Toxic Rain Pathfinder League Start Guide for Necropolis

---------- EXTREMELY IMPORTANT INFO ---------- -Leaguestart Regex Copy this into the Tarkleigh's search bar in Lioneye's Watch to highlight useful 3-link items g-g-b|g-[gb]-g|b-g-g|nne|rint -Area of Effect You want 39% Increased AoE to make all five of your Toxic Rain pods cleanly overlap. You get 20% from the Passive Skill Tree, and the other 19% from helm and glove prefixes. It's not as big of a concern during the leveling process. -Should I do the Siosa quest? (A3 Library) You don't have to, and it is out of the way, but it lets you buy Flame Dash and Malevolence before Act 6, so yeah, probably. -How to Fix Mana in the Campaign Make a beeline to Primal Spirit while doing the campaign. It really helps solve mana early on. Use your mana flask liberally in early acts, and spec toward Eldritch Battery at the top-right corner of the passive tree. Note: If you use Eldritch Battery, Manaforged Arrows will not work, because you're spending Energy Shield, not Mana. You will need to use Ballista Totems with Focused Ballista Support. -Fixing Mana at Endgame At endgame, a 25% Reduced Mana Cost of Skills crafted Flask suffix is extremely important. This gets boosted by Increased Flask Effect and Alchemist's Genius. Increased Flask Effect in the tree and a few jewels or rings with % Reduced Mana Cost of Skills will bring your mana costs low enough to cast Malevolence linked to Divine Blessing Support. Be sure to link your Divine Blessing to Inspiration Support (and +20% Quality the Inspiration Support) for the reduced mana cost it provides. With a Mageblood, the 25% Reduced Mana Cost of Skills Flask Suffix is basically all you need. One flat -Mana Cost of Non-Channeling Skills craft on a ring will get your TR casts down to 1 mana, which is crucial for triggering Manaforged Arrows. -When can I swap out of Eldritch Battery? As soon as you fix your mana without it, drop it and switch to Manaforged Arrows. Be warned that by dropping EB and moving to a setup that's oriented further down the passive tree, you will lose a lot of Intelligence from travel nodes. -How do I fit in all these auras? We take two Reservation wheels. They help a lot. After that, you can use some combination of the following: -Mana Mastery that grants 12% Reservation Efficiency -Enlighten Support linked to Auras -Mana Reservation Efficiency helm suffix from Essence of Loathing -Mana Reservation Efficiency helm implicit from Eater of Worlds -Small Reservation Efficiency Cluster Jewels with a notable for Grace (Sublime Form) or Haste (Frantic Aspect). -Anointing Sovereignty (Silver Oil x3) from the Templar side of the tree. -What is the best anointment? Potency of Will, which you can reach via a Very Large Thread of Hope in an endgame build. Sovereignty is good once you have a Thread of Hope. -What kind of flasks should I use? Life Flask is a given. You want a prefix that grants increased life recovered and reduced recovery rate so that you don't have to hit the keybind as often to keep it active. I bind my life flask to my mouse. Make sure your Life Flask has a "Grants Immunity to X" Suffix. Bleed/Corrupted Blood immunity is best. This will allow you to drink it even while at full health. Topaz is a great flask for this build because it helps offset the massive downside of Lightning Coil, and overcaps your Lightning Resistance so that you can safely farm Blue Eldritch Altars. Prior to acquiring Lightning Coil, it's not really necessary. Jade and Quartz Flasks are both good alternatives during the campaign. Silver adds both movement speed and attack speed. It's a no-brainer. Quicksilver adds movement speed. It's not required, but it's pretty close. This leaves room for one other flask. Jade and Quartz are good options during the initial gearing process, but they aren't all that competitive at higher gear levels. Unique Flasks such as Taste of Hate or Progenesis far outperform the competition. You can use both, but this will require sacrificing one of the four other flasks listed above. Topaz is probably the best option to drop, just compensate with lots of Lightning Resistance on your gear. You can drop the Quicksilver Flask if you don't mind being slow. BUT WHY? -What flask suffixes are important? 25% Reduced Mana Cost of Skills on a 100%-uptime flask. This is critical for fixing mana and dropping Eldritch Battery. T1 % Increased Attack Speed is a huge DPS increase. % Chance to Avoid Being Stunned will prevent you from being stunlocked to death. % Reduced Effect of Curses is great for QoL. ---------- LEAGUE START INFO ---------- -What Skill should I use in Act 1? Caustic Arrow is very good for most of Act 1. Its main source of damage is the pool it leaves on the ground, and it doesn't overlap, so you don't have to spam it on bosses. Puncture helps a lot on Brutus. That's its only use. Swap to Toxic Rain at level 12. You can continue using Caustic Arrow against Merveil if you have a socket for it, but its value falls off pretty quickly. -Early Leveling Tips: Look for movement speed boots, quicksilver flasks, and 3 green-link items. Don't waste time killing rares unless you can do so really efficiently. Focus on killing magic packs for XP and white mobs to keep your flasks full. Keep moving! Leveling in Path of Exile involves a lot of walking! Get a Sapphire Ring (or two) before fighting Merveil. Finding a 4-link is your first big gearing goal (level 25+). You either want 4g or 3g1b. Use Efficacy as your Blue Support Gem. 3g1r or 2g1b1r can work, but it's not as good. Use Increased Duration Support or Damage on Full Life Support as your Red Support Gem. NOTE: If using Damage on Full Life Support, be sure to take the Life Mastery that grants "You count as on Full Life while at 90% maximum health or above." -Auras Summon Skitterbots is the best aura available once it becomes available, but it quickly drops in value compared to alternatives like those listed below. (Use it for a while, but be prepared to drop it when the time comes. Continue leveling it in your offhand.) Haste is the best aura in the campaign because it makes you move faster. It's not amazing for fighting bosses. Switch to Malevolence for more single-target damage. Purity of Elements helps with capping resists and being ailment immune. Grace is a great defensive aura, and you can use it to massively increase your tankiness if you find yourself struggling defensively at any point. It's mainly just for not dying to random packs of magic and rare monsters, which is very useful, but swapping auras during the campaign will make the experience faster and smoother. Grace won't make you faster or add damage, and it's mostly worthless against most bosses. ---------- EARLY ENDGAME ---------- -Kitava's dead. What now? Level up in Blood Aqueducts until you are around level 68. Start progressing your atlas. Farm currency in easy content. Your damage will stink a bit, but you move very fast, so Heist is great. Labrunning is also good if you're willing to do it. Farming Essence in low-tier white maps is a really strong, easy strategy early in a league. Alch-and-Go Expedition Farming is great. too. Betrayal is a profitable league mechanic early, and it can create some really useful gear at leaguestart. Try to get a Quill Rain or a 6-link Short Bow from The Porcupine Divination Cards. This will help your damage out a lot. Craft the Short Bow using Shrieking Essence of Dread for +2 bow gems. Craft Attack Speed, or Chaos DoT Multi if you get Attack Speed on the bow. Farming Betrayal for the -Mana Cost of Non-Channeling Skills ring prefix craft and Cinderswallow Urn (to unveil for suffix crafts) from Catarina is extremely valuable. Get a Lightning Coil as soon as you can, it will really help you deal with Physical damage. Fix your stats, get your flasks set up, keep your resistances up, level your gems, and start saving to craft a +3 Thicket Bow & buy an Empower Support. ---------- ENDGAME FAQ ---------- -What Cluster Jewels Should I Use? Large Chaos Damage Cluster Jewels with 8 mods. The preferred notables are Unholy Grace, Unwaveringly Evil, and Wicked Pall. Medium Projectile Damage Cluster Jewels with Shrieking Bolts and Repeater are ideal for maximizing damage. Medium Chaos Damage Over Time Cluster Jewels with Wicked Pall and Student of Decay are a good alternative that can help with Chaos Resistance. The difference in damage is pretty small. -Will Crafted +1 to Socketed AoE Skill Gems, (9-10%) Increased Area of Effect Prefixes on Helm and Gloves work? Absolutely. Going for the +2 to Socketed AoE Skill Gems setups is an endgame optimization, and not required for the build to function effectively. -Do I need specific Jewels? Nope! Jewels and Rare gear are about solving problems. You need a certain amount of resistances, stats, and spell suppression to make the build function safely. Acquire them across all those pieces of gear as you are able. -Is the Thread of Hope necessary? No, but it is a good endgame optimization that lets you anoint Sovereignty without losing the massive damage from Potency of Will. -Do you need a Despair curse-on-hit ring? No, but it's convenient! Many players self-cast Despair on rares and bosses, but that's tedious. -Do I need Forbidden Flesh/Flame? No! They're a super expensive flex, and a really bad investment unless you can get lucky and buy them cheap. They do make you zoom fast, though! -What Watcher's Eye mods should I use? Phasing while Haste is active is pretty good, and surprisingly cheap. You can get Phasing elsewhere, but this is a really easy spot for it that costs very little. The real purpose of using this Watcher's Eye is to get Phys Taken as Light/Cold/Fire. Damage conversion is massive for increasing your tankiness, and a big part of why we like Purity of Elements even into the endgame version of the build. Increased Damage Over Time Multiplier While Affected By Malevolence adds a ton of damage, which is great, but it is insanely expensive with the other mods, and can push you over the DoT cap once you are geared enough. -Why not Headhunter? You can, it's great! Mageblood makes trivializing mana pretty easy, and it makes you consistently zoomy! Headhunter can add tons of projectiles and attack speed, which may make the game perform really poorly. It can also make fixing mana more difficult. Make no mistake, Headhunter will absolutely work, it's just less reliable. -Why not run Defiance of Destiny? Damage! I spent ~4000 Orbs of Alteration crafting this +2 neck, and I chose to enjoy the ~25% more damage it grants. I'll do it again in Necropolis League, too! Defiance of Destiny is a great amulet, arguably better than this super-expensive one. It will make you UNREASONABLY tanky, and it is much cheaper, it just comes at the expense of some damage. -Why not all 3 Ele Res Flasks? Same reason! It's a super-tanky setup that works great (even after the 3.24 nerfs), but you have to give up some damage & speed for it! No thanks! -Do I really need to use a Life Flask? Defiance of Destiny is an effective substitute, but you will need to account for DoT effects and find another way to deal with Bleed & Corrupted Blood. Corrupted Blood immunity through Corrupted Jewels will work, but for Bleeds you will probably want to run Steelskin instead of Immortal Call or switch to Ralakesh for your Minor Pantheon.