New POE 2 league: 0.3 The Third Edict. I wanted to play something I hadn’t played yet, I also wanted some EV/ES build and try Deflection, and I hadn’t played poison. So here is my league start experience with Poisonburst Arrow Pathfinder.

I found this guy on Youtube: FatbellyWW who had play this build in 0.2 and looked into playing it again in 0.3. I pretty much followed what he did with minor tweaks.

Levelling was ok, not super powerful but good enough. It’s nice that Poisonburst Arrow is a Tier 1 gem so you can start with the skill right away. Changing your bow often is super necessary. As soon as I got some currency, I even bought one on trade with high pDPS and this really carried me. I completed the campaign at level 65, in 18h, with 25 deaths. Most of my deaths were due to low resistances as I didn’t feel like farming low level zone until finding high resistances items.

Once in map, I spent between 1-3 ex on each piece of gear to get life and resistances and start blasting maps. Here is my train of thoughts on what I consider for this build.

• Plague Bearer. Maybe the most important way I departed from the original build. It is really powerful so I would recommend it but I don’t enjoy the playstyle. I’d rather spam Poisonburst Arrow and use Toxic Growth, Vine Arrow and Despair for tanky mobs.
• Toxic Domain. New skill, it’s good but it requires you to stay in the ground effect (like Sigil of Power) and of course… press another key. So I had it most of the time but when needing another skill, I sacrificed it.
• Wither. Not a big fan of Withering Presence as we have no investment in Presence AOE and when fighting a boss far away, the boss doesn’t get withered. I thought about Withering Touch support but it doesn’t seem to be working on a secondary skill that does not do big hit DPS. So I kept the aura.
• Temporal Chains. It was buffed in 0.3 and would help with both defences and poison duration but it required to get a second max curse on the tree or with the Doedre’s Damning Lazuli Ring + extra spirit for Blasphemy to not have another key to press. Also the Blasphemy aura AOE is not that big without investment. So I opted out as I thought the investment wasn’t worth it.
• Kurgal’s Leash Lineage support. Used alongside Skeletal Sniper, and Brutus’ Brain Lineage support, it provides the Unholy Might buff. While powerful, it’s a key to be pressed every 5 seconds so I rarely used it.
• Heart of the Well Diamond Jewel. Introduced this league, I didn’t find may mods I valued so I didn’t buy one. But it seems that 1/3 of players on poeninja got it so it must be good?
• Slivertongue Zealot Bow. Without Pierce, Fork, Chain, multi proj, map clearing felt lacking unless you do the combo Toxic Growth + Poisoburst Arrow on every packs. I was playing with a regular rare bow and Fork support but as soon as I had enough points invested in crit, I used this bow and it felt better. Life and mana leech is also helpful.

But to be honest, clearing maps didn’t feel great and I was getting sick of the build. Mostly my fault because I didn’t like the Plague Bearer playstyle. But I wanted to explore more the end game and single target DPS was great so I didn’t want to reroll. Then I saw this video from J_Macc and this legend was riding a Rhoa and using Nova Projectiles Support. I tried it and right away, I had fun. What an idiot! How did I not think of this myself sooner. It was sill enough DPS for rare and map boss without swapping gems.

As I like this build and I want to spend a bit more time in the end game, I have not finished with this build. This is more of a snapshot after reaching level 90 and getting my 4th ascendancy. If you’re interested in my Better Trading (Chrome extension to save your trade searches) link so you can maybe leverage my searches to find your gear:

BETTER TRADING LINK

I still have many avenue for improvement so I might make an update after I invest more time and currency in this build

More details below with POB, pros and cons, DPS, etc.

Builds Comparaison

Impossible to be fair but I’m trying my best. I’m trying to get all characters to lvl 90, 4 ascendancies, 5L, gem level 19 and under 10 div.

This one has a 6L because 6L are cheaper this league. It’s also more than 10 div but 1 div = 62 ex right now so it’s not that bad.

Would I play it again?

Yes

Path Of Building and stats

https://pobb.in/B7Tbj28S-54G

POB is setup for mapping.

For optimal single target (I only do it for Arbiter style boss). You need to change from Nova Projectile to Pinpoint Critical support on Poisonburst Arrow. And remove the Rhoa spirit reservation to add Clarity and Precision.

Almost impossible to really know the full DPS as there are many components of DPS (Hit, Poison, Explosion, Vine Arrow, Toxic Growth, etc…)

Please visit this Google Sheet to see the main information and POB data I kept track of. You can more easily compare with other builds.

My experience in video