Poisonous Concoction Pathfinder Build Guide

• Grab a Widowhail with as much Quiver Effect as possible, at least 220% is highly recommended as this makes you hit the 300% breakpoint with all the nodes on the passive skill tree.
• If you're in Solo-Self Found and you don't have a Widowhail, use any bow that has +# to Level of all Projectile Skills, preferably +5 to Level of all Projectile Skills.

• +# to Level of all Projectile Skills.
• #% increased Attack Speed.
• +# to Dexterity
• #% increased Projectile Speed
• # to Accuracy Rating

Something that's bugged that currently works is #% increased Damage with Bow Skills. This is a huge increase to damage, but will almost surely get fixed as soon as GGG gets around to it. So it's not recommended to invest into a Quiver with that mod, only get it if you happen to get it as a nice bonus, or if you're ok with losing that mod on your Quiver.

If you don't get Dexterity on the quiver getting enough Dexterity to level all your gems might become really hard. In that case considering limiting the level of your permanent buffs until you can find the Dexterity elsewhere.

• Ghostwrithe converts part of your Life to Energy Shield, this applies before Chaos Inoculation and gives you pretty much as much Energy Shield as any medium-budget Body Armour realistically gives you. You can use a Vaal Orb on this item to try and get a higher % of Life converted to Energy Shield, be warned that this might also negatively affect the item though, and be sure to give it 2 sockets first! Iron Runes are the ideal runes to socket in Ghostwrithe, but getting 75% Resistances always has priority.

In case Ghostwrithe gets changed(specifically its interaction with Chaos Inoculation), or if your budget is pretty high, you can opt to go for a Expert Waxed Jacket with very high Evasion and Energy Shield instead. Or go for a Expert Hexer's Robe with high Energy Shield.

• As high Energy Shield as possible.
• +#% to Fire, Cold and Lightning Resistance.
• +# to Maximum Life to scale Ghostwrithe (useless stat if you don't use Ghostwrithe).
• #% increased Rarity of Items found (Luxury stat, do not prioritize)
• #% reduced Attribute Requirements (can come in handy if high Intelligence requirement)

• Evasion Rating and Energy Shield.
• +#% to Fire, Cold and Lightning Resistance.
• +# to Maximum Life to scale Ghostwrithe (useless stat if you don't use Ghostwrithe).
• % increased Attack Speed.
• #% increased Rarity of Items found (Luxury stat, do not prioritize)
• Notable unique mention: Snakebite for an extra poison stack, which gets scaled with Overwhelming Toxicity. This is technically your highest DPS option, but keeping up the Poison stacks might become rough.

• +#% to Movement Speed.
• +#% to Fire, Cold and Lightning Resistance.
• Evasion Rating and Energy Shield.
• Any attributes you might need, like Intelligence and Dexterity.
• #% increased Rarity of Items found (Luxury stat, do not prioritize)
• Notable unique mention: Corpsewade can greatly improve your clearspeed, at the cost of having only 10% Movement Speed. The only way you can really counter this low Movement Speed is by using Queen of the Forest, which reduces our Energy Shield and survivability by a lot, so that's not really worth it. If you do decide to use Corpsewade make sure to link Decompose with support gems like Magnified Effect, Momentum and Bursting Plague. Make sure you swap these boots out when killing pinnacle bosses, where they don't add anything. If you use Corpsewade you no longer want any links on Contagion besides Chaotic Freeze.

• +#% to Fire, Cold and Lightning Resistance.
• +# to Maximum Life to scale Ghostwrithe (useless stat if you don't use Ghostwrithe).
• #% increased Chaos Damage
• +# to Evasion Rating.
• Any attributes you might need, like Intelligence and Dexterity.
• #% increased Rarity of Items found (Luxury stat, do not prioritize)
• Notable unique mention: Glowswarm is great for leveling and playing with low DPS.

This is the hardest piece of gear to get perfect, and after your Quiver is the piece of gear you want to invest into the most.

• +# to Level of all Projectile Skills.
• +# to Spirit (You want any amount, even +5 is enough to be able to fit in Herbalism).
• #% increased Maximum Energy Shield.
• +# to Maximum Energy Shield.
• +#% to Fire, Cold and Lightning Resistance.
• #% increased Rarity of Items found (Luxury stat, do not prioritize)
• Instill Heavy Drinker to make your Life Flask much more potent.

Get a Wide Belt, Mail Belt or Fine Belt.

• At least one of: #% increased Flask Charges gained and/or #% reduced Flask Charges used.
• +#% to Fire, Cold and Lightning Resistance.
• #% increased Flask Life Recovery rate.
• +# to Maximum Life to scale Ghostwrithe (useless stat if you don't use Ghostwrithe).
• +# to Charm Slots.

You need "Gain 0.25 Charges per second" mod on both your flasks. For prefixes the one on your Mana Flask doesn't really matter, since you pretty much never press it. Your life flask ideal prefixes are:

• #% more Recovery if used while on Low Life (WARNING: it's very likely a bug that this currently works with Chaos Inoculation).
• #% increased Amount Recovered.
• #% increased Recovery rate.

This build allocates at least 4 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 bonuses gained from Equipped Quiver (only if it pushes you to the next 50% breakpoint)
• #% increased Maximum Energy Shield
• #% increased Magnitude of Ailments you inflict
• #% increased Magnitude of Poison you inflict
• Damaging Ailments deal damage #% faster
• #% increased Poison Duration
• #% increased Duration of Damaging Ailments on Enemies
• #% increased Attack Damage
• #% increased Projectile Damage
• #% increased Chaos Damage
• #% increased Effect of Withered
• #% increased Area of Effect
• #% increased Attack Speed
• #% increased Movement Speed
• #% increased Evasion Rating
• Gain #% of maximum Energy Shield as additional Stun Threshold
• #% chance to Blind Enemies on Hit with Attacks

Any of these mods are also good on a Time-Lost Jewel that affects a lot of nodes in the vicinity.

Yes, you can use this skill as soon as you ascend. Using a unique like Glowswarm is recommended early on, and it only really starts getting good when you can equip a +2 to level of projectile gems quiver combined with Widowhail, which you can at level 41. It's definitely playable before then though.

There's a couple of mechanics in this build that might not be intended, this is a list of those mechanics, how likely they are to get nerfed(in our estimation) and what impact the nerf would have:

1. "Increased Damage with Bow Skills" on Quiver works for Poisonous Concoction: this is pretty much guaranteed getting fixed. Luckily this build doesn't rely on this mod, and we don't recommend you use it anyway because of the likeliness of a fix.
2. You can use a Bow and Quiver while throwing Poisonous Concoction, and stats on your Bow and Quiver are applied while throwing: keeping in mind that Path of Exile 2 is designed around using multiple skills on each build, this seems pretty intended. +# to Dexterity for example being disabled temporarily while throwing would cause very weird situations, and is thus very unlikely to be changed. If this was changed anyway this would mean you lose a lot of "+# to level of projectile gems", and it would likely kill the build.
3. Chaos Inoculation counts as Low Life: very likely a bug that will get fixed, you use this in 2 places: your Life Flask's most ideal prefix is '% more Recovery if used while on Low Life" and you pick up Killer Instinct. The Life Flask has plenty of other prefixes(see "Gearing"), and Killer Instinct is still good even without the Low Life bonus. So this is only a pretty small nerf.
4. Ghostwrithe works with Chaos Inoculation: This is a weird one, according to how conversion works in Path of Exile 2 this might be intended, but it's also a really powerful and easy way to get a lot of Energy Shield, so might be nerfed regardless. See "Gearing" for alternatives, but what it comes down to is that the build becomes a bit more expensive(but getting Spirit and Resistances will be easier!).
5. Area damage doesn't work with Poisonous Concoction: Likely to get fixed, but doesn't really affect you since you can't really pick up much of this anyway.
6. Increased Area of Effect while Unarmed doesn't work while wearing a bow but using an unarmed skill: Not sure if this is even a bug, if this gets fixed it might be worth picking up Flurry on the passive skill tree.

As always: patch notes will get analyzed as soon as they're out and we'll try to update the guide as soon as possible to account for any changes. So be sure to pin this guide to be notified when we do!

The first thing you should do if your clearspeed feels bad is picking up more pack size on the Atlas Passive Tree. More pack size means your poison has more chance to spread to other monsters. You can also get more movement speed.

If you feel like your clearspeed is bad because random normal rarity monsters are left behind, that's just a monster you're going to have to ignore. It likely wouldn't drop a lot anyway since the vast majority of your loot comes from bosses and rare monsters.

You can also setup a weapon swap with a shield for Shield Charge. The reason we don't recommend this by default is that you can't set Poisonous Concoction to only be used with 1 specific weapon set. So you'll have to manually weapon swap back after each Shield Charge.

If those changes aren't enough you can use the Corpsewade setup that's mentioned in the Boots section of Gearing. Do be warned though that this setup lowers your movement speed a lot which feels bad in some situations.

You get these as you level up your character. For links:

• 3 support gems = Character level 40
• 4 support gems = Character level 65
• 5 support gems = Character level 90

The most important breakpoints for gem levels are:

• Level 17 gem = Character level 72
• Level 18 gem = Character level 78
• Level 19 gem = Character level 84
• Level 20 gem = Character level 90

There's currently no known way to get quality on Poisonous Concoction.

You only need +5 Spirit after the Campaign to use all your buffs. If you don't have this yet you can safely drop Herbalism.

The build can be pretty heavy on the attributes if you level everything. Luckily our main skill has no attribute requirements. So just follow the skill leveling priority section of this guide, but if you can't get the attribute requirements just leave them lower level until you can(you definitely want to work towards getting the attributes to level up all high-priority skills though.

• Relic: 30% increased Charm Charges gained
• Venom Drought: 25% increased Stun Threshold
• Cruel Relic: 15% increased Life Recovery from Flasks
• Cruel Venom Drought: +5 to All Attributes

NOTE: These bonuses are minor, if you picked something different for the Venom Draught, don't worry too much!