[Expedition] PoE 3.15 Ranger Caustic Arrow Raider Starter Build

This PoE 3.15 Ranger Caustic Arrow Raider Starter Build very easy to play. It's immune to ailments and can run absolutely any map mod. Any incoming damage can be easily solved with two instant life flasks healing you back to full life. Tanky end game, over 6000 life and very high evasion + dodge

Quick Jump

Pros & Cons

 

Skill Tree

Ascendancy

Avatar of Veil (Phasing) + Avatar of Chase (Onslaught)

Avatar of Veil and Chase provides amazing defensive, speed and QoL features. No other ascendancy can really match it. Best used for pure mapping, but still works against end game bosses.

Build uses Way of Poacher for levelling purposes, before finishing merciless Labyrinth.

Pantheon 

Major God: Soul of Lunaris 

Nuff said, straight up has the best synergy with the build. Others barely do anything except few specific cases.

Minor God: Soul of Shakari OR Ryslatha OR Garukhan

All three of them are pretty good, but my personal favorite is Shakari. Having full ailment immunity simply feels great. Use it only if you upgraded it.

Ryslatha is 2nd most useful minor god, i use it for any end game boss encounter. It's great for labyrinth as well and overall best choice if you don't want to look at pantheon ever again.

Garukhan is also great option for defence during mapping. Additional evade chance is very powerful combined with high evasion.

Bandit: Kill All (recommended) OR spare Oak

Passive Tree & PoB

Path of Building Link: https://pastebin.com/fpLJyvdU

 

 

 

 

Gems Setup

Main Skill - Caustic Arrow

Caustic Arrow + Void Manipulation + Swift Affliction + Vicious Projectiles + Damage on Full Life + Concentrated Effect + Empower

Your bread and butter. First 3 support gems have no real downsides and should always be included in the build. Conc Effect and Damage on Full Life have downsides, which one you prefer is up to you (i recommend the second one). Empower has no downside but requires level 3 or 4 to be worth using. Costs a lot of money or time.

Other Support Gems you can use:
Greater Multiple Projectiles - for massive AoE which translates to clear speed. Use only for clearing if your damage is high enough. Use instead of Swift Affliction, switch back for bosses.
Efficacy - Use instead of Concentrated Effect to get rid of AoE penalty for small price in damage. Recommended for console players.
Mirage Archer - Additional clear speed if you have necessary AoE to make it worth. You cannot use Concentrated Effect OR must have at least 3 arrows total. Good situational gem. 

Wither Totem

Wither + Spell Totem Support + Multiple Totems Support + Increased Duration

Nearly doubles damage against bosses. Place the totem somewhere on the side and let it do the work. It also slows their movement speed, so keep that in mind against some bosses. Totems are squishy and destroy easily, you might have to resummon them.

Cursed Frenzy

Frenzy + Greater Multiple Projectiles + Curse On Hit Support + Despair

Setup designed for additional damage against bosses/rares. Each successful hit generates Frenzy charge and curses enemies at the same time. When at maximum charges, it refreshes their duration.

Guard Skill

Steelskin + Cast when Damage Taken

Steelskin for extra durability. If manually cast, it's great for any encounter. If you're lazy and linked Steelskin with CWDT, it protects you from multiple hits in quick succession. The entire setup is optional, but recommended nonetheless.

Primary Auras

Malevolence + Vaal Grace + Clarity

Malevolence is undoubtly best aura you can use. Significantly increases your damage and duration of your skills.

Grace is used primarly for levelling and early mapping. Once you're capable of reaching evade chance cap, the aura should be replaced with Malevolence. Vaal version of Grace is still used as a situational skill.

Clarity is not mandatory, but it's the easiest way to greatly increase mana regeneration. Without it, you will find yourself running out of mana all the time. Clarity's maximum level should be 10, do NOT level the gem above it.

Situational Skills

Blink Arrow + Vaal Grace + Vaal Blight

Blink Arrow is used to cross gaps and escape tough situations quickly. Your primary way of moving around is still on foot.

Vaal Grace allows us to cap Dodge / Spell Dodge. It's a temporary aura which is best used during harder encounters like abyss/breaches/harbingers etc. Vaal Grace should be linked with Increased Duration support for longer uptime.

Vaal Blight is a great utility skill for slowing down enemies, so it's easier to keep them inside degen ground. Also applies some extra damage. Vaal Blight should be linked with Increased Duration support for longer uptime. It's an optional gem, but very much recommended. 

These are the only mandatory gems and we still got 2-4 free gem slots. How you fill the rest of them is your choice. 

 

Optional Setups

Bestiary Aspect / Flesh and Stone:

You won't be able to use both of them due to already high mana reservation from primary auras. You have to choose one.

Aspect of the Crab is an amazing source of physical mitigation for evasion characters. With very high evade chance numbers it can easily act as permanent 20% physical damage reduction. It's a reservation skill only obtainable through specific uniques and beastcrafting.

Flesh and Stone is a short-ranged defensive aura that blinds nearby enemies and slightly reduces attack damage of enemies unaffected by blind. You're going to be evade chance capped against all blinded enemies, even without flasks. Onslaught buff is still required to reach evade cap.

Enlighten support gem reduces the high mana reservation of the auras, allowing for easier mana management. You can link it to Malevolence, Flesh and Stone, Clarity to increase your unreserved mana pool. It cannot support Aspect of the Crab since it's not a skill gem.

Withering Rain (GGGR):

Toxic Rain - Mirage Archer - Withering Touch - Increased Duration

Optional setup to Wither Totem. It's much, much worse when it comes to raw damage increase and reliability. However this setup can be used in any situation for additional utility/damage which is not possible with totem.

6-link Cursed Frenzy (GGGGBB):

Frenzy - Greater Multiple Projectiles - Curse on Hit - Despair - Additional Accuracy - Enhance

If you're rich, that's probably the best 6-link body armour setup. Additional Accuracy for more reliable cursing and frenzy generation. Enhance for extra damage from Despair. You can also use Culling Strike, but in best case scenario you'll get lucky to save more than a single second against end game bosses.

Fortify: Vigilant Strike with The Vigil threshold jewel

Only usable if you have melee weapon swap. Gives ~35 second long Fortify, awesome bonus for hard hitting bosses. Without threshold jewel the duration is only ~12 seconds, but it's enough if you facetank a monster.

Golem: Stone Golem OR Flame Golem OR Chaos Golem

Stone Golem is most useful with his taunt and high flat health regeneration. Flame golem for the damage, Chaos golem if you want to try some phys dmg reduction shenanigans. Golems tend to die quite often in high tier maps, but are very useful in early mapping or against labyrith traps (stone golem).

Portal Gem

If you have a free gem slot, why not? Pair with Enhance support for extremely fast portals.

 

Gear Setup

Weapon

The first core item of this build. 

Caustic Arrow's cloud has very limited options when it comes to increasing it's damage output. Additional levels and crafted mods are the only way to make your bow actually benefit the build in the first place. CA setup socketed inside +3 bow easily increases the damage output by ~50-60% more compared to a normal 6-link. 

To make it clear, on the bow we NEED:

• +1 to Level of Socketed Gems (prefix)

• +2 to Level of Socketed Bow Gems (prefix)

• +33-40% Chaos Damage over Time Multiplier (prefix, crafted)

You can also use super budget version with only +2 to Level of Socketed Bow Gems, 
it's enough to actually beat almost any encounter in the game. However the more damage, the easier it gets. Crafting +3 bow is not that expensive and massively boosts the damage.

I recommend to self-craft the bow as it's the cheapest way to do so. Plus, you can directly upgrade the +2 6-linked bow into +3 once you acquire currency. Chaos DoT Multiplier doesn't have to be highest level, any tier already gives really good bonus and you can upgrade it as you unlock tiers.

Body Armour

Kintsugi

"50% Increased Evasion if you have been hit Recently" is a really nice bonus for mapping. The "20% Less Damage Taken if you've not been hit Recently" also works against degens (LAB TRAPS!) until you've been hit.

Kintsugi is a mandatory end game body armour for Raider. Combined with with very high evasion + dodge, the unique passive acts as 25% more life. It is true for many bosses.

Before you reach the end game, you might want to use Carcass Jack or Cherrubim's for additional DPS. If you're non-Raider ascendancy, you might want to consider Queen of the Forest instead. You will find more explainations below.

 

Optional Armours

Carcass Jack

Best chest for start of the league. Good amount of additional damage, life and some resistances. Also massively boosts the AoE which is a bit small without high gem level. It's still inferior in the long run and should be used only for league start.

Cherrubim's Maleficence

Best choice if you want more damage. It has up to 80% increased chaos damage, giving around ~15% more damage in the final build. Has a lot of life as well, making it OK defense wise. Can be used instead of Kintsugi in the end game, but i wouldn't recommend it for hardcore characters.

Queen of the Forest
Option for non-Raider ascendancies. Movement speed is our primary way of moving around the map and dodging skills. Raider has enough speed on her own, allowing the use of defensive chests. Others ascendancies don't have that luxury, so you should consider using it.

Quiver

A rare pierce quiver with life and resistances. Later on you'll want to craft or buy shaper quiver. Something like the first one i linked, the more life and resists the better.

Shaper quivers can roll "Bow Attacks fire an additional Arrow". It's a quite rare mod, so getting one with high health is going to be damn hard. Crafted 41-55 life is going to suffice for majority of the game. Shooting 2 arrows feels a bit weird at first, but it's a huge QoL and effective AoE increase.

Shaper quivers are fully covered in crafting section.

Helmet, Gloves and Boots

Packed into same category, as you want same thing from all of them:

• Life

• Resistances

• Open Suffix (optional)

• Movement Speed (boots only)

Evasion based preferred, especially the helmet (can achieve really high evasion). Atziri's Step unique boots are amazing defensive option if your resistances allow it. That's pretty much it, what's left is to look at the enchantments:

Gloves: of Spite

Nothing else is useful, really. You can totally ignore the gloves enchantments.

Boots: 8% chance to Spell Dodge if you've taken Spell Damage Recently.

Best late game enchantment. The build is nearly invincible against attacks, but spells still hit quite often. 80% chance to avoid stuns is also a great alternative.

Helmet: 

• #1 - 30% increased Caustic Arrow Duration 

• #2 - 40% increased Caustic Arrow Damage

Both are on similar power. In my opinion Duration enchantment and the QoL it gives are more valuable, you should be aiming for it. The latter gives around ~7% more damage, small but welcome upgrade.

Belt

Once again, life and resistances. Strength is also a desirable stat. Leather Belt is the best base, with Heavy Belt being slightly weaker option.

Rings and Amulet

Like majority of other gear and little more:

• Life

• Resistances

• Strength and Intelligence

• #% Mana Regeneration

• +(4-5)% chance to Evade Attacks (elder mod)

Attributes to reach ~160 requirement for lvl 20/21 gems. Mana regen is not required but allows to drop Clarity if you have enough of it.

Once you hit the end game, i recommend buying a good Marble amulet. Life regen is really helpful in mitigating degens / small hits. Elder rings are also necessary to hit evade chance cap with their "+(4–5)% chance to Evade Attacks" mod. It's required in the end game maps, for safety reasons.

Flask

Life flasks - i recommend 1 Bubbling and 1 Seething with bleeding/freeze/poison immunity for emergencies.

Utility flasks - you should use Quicksilver and Jade. You NEED curse immunity and 90%+ increased evasion rating on them. They should also have "Reduced Charges" mod, it's undoubtly the best affix for flask uptime in maps. For additional effects, curse/bleeding immunity and increased evasion rating are the only good options.

Flask setup is flexible, you can adjust it if you like. However anti-bleeding life flask and two utility flasks mentioned above are MUST have.

Jewels

There's not much to discuss, you want any 3 out of these 6 mods on your jewels:

• 5-7% increased maximum life

• 3–4% to Chaos Damage over Time Multiplier

• 9–13% increased Chaos Damage

• 10–12% increased Damage over Time

• 10–12% increased Projectile Damage

• 10–12% increased Area Damage

• 8–10% increased Damage

Life on the jewel is especially valued, get it if you can. Getting a jewel with all 4 good mods is kinda impossible, but finding one with 3 mods at once should be easy. Be sure to look out for other mods that can be beneficial for you:

14–18% increased Evasion Rating

• 7–13% to Chaos Resistance

• 4–6% increased Rarity of Items found

• Any resistance / strength / intelligence mods

Watcher's Eye is an expensive jewel you want to acquire once you reach the end game maps. It is incredibly strong both offensively and defensively. Primary mod you would look for is 18-22% Chaos DoT multi while having Malevolence, as it provides around 10-15% more damage. Anything else is just a bonus. Worthwhile mods from strongest to weakest:

• +(18–22)% to Damage over Time Multipliers while affected by Malevolence

• Unaffected by Bleeding while affected by Malevolence

• (15–20)% increased Recovery rate of Life and Energy Shield while affected by Malevolence 

• (-5 to -10) to Total Mana Cost of Skills while affected by Clarity

• (20–30)% increased Mana Recovery Rate while affected by Clarity