely destroyed by many map mods. Avoid poison, reduced flask charges, elemental reflect, -max res, reduced life recovery rate, most T17 mods (like reduced AoE, flask meteor), the list goes on...
• Bad at meta farming strats like Rogue Exiles and a lot of altar mods can really impact the build.

Almost hit the 5k character limit O_O