Poisonous Concoction Pathfinder PoE- Gear Progression (2024)

Milestone 1 - Get decent Rare Gear

After the campaign, you encounter a steep difficulty increase. This becomes a problem unless you upgrade your suboptimal gear into something more appropriate. This is where random Currency you dropped during the campaign comes in. Spend all Chaos Orbs you have on gear upgrades so you can progress through the game.

You are looking for Life on every single gear piece, as well as enough Resistances to cap them at 75%. A good trick to get some Life on your items is using: Screaming Essence of Greeds on items that are already appropriately linked and coloured.

Look out for Accuracy on Gloves, Rings or on your Quiver and make sure you have 100% chance to hit at all times in the character sheet. Note: Your Accuracy decreases with levels since enemies get stronger, so going for more than less pays off later.

Milestone 2 - 100% Chance to Poison

Now is the time to have 100% Chance to Poison. Go to your Character Tab by pressing "c" and look at your Poisonous Concoction sheet. Under "Offense" it shows the "Chance to Poison". If it isn't at 100%, reevaluate your build.

To make this easier, here are all the sources of Increased Poison Chance you should have by now:

• 40% innately on Poisonous Concoction
• 10% from Poison Damage and Chance
• 15% from Toxic Strikes
• 15% from Poison Chance
• 10% from Claw Attack Speed and Poison Chance
• 10% from Claw Ailment Damage and Poison Chance

Milestone 3 - Get your Sockets, Colours and Links in order!

After you have some starter gear, make sure you can use all your Gems. You need to use your Jeweller's Orbs, Orb of Fusings and Chromatic Orbs to adjust your items appropriately.

Use the Skill Gem Section to check if you have the right colours on your items!

Milestone 4 - Tabula Rasa

Getting an early six-link can be expensive, but Tabula Rasa provides a cheaper solution. Going from a 4-link to a 6-link almost doubles your damage, and is therefore a complete gamechanger. It does not have any defensive mods however, so until you replace it you'll be vulnerable.

In order to get the Currency to buy a Tabula Rasa, use the Chaos Orb Recipe or farm some Heists.

Milestone 5 - Mark of Submission

Mark of Submission is simply incredible. It's cheap, easy to use and applies one of your Curses automatically, giving you more time to place Ballistas or dodge enemy attacks. The Curse of choice is Despair, which you socket into the Ring! Other sources of automatic cursing significantly reduce the power of your Curse, because they only triggers a Level 1 version of it. Mark of Submission makes it possible for you to apply a FULLY LEVELED Despair with Quality, making it a must-have to beat highly resistant enemies, even in lategame scenarios!

Milestone 6 - Flasks

Next inspect your flasks and see if they are adequate for the content you are farming:

• 2x Divine Life Flask
• Quicksilver Flask
• Granite Flask
• Jade Flask

Use Orb of Transmutations, Orb of Alterations and Orb of Augmentations to craft some important Suffix mods onto your 3 utility flasks:

• Increased Armour during Flask effect
• Increased Evasion during Flask effect
• Increased Movement Speed during Flask effect

Prefixes are not super important right now, but check the gear sets if you want to craft perfect flasks.

For Life Flasks we want our Life Flask to have extra Amount Recovered, similar to this one: Saturated Divine Life Flask of the Cure.

Milestone 7 - Check your Accuracy Rating

Damage doesn't mean anything if you can't hit enemies with it. Open the Character Menu by pressing c, then go to Poisonous Concoction and check your "Chance to hit" there. It should be between 98 and 100% at all times.
Other than Acuity, you also need Accuracy on Gear (Jewelry and Gloves).

If you have Mana Reservation for it, you can use Precision. Be careful though, it reserves more and more mana the more you level it up!

Milestone 1 - Get a better 6-Link

Tabula Rasa is a fine early game Unique. However, in order to get our Defenses up to midgame standards, we need a 6-Link Body Armour with actual stats like Armour, Evasion, Life and Spell Suppression.

To do this, you want to purchase a 6-Linked Body Armour from Trade and then craft it yourself.
Look out for base-types that have both Armour and Evasion, the higher the better. Evasion is especially important, since other base-types can't roll Spell Suppression.

Lets assume you bought a 6-Link like this: Triumphant Lamellar
Now, we craft the Body Armour with a Screaming Essence of Greed. This secures you a Life roll, however the rest of the mods are random.

The stats you are looking for are (in order of importance):

• Spell Suppression
• Physical Damage Reduction
• Any Resistances
• Extra Armour and Evasion

If you don't like the outcome, just apply another Essence until you do, depending on how much Currency you have at your disposal.

Milestone 2 - Despair on Hit Ring

Enemies with high Chaos Resistance are the worst thing to kill for this build. To solve that, we use Despair as our curse. However, using it on every single enemy is annoying, so we automate the process with a Ring.

The easiest way BY FAR to aquire the mod Curse Enemies on hit with Despair, with x% increased Effect is to buy it. Find out more about Trading here.

If you understand how Harvest works, you have the option to craft the Ring yourself.
Take a Ring with a Hunter Influence and use "Reforge a Normal, Magic or Rare item as a Rare item with random modifiers, including a Caster modifier" to force a Caster Modifier. This gives you a good chance to get Despair on Hit!

Milestone 3 - Decent Rare Amulet with Anoint

At this point you want to invest into a decent Amulet, so you can anoint it without wasting Currency.
The stats you are looking for are (in order of importance):

1. +1 to all Skill Gems
2. +1 to all Chaos Skill Gems
3. % Chaos Damage over Time Multiplier
4. + to Maximum Life

+ to level mods are incredibly hard to get at this stage, but you only need one of them. The reason is that at Level 22, Poisonous Concoction increases from 9% to 10% Life Flask scaling, meaning you can achieve it by having a Level 21 paired with a +1 Level from the Amulet.

At the end, go to Cassia and anoint the amulet with Fatal Toxins, which costs you 1xSilver Oil, 1xViolet Oil and 1xClear Oil.

Milestone 4 - Spell Suppression Gear

Once you progress your Atlas far enough, enemies become more dangerous, especially everything that deals Spell Damage. This is where Spell Suppression comes in. Whenever you Suppress Spell Damage, you take 50% less damage from that source. This means at 100% chance to Suppress Spell Damage, you only take half damage from all spell sources. You can get Spell Suppression from:

• Gear, notably Gloves, Boots and Body Armour.
• On the Passive Skill Tree, by taking Magebane, Reflexes and Quickstep.
• Eldritch Implicit on Gloves.

You can delay this step if you feel comfortable as is, just make sure to come back to this milestone once the difficulty curve catches up to you!

Milestone 5 - Flagellant's Flasks

Craft your Utility Flasks using Orb of Alteration to have the Suffixes we mentioned already which are:

• Increased Armour during Flask effect
• Increased Evasion during Flask effect
• Increased Movement Speed during Flask effect

However, on top of these, you now need the fitting Prefix: Gain 3 Charges when you are Hit by an Enemy.

For this you need Flasks with an Itemlevel of at least 80. Then you craft them using Orb of Alterations and Orb of Augmentations until you get the desired mods. It doesn't matter which of the Flasks has what Suffix, just make sure that they all have the Flagellant's Prefix. Afterwards, use your Crafting Bench and enchant your 3 Utility Flasks with Used when Charges reach full.

This automates your Flasks while giving you instant Life Recovery whenever you get hit by using Master Surgeon (more on this in the Key Build Information section).

Milestone 6 - Large Cluster Jewel

In order to get the most out of our Passive Tree, we expand it with Cluster Jewels. To do this you'll need a Large Cluster Jewel with Chaos Damage and 8 Passives from the Trade Website with this search. If the 8 Passives are too expensive, try 9 for now and upgrade to 8 later.

Apply these Fossils using Resonators that you can buy here.
Do this until you get a combination of 3 Notables that are decent. Getting the perfect combination is rare and you can come back to it later, but this would be it:

• Unholy Grace (most important one)
• Unholy Grace
• Unwaveringly Evil

Milestone 7 - 2x Medium Cluster Jewels

Now that you have a Large Cluster Jewel, you can expand your Passive Tree further by adding 2 Medium Cluster Jewels. You want the ones with increased Damage over Time.

If you can get a good combination of mods from the Trading Website already, you're done. Otherwise, you have to craft them by using Orb of Alterations, Orb of Augmentations and Regal Orbs until you get 2 good Notables.

The best Jewel Setup possible would be the following:

Jewel 1: Flow of Life + Circling Oblivion

Jewel 2: Flow of Life + Circling Oblivion

The only real bad node you can hit is "Haemorrhage", otherwise all of them are at least ok.
Make sure you get the best possible Cluster Jewel Setup as quickly as possible. If you can't, settle for a budget alternative for now!

Milestone 8 - Eldritch Implicits

Your Gloves, Boots and Body Armour can all have 2 Eldritch Implicits each. These Implicits can be added by applying Searing Exarch and Eater of Worlds currency.

Eldritch Currency can be found from Altar Rewards in Maps after choosing either the Searing Exarch or Eater of Worlds Beacon on the Map Device. They have tiers, for example the lowest tier currencies are: Lesser Eldritch Ember and Lesser Eldritch Ichor. If you don't like an outcome, just roll over it with another Eldritch Currency. Don't go overboard on rerolling, you'll have to redo the Implicits later anyways.
Here are some good outcomes to remember, in order of importance:

Gloves:
Searing Exarch: Attack Speed or Chaos Damage over Time Multiplier.
Eater of Worlds: Mostly Spell Suppression.

Body Armour:
Searing Exarch: Effect of non-Curse Auras, Flasks have increased Effect, Chaos Damage, any Maximum Resistance mod.
Eater of Worlds: Determination/Grace Aura Effect.

Boots:
Other than Movement or Action Speed, there's not that much to get here. Stick with the first thing that does anything for your build for now.

Milestone 9 - Check your Gear for Weaknesses

At this point, we are moving into big and expensive endgame upgrades, so make sure you don't have any gear pieces that could be easily upgraded. Resistance Caps, Spell Suppression, Poison Chance and Accuracy Cap should be second nature to you at this point and should be checked after you shuffle your gear around!

Milestone 1 - Awakened Support Gems

Awakened Gems are strictly better versions of their normal counterparts.

The earlier you buy these the better, since they require an immense amount of experience to level up:

• Awakened Greater Multiple Projectiles Support
• Awakened Unbound Ailments Support
• Awakened Vicious Projectiles Support
• Awakened Void Manipulation Support

Note: Make sure that your Gems have Quality by applying Gemcutter's Prisms to them. This is especially important on your Main Skill Setup.

Milestone 2 - Tailwind/Onslaught Boots

You can make endgame Boots by combining 2 mods using an Awakener's Orb.

The first item you need is Boots with You have Tailwind if you have dealt a Critical Strike Recently and NO OTHER INFLUENCE MODS.

The second item you need is Boots with 8-10% chance to gain Onslaught for 4 seconds on Kill and EXACTLY 1 OTHER INFLUENCED MOD. Then, use an Orb of Dominance to have a 50% chance to upgrade the Onslaught Mod. If you hit, the Boots are ready, if you don't, try again.

Now, combine the 2 Boots with an Awakener's Orb. The outcome keeps the Base-Type of the item you clicked last, so see make sure that's the better base. After combining them you'll have Boots that look like this: New Item + 2-4 random Affixes.

Check if you have an open Prefix and your Suffixes are filled on your Item (If they are not filled, do so with an Exalted Orb). After that, craft Suffixes cannot be Changed and use a Veiled Chaos Orb to reforge all Prefixes.

Now you should be left with a Veiled Modifier and 0-1 other Mods on your Item. Craft + Maximum Life on your Crafting Bench to block that roll from occurring with your Veiled Modifier. Then unveil the item, which almost always results in you getting % increased Movement Speed + an additional modifier.

At the end, craft + Maximum Life on your Item and you are done. It should now look something like this: New Item.

Milestone 3 - Helm Upgrade with Enchant

Now we want a Helmet with the Helm Enchant Poisonous Concoction has 24% increased Area of Effect. This might be expensive to get on your The Gull, so I'd recommend switching to a Rare alternative at this point.

Milestone 4 - Other small Improvements:

Now we get to Poisonous Concoction endgame, which is where it's weaknesses come to the forefront. This skill is absurdly good early but simply lacks the "crazy Unique Items" and power spikes later. Not needing to worry about a weapon early was an upside, now it is a downside, since upgrading weapons is one of the premier ways to upgrade attack based builds.

However, you are a Ranger, so what a lot of people do at this point is respec into endgame attack based builds that focus on speed. These will not be covered here, and instead we will push this build further. It's definitely possible, but requires a lot of finetuning.

Here is a list of improvements to your Rare Gear:

• Get a Shield with Socketed Gems have 30% increased Mana Reservation Efficiency to fit another aura into your build. Use an Awakener's Orb to get Recover 5% of Life when you Block on top. The way Awakener's Orb works is described in the "Tailwind/Onslaught" Boots section above. This is an example of how a Shield like that looks like: New Item
• Start filling out your 2-Point Jewels. The stats you are looking for is %increased Maximum Life and everything that increases your damage (see Build Scaling section).
• Check that your Gloves have % increased Attack Speed and +% to Chaos Damage over Time Multiplier (implicit).
• Revisit your Body Armour. You could now use Deafening Essence of Greed to get a higher Life Roll. Use them repeatedly until you get something better than you had before that you are happy with. It also has to include a high amount of Spell Suppression.
• Replace your Belt with a Stygian Vise with high Life, Strength and either Flask mods or Resistances. For the Abyss Jewel, use anything that has high amounts of + to Maximum Life, Resistances and Attack Speed.
• Improve your Rings by crafting on Vermillion Ring bases. Revisit the Despair on Hit Ring Milestone but this time don't settle for the first Ring you hit. Try to get something with useful stats.
• Apply Fertile Catalysts to increase your Life on your Rings and Noxious Catalysts on your Amulet to increase your Chaos Damage over Time Multiplier.

You've reached the end of our Milestones, congratulations!

Every upgrade beyond this point is not simple enough to serve you in a static format like this. This is because most of your upgrades going forward heavily depends on the choices you made. However, that doesn't mean that your journey ends here. If you want to go further, check out other people's versions of the build on poe.ninja. They give great insights and new creative ideas!