Conc's Toxic Rain Occultist 3.6 League Start

[Concillian]

Occultist passive tree & leveling strategy

The Occultist is a good choice for Toxic Rain because of how much Chaos damage & multi is nearby. 3.6 added some increased AoE nodes as well and Energy shield is a good match to the toxic rain playstyle (get hit, run away and avoid damage while your ES recharges)

I am leveling under the assumption that I will switch to CI early. Perhaps as early as Act 6, hopefully by Act 8, and latest Act 10.

The build is depending on auras of Discipline + Clarity + Purity of Elements to make league start gearing very easy. The tree & ascendancy provides us with LOTS of offense, way more than my raider had last league, and I don't anticipate needing an offensive aura. I may choose to drop some tree damage for a defensive curse if necessary, but I don't think it will be necessary.

1st and 2nd Ascendancy are the energy shield & recharge specific ones that help us get our energy shield up and running: Wicked Ward ---> Vile Bastion

3rd & 4th ascendancy are large DPS boosts: Void Beacon ---> Withering Presence

I think there is a good argument for going the curse route of Profane Bloom --> Malediction, but for this character I'm not choosing that route. You could easily go this route with some different reservation skills and gearing. Exploding curses are GREAT for map clear, but you'll find that Toxic Rain is pretty good on it's own.

Toxic Rain is not offered to Witch as a reward, nor is it available for purchase until Act 3 library. I plan to get around this by running a range to level 12 / Nessa quest and then stashing the gem for my Witch to use. This is an unfortunate way of doing things, but I think I'm fast enough at act 1 that this should only be ~30 minutes of diversion.

Before level 12 you can use Blight, but Freezing pulse & frost bomb are easier to use while moving through Act 1 quickly, in my opinion. You won't be picking up any chaos damage before you get level 12, so it doesn't really matter what gem you choose to use before level 12.

On the tree, path out of witch via energy shield, and head for the big +30 DEX node so you can start using a good selection of bows. Also take the +30 STR node, just so we can use whatever gear we come across. We'll be short on STR and will likely need to keep this node even in endgame gear.

Continue in the same direction towards the Chaos Damage cluster with 'Atrophy'. Get there through the Life / ES nodes, as we will be hybrid life & ES for a while.

With Atrophy, come back and get the AoE nodes near the center of witch to unlock efficiency in your damage (Blast Radius), and head for the Increased attack speed notable outside shadow: Coordination, taking more hybrid life / ES and some increased AoE along the way.

At this point the tree looks like this ~ level 30-35:

Now grab the DPS nodes 'Growth and Decay & the hybrid ES & life nodes 'Melding' that we pathed by already. Now we get attack speed near Scion, 'Harrier'. Get the jewel socket if you have some attack speed to put there, skip it if you don't have a decent jewel. Should have the first ascendancy about then, and damage should be feeling okay, so we go back to defense and utility -- 'Arcane Will' and 'Foresight' are both 2 pointers near the starting point.

[https://www.pathofexile.com/fullscreen-p...HH5N_6z]So here we are at level 50ish[/url]:

Now we travel up near CI & get the flat ES nodes. We're here so we can switch first couple zones of Act 8 where there is a lot of chaos damage and Doedre Darktongue, a heavy, heavy Chaos damage boss. refund CI after Doedre. Then travel down at Trickster for more damage and ES with 'Void Barrier' & 'Method to the Madness' DPS nodes. You'll welcome those DEX and STR nodes too. We get some aura bonuses from 'Influence'... at this point I was running Purity of Elements, Discipline and a low level Clarity, all of which make it super easy to gear as we go, you can choose a specific Purity if you are lacking in one particular resist type, or ended up with a lot of gear with one particular resist type on it. It doesn't hurt to level multiple purity aura gems if you have spare skill gem slots, so you can use whatever you need that fits your gear options.

Then we atart pathing up therough the middle of Witch through the gem slot in the direction of 'Corruption' and 'Unnatural Calm'

This should put us at ~entering Blood Aqueducts or so.

Now actually get those points, take whichever you feel you need, defense or damage first. Now we re-adjust the tree over by the wheel outside of trickster to make some more efficient ES nodes easier to get. It takes a couple points in travel nodes, then some refunding to make the pathing slightly different. This is in prep for getting some full ES gear and switching over to CI. When switching, refund some slightly less efficient hybrid life / ES nodes for some slightly more efficient nodes that also give small other bonses (Evasion scaling and ES & mana regen). Start taking jewel slots with DEX traveling to make gearing even easier & jewels will give us more attack speed, which will smooth out the feel of everything in addition to adding DPS.

Should also be picking up the 3rd ascendancy in this timeframe (Vile Bastion)

So we look like this ~75-80ish as we are preparing for maps

From here on out, our primary framework is pretty much done, we get jewels and pick up some minor other nodes. You can get less jewels and more ES if you like, or less jewels and slide over to Fatal Toxins for more DOT DPS, there are several routes to go. Play it based on how the attack speed & mana regen feels how many jewels you get, but at least the jewels that take DEX and attack speed traveling.

Here is one possible level 91 tree (7 jewels, alternately you can do 6 jewels and get Fatal Toxins, for example)

You probably don't need the +30 DEX anymore, and can refund that. You WILL need the +30 STR and even more on your gear or jewels.