Poison Ranger - Begginer Friendly (Updated 18/12)

[Cachorra Fêmea]

Hey!

You like poison and are looking for a simple yet effective build in PoE2? Try this!

🌿 Core Playstyle:

Spam Toxic Cloud to cover the battlefield with poison zones.
Fire poison arrows to melt enemies as they move through the gas.
Keep your distance and watch your damage-over-time do the work!

🎯 Tips:

Equip Gas Arrow with Scattershot for wider poison coverage.
Focus on Physical Damage first, then poison-enhancing mods.
Manage mana carefully—this build loves spamming skills!
Perfect for beginners who love long-range combat with a touch of chaos. Give it a try and let the poison flow!

https://mobalytics.gg/poe-2/profile/9ee67bfd-2eec-4e82-80c6-e248d9e67203/builds/ae5ba605-2ce5-4861-8a61-7a99439dadce


If you have any tips or suggestions to me, please, let me know


Note: I post a video in the build link showing how it performs in the endgame.

[Shade30Seven]

god i hope they change the pic for pathfinder, in my op i think it looks horrible

[Cachorra Fêmea]

Originally posted by Shade30Seven:

Originally posted by Cachorra Fêmea:

You have any suggestions? I in am Endgame now, the damage is very very good, but I sense myself like a glasscannon

Well you're play-style may be different than mine so a few clusters you've chosen is subjective due to play style! theres no right or wrong here

However whats not subjective is the waste of points with some of you're path options on the skill tree. I can count 9 points right off the rip that are serving you absolutely no purpose except to attributes! you could easily cut those 9 points out of the tree to get yourself more damage or more sustain,

Also there a few other things here but i will just share my own build with you so you as well can critique mine. Im not finished with it currently im still ironing out the some kinks it and waiting for some patches.

I found 4 traits you are talking about, I will make a change here on build, thank you sir

[thestile]

I'll look forward to trying that. I found a pretty cool unique bow that makes me really want to start a ranger build.

I'm wondering if he will be like the mercenary, I haven't seen any footage of the ranger combat.

[Cachorra Fêmea]

Originally posted by thestile:

I'll look forward to trying that. I found a pretty cool unique bow that makes me really want to start a ranger build.

I'm wondering if he will be like the mercenary, I haven't seen any footage of the ranger combat.

The Ranger is faster than the Mercenary, although sometimes it might feel less brute-force. With this build, it's really easy to stun bosses, so the gameplay can be quite similar to the Mercenary, but with much more mobility.

[SidneyBoo]

Originally posted by bonewax21:

better than lightning arrow? I thought that was the meta ranger build at present

No, lightning arrow is much stronger than poison. poison is really bad atm in poe 2. ur better off going bleed bow.

[Lyote]

Originally posted by Shade30Seven:

god i hope they change the pic for pathfinder, in my op i think it looks horrible

If it makes you feel better, the art for Infernalist shows the Witch spawning the flaming skulls from Raging Spirits.
A Sorcerer buff XD

On topic though...
I didn't look at metas or guides for my Ranger tbh.
I started off wanting to go more on Crossbow but ended up leaning way harder into poison.
Build ended up being:

- Poisonburst Arrow(Corrosion, Comorbidity)
- freeze wall crossbow shot (need to test with Fortress to make the V into a ring)
- Toxic Growth
- Gas Arrow
- Ripwire Turret (later will be Artillery)
- Gas Grenade (Scattershot)
- Plaguebearer spirit buff
- Arctic Armor

Gameplay is using the freeze wall crossbow shot to limit mob movement along with the Ripwire maiming and pinning stuff so i can keep them in the gas clouds longer.
Once the gas fields are up, Toxic Growth destroys healthbars lol

[Ghost | Severage]

Originally posted by Cachorra Fêmea:

Originally posted by Medicles:

Now here comes a question. How effective is it to go for Physical damage when Cultist Bows are arguably the best weapon choice for Poison Ranger and they come with Chaos Damage immediately?

I thought about going for Physical early on and then later respecc completely to Chaos, but i could also just go for Poison early on until i get Cultist bows (which start in act 3) and then go for Chaos, ditching Physical completely. I am just not sure how often i could get a Cultist Bow upgrade until endgame. It may be more efficient to go for early Physical damage and then change to Chaos in the endgame.

I wouldn’t recommend going for Chaos Damage on Poison Archer Build. You’ll spend a lot of points to increase Chaos Damage, but it doesn't actually scale your poison damage in PoE 2—it’s your Physical Damage that does. From my experience, focusing on Physical Damage early on worked better for me, and I found it more efficient. I tried making a Chaos-focused build to use the Cultist Bow, but it ended up much weaker than the Physical Damage version. Physical Damage buffs the poison much more effectively, so I found it to be a better choice for a stronger build overall.

It's stated ingame that poison damage is affected by chaos dmg and phys dmg and increases the magnitude of your inflicted poison.

I'm running a hybrid phys/chaos poison ranger and it works great, tho I have a small mana problem atm due to the high lvl of my gems that I have to fix.

[Cachorra Fêmea]

Originally posted by Ghost | Severage:

Originally posted by Cachorra Fêmea:

I wouldn’t recommend going for Chaos Damage on Poison Archer Build. You’ll spend a lot of points to increase Chaos Damage, but it doesn't actually scale your poison damage in PoE 2—it’s your Physical Damage that does. From my experience, focusing on Physical Damage early on worked better for me, and I found it more efficient. I tried making a Chaos-focused build to use the Cultist Bow, but it ended up much weaker than the Physical Damage version. Physical Damage buffs the poison much more effectively, so I found it to be a better choice for a stronger build overall.

It's stated ingame that poison damage is affected by chaos dmg and phys dmg and increases the magnitude of your inflicted poison.

I'm running a hybrid phys/chaos poison ranger and it works great, tho I have a small mana problem atm due to the high lvl of my gems that I have to fix.

When I tried fully focusing on Chaos damage, I didn’t quite like it because I had to invest more points than I would with Physical damage, and the result seemed weaker to me. It felt like I needed a much more specific build, which might not be as beginner-friendly. A build focusing purely on Physical damage and poison magnitude might be more enjoyable. But thanks for the info buddy

[Cachorra Fêmea]

A quick demo video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EPEK2N38pPo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e_DGZlS_Ao4

[tinklepee]

20 hours into the campaign and my poison does 100 dps. I want to kill myself

[Shade30Seven]

Originally posted by tinklepee:

20 hours into the campaign and my poison does 100 dps. I want to kill myself

I mean what kinda poison are you shooting them with? love poisons? youre doing something right for that to happen

[Cachorra Fêmea]

Originally posted by tinklepee:

20 hours into the campaign and my poison does 100 dps. I want to kill myself

My wife carried me a lot in the beginning—we all struggle at the start! Don’t forget something I did: always keep your weapon updated. Merchants sell much better weapons early on, so make sure to check them out!

[Ben]

Originally posted by bonewax21:

better than lightning arrow? I thought that was the meta ranger build at present

Who cares about "meta" ?

You should try using Fire Wall to help detonate the poison gaz from Gaz Arrow. And you're also adding another burning DOT to the other DOTs.

[5P4RK4]

Originally posted by Cachorra Fêmea:

Originally posted by Medicles:

See, this is a problem. I am not getting proper information about this on the internet either. Only knowledge i have comes from other people on Reddit or the official forum claiming that Poison damage is increased through Chaos damage. I guess i will just have to try out myself.

So if you arent going for Chaos damage, what else are you pumping? Do you have any kind of mana problems and if yes, do you use flask or have you used mana nodes?

Yeah, exactly. I see many controversal information about chaos and poison, but if you figure it out please tell me more, because for me chaos don't do a small diference. About my focus, is all about projectile and physical damage, only 1 level in any type of damage boost my poison a considerable amount. About Mana I use a lot, but I don't sense a HUGE priority in mana regen, I never see my bottle empty, so is alright.

If you read the tooltip on poison it lays it out clearly but it is not intuitive. Poison scales from chaos or physical damage of HITS, just like bleed scales off phys hits because it is an affliction.

So adding flat chaos damage to a physical hit will scale it accordingly, as will using a chaos damage bow.

But, the thing is with '12% increased chaos damage' nodes in the chaos wheels. If you do a physical hit, this won't scale your damage at all even though the poison is in chaos, because the physical damage hit wasn't impacted. But adding projectile, bow, phys (or ele if you are converting that), etc. damage will. increased chaos damage will only do as much as you have chaos damage on hit.

These wheels are only worth taking if you are using a cultist bow. The only thing that is really doing anything is the +chaos skills level and a bit of help on your vine.

The exception to this is the pure chaos notable which adds % chaos damage to other damage, which will scale the hit. This makes a good anoint.

Enemies do still resist the poison with chaos res, so wither and the chaos damage curse are worth getting and do a lot.

[RodHull]

Originally posted by Cachorra Fêmea:

I wouldn’t recommend going for Chaos Damage on Poison Archer Build. You’ll spend a lot of points to increase Chaos Damage, but it doesn't actually scale your poison damage in PoE 2—it’s your Physical Damage that does. From my experience, focusing on Physical Damage early on worked better for me, and I found it more efficient. I tried making a Chaos-focused build to use the Cultist Bow, but it ended up much weaker than the Physical Damage version. Physical Damage buffs the poison much more effectively, so I found it to be a better choice for a stronger build overall.

Chaos does scale poison, as in a bow that 50 base chaos will do identical poison damage as a bow that does 50 base physical. Read the tooltips poison damage is based on 20% of the physical and chaos damage on the base hit. Now granted you are better off working with physical cause its easier to get on the nodes, and easier to get on bows. But chaos does work for poison builds.