Hey y'all, posting my janky experiment for the league in case any of you are interested in "off-meta" stuff (in quotes because poison is very overtuned atm)

Obligatory disclaimer: Do not play this. It is not good.

PoB: https://pobb.in/E501YdQlcOC-

PoB is a snapshot of the exact character I have in game that I was farming Uber Sirus with earlier today. Config is reasonable, focus is not ticked. Total investment: ~50-60 div

Yeah, so basically, I've really wanted to play fire poison for quite a while now but it never really worked out until this league - the numbers were always too bad (consuming dark buff when???). However, now that temp chains is completely and totally busted, the downside of Volkuur's gloves is heavily mitigated with curse investment, making ele poison actually pretty viable. My poisons last ~7s without focus, which is honestly more than you need - if your poisons are too long, the DPS numbers in PoB can feel really misleading in actual gameplay, due to a lot of bosses having immunity phases and cleanses and stuff.

I decided to go with incinerate because divergent is very strong for poison, and the combo with the helm enchant gives you a ton of damage - about 18% more from the enchant. I probably wouldn't change for another skill, but the incinerate playstyle doesn't mesh well with most difficult content in poe. Tons of cast speed helps a lot, though, and overall it does enough damage that it does work.

Btw incinerate clear is garbage but hey, we're a poison build so we get to cheat with plague bearer and obliteration.

I wouldn't say this build is made of paper, it can level in juiced maps just fine with decent play, but it is not tanky by any means. With more investment you can probably get there. I still haven't been able to purchase a rational doctrine, and it's possible to get a lot more block than I have if you give up some damage. Red Nightmare at Eternal Youth is a very good choice for this, giving 10% block, along with the 11% from Sanctuary, easy access to life nodes, 5% more dmg from the jewel, and some more strength to make balancing for Rational Doctrine easier.

Speaking of Rational Doctrine, since I don't have it, my timeless jewel is losing me dps and I have to use tempest shield for shock immunity lol.

Gems in the pob aren't completely optimized, skin of the lords is a huge pain in the butt to work around with awakened gems since it can only socket corrupted. Basically - there's still room for more damage.

Gear is good enough, but everything can be improved. Especially the rings. Crafting a good suffix base with cast speed + res or attribute, then hunter slamming for poison duration and slock veiled chaos for life after is a good option. 5 mod rings for about 4-5 div, I just ran out of currency after buying ashes.

Don't have a Watcher's Eye (malev are expensive) and I couldn't decide what forbidden jewels to use, so I just... didn't. Honestly, Scion options for poison are pretty bad, so I'm not sure an optimal build would even use them. They can help with block (glad, not recommended) or damage (trickster, not recommended) or.. cast speed..? idk. Everything looked pretty bad. Inquis could get you consecrated ground to use with rational doctrine but you're better off just trying to balance attri through good strength gear.

If you have any questions or thought this writeup was interesting, comment whatever. Overall I'm happy with the build for what it is, and if it interests you, neat. However, I cannot stress this enough, the power level of this build is not high enough to justify investing in it unless you really want to play incinerate or something. Scion is in a pretty good spot right now imo, but you're better off playing like... cold dot or something.