[Expedition] PoE 3.15 Shadow Toxic Rain Trickster Starter Build

The PoE 3.15 Shadow Toxic Rain League Starter Trickster build is incredibly tanky, decent to high life pool, and has great damage and clear speed.

Quick Jump

Pros & Cons

Build Mechanics

Toxic Rain: Toxic Rain shoots out a base 5 arrows (pods). Pods can stack, so area of effect is somewhat important. Attack speed is massively important in terms of DPS and enjoyment.

Recovery: With flasks up, we sit at a comfortable 45k Evasion to cap our QOTF, and 50/75 dodge/spell dodge. This means we rarely get hit, and when we do, we proc Ghost Shroud.

Skill Tree

Bandit: Kill All (recommended) OR spare Oak

Passive Tree & PoB

Path of Building Community Link

30 -> 50 -> 70 -> 90 -> Full

This is what you're shooting for: https://pastebin.com/78rTAXNR

Gems Setup

Main Link

Toxic Rain - Mirage Archer - Void Manipulation - Vicious Projectiles - Swift Afflictions/Efficacy - Empower Level 4 (Skip if you don't have at least Empower 3)

Offhand

Caustic Arrow - Mirage Archer - Greater Multiple Projectiles - Swift Afflictions - Vicious Projectile - Void Manipulations

Auras

Flesh and Stone - Malevolence - Discipline - Enlighten

You can grab reduced mana reservation off the tree if you want to force Blood and Sand, but I'd recommend just not bothering until you get a strong enough enlighten. You can consider running Dread Banner if you have a low enough mana cost on Toxic Rain/Caustic Arrow, but don't have Enlighten. You may also want to use a level 1 Clarity somewhere else in your gear. This will give you access to Clarity mod Watcher's Eye, and Vaal Clarity which can help with early bossing.

Wither Totem

Spell Totem - Multiple Totems - Faster Casting - Wither

We already have quite a bit of duration, so faster casting helps us build quicker. You can ignore the Wither Totem set up for a while, until you feel the need for more boss damage. Withering Step is generally enough to get me through all of story and then some.

IC + Blink Arrow

CWDT - Steelskin, Clarity - Blink Arrow - Faster Attacks - Culling Strike

Feel free to use Second Wind in place of cull if you prefer it, but a single Blink Arrow charge feels fine for me. Steelskin needs to be high level, so the strength requirement can be cumbersome. use Immortal Call instead if you can't meet the strength requirement.

Despair

Withering Step - Dash - Despair - Second Wind

You can look at using a COH ring or even a Despair Bow on your offhand with your Caustic Arrow setup if you need more CA damage.

Gear Setup

Weapons - Thicket Bow

+1 to Level of Socketed Gems
+29% to Damage over Time Multiplier
12% increased Attack Speed
Can have up to 3 Crafted Modifiers
+2 to Level of Socketed Support Gems
+37% to Chaos Damage over Time Multiplier

You may also want to get a second bow for your offhand to use Caustic Arrow, although it isn't at all necessary and you can clear maps with Toxic Rain if you prefer.

Start out with a 5 link 1.5 attack speed base (Short Bow, Grove Bow, Thicket Bow) with +2 to socketed bow gems and a local attack speed craft. There's a couple incremental bows you can go to depending on your budget.

You can also farm a 6L bow from Imperial Legacy cards in The Oasis Zone. If you want to know all of the locations it can drop, check here:
https://pathofexile.gamepedia.com/Imperial_Legacy#Item_acquisition

Consider farming two bows if you're on SSF, one for Caustic and one for Toxic Rain. A full set should only take a few hours.

Quiver

Fire Arrow Quiver

Adds 4 to 8 Fire Damage to Bow Attacks
+16% to Damage over Time Multiplier
+20% to Chaos Damage over Time Multiplier
+91 to maximum Life
12% increased Attack Speed

Start off with quivers that have life, attack speed, and fill out your resists. For your offhand, make sure you run a Penetrating Quiver base to help with Caustic Arrow's clear.

When you have more money to invest in damage, you can look at something like the DoT or CDoT multi (or both).

Helmet - The Vertex

+1 to Level of Socketed Gems
Socketed Gems have 50% reduced Mana Cost
279% increased Evasion and Energy Shield
+39 to maximum Energy Shield
+28% to Chaos Resistance
Enemies Cannot Leech Mana From you

You can use Eber's Unification if you want more damage, but I think Vertex is the best helmet here.

For lab enchants, +1 pod or +40% damage are both good. +1 pod was the only one available at the time, so I went with that.

Chest

+247 to Evasion Rating
95% increased Evasion and Energy Shield
+70 to maximum Energy Shield
+33% to Lightning Resistance
25% increased Stun and Block Recovery
Gain 10% of Maximum Life as Extra Maximum Energy Shield

There's a lot you CAN look for on a chest, like frenzy charge on hit, spell dodge, ailment immunity, etc. but start off with hybrid EV/ES, and crafted %Life gained as Energy Shield.

Gloves

Sorcerer Gloves

16% increased Attack Speed
+34 to maximum Energy Shield
88% increased Energy Shield
+48 to maximum Life
+27 to Intelligence

I use damage and ES gloves, but just find a rare that has life and fills out your resists until you start investing more currency into the build.

Boots 

Atiziri's Step is how we get to 75 Spell Dodge. They also come with 30 movement speed, solid life, and good evasion. Perfect boots for the build.

You can consider synthesis implicit boots over this, but its too early in the league to call it one way or the other right now.

Rings

YOU WILL WANT AN ELREON MOD You WILL want an elreon mod on both of your rings of -6 or -7. We get very close to full reserve, and we attack very quickly.

You can also find a ring with the temple mod "Xopec's" on it, which is considered a mana mod although it gives - total cost of skills.

Belt

Life, resists, maybe some strength, and an abyssal socket.

Amulet

With the addition of new influences, the amulet can become a massive source of damage. +1 Dex or +1 Chaos gems is very powerful, as it CDOT multi. Invest here when you can, but its not a priority.

If you're using Steelskin, you're going to need to find a lot of strength here. If you cannot find adequate strength to run a high (20 or 21) Steelskin, you should drop it completely and instead run a low level CWDT-IC set up instead.

Flask

Find Immunity to Freeze and Chill, Curses, Bleed Mod

And Jade Evasion Flask:

+3000 to Evasion Rating
96% increased Evasion Rating during Flask effect

Quicksilver Flask: Movement

Instant Recovery Life Flask

Dying Sun

Jewels

9% increased Damage
11% increased Damage over Time
11% increased Chaos Damage
8% increased Attack Speed with Bows

DAMAGE WITH BOWS AND DAMAGE WITH TWO-HANDED WEAPONS DO NOT AFFECT THE DOT DAMAGE OF TOXIC RAIN. We do not hit WITH the weapon, so these mods don't apply.

Minus Maximum Mana clarity mod is really strong here. You can get malevolence mods as well, just look for a solid Watcher's eye that you can afford. On rare Jewels look for stuff with life and attack speed.

Watcher's Eye
-10 to Total Mana Cost of Skills while affected by Clarity
Unaffected by Bleeding while affected by Malevolence

You will also want to get an abyss jewel with onslaught: 8% chance to gain Onslaught for 4 seconds on Kill

Cluster Jewels

Large Cluster Jewel

There's two base types for Larges that we're interested in: Chaos and Bow. Ideally you want 8 passives max on whichever one you get. With the baseline two jewel sockets coming soon, you want as many strong notables as you can get.

For Bow, the two main ones are Tempered Arrowheads and Broadside. Other useful ones would include Martial Prowess and Fuel the Fight.

For Chaos clusters, the top three are Wicked Pall, Unholy Grace, and Misery Everlasting. Anything that give chaos damage is passable, though.

Medium Cluster Jewel

For Mediums, you want either 4 or 5 total passives, with Wicked Pall and any other useful notable. Virtually all of them are applicable, some give slightly more useful additional stats though. Flow of Life gives 4% life, Student of Decay gives 13% Chaos damage, etc. Just use what you get or can afford.

Small Cluster Jewel

You have 3 options here. You can use a 2 point Attack Dodge jewel for Elegant Form if you're trying to reach 100% ailment immunity (recommended).

You can use a life jewel (2 or 3 points) with Sublime Sensation or Fettle.

You can use a regular jewel for Life or Damage stats (big budget but best after 100% immunity if you need damage).