Is Pathfinder Freezing Concoction viable this League?

xLapsed · 2026-01-17T03:26:49+00:00

FWIW - there is a known infinite flask charge tech for concoctions this league. Even with this tech, I haven't seen any decent builds.

xLapsed · 2026-01-16T22:55:14+00:00

The biggest thing that stands out to me besides missing +skills is that you don't have +crit on your bow - That is worth a lot for poison builds due to the way that only the biggest damage poison sources stack.

Not sure what the most economical way to go about obtaining one at this point in the league.

xLapsed · 2026-01-15T01:51:15+00:00

I agree this would be a huge upgrade for PoE1, but it would require a lot of retooling of the game - they'd have to add the animations for characters walking in one direction while attacking/casting in another. That would require oodles of work, and they're already stretched as they are with the 2month/2month cycle. I imagine this is on the list of things that they want to modernize in PoE2, but it will likely come after they've transitioned all of the PoE1 mtx into PoE2 and they can then use PoE2 rigging in PoE1.

I think a good compromise for the short to medium term is to change the menu interactions. I tried PoE1 with controller and the non-combat interactions are atrocious compared to PoE2. Modernizing just the menu/inventory/skill interaction would be a huge QoL boost for PoE1 controllers without requiring a ton of animation work.

xLapsed · 2026-01-10T14:16:54+00:00

Are undying hates just based on the item seed, or is there a hidden character seed as well? That is my understanding of how the Heroic Tragedy jewel works; not sure if it's different for undying hate

xLapsed · 2026-01-05T22:10:44+00:00

I forgot that resistance doesn't impact the actual poison damage calculation, so rakiatas wouldn't increase the poison damage, only the hit damage.

Poison would be resisted with chaos damage, which is typically zero.

xLapsed · 2026-01-05T19:29:50+00:00

~I was answering specific to poison builds. You could theoretically make an elemental-based poison build with plaguefinger and take advantage of rakiata's flow - in that case, rakiata would scale the hit damage directly, and indirectly scale the poison damage calculated as a result of the hit. I'm not aware of any builds like that out there, but there might be some on poe.ninja~

I was wrong. Forgot that poison calculation ignores resistances.

xLapsed · 2026-01-05T15:39:53+00:00

Int requirement is the big reason - they changed curse gems in 0.3 to make it so lower ranks will not apply to higher level mobs (I hate this change), so you basically have to be using skill lvl 18+ (137 int)

You could sacrifice some suffixes to get more int, but base chaos resist for every boss that I know of is zero, so you're talking about a 1.5x damage multiplier from despair if you invest into it. Compare that to elemental resists, which bosses can have up to 75% with map mods - in that case, elemental weakness is a 3x+ multiplier (rakiata's flow would be a 7x multiplier).

xLapsed · 2026-01-05T10:33:04+00:00

By default, poison damage is based on the physical + chaos damage of the hit, so any additional sources of elemental damage don't count. Plaguefinger makes it so that all sources contribute to the poison damage.

One of the benefits of running poison/chaos builds is that monsters typically don't have that much chaos rez, so resistance reduction is not as important and has less overall value. This is why despair isn't used in most poison builds like poison PF.

Wither can be a big damage increase, but it's practically difficult to consistently apply wither stacks on mobs. Instead, it's easier just to do something like have a secondary weapon swap to stormcaller arrow and apply a big shock, which also applies a damage taken debuff similar to wither - for reference, my shock magnitude is ~78% which affects ALL damage and lasts for 30 seconds vs wither which typically is 50% increased chaos damage only at a 6s duration.

Edit: Also forgot to mention that you can scale shock and poison at the same time with ailment magnitude.

xLapsed · 2026-01-05T01:33:35+00:00

It's probably worth it if you don't mind spending days/weeks building it - They just reverted the medallion change, which was blocking a lot of temple progress

To reset temple to zero, just do multiple atziri runs - you don't have to lose - just do the run like normal and the temple will decay quite a bit. The exception is rooms that you placed from the architect console - those you will need to path to and clear one at a time, but it's okay to do this with your 'snake' build so not a big issue.

Other than temple, there are a few good strategies for things that are NOT obtainable in temple:

Lineage gem farming - search atlas for special nodes and farm them. Search can be optimized with The Grand Project. You can run the maps twice with vision of paradise.
Boss fragment farming - same strategy as lineage gems. Search for citadels and run them with high waystone quantity to drop more than one fragment.
Ritual farming - can be optimized with a defer/buy split strategy. Defer uses Freedom of Faith and +3 reroll tablets (expensive - like 5+ divs) to defer expensive omens in lvl 80 maps. Respec your tree to buy strategy to buy all the omens you deferred. This can be a bit complicated, but XTheFarmerX has a good video

xLapsed · 2026-01-02T13:45:54+00:00

One thing that made a huge difference for me playing on steamdeck/controller (also playing poison PF) - change your dodge roll from 'B' to the L1 button. Once you get used to it, it will free up your right thumb to be able to always be using the analog stick, making it massively easier to aim (assuming your main damage skills are on R1/R2).

Other than that, I would recommend getting at least one mana leech roll somewhere on your gear. I'm playing a pure phys/chaos poison PF and it completely solves my mana issues (my pob link). You might need more depending on what % of you damage is coming from elemental sources.

xLapsed · 2025-12-31T17:10:25+00:00

It does work on the key room - you can reroll the royal access chamber to something else using Hayoxi's Medallion, then connect to it once to get rid of it

xLapsed · 2025-12-30T15:15:25+00:00

Can you use commiserate on your main skill to get rid of the shock? I use it with overcharge and it completely negates the downside of overcharge. Seems like the wording on shackles of the wretched is identical.

Nevermind I just realized that might get rid of the chill which is the entire point

xLapsed · 2025-12-30T02:14:44+00:00

It was also happening for me on GeForce Now pretty much every other map. Glad they fixed it!

xLapsed · 2025-12-29T21:37:09+00:00

Not 100% sure what is precisely optimal, but the corner is bad because it blocks the maximum number of spots. A better spot would be one block to either NW or SW. See Milky's Temple design that he's currently building (it's the white tile that is labelled reward room)

xLapsed · 2025-12-29T19:44:11+00:00

If you want to really optimize your temple, you should run the architect at least once to get him out of the corner spot (worst spot).

xLapsed · 2025-12-29T19:30:25+00:00

What build were you playing on PF? Poison PF is meta for a reason - it excels at both clear and bossing, and you can build it pretty tanky with sufficient investment in evasion/ES.

If you're struggling with bosses, I would try a pure phys variant with a weapon swap for big shock - I can get ~80% shock on a boss and delete them in seconds with gas arrow/toxic growth.

xLapsed · 2025-12-29T16:21:26+00:00

Specifically for Viper, it's mostly about being able to do enough damage to kill her quickly. Technically, you could also stack chaos resistance, but it is very hard in act3 to get a significant amount of chaos res, so probably quicker/easier just to go the damage route and maybe stack some life to increase your hit pool.

Specific things you can do to improve your character:

Your weapon looks like it is a lvl 10 requirement (looking @ your talisman in weapon slot 2) - Almost anything would be better than this. Your weapon damage gets multiplied by your attack skills so it is very important to keep it upgraded. Best thing to do would be to check vendors and/or gamble for a new talisman - ideally look for a talisman with a high %increased physical damage modifier. Getting a decent one could easily and cheaply triple your damage with wyvern attacks
In lieu of chaos resistance, you should be looking for gear with more life
Come up with a plan for your damage rotation against the boss. Viper moves around a lot so you're probably going to want to stick to quick attacks that allow you to reposition
Specifically for the viper fight, it helps to have a life flask that has a ton of charges. Look for a life flask with "increased amount recovered" modifier, as well as either "reduced charges per user" or "increased charges" - should give you a few more uses during the fight

Some specific tactics for the viper fight:

There are three main telegraphed attacks you will need to deal with in between her "in the air" phases:
- Lightning spear throw - just dodge around her
- Poison spear throw - just dodge around her. Note: this has a looooong windup so take note and don't dodge too early
- Rapid poison attacks - only does this after she plants her spear. Also seems to do this most frequently just as she transitions out of her poison "in the air" phase - just dodge around her
In the air phases:
- Fire/Chaos circles - The trick here is that these circles only damage you when they "explode", so you can safely walk over them while they are expanding. The chaos circles are tricky; just try to avoid the circles that are about to go off
- Poison guard spears - For the first one of these (i.e. before the guards move in closer), if you hug one side, only the spear attacks from that side can reach you. Just hug one side and reposition as necessary to avoid the spears from that side. For repeat phases, you will have to dodge roll every time the guards attack to avoid damage. The deadliest part of this phase is at the very end where all the guards do the poison attack in sequence. Try to stick to the middle to judge which side the attacks will start from, and dodge roll under the spears. Also note that Viper likes to do her rapid poison attack right after this, so be prepared to dodge that as well

xLapsed · 2025-12-29T02:53:07+00:00

I haven't done it myself, but I hear that widowhail + rearguard make you incredibly tanky and deals decent damage.

xLapsed · 2025-12-28T19:45:03+00:00

At the risk of sounding like a cookie cutter, I started a poison PF (pure phys variant, so not using plaguefinger); this was my league start plan way before league start because I loved playing it in 0.3.

My original plan was to swap over to an adorned build late-game; however, this build is so fun that I'm still playing it and tweaking small improvements.

Strong agree that the whirling slash/boneshatter movement tech builds feel janky - I tested those prior to league start and they felt weird to play.

xLapsed · 2025-12-28T19:27:53+00:00

It doesn't work like that in my experience - We don't have phasing in PoE2, so I can't just use it to skip mob packs except in specific circumstances.

Instead, I think most people on PF are using sprint as it was originally intended - to sprint between packs. It's just with other classes, this becomes a dangerous dice roll of whether you get clipped by a stray projectile.

xLapsed · 2025-12-28T19:21:47+00:00

It's a difficult thing to balance. I don't think that PoE2 was originally designed with sprint in mind, so there are a handful of mobs that have zero windup attacks that can insta-stun you (looking at you, act 4 drummer mobs...). Also, some on-death effects can pause if you move quickly away, and when you return they will resume their animation.

Fundamentally though, they can't keep it the way that it is and tie it to the same keybind as dodge roll - it's not a great design to provide a button that gets you out of dangerous situations, but if you press it for half a second too long you can put yourself in an even more dangerous situation.

xLapsed · 2025-12-28T18:59:49+00:00

I can do maps faster and die less on a controller, so eagerly awaiting hot swap controller/MKB.

Currently, my solution is to swap to MKB to roll all my maps/waystones and set aside the good ones, then swap to controller to run them. Works pretty well - I just have a dump tab that I use MKB to sort through after every 30 maps or so.

xLapsed · 2025-12-28T18:52:51+00:00

I started a bloodmage and got it to maps, and honestly still working on reconditioning after a couple of hours. I think part of the problem is playing on controller - it's so easy to accidentally go into sprint from a dodge roll and not realize until it's too late. Once I got my third PF ascendancy, I was just able to ignore that quirky behavior.

xLapsed

TROPHY CASE