Poisonous Concoction Pathfinder Build Guide
If you like clearing the endgame on a low budget, throwing poisonous bottles at your enemies and watching the poison spread through packs of monsters this build is for you. The Poisonous Concoction Pathfinder scales poison damage so you don't need to worry about having perfect damage uptime, the poison takes care of that for you!
This build uses Poisonous Concoction from the Brew Concoction Pathfinder Ascendancy node. This means your main damage skill automatically levels up with your character. To add extra levels you use Widowhail with a quiver that grants +2 to level of all projectile gems for even more damage.
Scaling into the endgame, you pick up Chaos Inoculation to become immune to Chaos damage and then scale Energy Shield as your defense. Eternal Youth combined with some investment into life flasks means your recovery is great, no need to wait for your Energy Shield recharge to start.
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.
Skills
- Poisonous Concoction throws a bottle to apply a strong poison on the enemy. You link it to Scattershot to apply 3 poisons at once for an easier uptime. The 5th support gem is pretty flexible, by default Deadly Poison is recommended, but Martial Tempo and Bursting Plague work as well. Comorbidity might look tempting, but it makes your poison uptime bad and is not recommended.
- Eye of Winter is used to apply Wither on bosses. Since a skill needs to deal Chaos damage to Wither using this before you pick up Pure Chaos on the passive tree is useless. Make sure you don't level this past level 13, as this would just make the Intelligence requirement go up.
- Despair is a Curse you use on bosses to lower their Chaos Resistance. Since all of your damage is Chaos this increases your damage.
- Vine Arrow gives you Rage through Font of Rage. When you throw your Poisonous Concoction on it you also poison it, which makes it deal 110% of one of those poisons to nearby enemies. This means it pretty much acts as an extra stack of poison.
- Contagion is used for both clear and bossing. While clearing it helps spread your poisons in a bigger area, and for bossing it freezes the boss through the use of Chaotic Freeze.
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Skill Rotation
- While running around in a map you shouldn't need to use anything more than Poisonous Concoction. Rare monsters die very fast because of the poisons that get spread to them from the Contagious Contamination Ascendancy passive. In situations where pack size is high, like in Breaches, you can use Contagion to spread poison in an even bigger area than Contagious Contamination does.
- For bossing you open up with a couple of Vine Arrows before the boss becomes targetable. Then Despair (ideally timing it exactly 1 second before the boss becomes targetable). Use Contagion to enable freezing the boss and finally use Eye of Winter for Wither. After that you can spam Poisonous Concoction, keeping up the debuffs as they expire.
Skill Leveling Priority
Passives
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- Use the Endgame tree if you're using Ghostwrithe, if you have an Expert Waxed Jacket with high Evasion and Energy Shield you want to use the Evasion/Energy Shield tree instead.
- You want to grab Master Fletching as soon as possible. Since you scale most of your damage on your Quiver this gives you a great boost to that. For the Quiver Effect small nodes there's a breakpoint every 50% total Quiver effect, if you add together your Widowhail and any jewels you might have you only want to pick up the Quiver Effect you need to reach the next 50% breakpoint.
For example: your Widowhail has 230% and you have 1 jewel with 10% Quiver effect. You get 50% from pathing to Master Fletching for a total of 290%. This means you only need 1 Quiver Effect node to reach the next 50% breakpoint of 300% total. - Subterfuge Mask is great for your Evasion Rating. Try to get a helmet with as much Energy Shield as possible.
- Chaos Inoculation makes you immune to Chaos damage. This allows you to fully focus on Energy Shield as your "life" pool. You can then recover this using Eternal Youth and your Life Flask.
- Pure Chaos might look like just a generic damage node. But this is actually very important for your Eye of Winter with Withering Touch combo to work, since Withering Touch requires you to deal at least 1 Chaos damage to work.
Ascendancy
Learn how to complete the Trial of the Sekhemas and Trial of Chaos to earn your first 2 Ascensions with our Ascension Guide!
- Brew Concoction gives you the option to pick Poisonous Concoction. This provides you with your main skill so is the backbone of your entire build.
- Contagious Contamination is mostly a travel node for you, but it also saves you from having to run Herald of Plague. +30 Spirit!
- Overwhelming Toxicity doubles your poison damage, assuming you can keep up the poison stacks. You grab some poison duration on the tree(for example: Escalating Toxins) to mitigate the downside of this node.
- Traveller's Wisdom and Passive Points give you 6 extra passive points. This doesn't sound like much, but really adds up for a build like this that travels a lot on the skill tree to get Energy Shield.
- Connected Chemistry can be picked up temporarily if you level with this build. During the campaign you might run out of flask charges otherwise. This node is not needed anymore after you've got your 3rd ascendancy.
Gearing
Offensive Scaling
- The main way you scale Poisonous Concoction is by getting levels on it. You can get levels on the gem by:
- Leveling up your character, the main breakpoints for this are: Level 72 for Level 17 gem, Level 78 for Level 18 gem, Level 84 for Level 19 gem and Level 90 for Level 20 gem(and 6-link).
- Getting a Quiver with +# to Level of all Projectile Skills like this: Onslaught Barb.
- Scaling the Quiver with Quiver Effect through Widowhail and Master Fletching.
- Getting a level by grabbing Dark Entries on the passive skill tree.
- Adding additional poisons on the enemy(for example, from: Building Toxins) and then doubling those poisons using Overwhelming Toxicity.
- Magnitude of Poison you inflict from the Passive Tree and Jewels.
- #% increased Attack speed.
- % damage, like Projectile Damage, Chaos Damage and Attack Damage.
Defensive Scaling
- Sufficient +#% to Fire, Cold and Lightning Resistance to cap your Resistances.
- Maximum Energy Shield.
- Evasion Rating.
- A strong Life Flask with Eternal Youth to recover your Energy Shield.
- Ghost Dance to recover your Energy Shield.
- If you are still struggling check out our Survival Guide for additional useful information!
Here's how you should gear your Poisonous Concoction Pathfinder. Sorted mostly in order of importance
Weapon
- 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.
Quiver
Body Armour
Helmet
Gloves
Boots
Rings
Amulet
Belt
Flasks
Jewels
Atlas Passives
Click the arrows to open the full tree in a new tab.
This build benefits a lot from high pack size so your poison can spread through the use of the Contagious Contamination Ascendancy notable. Endgame activities with high pack size, like Breach are great for this build. It can struggle a bit with clearing up random stragglers sometimes, with the way map sustain is right now it's safe to ignore those monsters though.
Learn about the endgame activities available to you in Path of Exile 2 with our guide!
FAQ
Can I level with Poisonous Concoction?
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.
Can I improve my clearspeed somehow?
How do I get base levels and/or links on my Poisonous Concoction?
How do I get quality on Poisonous Concoction?
I don't have enough Spirit to cast all my buffs
I don't have enough attributes to level all my gems
What bonuses should I choose from relics in Act 2 and venom drought in Act 3?
Video
Summary
- Poisonous Concoction is a skill that throws your mana flask at monsters to poison them.
- Use Contagious Contamination from the Pathfinder Ascendancy to spread the Poison between packs of monsters.
- Scale levels on Poisonous Concoction through your Quiver and Amulet.
- Scale Energy Shield and pick up Chaos Inoculation combined with Eternal Youth to get a huge "life" pool.
- Evasion allows you to utilize Ghost Dance to quickly regain Energy Shield in dangerous situations.
Changelog
- January 16, 2025
Adjusted build for 0.1.1. This made "Damage with Bow Skills" not apply to Poisonous Concoction anymore, we already counted on this nerf happening though, so it doesn't affect the build unless you happened to randomly have it on your quiver.
- January 6, 2025
Adjusted build for patch "0.1.0e Hotfix 6". This patch fixes a bug where Chaos Inoculation was counted as being on Low Life. The only change made to accommodate for this patch is no longer using the "more recovery on low life" mod on your life flask.
- December 23, 2024
Written for Early Access
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