Hi all, i've been messing around with Poison LS for the last few weeks and finally found something that's VERY comfortable with basically all content, especially very juiced mapping.

This build has been discussed before but i've put some twists on it that bring it to a place im much more comfortable with

Although the build can reach around 40m dps on paper under ideal conditions, it can easily surpass 10 mil dps while juiced mapping even before propping down VLS and totems, focus etc. which lets you comfortably juiced map under any hostile conditions

I've spent maybe 50-60 ex overall on this build and most of that is on the amulet and belt, the rest in crafting, though I'm sure it can be scaled even further with more currency. You can get it going with even 5 ex probably.

TL;DR/PoB at the bottom - rambling ahead

Now let's discuss some of the main mechanics

Scaling Damage

You scale your damage through the following mechanics:

• Flat ele damage - by using a heist dagger (Pneumatic Dagger) that allows all damage to poison we get more ele damage however we can. Mantra of Flames, Blizzard crown, ele dps dagger, and any other imagineable way (6 mod abyssals anyone?)
• Attack speed - since poison stacks are not capped, the more we hit the better. stacking through tree, and various methods discussed below, ancestral protector a nice buff when yo ucan get it up
• Crit - you can cap easily through the tree and items, precision aura, but also through mechanics like brittle, or Ungil's Harmony amulet (NOT mandatory, see below)
• Crit Multi - converting crit multi to DoT multi through Perfect Agony Keystone - Elusive effect, nightblade, many opportunities on tree.
• Poison Multi, Dot Multi, Chaos Damage, Proj Multi, Whatever you can grab
• Self Chill - this is a big one, since you cap 30% chill easily for 30% MORE action speed, which is huge considering the attack speed mechanic of poison
• Shocks - yes, we can shock, since we stack flat ele damage and ideally have crit multi even for hits, we shock bosses, and shock prolif. you hit 50% shock on every single thing while mapping, and even get endgame bosses comfortably above 30-40% shock. More on this below
• Poison/Skill effect duration - longer poisons can stack better, and reach a higher potential damage output if you stay on your target
• Faster Ailments/Poison - ofcourse this does not necessarily increase your overall 'ideal' damage output on paper, but frontloading poison's damage is a huge boon to taking down targets quickly and lets you reach your maximum damage output quicker since poison usually ramps up to it's potential 'slowly' instead of having a burst of damage.
• Offensive auras - Malevolence, Herald of Agony, probably can fit in another one.
• Vaal LS - popping down two more attack sources lets us double dip our damage pretty much
• additional strike targets with LS - having a more strike targets mod on your gloves, ancestral call or
• Pairs well with headhunter, even replica (cant afford a big one yet) - most if not all buffs are complementary for this build, which makes it simply a beast in juiced maps.
• WITHER - this is a big one. it can easily double your damage. we employ anomalous withering step to outright have 8 stacks on any monster, and can apply more through either withering touch totems or put it in the 6link
• Frenzy Charges - can keep them up rather easily with poachers mark. but you can use blood rage if you like. I didnt see the need.

Scaling Defences

Here you might think we are somewhat lacking, but not entirely. I've hit level 97 just running maps with the very rare one shot (before HH buffs ofc, after that nothing will stop you)

• PATHFINDER Master Surgeon - best mapping defense in the game. we pair flagellant flasks with pathfinder's Master Surgeon to basically heal 25% of our life every second hit we get. when it gets messy on screen you are hit on the time and thus are healing ALLLL the time. a big pack will never ever stop you

• Armor - the usual determination, defiance banner setup, with a granite flask with added flask effect that's realistically always on. I could not get an obscene amount but you could comfortably get to 25k+

• Evasion - high dex, evasion/armor hybrid gear puts us in a nice place but since we do actually want to take many hits while mapping, you dont need to scale this very far.

• Spell supression - cap 100% easily through gear for alwasy on 50% less spell damage. op.

• Avoidance - through Elusive effect, we get a 'dodge' mechanic up most if not all of the time between 15-30% chance.

• LGOH/Leech - through Poacher's mark, cluster jewel, we consistently heal even on bosses

• Life - the usual. more life the better. scales your heal from Master Surgeon ofc.

• CHILL - you always always chill cap any monster in the game. 30% less action speed for them is 30% less output of damage and ofc, lets you react better to big bosses.

• Elemental flasks which are always on - we do not scale res cap in any significant way, but you get about 25% less damage taken just from the flasks being up permenantly. this effectively puts you above like 80% res.

• Some inconsistent chaos res from Golden Rule - i would like to get more on items, but you could not-consistently hit your chaos cap just from the obscene amount of poisons you have on you at a given time.

• Freeze - high ailment effect means you can freeze packs of enemies rather easily. which is a nice defensive boost.

• Crit reduction - ideally get above 60% less crit damage through determination watcher's eye. theres additional options for this like grabbing the claw master which means you do not take extra damage from crits. you can path there if you are desperate as some claw nodes do actually have mostly benefitial stats even without the claw modifiers (we are using a dagger, after all)

• Poison immune, Chill is good for us, Corrupted blood and bleeding immune through flasks but can get on gear. Ignite immune from a ring corrupt, and i guess we get shocked sometimes.

• Attack block - you can scale this if you wish, but its not a consistent mechanic on this build. we use a shield though so have at it.

ZOOM ZOOM

Who doesnt like a juicy amount of movespeed. here we are covered :

• Withering Step / Elusive from crit - you basically always get 40-50% movespeed just from elusive.
• Onslaught - can get on kill from boots, synth implicit, flask, whatever.
• Tailwind - if rich, get it on boots, if not, meh we have enough MS already
• 20 -35% from boots
• SELF CHILL - 30% MORE speed anyone? up as soon as you hit anything and stays a decent time
• Flasks - you can get much more from all your flask effect and a good quicksilver, but i have so much MS i actually dropped a quicksilver flask from the first time on any of my builds. we are indeed zoomy enough
• Whirling Blades/Dash - we scale so much MS and attack speed we may as well zip around with whirling blades. this move skill feels much better than shield charge and the like. can have dash if you want. we are not starved for slots.

Observations / Modifications

• Fury of Nature - this new ascendancy is very much slept on. you get 100% MORE ailment effect and all your ailments prolif in a large radius. this actually lets us cap chill outright, lets you actually freeze, and on top of that is a path to achieve actual shocks on bosses. every point you put into ailment effect which is very common on our tree (even 70% just from Unbound Ailments), gets doubled. for how cheap this is, i couldnt find a better option.

It bears discussing if for pure mapping, mabe having two other jewels is better, but the prolif by itself is amazing and so is the always-on 50% shock on every single monster you hit. btw, if a boss has any adds next to it, hitting one of those will instantly spread the 50% shock to the boss, and youll mow him down before it scales down to his own HP pool (in cases where you can only get a 35-40% shock on a BIG boss)

I've not experimented at all with alternative ailments yet, but imaginably this would also let you cap all of those, for example we may be able to simply stop scaling crit chance altogether by going for brittle instead, and you chill yourself through poison anyway so it doesnt disable your self-chill mechanic.

• Uul-Netol's vow - there are MANY good support gems for this build's main skill, so much so that I decided to squeeze in a 7th link using this amulet. this opens a lot of good options like Cruelty, Withering Touch, Immolate etc.

A few things stand out here for me. One is that our Crit hits now actually have a crit multi applied to them and not only to their Poison (since we dropped Ungil's). this is actually amazing since you can finally get beefier hits against bosses and apply the aforementioned huge shock and hit the cap, you will need to compensate with more crit chance on the tree (and probably a diamond flask) but it's worth it. Maybe i could get brittle on boots to ensure 100% crit on bosses since everything else dies immediately anyway.

The second is all the options opened up for your 7th link. you can stack more damage (probably as much as 50% more total DPS) in various means. you can invest in Cruelty effect a little bit and guarantee a big one up on bosses (since our crit multi for the hit is back) or you can go for withering touch and ensure you always have 15% wither stacks up on bosses. the gem may look like its not doing much. but those added consistent withers on all monsters are probably more damage than anything else in the build. if you manage to get both on a boss with totems, he will die VERY quickly.

You can very easily employ even gem color swaps (cruelty for mapping, withering touch for bosses etc) with this without touching your body armor. great stuff.

Conclusion and thoughts

PoB: https://pastebin.com/e2NH2fut

Quick mapping vid, t16 glacier with sextants : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-wdvkhBz3JE

Overall, this build has so many synergies and differing ways to scale it that i found it a ton of fun to mess around with, some choices seem counterintuitive (like why would i use awakened added lightning damage instead of a gem with a bit more DPS? because this scales up my shock which wouldnt neccesarily be reflected in POB DPS) and it makes you think outside the box a bit. I've tried to focus it on viable, always up damage sources that will reflect in juiced mapping since that's most of the content im doing. I could

I tend to enjoy builds a lot more when there is many different directions for progression and especially this league, even crafting the items for it has been a blast - look at those gloves! i would have never made or bought something like that without recombinators and it only cost me like 5 ex to do. I even crafted that dagger myself for around 6 ex, and a top-end dagger would easily get me 25% more DPS.

We are only limited in our unique choice to the ring slots, which opens up a lot of gearing opportunities and flexibility. taking this build from acts to juiced mapping has been non stop incremental upgrades and experimentation/rebalancing which to me is a top tier path of exile experience.

Mapping is so much more consistent than any other builds i've tried this league, and bossing is actually pretty amazing too (youre not immortal, but the balance of output damage vs tankiness is very very good. when i get a set together i just run it instead of selling it off. Maven was a walk in the park, deathless. I've done wave 30 simu with a couple unfortunate deaths)

If there's any thoughts and feedback on the build I would be happy to discuss (like, could i fit in Despair maybe? is there more ways to scale defenses? more optimized cluster jewels? different aura setup? have at it)