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Hello, Exiles.

I've always been a poison enjoyer in Path of Exile, but have not played a decent poison build in PoE2 yet. A lot of this is because I just don't like how poisons work in PoE2, which is entirely personal and nitpicky, but here we are.

I miss being able to stack poisons like in PoE, so I wanted a build that could do it. Lorrata seemed like the way to go, despite its apparently recent nerf with the addition of dealing no elemental damage.

I think this weapon is super cool, it looks dope and its function really scratches an itch. Plus, on aesthetic theme with the build, it lets me use one of my favorite and vastly underutilized skills, Wind Serpent's Fury. So I get to poison old-school style, use a dope weapon, and a dope skill? Sick.

For what it's worth, I've invested very, very little time, currency, and effort into this build. It's pretty slapdash at this time, my tree and gear aren't spectacular, defenses are real bad, but here's the PoB via Maxroll; I will also be going over all pertinent passives, gems and or gear pieces.

This is not a one button build. It's an all-the-buttons build.

This is also more like a proof of concept than a guide of any kind.

The TL;DR of the build is as follows:

• Clear using Gas Grenades and Entangle, along with three different explosions from support gems.
• On bosses or exceptionally tanky rares, use High Velocity Rounds against an enemy with fully broken armour.
• This applies a debuff called Riven Armour (see below) which essentially acts as "Impale, but it's a durational debuff."
• This gives Splinter of Lorrata enough base damage to apply decent sized poisons, and lots of them at once using Spearfield.
• Generate Frenzy Charges automatically in order to use the knockback from Wind Serpent's Fury to shove (smaller) bosses into your waiting spears behind them.

The \"Splinter of Lorrata build\" is actually a crossbow build you guys, sorry.

ASCENDENCY:

Deadeye.

There are a few ascendancies that could work with this build, but I chose Deadeye for a few reasons, and I think they make it a very strong contender for best option.

Called Shots: Crucial for our Frenzy Charge generation, utilizing a level 7 (for mana's sake) Sniper's Mark. This passive automates mark application and is otherwise very valuable as well.

Proximity Specialization-Point Blank: We have a few other passives that increase our damage in close proximity, this 20% more helps make the High Velocity Rounds damage even higher, for more poisons.

Tailwind: The faster you can spam Spearfield, the more poisons you can stack. Movespeed and Evasion are also great. Easy take, even though I'm not currently taking advantage of Deflection.

Mirage Deadeye: Free Mirage Archer! Extra Gas Grenades with Corrosion to make sure Boss Armour stays fully broken, as well as helping with clear. Can be utilized in other ways (can use Spear skills too).

If you don't care about Tailwind or Mirage Deadeye, you can always get an extra projectile on your Gas Grenade. Or two different options for more Frenzy Charge generation.

SKILLS:

There are three "sets" of skills at use in this build. We have clear skills, boss-killer skills, and utility skills.

Clear Skills:

• Gas Grenade: Important Supports are Corrosion, Bursting Plague, and Armour Explosion.
• Entangle: Important Supports are Poison Spores and Blind II. This gem can be low level to save mana. (NOTE: Assign this skill to be used with your Spear, not Crossbow, to take advantage of Dance with Death Keystone's increased Skill Speed (cast rate.)
• Herald of Plague: GGG said "I don't think we should support this gem" so just put like, Clarity in there or something.

How it works: Fire a Gas Grenade and send an Entangle or two towards the enemies.

Entangle will slow everything by ~50%, blind them (which increases damage against them via passives), poison them (for even more damage against them and some slow via Maim), apply your Mark to someone (for frenzy charges, shock), and apply Poison Pustules to everything*.*

Gas Grenade fuels Entangle's Poison Pustules and applies Bursting Plague before it strips armour incredibly fast with Corrosion and causes Armour Explosions.

This results in packs melting very fast as each enemy explodes three times from Plague, Pustules and Armour pop. If a rare persists, shoot them once or twice with High Velocity Rounds.

An example of what clear looks like. Recorded in a T4 at level 70.

Boss-Killer Skills:

• High Velocity Rounds: Important Supports are all heavy damage focused. Brutality III, Heft, Close Combat, Deliberation, Phys Mastery, etc.
• Spearfield: Important Supports are Concentrated Area, Deadly Poison II, Rearm II, Rapid Attacks II.
• Sniper's Mark (via Called Shots): Important Supports are Charged Mark, Mark for Death.
• Wind Serpent's Fury: Important Supports are Punch Through, Knockback, Perpetual Charge.

How it works: We open with our Clear Skills, breaking their armour and blinding them. The boss's armour should break very fast thanks to our Gas Grenade (and Mirage's as well).

Entangle's tiny little base 10% crit chance, thanks to how often it hits, is enough to reliably proc the Frenzy Charge from consuming Sniper's Mark (which is automatically reapplied thanks to Called Shots). When Sniper's Mark is consumed, Shocked Ground appears under the enemy thanks to Charged Mark.

Optional: If you have a Frenzy Charge ready before you use HV Rounds, use Wind Serpent's Fury first to get a very large damage boost on HVR thanks to Punch Through.

Once the boss's armour is broken, you apply Riven Armour with an HVR shot. Now your Spearfield hits have 5% of that HVR hit's damage tacked on top of them for as long as the debuff lasts. As long as the enemies armour remains broken, all you need to do is hit them with HVR again.

Spam Spearfield. Poisons should begin to stack up. Another HVR shot should refresh the duration on Riven Armour as well as refresh the duration of the broken armour itself, thanks to Mark for Death. Our Mirage's Gas Grenades will help make sure the armour stays broken, and fuel some pustules while its at it.

You should definitely have some Frenzy Charges by now, and more than likely a small pile of untouched spears behind the boss. Use Wind Serpent's Fury to knock them backwards into the pile, applying tons of poisons instantly. There are plenty of bosses that are large enough where this isn't a problem, and your entire Spearfield will hit them each cast.

Note: With 3 Frenzy Charges and the Knockback support gem, WSF will push enemies further than the edge of the screen. Punch Through applies the Easy Target debuff to the enemy, which gives the next hit against them 3% increased damage per meter of expected (not actual) knockback distance. Often this gets consumed by a Spear, but you can also use this mechanic to add a huge chunk of increased damage to HVR which increases your overall Spearfield damage substantially.

...

....ok, yeah, that sounds like some serious John Madden gameplay, but it's really not that bad.

Gas and Entangle till armour breaks, HVR shot, Spears spears speaars, shove, dead. Got up to 62 stacks of poison on this guy. Also recorded in T4 at level 70.

Utility Skills:

• Disengage: Super useful for getting out of tight situations. Doesn't do shit for damage due to Lorrata's low numbers, but can maim, cull, and save your buns.
• Wind Dancer: More evasion and a little knockback to save you again sometimes.
• Charge Regulation: 24% increased skill speed while we have a Frenzy Charge, which is most of the time. (NOTE: You can use Charge Profusion II in your Sniper's Mark for a 15% chance to generate an a random charge, which can give you increased evasion or critical chance, neither of which are useless.)

GEAR:

As previously mentioned, I haven't put much effort into gearing this character yet. There are definitely a few things to go after on rares and a couple points about uniques, but aside from that, gear isn't really nailed down.

One important point, however, is that your main focus as far as "more damage" goes should be getting HV Round's damage as high as you can. The higher that hit's damage is, the higher the poisons damage will be.

• Splinter of Lorrata is obviously required. If you want to spend a few divines on one with the Adds X-X Chaos Damage corruption and two sockets with Fenemus' Agony Rune and Citaq...o...whatever's Soul Core of Foulness for another chunk of flat Chaos and 13% Extra Chaos as well, I'm sure it helps a little bit.
• Plaguefinger Gloves are in my current loadout for the sole purpose of allowing the Armour Explosion to poison and I doubt that is doing much heavy lifting. Mine have a break increased armour corruption and Mannan's Rune of Cruelty for a little more poison magnitude. Could easily be rare gloves.
• Rare armour pieces should be Evasion, I think. Life, resists, attributes, normal stuff. No crucial rare mods, other than what is mentioned below.
• I have Afterimage annointed on my amulet for 60% increased evasion and a 5% reduction in movement penalty. Solid, cheap choice, but do what you want here.
• You want Physical Damage to Attacks and Cast Speed on your rings. The Phys helps ramp up HV Rounds damage as well as adding just a little bit more to Spearfield for the poisons. The cast speed is there to help us get Entangle out faster.
• Get the highest Physical Damage crossbow you can. Elemental damage is useless for HVR due to Brutality III. +Projectile Skills is a must, Damage as Extra Physical is great, few other mods matter terribly, though some of the grenade ones are probably good. I'd stay away from the Bombard Crossbow unless you have the extra projectile from Deadeye, as the split stream fire pattern of two grenades can be awkward.

As mentioned before, the gear is really just "whatever I had or whatever was cheapest" and aside from capped resists and like, 50% evasion...there are no defenses in this build at all, other than "don't get hit."

The defensive part of the build could definitely use some work. I think Deflection is a good place to start, as well as a Defiance of Destiny, and am open to any other suggestions.

PASSIVES:

My current tree at level 73.

I'm not completely sold on this tree, but there are a handful of things going on in here that work out well for what I'm doing with this build.

Important Passives (and why):

• Vile Wounds: 33% increased damage against poisoned enemies. Entangle has a ~50% chance to poison without Poison Support, and hits often/fast enough that it will reliably poison anything you throw at it. Guaranteed damage boost on all skills.
• Disorientation: 25% increased damage against blinded enemies. Entangle blinds everything it touches too, more damage out of the gate.
• Crippling Toxins: 25% increased poison magnitude, 25% chance to maim poisoned enemies. Together with the 25% chance for attacks (I believe Armour Explosion counts as attack damage) to maim from Maiming Strike we have a solid chance to slow enemies even further.
• The Frenzied Bear: 30% increased damage and 10% increased Skill Speed if you've consumed a Frenzy Charge recently. This stacks with Punch Through's damage increase when you consume charges to use Wind Serpent's Fury, further boosting HV Round's damage.
• Freedom of Movement and Catlike Agility: Both give substantial boosts to Evasion as well as a total of 8% reduced movement penalty while using skills, and since Entangle and Gas Grenade both slow us, this helps.
• The Noble Wolf: 25% ailment magnitude and 20% increased crit chance against Marked enemies. The crit helps Entangle generate Frenzy Charges with Sniper's Mark and the poison magnitude speaks for itself.
• Toxic Sludge and Lasting Toxins: a total of 80% increased poison duration, thanks again in part to Entangle slowing enemies.
• Dance with Death (Keystone): 25% increased skill speed for your spear if you don't equip a shield. Great for spamming Spearfield and Entangle.
• Escalating Mayhem: up to 50% increased damage per Hazard triggered recently. This doesn't increase poison damage, but it will increase HV Rounds' damage if you fire it to reapply the debuff during a boss fight.
• Escalating Toxins: up to 100% increased poison duration for each poison inflicted recently. At 10% per poison, we hit this cap almost instantly.
• Building Toxins: Targets can be affected by +1 poisons, but 25% reduced poison duration. The downside of this is made up for by over 180% increased duration, and the extra poison applies to our clear skills and gas grenade, assuring more damage on trash and faster armour destruction.
• Heartstopping: 20% increased crit chance and 10 INT. By itself, the 20% and 10% on the small node before it do very little for your crit chance, raising Entangle's 10% to 13%. Together with The Noble Wolf though, this does raise the crit chance to 15%, which makes your Sniper's Mark 50% more likely to proc, which doesn't hurt. I honestly just took this because I needed the INT.

UHHH...

Well, I guess that's it.

The build definitely needs some work, but I think the concepts are here and all work together in some cool ways. I've had a lot of fun messing around with it and will probably dump a bunch of currency into making it work. I'm wide open to any suggestions for improvement, especially on the defensive side of things.

Bye!

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