Cyclon's Toxic Growth's Poison Pathfinder

Warning: Build gets buffed in 0.4, but we do not know final Gem Numbers and Passive Tree. Further Updates and details will be added in the following Days

The Poison Pathfinder is the perfect All-Rounder on League Start.

The Build uses Herald of Blood for Poison Chaning for as long as there are Enemies to kill in range.

And Toxic Growth for absurd Single Target Damage. It also utilizes Critical Damage early. Fishing for Critical Strikes, resulting in Strong Poisons even during the Campaign.

To mitigate the Downside of Slow Poisons during the Campaign and Early Endgame, the Build uses a Mix of On-Hit Damage and Poison Damage to kill.

Thanks to Plaguefinger we can use any Bow Skill for Clear during the Endgame.

Overall a Solid League Starter Choice assuming no Nerfs. 😅

Mapping

For Mapping we use the Primary Mapping Skill in Weapon Set 1 ( Poisonburst Arrow, Lightning Arrow or Ice Shot). In Later Stages the Skill is supported by Nova Projectiles for full Screen Coverage.

Once one Enemy dies, all Enemies in Range will die in a Chain-Reaction of Poison and Bleed Explosions thanks to Herald of Blood until the entire Pack(s) is dead.

As the Build uses Rhoa Mount, we can just freely run through the Map and shot until everything is Dead.

Bossing

For Rares we use a simplified Single Target Rotation of Toxic Growth and either Gas Arrow or our Primary Mapping Skill

For more Tanky Rares or Unique Bosses we use the full Rotation

1. Vine Arrow
2. Gas Arrow
3. Toxic Growth
4. repeat Toxic Growth
5. 1. till Boss is Dead
   2. or Vine Arrow and Gas Arrow expire. Repeat Rotation from 1.

In Early Stages of the Gear use Plague Bearer whenever at 100% and move around the Boss to utilize Withering Presence and Despair

Survivability

Position yourself away from Enemies and fire from affar. If something does get to you Wind Dancer and the Evasion Rating will ward the Hit of. And the Build uses a Hybrid Life & Energy Shield Hit pool to tank anything that does actualy Damage us.

Recovery

We recover our Life with the Build in Leeching Toxins and Energy Shield with Ghost Dance in the ES/ Eva Stage. As our Damage is 80-90% Physical any Random Life Leech or Mana Leech Mod on Gear does actualy benefit us.

Plaguefinger Gloves

Plaguefinger allows all Damage to contribute to our Poison Damage. By Default Poison Damage is calculated based on Physical and Chaos Damage only.

This allows the Build to utilize any Bow Skill to replace Poisonburst Arrow as the Primary Mapping Skill. Depending on the Patch Notes, we can utilize whatever Mapping Skill is the Strongest or has the most Coverage.

A Second Benefit of using Plaguefinger is that we can use Flat Lightning Damage on the Build. Using the Hit Part of our Attacks to apply Shock, which gives a 20% increased Damage Taken Multiplier to the Enemy.

Poisonburst Arrow

Poisonburst Arrow has 2 Parts. The Hit Part and the Explode Part.

The Hit Part of Poisonburst Arrow can Critical Strike, but relies on your Accuracy Rating to Hit.

The Exploe Part deals no On-Hit Damage, but Poisons anything in its Area as if Hit. This means we always Poison, but I am unsure if Critical Strikes apply to the Explode Part of Poisonburst Arrow.

Poisonburst Arrow will always Explode at the End of the Travel, even if the Hit Part hit nothing.

By reducing the Projectile Speed or Range(Obliterator Bow) OR riding a Rhoa and aiming close to the Character, we can force the Travel to end Early and result in 'Hits', even if we do not have enough Accuracy.

Toxic Growth

Toxic Growth got reworked in 0.3 and now directly fires the Skill without any forced Movement.

On it's own Toxic Growth Damage is nothing Special. However it can be enhanced by Poisoning the Postules before they Explode.

Each Postules stores the theoretical Poison Damage applied and if it stores the Maximum Amount or above, it explodes directly instead of the Set Delay. This also allows the Build to utilize Long Fuse II without the Downside of the delayed Explosion.

If the Postule got inflict with Poison, two special Rules apply to it:

• It will deal up to 300% More Damage when Exploding, based on the theoretical Poison stored. That does mean that if the Postule explodes early. It will deal the 300% more Damage
• A poison Charged Postule will not get overwritten by a new one. This is especialy usefull early on. As we cannot accidently remove our Damage if we fire a second Toxic Growth to early.

A few other interesting Facts about Toxic Growth that help understanding how to maximize the Damage are

1. Toxic Growth Postule Damage is a Hit, unlike Poisonburst Arrow Explosion which Poisons as if Hit. The Postules do Hit Damage that can apply Ailments. So even in early Stages of the Build we can utilize Toxic Growth to apply a lot of On-Hit Damage, on top of the Poison Damage.
2. Toxic Growth can be supported by Concentrated Area, which will reduce the Spread of the Postules and their Explosion Radius. It does increase the Overlap and is recommended to use.
3. To proc Postules, enough Poison Damage needs to be applied. The damage Multiplier from the Poison is bigger than the Gem Level Multiplier. As such it is better to keep the Gem at Level 5 to explode the Postules faster. Only in the very Lategame Stages of the Build should you level Toxic Growth further.
4. Toxic Growth fires 2 additional Postules if at 20% Quality.
5. To Proc a LvL 5 Toxic Growth Postule the Rule of Thumb is 2 Shots of Poisonburst Arrow or 1 Gas Arrow with Deadly Poison I. This means that if we fire a Gas Arrow with enough Poison DpS on the Boss and keep firing Toxic Growth the Postules can instantly Explode, even before the next volley lands.

Crit Fishing

Crit Fishing is short for Critical Strike Fishing. As in Fishing for Critical Strikes. The Term 'Fishing' is used in Games when we do a Action repeatedly for a specific outcome that has a Chance to appear. In this Case for Critical Strikes.

Poison in Path of Exile 2 is based on the Hit Damage before Reductions are applied. This means that the Critical Damage Bonus from Critical Strikes does apply to the Poison.

If we hit an Enemy 100 Times and assume a Critical Strike Chance of 10%. Then we have 90 Poisons on the Enemy from Non-Critical Strikes and 10 Poisons from Critical Strikes.

Another Feature of PoE 2 is that an Enemy can be affected by an infinite amount of Poisons, but only the Strongest ones apply their Damage. The Limit here is based on the Amount of Max Poisons the Player has Allocated via Passive Tree, Ascendancy, Support Gems and/or Gear.

In Our Case we have 6-8 Poisons from Toxic Growth and 2 from Gas Arrow as it is the only Skill supported by Escalating Poison.

Given the above Rules, the strongest 10 Poisons would all be from our Critical Strikes, and such all be the Crit Enhanced Poisons based on our Critical Damage Bonus.

Now the Reason this works is because Poisons have a Duration. Giving us a Chance to Stack up Powerfull Poisons in several Rounds of applying them with Toxic Growth.

This does mean though that we do need some amount of increased Attack Speed on our Build or Increased Poison/Ailment Duration, so there is enough time to apply all the Crit Poisons.

Herald of Blood Chaining

By Default Heralds cannot inflict Ailments, the only Exception is Herald of Plague.

By supporting Herald of Blood with Bursting Plague and both Bleed III and Poison III we create a Self Chaining Herald, circumventing the Inability to inflict Bleed on Herald of Blood.

1. We Kill an Enemy with our Primary Clear Skill, supported by Bleed III
2. 1. Poisoned Enemie dies, spreading the Poison via Contagious Contamination or Herald of Plague.
   2. The Bleed Enemy explodes with Herald of Blood for Physical Damage that cannot bleed but can Poison, as Herald of Blood is supported by Poison III
   3. The Poisoned Enemy releases the Bursting Plague Physical Damage, which is also supported by Bleed III and Poison III
2. Next Enemy dies
3. 1. Procing Herald of Blood cause it was Bleeding
   2. Procing Bursting Plague cause it was Poisoned
   3. Procing Contagious Contamination to spread the Poison further

Repeat of Step 2 till all Enemies are Dead.

Weapon Set 1 & 2

This Build uses Weapon Set diffrently from most Builds. Instead of using (W)eapon (S)et 2 for a Curse Setup, we have divided Notables to only be used by the WS it is most usefull in. Maximizing Efficiency on the Passive Tree. Using the Weapon Sets in this Way also allows the Build to utilize Rigwald's Ferocity for the Damage Portion.

To Setup the Skills on the correct Weapon Set. Open the Skill Pannel (G by default) and click on the Arrow nex to the DMG Number. At the Bottom of the Detail Pannel select which Weapon Set the Skill is to be used with.

04.12.2025 | Initial Writeup