The Poison Flask Pathfinder is a high-damage, flask-centric build designed to capitalize on the Pathfinder’s ascendancy nodes and unique skill synergy. This build focuses on inflicting devastating poison damage, utilizing flask mechanics for survivability, and leveraging mobility to dominate both single-target and area-of-effect encounters.
Ascendancy Nodes
The Pathfinder ascendancy offers a blend of flask utility and poison-focused mechanics that make this build shine:
1. Connected Chemistry
- Increases flask charges gained, ensuring you can maintain uptime on powerful flask effects. This node allows for frequent use of defensive and offensive flasks, critical for this build’s survival and damage output.
2. Enduring Elixirs
- Prevents life flask effects from being removed when your unreserved life is full. This ensures consistent life recovery and enhances survivability in prolonged encounters.
3. Contagious Contamination
- Spreads the most damaging poison from killed enemies to nearby foes. This significantly boosts area-of-effect damage, ensuring that poison spreads efficiently in crowded encounters.
4. Overwhelming Toxicity
- Doubles the maximum number of poisons you can stack on enemies, drastically increasing poison damage potential.
Primary Skill: Poisonburst Arrow
A core skill for this build, Poisonburst Arrow excels in applying poison damage across both single-target and area-of-effect situations.
Support Skills:
- Poison Chance Support: Maximizes the chance to inflict poison on hit.
- Multiple Poison Support: Enables stacking additional poisons, amplifying damage potential.
- Deadly Poison Support: Enhances the potency of poison damage.
Secondary Skill: Toxic Growth
Toxic Growth allows for tactical poison placement, creating pustules that explode for massive damage after a delay.
Support Skills:
- Inspiration Support: Reduces the mana cost of skills, easing flask management.
- Faster Casting Support: Improves the deployment speed of Toxic Growth.
Additional Skills
- Herald of Plague: An aura skill that spreads poison from killed enemies, synergizing with Contagious Contamination for maximum area coverage.
- Escape Shot: A movement skill offering repositioning and crowd control.
- Plague Bearer: Stores poison damage dealt and releases it in a devastating burst, providing an additional damage spike.
Equipment
Weapons:
- Focus on bows with added chaos or poison damage. High attack speed is a bonus for poison application.
Body Armor:
- Look for increased poison duration and flask-related modifiers.
Boots:
- Corpse Wade Boots: Creates poison clouds from corpses, increasing poison spread.
- Gambler’s Sprint Boots: Enhances mobility with random speed bursts.
Rings/Amulets:
- Prioritize chaos damage, poison effectiveness, and life.
Passive Skill Tree Suggestions
- Flask Effect and Charges: Boost flask efficiency and uptime.
- Poison Damage and Duration: Amplify poison output.
- Chaos Damage: Increase overall damage from poison effects.
- Life and Evasion: Enhance survivability, critical for a ranger class.
Gameplay
This build thrives on mobility and strategic poison application:
- Use Poisonburst Arrow for initiating fights and spreading poison.
- Deploy Toxic Growth in dense enemy clusters for explosive area-of-effect damage.
- Maintain Herald of Plague for additional poison spreading.
- Use flasks tactically to sustain life, mana, and damage output.
- Reposition frequently with Escape Shot to stay ahead of enemies.
Strengths
- High poison damage with excellent area-of-effect potential.
- Flask mechanics provide significant survivability and utility.
- Versatile playstyle with strong mobility options.
Weaknesses
- Flask-reliant; mismanaging flasks can reduce effectiveness.
- Limited information on Path of Exile 2’s final passive tree may require adjustments.
Final Thoughts
This Poison Flask Pathfinder is a base build designed to highlight the Pathfinder’s unique ascendancy mechanics. As Path of Exile 2 evolves, adapt this framework to fit your playstyle and the available content. Experiment with skill and gear combinations to refine your ultimate poison machine!
