Pathfinder Poisonous Concoction Endgame Build

Introduction

With the sweeping balance changes to every system coming in Patch 0.2, it is nearly impossible for us to have confidence in existing, well tested guides. While we will do our best to get these updated as soon as possible, their current state may leave them unusable. Make sure to regularly check back to see if any changes have been made.

An amazingly fast endgame farmer, able to zoom through and clear multiple screens with a single button press. It’s also very affordable to put together. All but one of the required gear pieces can generally be found for 1 exalted orb.

This build will cover the base interactions for Poisonous Concoction, but also provide information on a variation of the build meant specifically for killing bosses as fast as possible.

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Strengths and Weaknesses

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Build Mechanics

Between Poisonous Concoction, Contagion and Decompose, a skill granted by the Unique Boots – Corpsewade, our ability to clear the entire screen is quite impressive. Once you’ve killed a couple enemies, Decompose will automatically trigger to create gas clouds that continue killing enemies very quickly. The downside to these boots is that they only provide 10% movement speed, which feels abysmally slow. To fix that, we use a unique chest piece, Queen of the Forest, which provides movement speed based on your evasion, and we stack quite a bit of evasion.

However, while the build is amazing at farming maps, it is quite weak at killing pinnacle bosses. There is an alternate version of the build, using Chaos Innoculation and slightly different gear, that is much better suited for bossing. There is detailed info about the build in our POB link below, and some notes about that variant at the end of this page.

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Skill Rotations

Execute the steps below to optimize damage against bosses.

1. Vine Arrow (before the boss becomes active)
2. Despair
3. Eye of Winter
4. Poisonous Concoction
5. Contagion
6. Repeat Poisonous Concoction/Vine Arrow until you need to reapply debuffs.
   

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Gameplay Tips

It is recommended that you use this build to farm maps, especially with Breach or Delirium applied, and save up or sell your Citadels, Breachstones, Audience with the King, etc.. If you don’t want to sell them, there is a slightly different version of the build that is much better at killing these bosses, but it is slower at clearing maps. It entails taking Chaos Innoculation on the passive tree, using the unique Ghostwrithe Chestpiece, and regular movement speed boots. We recommend saving up all these boss encounters, respeccing the build to kill them, then going back to this version for farming again.

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Skill and Support Gems

Poisonous Concoction is our main damage skill, but between Contagion and Decompose, we barely have to use it more than once or twice per screen of enemies. Especially during mechanics like Ritual, where we hardly need to move, Decompose will effectively kill everything for us.

The following Support Gems are listed in order of socket priority for each Skill.

Skill Gems	Support 1	Support 2	Support 3	Support 4	Support 5
Poisonous Concoction	Scattershot	Chaos Infusion	Chaos Mastery	Martial Tempo	Close Combat
Decompose	Deadly Poison	Comorbidity	Momentum	Bursting Plague	–
Contagion	Chaotic Freeze	Expanse	Magnified Effect	Arcane Tempo	–
Vine Arrow	Swift Affliction	Font of Rage	Font of Mana	–	–
Eye of Winter	Unleash	Withering Touch	Inspiration	–	–
Despair	Heightened Curse	Focused Curse	Hex Bloom (optional)	–	–

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Spirit Gems

The Spirit Gem setup requires 100 total Spirit. Completing King in the Mists on normal, and then Ignagduk, The Bog Witch in Normal and Cruel difficulty in the campaign rewards 100 base Spirit.

Spirit Gems	Support 1	Support 2	Support 3
Wind Dancer	Maim	Blind	Life Thief
Ghost Dance	Clarity	Fast Forward	–
Grim Feast (turn off on map bosses)	–	–	–
Alchemist’s Boon (turn on for map bosses)	–	–	–
Blink (Weapon Set 2)	Ingenuity	Second Wind	–

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Ascendancy

Pathfinder is our chosen Ascendancy, as this is how we unlock Poisonous Concoction. This skill is unique to the Pathfinder Ascendancy, no others have access to it.

Our leveling guide for Poisonous Concoction shows which Ascendancy points to take first, as there is a bit of a swap between your second and third Ascendancy points. However, by the time you have all four available, both builds are the same. You’ll want Poisonous Concoction, Contagious Concoction, Overwhelming Toxicity, and Traveller’s Wisdom.

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Passive Tree and Path of Building

If you haven’t used POB before, you can find a useful beginner’s guide here.

Path of Building is a build planner with helpful theorycrafting tools. Import the following URL into the app for advanced details and calculations on this Poisonous Concoction build. 

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Gear

The preferred gear for the build is listed below with affixes ranked in order of importance. Prioritize gear with the correct base stats and beneficial explicit affixes.

We have three required uniques for this build, but other than Queen of the Forest, they are pretty cheap. These are the Widowhail bow, Queen of the Forest chestpiece, and Corpsewade boots. A higher roll on Widowhail is recommended, but it will depend on your jewels as well. Each 50% of quiver effect gives another +1 level to our main skill, Poisonous Concoction, in combination with the +2 projectile skills roll on our quiver. Anything before the next 50% breakpoint has a negligible effect.

Equipment Slot and Base Stats	Prefixes	Suffixes
Helmet (Energy Shield base)	1. Maximum Energy Shield and Increased Energy Shield 2. Maximum Life	1. Resistances 2. Reduced attribute requirement and/or Intelligence (to meet helmet requirement)
Body Armor (Energy Shield)	Queen of the Forest Unique
Mainhand	Widowhail Unique Crude Bow
Quiver	1. Increased projectile speed 2. Any flat damage rolls to attacks (phys, fire, lightning or cold)	1. +2 level of all projectile skills 2. Attack speed 3. Dexterity
Ring	1. Increased Chaos Damage 2. +Evasion rating 3. Flat damage to attacks (phys, fire, lightning or cold)	1. Resistances 2. Chaos resistance 3. Increase rarity
Ring	Ming’s Heart unique Amethyst ring (not required, use two rare rings if you can’t cap resists yet otherwise)
Gloves (ES/Evasion base)	1. Increased Evasion/Energy shield 2. +Maximum Life 3. Flat damage to attacks	1. Resistances 2. Chaos Resistance 3. Increased Rarity
Belt (Fine Belt base)	1. +Maximum life 2. Charm Duration 3. Flask Mana recovery rate	1. +1/+2 charm slots 2. Reduced Flask charges used 3. Resistances 4. Increased Flask charges gained

Jewels

The beneficial affixes for Jewels are listed below, ranked in order of importance. Prioritize Rare Jewels with two prefixes and two suffixes. Emeralds have your ideal affixes, the first two listed, but a good Sapphire is also acceptable.

• Prefixes
  1. Increased Quiver Effect (to hit a 50% breakpoint with widowhail and passive tree)
  2. Increased Magnitude of Ailments/Poisons you inflict (both affixes do the same thing)
  3. Increased Chaos Damage (sapphire jewels)
  4. Increased Magnitude of Ailments you inflict (sapphire jewels)
• Suffixes
  1. Damaging Ailments Deal Damage x% Faster
  2. Increased Flask Charges Gained
  3. Gain % of Maximum Energy Shield as additional Stun Threshold (Sapphire jewels)
  4. Damaging Ailments Deal Damage x% faster (Sapphire Jewels)

Campaign Buffs

Take the Increased Charm Charges Gained from the Titan statue medallion choice.

For the Venom Draughts, in normal difficulty we recommend taking increased Elemental Ailment Threshold, although increased Stun Threshold is not bad either.

The second time you choose a Venom Draught, in Cruel difficulty, we recommend taking the Chaos Resistance.

For more information, take a look at our Campaign Difficulties and Permanent Stat Bonuses guide.

Weapon Swapping

It’s recommended you find a shield with the highest evasion rating that you can equip (be careful, as most high level bases have a high Dex and Str requirement), to put in your weapon set 2 slot. You may want it to have a ‘reduced attribute requirements’ roll on it and/or to find a 1h weapon with some +strength to help you equip it.

With the weapon set 2 skill points, you can then take some extra evasion nodes on the tree, which gives you a ‘super speed’ option when running between packs or backtracking in maps. This can be upwards of 20-30% more movement speed, depending on your gear. We also take some curse effect, curse duration and skill effect duration on weapon set 2, and set Despair to only cast on weapon set 2. You drop the Quiver Effect, Reduced Mana Flask Charges used, and some of the Chaos damage nodes to free up the points. This lets us apply a beefed up, and longer lasting, curse on bosses before swapping back to our main weapons for the rest of the fight.

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Flasks and Charms

For both your flasks, but especially the mana flask, you want the highest ‘Gains X charges per second’ suffix roll possible. We have some increased flask charges gained effect in the build, so the higher this roll, the more charges you will gain passively. As we use these charges for our main ability, it’s important for sustaining our mana flask charges, especially on map bosses.

When talking about your life flask, it’s less important. You could use almost any of the other suffixes, however try to avoid ‘Chance to gain a charge on killing an enemy’ as it is the worst option. We don’t have trouble sustaining flask charges while clearing, so it’s mostly for boss fights where you might run out of flask charges, and this affix does not really help there. Some map bosses have adds during the fight, but not all of them, and they often aren’t enough to refill many charges.

For our charms, we want stun and freeze immunity, as our lower life pool makes us a bit more susceptible to stuns. This means a Stone Charm and a Thawing Charm. The ideal prefix would be ‘Increased Duration’ but for suffixes there are a few options. ‘Reduced Charges used’, ‘Increased Charges Gained’ or ‘Gains X Charges Per Second’ would all be acceptable.

If you have a belt with +2 charm slots, you can use a Golden Charm in the 3rd slot for added rarity when killing rares and uniques. As this build is intended for fast farming, extra rarity will increase your profits per hour.

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Chaos Innoculation (CI) Bossing Variant

As stated at the start, while this build is very good and fast at farming maps (and map bosses), it does start to struggle with pinnacle bosses. For these encounters, we recommend respeccing some points and swapping a few pieces of gear. Namely, swapping Ghostwrithe for Queen of the Forest, and some 30-35% move speed boots (with decent evasion/ES, life and resists) for Corpsewade. The rest of your gear can mostly stay the same, though you may have to balance your resists a little bit, depending on your specific situation.

The main build wants decent Chaos Resist, as it does not have a huge life pool, but we no longer need any Chaos Resist rolls on our gear. As we are now immune to Chaos damage, you may want to swap a few of your other pieces as well. Life rolls are still pretty good, as Ghostwrithe converts 50% of it to Energy Shield before CI sets your life total to 1.

The skill tree for this variation is shown below.

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Changelog

March 28th, 2025: Guide created for Path of Exile II, Early Access