Poison Gas Arrow Acolyte of Chayula Build Guide
If you want to explore the dark side of Monk as a Gas Arrow Acolyte of Chayula, this might be the build for you! Poison your enemies with choking clouds, then explode foes with massive plagued bursts.
You use your bow to shoot Gas Arrows that quickly expand, poisoning all enemies they come in contact with. Scaling off of the amount of poison damage you deal Plague Bearer comes into play with a massive Plaguenova once you've accumulated enough.
On big rare monsters and bosses, you start to add in Vine Arrow, Wither, and Despair. Vine Arrow can be poisoned to even further increase your damage. Wither comes through Eye of Winter, which drastically increases the amount of chaos damage an enemy takes. Even further past that, you can also curse enemies with Despair reducing their chaos resistance, for massive damage increases!
You do not need specific resistances on any item, just get the required total resistances amongst all gear combined. You need to cap your Resistances at 75% unless otherwise specified in the guide!
Path of Exile 2 is currently in early access, this means rapid development including frequent changes to builds as there are balance fixes and we learn more. Pin this page to be notified of any updates.
This guide assumes you are at least level 68 and have completed Act 3 Cruel, to learn more about the leveling process check out our Explosive Gas Arrow Acolyte of Chayula leveling guide.
Skills
- Gas Arrow creates gas clouds that leave a ticking poison on enemies. Multiple clouds from additional arrows can overlap and put multiple poisons on the same enemy.
- Plague Bearer is a massive single target increase, and also extremely good for clear, especially once you get your 4th support Astral Projection. Plague Bearer is a spirit reservation gem which stores poison damage you deal to inflict Plaguenova, a massive damaging area of effect ability.
- Vine Arrow is for utility and extra damage. Font of Rage adds rage which increases your poison through more attack damage. Vine Arrow does most of it's damage through it's ability to be poisoned by your own abilties, ideally you poison it with the Plaguenova, as it takes the first poison as it's base damage.
- Vine Arrow is mostly used for Single Target, and for bossing you swap Scattershot onto it, since Gas Arrow uses it for mapping, but not for bossing.
- Eye of Winter puts Wither on enemies through Withering Touch, making them take large amounts of extra Chaos damage.
- Despair is your damage curse, providing massive increased Chaos damage taken by enemies.
Use the <Prev and Next> arrows to navigate.
Skill Rotation
- For single target you want to first look out for any Purple Flames from Into the Breach ascendancy node, these will give you damage gained as chaos, this is especially nice if the boss has any roleplaying downtime before attacking.
- Right before the boss spawns, make sure you use Gas Arrow a few times to prestack. This causes it to be instantly poisoned and starts building up for your Plague Bearer's Plaguenova.
- Once your Plague Bearer is stacked up make sure to set it up by using Despair and Eye of Winter first and then Vine Arrow, followed by the Plaguenova explosion.
- For clear the rotation is much simpler,Gas Arrow to stack Plague Bearer.
- Then use the active ability Plaguenova to clear!
Skill Leveling Priority
Passives
Click the arrows to open the full tree in a new tab.
- Whenever you have 1000+ total energy shield, Eternal Youth becomes really nice because if your Energy Shield falls off you are in danger of getting 1-shot. This pairs nicely with a recovery 25% instantly flask mod.
- Spectral Ward gives you additional Energy Shield per 12 Evasion Rating from your body armor, this means you want hybrid ES/EV to make the most of it.
- Subterfuge Mask gives Evasion based on your helmet's Energy Shield. To make the most of this one you want a high Energy Shield helmet.
- There is two tree set-ups here. The first is the base tree, while the second includes the weapon swap changes, with nodes you should prioritize.
- The weapon swap tree is focused on taking wither effect, curse duration, skill effect duration, and cooldown recovery rate. These are important for Eye of Winter, Despair, and Blink. Make sure these abilities are set to weapon swap II, and the rest of your abilities are set to weapon swap I. (such as Gas Arrow)
- Blink is an optional weapon swap addition, not required, but nice to have if you want it for backtracking. Make sure you have a low level sceptre, for spirit, to run Blink with some intellect on it to help with the gem requirements, and you can use Crest of Ardura for even more cooldown recovery rate.
- To learn more about weapon swapping mechanics check out our guide.
Ascendancy
Learn how to complete the Trial of the Sekhemas and Trial of Chaos to earn your first 2 Ascensions with our Ascension Guide!
- The biggest reason for playing this build is Reality Rending. This applies to the Gas Arrow cloud, snapshotting massive damage gained as chaos, which then increases the poison damage. This has the added benefit of making any elemental damage you gain from your bow, quiver, and rings also apply, at least partially to your poisons.
- Waking Dream is another big part of the build. This ability allows you to see the Flames of Chayula, these flames grant you bonuses based on their color. Purple is the main one, it grants 7% damage gained as chaos for 5 seconds, stacking up to 10 times. Blue flames grant mana back through leech, and help the sustain, especially while bossing, as Gas Arrow can be mana intensive at higher levels. Red flames are the least important for this build, they grant life back through life leech, however you should rarely need these. The best part however, is Waking Dream currently grants you Clarity, Cannibalism, Precision, Herbalism, and Vitality, all for free, just by having them linked to it!
- Lucid Dreaming is taken third, and it doubles all the effects and duration of all the Flames of Chayula. This makes the Purple Flames of Chayula for example last for 10 seconds and grant 14% damage gained as chaos.
- Last but not least Chayula's Gift, this might not sound amazing, but it helps immensely as hybrid, as energy shield takes double damage from chaos damage. This very easy to cap out, as the node before it grants 14% chaos resistance by itself!
Gearing
Offensive Scaling
- Gas Arrow is Poison damage, which is scaled by your hit. It is important to understand that the hit generates the poison, and then the damage modifiers to the hit afterwards do not scale your damage. For example, a Poison hit based off of physical damage does NOT benefit from increases to Chaos damage, despite Poison dealing Chaos Damage Over Time.
- Gas Arrow is scaled by +# to Level of all Projectile Skills.
- Sources of #% increased damage: #% Attack Damage, #% Global Physical Damage, #% increased Damage
- Poison is also scaled by Poison Magnitude.
- Plague Bearer is scaled by +# to Level of All Gems, Chaos, Physical.
Defensive Scaling
- Sufficient +#% to Fire, Cold, Lightning and Chaos Resistance to cap your Resistances
- Evasion to avoid all damage from hits, except for slams.
- +# to Energy Shield to provide additional effective health pool, as well as enabling recovery via Ghost Dance and Grim Feast.
- +# to Maximum Life.
- Movement speed is a great defensive layer, as it helps you manually avoid incoming projectiles and area of effect damage.
- If you are still struggling check out our Survival Guide for additional useful information!
Here's how you should gear your Gas Arrow Acolyte of Chayula. Sorted in order of importance
- #% to Physical Damage
- #+ to Physical Damage
- + to Level of Projectile Gems
- Bow Attacks fire # Additional Arrows
- % increased Attack Speed
- +# to Dexterity
- % Reduced Attribute Requirements (can be nice because the build has high attribute requirements)
- High Evasion and Energy Shield - Focus heavily on this as Evasion scales Energy Shield from Spectral Ward
- +#% to Fire, Cold, Lightning and Chaos Resistance
- +# to Dexterity
- +# to Intelligence
- +# to Maximum Life
- #+ to Physical Damage
- % increased Damage with Bow Skills
- % increased Projectile Speed Feathered Fletching
- #+ to Lightning, Fire, or Cold Damage (this scales the damage gained as chaos higher)
- + to Level of Projectile Gems
- % increased Attack Speed
- +# to Dexterity
- #% increased Energy Shield and +# to Energy Shield - Focus heavily on this as it scales Evasion from Subterfuge Mask
- +#% to Fire, Cold, Lightning and Chaos Resistance
- +# to Intelligence
- +# to Maximum Life
- #% increased Rarity of Items found (Luxury stat, do not prioritize)
- This build should be running the Snakebite gloves. These are very cheap gloves but if they are for some reason unavailable or you are playing Solo Self Found, prioritize the following.
- #% increased Energy Shield and +# to Energy Shield
- +#% to Fire, Cold, Lightning and Chaos Resistance
- +# to Maximum Life
- +#% to Movement Speed
- #% increased Energy Shield and +# to Energy Shield
- +#% to Fire, Cold, Lightning and Chaos Resistance
- +# to Intelligence
- +# to Maximum Life
- #% increased Rarity of Items found (Luxury stat, do not prioritize)
- +# to all Attributes and other attributes you may need
- +#% to Fire, Cold, Lightning and Chaos Resistance
- +# to Maximum Life
- #+ to Physical Damage to Attacks
- +# to Energy Shield and +#% to Energy Shield
- +# to Evasion
- For min-max Breach Rings with Attribute Quality are very strong
- Notable unique mentions: Ming's Heart, this lowers your defences, but it is a massive dps gain. I would recommend against it until you have 2000+ Energy Shield with Ming's Heart on.
- + to Spirit (50 here to run Ghost Dance, and Grim Feast without swapping, at least 20 otherwise)
- +# to all Attributes and other attributes you may need
- +#% to Fire, Cold, Lightning and Chaos Resistance
- +# to Energy Shield and +#% to Energy Shield
- + to Level of Projectile Gems
- +# to Maximum Life
- #% increased Rarity of Items found (Luxury stat, do not prioritize)
- Instill a node that isn't too costly but grants a decent boost in power until you have a really good Amulet. Radial Force is a decent option to provide a damage boost.
- +# to Strength
- +#% to Fire, Cold, Lightning and Chaos Resistance
- +# to Maximum Life
- +# to Maximum Mana
- +1 Charm Slot or +2 Charm Slots
- Notable unique mentions: Ryslatha's Coil, this grants up to 40% more damage, because poison takes the highest damage rolls as priority. Ingenuity is a good unique but make sure you do NOT use it with Ming's Heart on. This further reduces your hp and defences.
Jewels are a very powerful way to scale damage for a poison build, while also solving problems.
This build allocates at least 5 Jewel sockets which provide an excellent way to further customize your build. Specifically look out for the following stats on them in rough order of importance:
- % increased Damage with Bows
- #% increased Global Physical Damage
- % increased Evasion Rating
- Recover #% of Mana on Kill - This can really help with mana issues while mapping
- % increased Projectile Damage
- % increased Attack Damage
- % increased Magnitude of Ailments you inflict
- % increased Magnitude of Poison you inflict
- % increased bonuses gained from Equipped Quiver (use these to reach the 100% breakpoint with 2 of them and 5 nodes on the tree)
- #% increased Movement Speed
- #% increased Wither Effect (make sure you have at least 20%+ otherwise it won't hit the breakpoint)
- % increased Poison Duration
- % increased Attack Speed with Bows
- % increased Attack Speed
- +#% to Energy Shield
Any of these mods are also good on a Time-Lost Jewel that affects a lot of nodes in the vicinity.
Prism of Belief is an endgame scaling option for Plague Bearer. This can roll up to +3 levels, and Plague Bearer has VERY good gem level scaling, so this is a major upgrade. It may be expensive.
Atlas Passives
Click the arrows to open the full tree in a new tab.
Learn about the endgame activities available to you in Path of Exile 2 with our guide!
FAQ
The main reason for choosing Acolyte of Chayula over Pathfinder is because of the way Reality Rending works with Gas Arrow. It basically snapshots the damage gained as chaos, and they can all proc on top of each other, for massive poisons. Waking Dream also gives a ton of bonuses such as accuracy, mana regen, life on kill, and life regen from free reservations. The Flames of Chayula also give a ton of sustain as well as damage, and Gas Arrow can be mana intensive at higher gem levels.
You need both Dexterity and Intelligence to use your skills. Pick them up on your passive tree while traveling though the highway nodes and try to get as much on gear as you can. If you can't get enough Intelligence required to run Eye of Winter early on, you can run Rain of Arrows for wither instead. Reduced attribute requirements on bow helps a lot, since the best base is Expert Dualstring Bow, and it requires 212 Dexterity.
Focus on getting gear with high Energy Shield, this combined with Evasion and things like Grim Feast, make you quite tanky. On bosses you can swap Grim Feast for Ghost Dance. Also don't use Ming's Heart if you are dying frequently, I recommend at least 2000+ Energy Shield to use Ming's.
- Relic: 15% increased Mana Recovery from Flasks
- Venom Drought: 25% increased Mana Regeneration Rate
- Cruel Relic: 15% increased Life Recovery from Flasks
- Cruel Venom Drought: +10 to Chaos Resistance
NOTE: These bonuses are minor, if you picked something different for the Venom Draught, don't worry too much!
Video
Summary
- Gas Arrow is a long duration poison skill that lingers and allows you to move around while dealing damage, this makes dodging mechanics much easier, and it doesn't have very many issues with visual clarity either!
- Prestack chokepoints in dangerous events like Expedition or Breach by dropping gas clouds around you. This prevents you from getting swarmed.
- Try to always be moving around and making use of your mobility to quickly clear maps.
- Use Plague Bearer for a huge poison on single targets or to clear out whole screens from a distance with Astral Projection. Combine this with Herald of Plague to destroy entire packs of monsters off screen!
- Curse and Wither bosses while you move around and manually dodge dangerous enemies. Let your poisons do the work for you.
- Evasion and Energy Shield allow you to utilize Ghost Dance and Grim Feast for extra recovery and higher Energy Shield through overflow.
Credits
Written by: Goratha
Content Reviewed by: Crouching_Tuna
Language Reviewed by: Tenkiei
Changelog
- January 7, 2025
Written for Early Access
Related Posts
Getting StartedTrials of Ascendancy Guide
by ZIGGYD
NewsPath of Exile 2 Reveal Megapost
by tenkiei
MetaThe Best Leveling Uniques
by ZIGGYD
Build GuidesGrenade Mercenary Leveling Guide - Witchhunter and Gemling Legionnaire
by ZIGGYD
Getting StartedPath of Exile 2 Campaign Walkthrough
by havoc
Getting Started