My Next League Build Goal - Near Immortal Poison Caustic Arrow Ballista

DPS: 12.21M
Effective HP: 34.09K
Life: 3.84K
Level: 100
Min budget

Overview

My Next League Build Goal - Near Immortal Poison Caustic Arrow Ballista is a Path of Exile Pathfinder build by bandos_claws, made for the Archnemesis league (3.17). It is centered on Caustic Arrow and plays as a dexterity, attack, projectile, area archetype. In Path of Building it reaches 12.21M DPS with 34.09K effective HP, 3.84K life. Suited for: Heist, Simulacrum. Key uniques include Darkscorn, Snakebite, Circle of Nostalgia, Replica Farrul's Fur, Circle of Nostalgia.

bandos_claws's Notes

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This is not meant to serve as a guide, more of a showcase of whats possible and why i plan to play it.

https://pastebin.com/VPXBTmyQ

this build brings:

high dps with low investment (currently sitting at 12mil, can easily double that on higher investment)
a comfortable play style, just normal totem things.
an insane recovery mechanic, you are near immortal to all hits. dots still hurt.
auto flask usage
really pretty mtx (celestial caustic arrow is so pretty😊)
the option to spec into crazy movement speed
optional self cast + focus ballista setup for more dps (rearranging the gem setup is required)

the dps on caustic arrow shotgunning is really good, caustic arrow brings a chaos dot pool, but it also brings an aoe explosion on impact that is able to shotgun. caustic arrow has a relatively low added damage effectiveness, but its consistency is really good compaired to something like tornado shot. caustic arrow also brings built in wither with the anomalous gem.tldr: its a ranged poisonous concoction, more defencive + comfortable play style thanks to totems and range.

pathfinder brings master surgeon, gain 6% of life when you use a flask. this is recovery not regen, so it can heal through things that turn off recovery like maven beams. when you set up your flasks properly you will use them after every single time you are hit, automatically. this leads to, on average, every time you are hit, you gain back 24% of your total life. this is an insane amount of instant recovery, compairable to aegis aurora but for life builds. (the sweet spot seems to be 13 flask charges used + 86%+ increased charges gained, you can check these values by hovering over your flasks in pob.)

this build can get much more movement speed than it currently has, being near the ranger side of the tree theres a lot of movement speed to be had. you would have to sacrifice defence for it, but it would be worth it for content like heist where you want to be permanently and unconditionally fast.

before you get a clarity watchers eye, just use lifetap, the starting budget is very low. you may have to sacrifice some things, but this build can be done as a league starter easily. sadly im not here to tell you how to downscale the build because that would be a whole seperate post in itself. 😅

overall i plan to start out as toxic rain and transiton into this build once i get the key uniques. it should make for an excellent simuloclarum farmer once the transition is complete.