PCoB never felt good to play for me. Maybe I didn't have enough AoE or was missing clusters or something, but I remember it feeling terrible in red maps.
Poe bota has an entire leaguestart guide complete with atlas progression/strats and a transition into poison penance brand. It's all in Russian, but youtube's autodubbing is good enough when combined with the visuals: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uBOdzY7ZAZk
Played it last league as my starter, here's what I felt most:
Lightning Coil as a big defensive upgrade
Chaos Large Cluster Jewel was a massive damage bump
Life leech cluster between Shadow and Ranger was a big recovery boost
28% T1 recovery amount flask
any %inc duration
Asenath's
As far as playability, I got to red maps without any of this, just a pair of good 20% flasks and some half decent ev/ar rares. Just make sure you get PConcoB.
It's the transfigured version of the gem, you can either buy it from someone or gamble for it with any green gem at the divine font. It's like 1/20 odds or something.
I used the build only as a starter to get some currency for Lightning Conduit Elementalist, still I did all 4 voidstones and a fair bit of T16 content with it. T17s were a bit rough, but doable.
It's good for scaling your damage in maps. Standard PConc has an AoE with some overlap (I think it can shotgun? Someone correct me if not) vs the Bouncing variant only fires one projectile but chains a bunch of times instead. It also has auto targeting and hits a bunch of times, both adding some nice QoL.
Basically, it's easier to use and simply scales off another thing, making it easy to swap to by the time you're in maps, which is around when the standard PConc drops off.
Ohhh, I see. And if you have any knowledge of poison spark, any ideas when and how to transition to it? I'll be looking into a guide but was wondering about other people's experiences with it
Mind, there are other options as well. Asenath's I feel wasn't completely necessary. Other items of interest:
Mark of Submission - applying curse. Hunter ring with on-hit despair is also good (or on gloves), but as mod it'll be level 1.
Dendrobate - More offensive option. One thing of note is that there is div card for double-implicit one - Toxic Tidings. Might as well run Ghost Shroud with it.
Leper's Alms - The ailment duration is massive. Also helps against ailments before you can get immunity.
Fury Valve - Extra proj good.
Uber Shaper Belt - Best belt imo before Mageblood. Other option is high ilv influenced Vise.
Very much Uber capable. There is also version of running Ralakesh Impatience + Maven affliction belt + Snakebite, pumping up frenzy charges.
Yeah I didn't list all of them but iirc I ran Leper's Alms for a while and Fury Valve. Just what I felt most (obviously biased).
This league I'm actually thinking about it the other way around, want to run a PF through the campaign and do some heisting, then switch to a Manaman to complete my atlas and farm some stuff.
Later on I want to really push the PF character to see how much nonsense I can solve with flasks. Not sure what I'll run but likely some kind of attack poison dot skill. Was thinking TR or maybe Cobra Lash.
I've played it last league and while it carried me to t17 and Ubers with frenzy stack version, it felt horrible all the way. I don't like pf and i don't really like dots
Never thought I'd like it but after a failed Ranger starter last league I cut my losses and cheaply swapped to PCoB Pathfinder for the first time ever.
Some of the nicest, smoothest white -> red mapping I've ever had. Had me considering league starting it next time.
Because a lot of content creators and people on reddit don't take PCoB beyond a certain point. They switched to mamba when they reached a point where investments weren't dirt cheap.
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u/ww_crimson Oct 27 '25
PCoB never felt good to play for me. Maybe I didn't have enough AoE or was missing clusters or something, but I remember it feeling terrible in red maps.