Poison Ranger Build Thoughts

I tried going lighting arrow to start but quickly switch to poison arrow and toxic growth (CA/TR poe1 starter every league). I couldn’t get the hang of placing lightning rods. Mobs would leave their range to quickly. 

Agree with everything you noted. Choke points are plentiful and gas arrow + growth in a hallway does quick work.  

 I’ve been weapon swapping to flame bolt on a low level staff for ignites so I haven’t worked in addition ignite gems on the actual skill yet.   

What skill gems have you added to your bow? Or are you a crossbow ranger?

What level are you? I'm in Act 2 Cruel and really unhappy with poison.

I stupidly went Pathfinder thinking Concoctions would be good, but it turns out poison just doesn't have any support on gear and doesn't scale at all. I've got 8 poisons with Gas Arrow and 5 stacks of wither for bosses and it takes me like 20 minutes to kill every boss at this point.

I’m playing rain of arrows poison deadeye and really enjoying it. Vine arrow and poison burst arrow to combo bosses and tough rares. Snipers mark for frenzy charges for buffed rain of arrows. Wind dancer and plague bearer for auras. Rain of arrows alone clears everything else.

I’ve been using the poison chance support on rain of arrows but i think you can get away with like 70-80% poison chance since poisons have a cap unlike POE1. I’ll have to test it more tonight. I think the biggest thing is getting a good phys bow. I struggled hard until i ended up just buying a good phys dps bow off trade. YOLO slammed +3 proj skills too and am currently blasting act 3 cruel.

Trouble with this is it's not better than just gas arrow + flame wall all day long (which isn't clunky also)

Anyone able to get tornado shot to work? I tried it and honestly it just seems bad. Stuff like scattershot doesnt carry through into the nova, so it still only shoots 3 poisonburst arrows and not 9. im not entirely sure if any support gems work with it.

Gas Arrow - Flame Wall is not a poison archetype at all. If I play that, I would rather play LA - Rod instead.

I've been messing with poison and armor break. The idea was to grab the increased armour break nodes to get a real fast armour break via corrosion, and then to pair that with break endurance and resonance to generate frenzy charges for spiral volley.

It does okay, but nothing too insane. It also lets me generate power charges, which has some interesting supports that could further boost spiral when I get more sockets for it.

The poison damage scales pretty well, and rain of arrows makes single target pretty darn good. Overall it feels like a build being carried by armour break though, and the interaction is just sorta something interesting that it can do.

I'm leveling one in SSF right now and it took me longer to reach a2 than on my very first character. Without a half-decent bow I had literally less dps on poisonburst arrow than a white crossbow linked to envenom

So far it's been the literal worst archetype I've tried, not even melee felt this zdps and with zero clear. Just killed rathbreaker and her fight took me literally 5 minutes on a blue bow with 1-4 flat phys 💀 still getting the hang of toxic growth

Hopefully things get better once I unlock gas arrow in around 1 hour from now given my currently snail pace but I can't imagine a newer player playing this and having fun in a1 lol. If it doesn't get better I'll just respec my glacial bolt + fragmentation rounds merc (very first character, rerolled after getting him to a2 cruel) to lightning crossbow and push him to maps tonight

Is there anything obvious I'm missing tho or is the archetype basically turbotrash early on? Kinda feels like I'm playing PoE 1 bleed wintertide brand saboteur lol

Took me 6-8 hours just to hit level 16...

Rerolled into merc and got to 16 in half the time.

Here are some ramblings from someone who struggled through campaign but is feeling pretty good about poison in early maps.

Gas arrow is my main skill, best for keeping 8 stacks of poison, can't do it with poisonburst on single target. clouds overlap so multiple cloud stack it faster. poisonburst requires for attack speed investment and we need all the damage we can get.

For supporting my poison i have despair, a bit clunky but i only really need it on bosses and its duration is pretty good with persistence.

I also use a pretty cool combination of Rain of Arrows+Chaos infusion+Withering touch, which stacks wither easily.

i also have escape shot which i find is pretty good for getting out of wall situations, mileage may vary.

I'm not set on spirit usage yet, wind dancer is nice. a good tip for the campaign is just adding some skeletons if you have excess spirit, they do block shit and bosses sometimes target them.

now for some bait stats:

our part of the tree includes a bit of bait that might seem useful but is not really helping your damage all that much.

Accuracy and attack speed dont really matter for Gas arrow beyond having multiple clouds up. As said poisonburst might eventually be better and does make use of attack speed and accuracy.

Any poison stacks you can't keep up are bad points due to the pretty harsh downsides. look at boss bars to see if the stacks are actually used.

%Chaos damage does not increase poison damage unless you have flat chaos damage such as with a cultist bow, avoid it.

Having a good physical bow is extremely important, I don't think there is enough support for a chaos based poison build in the game yet. atleast I haven't seen it.

I'm a huge nerd and have a pretty good idea of how poison works by now so feel free to ask questions or call me out on anything you think sounds wrong, were all still learning.

TLDR: Level 69 pathfinder, i know stuff. Physical damage good, Gas arrow good.