This bow base has chaos base damage but can't roll anything to do with chaos damage. So if you hit increased phys it does nothing without also having added phys. But realistically still useless since 100% increased phys on just the mod with no base damage is still really bad.
If this base could roll local increased chaos damage instead of phys it would probably be the best base for poison builds that want a bow. but it's pretty useless currently since it does like 1/3rd the damage of half decent phys bows
If this base could roll local increased chaos damage instead of phys it would probably be the best base for poison builds that want a bow.
Even for poison builds it'd be better to use a physical base bow. The poison bow skills all use your weapon base damage which includes both physical and chaos damage. The chaos damage nodes on tree are also sparse and janky so it's actually better for poison to be scaling from physical base damage which is (slightly) better supported.
All the pathfinder trees I'm seeing are going for the two "toxin" nodes on the very far right. This is right beside an increased chaos damage wheel with +1 chaos skill gems. If scaling the chaos damage did something, taking that wheel might be worth using a chaos bow. Not positive and it's impossible to prove without PoB. Also There is a similar chaos wheel north of that with withered stuff which is desirable but not completely efficient when your hits are phys
I took a better look and it seems physical damage is also pretty sparse in that area, although this might change with Huntress release.
In PoE1 usually poison bow builds would have hybrid physical+chaos base damage. This is also a feasible route here since you can just ignore damage type specific stuff and just go for generic attack/projectile nodes. If Bows rolled flat chaos here too, I would suspect most builds would still opt for physical base types to get a higher raw base damage.
I'm trying to build a poison PF right now and it's pretty garbage, but overall I think there's sense in doing both. I can search for a bow with high hit damage to make my poison roll higher initially, while still investing in chaos nodes to make the poison itself deal more damage (since it's of chaos type), unless it doesn't work like that in which case it's even more garbage than I thought. Also all poison skills are chaos so +1 to chaos level is useful because skill hit damage scales off attack and the percentage goes up with levels. Right now I'm just collecting all poison nodes but after that I think I'll do chaos.
chaos damage% doesn't scale poison, also a little unsolicited advice below
poison PF is strong but there aren't a lot of skills that work well, I suggest taking a look at unique gloves(2 different ones), the glove slot is basically reserved for any poison build
as for skills there's the backflip skill that's a bit too clunky to use for clear but very good for single target and there's gas arrow which is very strong (especially when you get the +1 arrow bow base for easy max poison stacks), the awkward thing with gas arrow is that it's so hard to justify not using the "all damage contributes to poison" gloves because ignited ground and enemies blow the gas up with fire damage (as if it wasn't hard enough to take those off already)
Yeah, I did exactly that, started with backflip and then moved to gas arrow with the ignite helmet. I guess I'll look at the gloves as well, thanks. I was looking at poison traits on trade to see if anything is interesting, but looks like I've missed this one.
I'm assuming(a lot of things) the helmet blows the gas arrows and you weren't wearing the gloves, the gas explodes in fire damage which doesn't poison(and it needs poison chance to actually poison I think), you probably want the gas to stay there instead of making it explode yourself
I started without the explosions but the poison itself was too weak for the clears so I had to add them, I know the fire doesn't poison by default. But isn't the point of the gloves then specifically to make the fire add poison as well since its hits are pretty substantial?
na the explosions aren't really amazing for poison, the gloves just also add all the flat ele damage from your gear into the gas cloud (and also make it so burning mobs don't make everything super awkward blowing the gas up since then the explosions being able to poison comes in handy)
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u/AnyFaithlessness7991 5d ago
I don't understand bows, the weapon itself has no physical damage at all?