Poisonous Concotion -- High Investment Route

Hey everyone,

I started PCOC during Kalandra and really enjoyed it, and during the pre-league hype for Sanctum I decided to throw my brainpower into scaling it to endgame/Ubers. This season, I think I have been able to push PCOC into a very strong build with attainable investment that goes from league starter to ultimate endgame (you still need to dodge mechanics for ubers, it's just forgiving)

Without further ado, here is the POB link to my PCOC Pathfinder tuned to be a pretty fast psuedo-mf (~60 rarity, 14 quant) mapper as well as a decent uber bosser: https://pobb.in/c-w-iDN_dVms

Currently, I sit around 9 mil (non-uber boss) damage, but with all upgrades you end up around 14 mil damage before the focus mod on Devouring Diadem. If you want to check, my ign is Ganthremus--remember to check frenzy and endurance in POB, as they are up permanently with replica farruls.

This build leverages frenzy charges with snakebite and Forbidden Flame/Flesh to get good movement speed and solid damage. The key difference from other characters I have seen on PoeNinja is that I use The Siege alongside The Golden Rule, which causes PCOC to induce a very small bleed and also reflect our poisons and a bleed onto ourselves, which with a Watchers Eye for unaffected by poison results in capped Chaos res and significantly increased armor while attacking + a few seconds afterwards. Furthermore, this build ends up only really dying from oneshots, as thief's torment grants us LGOH, which when hitting only a single enemy, results in 10 * LGOH (~55, depending on ring) *4aps = 2200 life gain/s, which is multiplied by the number of enemies that are hit.

I think one of the main selling points beyond the damage and survivability is that the medium clusters are very easy to craft--harvest reforge with phys for 50 vivid guarantees one of our BIS mods, and from there it is pretty easy to reforge until you hit 2 notables that work--low tolerance, circling oblivion, etc.

Low tolerance and the poison wheel mastery result in progressively exploding packs as with the Pathfinder Ascendancy, you pass on your max damage poison to nearby enemies when an afflicted enemy dies--if they are unpoisoned, they get a 600% poison, and when they die, they release that 600% poison that gets amplified by another 600% on unpoisoned enemies, which clears screens if you have enough density.

Even if you don't end up using the build, there are some tricks I have learned from playing it that are universal--for clear, the 300% poison on uninfected enemies from the poison mastery is very strong, and The Siege on PCOC enables easy medium cluster crafting as well as the utility of maiming (30% reduced MS) any enemies you hit for a jewel socket and passive point. Additionally, an abyss jewel with %chance to blind is multiplied by your projectiles, which without awakened GMP is 9, so every hit you get at minimum 9 * X% chance to blind your enemies, which helps with survivability as you will end up blinding any boss you encounter and the majority of mobs that don't die instantly as well. A significant number of PCOC builds also use the -mana cost mod, which while useful is not actually neccessary during mapping as the feast from devouring diadem recovering your ES as well as plague bearer mean that you don't need to be attacking at 4aps constantly. During bossing, you won't be able to attack all the time anyways, so the DPS windows you have usually last slightly less long than your ES does (I am not the greatest bosser, so if you are really good, it might be more of an issue.)

This is the first time I have felt confident in suggesting a build I have made, so if I should make any clarifications or any questions arise, please feel free to ask.

TLDR: ele capped, chaos capped for a jewel, survives everything but one shots when attacking, one shots require several altar or map mods (multiple phys added as ele is pretty much the only thing), fast clear through amplified poison spread through packs, and decent uber bossing damage and survivability (can't take multiple hits, but can take 1-2 depending on boss mods).

Most importantly, budget: this char currently has ~30 div in it, but you may be able to achieve it for cheaper if you manage to six link your armour in less than ~3000 fusings. (sunk cost fallacy...)