Poison Gas Arrow Pathfinder Build Guide
Poison your enemies with massive clouds of gas with this smooth Pathfinder build. Poison clouds give you the luxury of moving around while damage is done for you. Outside of Rare and Unique enemies, just press one button as you glide through maps.
Poison Gas Arrow applies a number of stacks of poison on enemies, and Pathfinder enables up to 10 stacks with very little investment. Gear is cheap and doesn't require any complex mechanics to get the build feeling great.
Evasion and Ghost Dance synergize to allow you to avoid most incoming damage, but then recover large chunks of Energy Shield when you actually get hit.
Note: You do not need resistances/attributes on any specific 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!
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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 Poison Gas Arrow Pathfinder 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.
- Vine Arrow is your utility, drop it on a boss to add damage and regeneration of Life, Mana and Rage.
- Dark Effigy puts Wither on enemies, making them take large amounts of extra Chaos damage.
- Despair is your damage curse, providing massive increased Chaos damage taken by enemies.
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Skill Rotation
- While mapping, drop Gas Arrow on enemy packs and in chokepoints. The gas clouds last a while so they are effective at keeping enemies from surrounding you.
- When you meet a challenging Rare or Unique enemy, hit them with Gas Arrow and then drop a Dark Effigy and Despair on them. At that point you can use Gas Arrow again or drop Vine Arrow for more bonuses.
- The key on bosses is to stay at 10 poison stacks (or whatever your maximum is at the time) and then spend the rest of the time dodging and keeping your other debuffs on the enemy.
- Momentum gives you a substantial bonus for moving while attacking. There is both an audio and visual cue for the successful proc of this support, so test it in your hideout!
- Staying Close to your Vine Arrow pods will provide you Life, Mana and Rage regeneration. This can be useful to preload on bosses for Rage stacks if the boss has a significant spawning time.
- Use Plague Bearer for a huge poison on single targets or to clear out whole screens.
Skill Leveling Priority
Passives
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Ascendancy
Learn how to complete the Trial of the Sekhemas and Trial of Chaos to earn your first 2 Ascensions with our Ascension Guide!
- Contagious Contamination spread your poisons, improving clear significantly.
- Overwhelming Toxicity doubles the number of poisons you can have on a single enemy. This is the strongest poison node in the game, allowing for significantly more damage.
- Traveller's Wisdom is a straightforward 6 additional points on your passive tree.
- Running Assault allows for more speed during attacks, greatly smoothing out gameplay and allowing active dodging while you attack.
Gearing
Offensive Scaling
- Gas Arrow is Poison damage, which is scaled by your hit. It is crucial to understand that the hit generates the poison, and then damage modifiers to the hit afterwards to 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.
Defensive Scaling
- Sufficient +#% to Fire, Cold, Lightning and Chaos Resistance to cap your Resistances
- Evasion to avoid all damage from hits, and when you have at least 12-14k Evasion Rating, enabling Acrobatics to avoid damage from ALL hits.
- +# to Energy Shield to provide additional effective health pool, as well as enabling recovery via Ghost Dance
- +# 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 Poison Gas Arrow Pathfinder. Sorted mostly in order of importance
- #% to Physical Damage
- #+ to Physical Damage
- + to Level of Projectile Gems
- Bow Attacks fire # Additional Arrows
- #% increased Evasion and +# to Evasion - Focus heavily on this as it scales Energy Shield from Spectral Ward
- +#% to Fire, Cold, Lightning and Chaos Resistance
- +# to Maximum Life
- #% increased Evasion and Energy Shield and +# to Evasion and Energy Shield - Focus heavily on this as it scales Evasion from Subterfuge Mask
- +#% to Fire, Cold, Lightning and Chaos Resistance
- +# to Maximum Life
- #+ to Physical Damage
- + to Level of Projectile Gems
- % Increased Damage with Bow Skills
- % increased Attack Speed
- Gain # Mana per Enemy Killed
This build should be running the Snakebite gloves. These provide 2 additional poisons for a Pathfinder due to Overwhelming Toxicity. These are very cheap gloves but if they are for some reason unavailable or you are playing Solo Self Found, prioritize the following.
+#% to Fire, Cold, Lightning and Chaos Resistance
+# to Maximum Life
#% increased Evasion and +# to Evasion
- +#% to Movement Speed
- +#% to Fire, Cold, Lightning and Chaos Resistance
- +# to Maximum Life
- #% increased Evasion and +# to Evasion
- #% 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
- %Increased Mana Regeneration (as needed)
- +# to Evasion
- For min-maxing Breach Rings with Quality are very strong
- Notable unique mentions: Ventor's Gamble
- +# to all Attributes and other attributes you may need
- +#% to Fire, Cold, Lightning and Chaos Resistance
- +# to Maximum Life
- + to Spirit
- + to Level of Projectile Gems
- +# to Energy Shield and +#% to Energy Shield
- #% of Damage Taken Recouped as 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. Heavy Ammunition is a decent option to provide a damage boost. When you have more currency, a great defensive option is Patient Barrier. Offensively, you could choose Wither Away for a boost to your Wither.
- +# to Strength, +# to all Attributes and other attributes you may need
- +#% to Fire, Cold, Lightning and Chaos Resistance
- +# to Maximum Life
- +1 Charm Slot or +2 Charm Slots
Once your rings are both strong, consider using an Ingenuity belt. This item basically empowers your rings in place of a belt slot. This allows for you to get modifiers that assist your build on the belt slot that otherwise wouldn't be there, such as Mana Regeneration or Physical Damage to Attacks.
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 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.
The Prism of Belief is a nice boost to damage, but will require significantly more mana and mana recovery.
Atlas Passives
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- This build is great for things like Expedition, where you can preload your Gas Arrows before enemies spawn. When they spawn in, they die quickly and their poisons proliferate to the next pack.
- This build can do all map modifiers, but when you have a lot of % increased Map Modifier Effect, having 96%+ reduced recovery of Life and Energy Shield can be challenging.
- This build has good boss damage, so targeting boss maps can provide significant rewards.
Learn about the endgame activities available to you in Path of Exile 2 with our guide!
FAQ
The Plaguefinger gloves are a powerful item but come at a cost: item affixes. Early on, it is challenging to acquire gear that has all the resistances, life and evasion you need to feel strong in the endgame, while also getting prefixes with large amounts of elemental damage. The Snakebite gloves provide 25% more damage with no extra cost.
If you follow the build guide the attribute you need the most for your skills is Dexterity. Pick it on your passive tree while traveling though the highway nodes and this should be enough to use all of your skills. If you want to equip some equipment that requires small amounts of strength or intelligence, respec some of the attribute points. Make sure to still keep enough to be able to use all of you abilities. Using items with very high strength and dexterity is not recommended.
Getting enough Evasion (12k+ Evasion Rating) to swap to Acrobatics is a massive boost in survivability. By default, Evasion only works against projectiles and strikes from enemies. However, with Acrobatics, you can avoid damage from on-death effects, area of effect spells and huge boss slams. Life, Evasion and Energy shield (on helmet for Subterfuge Mask) are the most important defensive stats.
- 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 allows you to get damage out while you move and evade. Make the most of this by never standing in one place! You are further rewarded for moving and attacking by using Momentum.
- Close off chokepoints in dangerous events like Expedition or Breach by dropping gas clouds around you. This will prevent you from getting swarmed.
- Never stop moving!
- Use your Curse and utility on 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 Acrobatics for damage avoidance and mitigation
- Use Plague Bearer for a huge poison on single targets or to clear out whole screens.