So I just spent the past couple of days getting a generic poison Marksmen poison build using the Acidfletch - Unique Serpent Bow - Bow - Last Epoch Item Database unique and I realized that one of its major selling points, i.e. “100% of Hail of Arrows Damage converted to Poison” is pointless because there already happens to be a node on the Hail of Arrows tree that converts all of the damage to acid damage (called Acid Rain).
While there may be an argument that you can save getting the Acid Rain node with this unique (saving some points?) there are a few problems with this sentiment.
Acid Rain is already in a very convenient spot on the tree which requires very little travelling so you are not saving a lot. Ontop of this its also (obviously from a design perspective) right infront of the Venom Arrows node which provides poison and since the whole point of an acid build is to poison enemies you are probably going to be wanting to get this node so you are forced to get Acid Rain anyways
Since this unique is meant to convert “all” damage to poison you could argue that you can stack other damage sources on Hail of Arrows and to take advantage of double dipping however this doesn’t really work since any of the damage conversion nodes on the Hail of Arrows tree are unique (i.e. getting Crystal Arrows wil cancel Acid Rain). Ontop of this none of the damage conversion nodes actually add damage, rather it adds stuff such as chill.
I am having a suspicion that this may be an oversight (i.e. the item was designed without Acid Rain in mind)
The unique is more meant for a hybrid hit/poison playstyle, since it grants armour shred and armour shred effect, which is medicore if you only use HoA.
So if you use that unique you will most likely go a hit route and just use HoA as a “support skill”
If this is the case then its mediocre (at best) for achieving this rile, mainly because Rain of Arrows is a bad “support skill” unless you give it poison, the DPS is just going to be too low.
I mean I guess you can do something interesting like getting Crystal Arrows, giving you an AoE slow on the skill but it still doing poison damage but then again you can just get the Pin Down slow nodes which achieves a similar effect. Ontop of this (and as you said) the unique is also designed to work with physical damage however the unique also converts the Hail of Arrows from physical to poison which means you are just going to spread your damage thin for HoA unless you focus on poison.
I guess if the “Rain of Arrows” node on the passive tree provided “Hail of Arrows” instead of a cut down version of the skill, this unique can then open up providing a 5th skill option that can be auto cast but apart from this it seems to gimmicky to actually be useful (unless I am missing something).
If would be very careful calling a skill “mediocre”.
I just throw in a few words:
Crit Vulnerability, Frailty, Dusk Shroud and even more Armour Shred.
You could literally take all 4 of those things inside of HoA’s Skill Spec Tree at once
I don’t know if you can call that a “mediocre support skill”.
You can completely ignore the poison convert and poison damage on the unique and it’s still a very cool item.
This is the problem, to be clear I am not saying that the item as a whole is pointless just this part of it. In fact if Acid Rain didn’t even exist on Hail Of Arrows then I wouldn’t be saying this.
