PoE 3.25 Scourge Arrow of Menace Pathfinder Build

Do you like to use the Scourge Arrow of Menace in PoE 3.25 to great effect? If you do, then you definitely need to read further! That is because we are going to talk about a build that utilizes this Transfigured Gem in an unorthodox yet effective way.

This attack skill gem can melt enemies with potent poisons that are further enhanced with the choice of ascendancy class for this build. Although it is not a league starter, the items that this build uses are relatively affordable and accessible even in the first week of a new league.

So, if you are interested in playing a build that relies on deadly poisons to kill enemies, then we advise that you read this article to completion. This is our ultimate build guide for the Scourge Arrow of Menace Pathfinder in Path of Exile 3.25 Settlers of Kalguur League!

Basics

The star of the show is the Transfigured Gem, Scourge Arrow of Menace. The main difference between the transfigured version and the original attack skill gem is that it is not a channeling skill. This allows for a more active playstyle, whether you are using it yourself or when linking it with Ballista Totems.

In Patch 3.25, the Scourge Arrow of Menace has its effectiveness of base and added damage buffed from 125% to 162%. However, take note that the gem no longer has innate added chaos damage. Still, that is easy to address with gear and support gems.

In addition, Divine Blessing Support has been deleted, which means that you now have to sacrifice between Malevolence or Grace. It is up to you whether you want more damage or more survivability.

Although Grinding Gear Games reintroduced the Poisonberry Tincture in Path of Exile: Settlers of Kalguur, it still does not benefit the build in any way. This is because the Tinctures now only affect melee weapons. You do have the option of purchasing a Forbidden Flame and Forbidden Flesh jewel to take "Seasoned Hunte" from the new Warden ascendancy class, but then you will sacrifice two jewel sockets in the process. Hence, you are still going to use Wilma's Requital.

For the uninitiated, Wilma's Requital is a unique helmet that lets you summon one more totem at the cost of forgoing the ability to damage enemies yourself. If you think this is a downside, it is not. If anything, you will gain more benefits from employing a totem playstyle because you will focus your attention on survival and nothing else.

For the rings, you will now use the Circle of Nostalgia rather than the Precursor's Emblem. This is to provide your totems with a much higher chance to inflict poisons on hit. All of the new mandatory items will be discussed in the appropriate sections of the build guide.

Now, the gem itself converts 60% of your physical damage to chaos damage, but you want to increase that to get the most out of it. Hence, you will use the Darkscorn unique bow. This bow contains some pretty good modifiers that complement the build really well — all without having to dabble into crafting.

You still do need to craft your quiver, though. Luckily for you, we have a comprehensive crafting guide, which is your ultimate resource for all things crafting in Path of Exile.

In addition, the Scourge Arrow of Menace Pathfinder is a Frenzy Charge stacker, so you can greatly improve the damage of this build by stacking as many Frenzy Charges as you can. This is where things could get expensive, but the good news is that you can deem the "Frenzy Charge" items as upgrades, meaning, you can get them later down the line.

Despite the relatively low amount of HP, this build is deceptively tanky, particularly when you are able to get the Progenesis. Because of the choice of ascendancy class, you need to use a Divine Life Flask to keep things going as well.

Another thing to note here is the Scourge Arrow of Menace Pathfinder can also be built as a Magic Find character. If you are looking for an MF character that utilizes poison to great effect, then this is one of the top contenders for sure!

If you want to improve the damage of the build, look for the following modifiers on your gear:

• Added Physical Damage
• Increased Physical Damage
• Increased Chaos Damage
• + to Damage Over Time Multiplier
• + to Chaos Damage Over Time Multiplier
• Increased Attack Speed
• +1 to Maximum Frenzy Charges

Playstyle

While you can certainly use Scourge Arrow of Menace yourself, this build primarily uses Ballista Totems to deal insane amounts of damage.

So, when you enter a new map, search for juicy packs of monsters and drop five ballistae to do the job for you.

Even though you cannot deal damage yourself, you can use Frenzy on your foes to apply your hex curses.

Ascendancy

This build is only possible thanks to the notable passive skills that are available in the Pathfinder tree.

Master Toxicist is responsible for killing enemies effectively. This notable ascendancy passive skill enhances the poisons you inflict to become more damaging than ever. How does it do that? Well, they have a 20% chance of dealing 100% more damage if you are under the effects of any flask. This is the reason why you need to use a Divine Life Flask every five or six seconds just to avail of this node's effect.

Nature's Reprisal complements the previous node very well. This notable passive skill increases the effect of the "Wither" debuff by 50%. If you are new to PoE, Wither is a debuff that causes affected enemies to take more chaos damage. Having said that, poisons in this game inflict chaos damage, so it just makes sense to have the ability to inflict Wither, don't you think?

Nature's Adrenaline gives you three flask charges every few seconds. This allows you to have your flasks ready at all times. Thanks to this node, you will always have enough charges to use any of your flasks to keep Master Toxicist's effect active.

Master Surgeon just ensures that the life recovery effect of your Life Flask is active even if your HP pool is already filled. With this notable ascendancy passive skill, you can use the Divine Life Flask even if you are at 100% health.

With the removal of the Raider ascendancy class in the Settlers of Kalguur expansion, where else do you get the "+1 to Maximum Frenzy Charges" mod? Well, that effect is now in the new "Avidity" node from the Deadeye. So, if you plan to buy Forbidden Flame and Forbidden Flesh jewels, make sure to get those with Avidity as the matching modifier.

Gear

Most of the items for the Scourge Arrow of Menace Pathfinder are relatively affordable, so you can try this build out after the first week of a new league. Although most of the pieces of gear are unique, you need to craft the endgame quiver to maximize the potential of this build.

Weapon

The main weapon that makes the Scourge Arrow of Menace Pathfinder effective without all of the complicated crafting is the Darkscorn. This unique bow brings all of the goods, including attack speed, added physical damage, percent physical damage, and some accuracy rating.

However, what makes this the ideal weapon for the build is that it converts 25% of your physical damage to chaos damage. When you include that with the 60% intrinsic conversion from the Transfigured Gem, then you will have 85% physical-to-chaos damage conversion simply by using this bow.

What's more, the Darkscorn has a similar effect to Master Toxicist, albeit instead of 100% more damage with poisons, your Scourge Arrow of Menace ballistae will deal 300%!

That is not only the noteworthy thing about this bow because it also grants 25% of physical damage from hits taken as chaos damage, which greatly helps improve your survivability!

Quiver

Since you are using a bow, you will need a suitable quiver as well. For the Scourge Arrow of Menace Pathfinder, the quiver you need is a crafted Broadhead Arrow Quiver (Attack Speed) or Penetrating Arrow Quiver (Pierce) with two damage over time multiplier suffixes, life, attack speed, and increased damage with bow attacks.

The process of crafting the quiver is lengthy. But do not fret, we have got you covered! Read our ultimate crafting guide to learn how to craft this amazing endgame quiver!

Body Armor

The Covenant is an amazing body armor for the build. That is mainly because it grants your totems the effect of a level 29 Added Chaos Damage Support. As you can tell, this gives them a huge boost to chaos damage just by socketing the Scourge Arrow of Menace into the body armor itself!

This also addresses the removal of the innate added chaos damage from the Scourge Arrow of Menace skill gem itself. If you have the PoE Currency, you could purchase corrupted body armor with "+2 to Level of Socketed Projectile Gems."

Magic Find in Path of Exile: Settlers of Kalguur has changed dramatically. We used to recommend Greed's Embrace back then because the said unique body armor because it used to increase item quantity. But now, GGG has removed that in favor of other in-game mechanics. Thus, we no longer recommend Greed's Embrace for the Scourge Arrow of Menace Pathfinder.

Helmet

In the previous iteration of the build, you have the freedom to wear a self-crafted helmet to improve your spell suppression and whatnot. However, since GGG has removed the Wildwood Ascendancies, you now have to rely on Ballista Totems to do the dirty work.

That is the reason why you are going to wear Wilma's Requital. This grants you the effect of Ancestral Bond — a keystone passive that lets you summon one more totem in exchange for not being able to deal damage yourself.

Along with the "Watchtowers" notable passive skill, you have the ability to put down five Ballista Totems at a time! Imagine the screen being bombarded with thorn arrows from the many Spore Pods your ballistae can create!

Take note that if you are going to buy this from the trade website, get one that has the corrupted implicit mod: "Socketed Skill Gems Get a 90% Cost and Reservation Multiplier." The reason why this is important is that you will socket your main aura gems into the helmet.

Gloves

Since the Scourge Arrow of Menace Pathfinder stacks as many Frenzy Charges as it can, there are no better gloves for the build than the Snakebite.

Snakebite has a unique effect where your attacks have a 60% chance to poison enemies while you are at maximum Frenzy Charges. The good news is that you always avail of this effect because of the boots you are going to wear. More on this in a bit.

Since you are essentially playing a Frenzy Charge stacker, these gloves improve the effect of the said charges as well. More specifically, you gain 2% increased attack speed, 6% increased accuracy, and plus 5% to damage over time multiplier for poison per Frenzy Charge.

Boots

Ralakesh's Impatience is a staple among "stacker" builds in Path of Exile. That is because when you wear these boots, you "count" as having the maximum number of Endurance/Frenzy/Power Charges. This might not reflect in your buff bar, but if your Frenzy Charge limit is, say, 10 charges, you will gain 40% increased damage and attack speed just by equipping these unique Riveted Boots!

Remember Snakebite? It has this unique effect where you have a 60% chance to poison enemies while at maximum Frenzy Charges. Well, due to Ralakesh's Impatience, you always gain this effect so long as you do not remove the said boots!

Even though these boots no longer have a movement speed mod in Path of Exile 3.25 Settlers of Kalguur League, they are still the best-in-slot for this build.

Amulet

For the amulet, get The Eternal Struggle with the "+% to Chaos Damage Over Time Multiplier" Searing Exarch implicit modifier. The Eater of Worlds mod can be anything, but if you can get your hands on this amulet with "% Increased Mana Reservation Efficiency of Skills," then that is even better!

If you want to improve your survivability, you could wear the Defiance of Destiny. Even though this amulet has been nerfed in PoE 3.25, it still remains a good defensive option, primarily due to its unique effect.

Do not forget to anoint the amulet with Whispers of Doom (3x Golden Oils) so that you can apply an additional curse.

Rings

As mentioned earlier in the build guide, you will no longer use two Precursor Emblems (Two-Stone Ring) for the Scourge Arrow of Menace Pathfinder. Instead, you will replace them with a couple of Circle of Nostalgia rings with these unique modifiers:

• % Increased Chaos Damage While Affected by Herald of Agony
• Herald of Agony Has % Increased Buff Effect

The reason why Circle of Nostalgia is needed for the build is so that your totems have a much higher chance of inflicting poisons. This change is to rectify the removal of the Poisonberry Tincture from the build in Patch 3.25.

If you have the PoE currency, buy the Circle of Nostalgia with the "+1 to Maximum Frenzy Charges" and "% Increased Damage with Ailments" synthesized implicit modifiers.

While Magic Find is in a pretty rough spot in the Settlers of Kalguur expansion, Ventor's Gamble is still pretty useful. In fact, we would argue that it has become even more amazing, especially due to the addition of a mana reservation efficiency mod. If you are struggling to reserve all of your necessary auras, you could put at least on any of your ring slots.

Belt

With this build, you are dealing poison/chaos damage to kill the enemy. That is why you should use items that improve poison damage. One of the items that you can wear is Olesya's Delight. This has a unique effect where all of your Frenzy Charges are converted to Affliction Charges. What do these special charges do, you ask?

For every Affliction Charge, you deal 8% "more" damage with ailments. If you are unaware, the "more damage" multipliers in Path of Exile are calculated multiplicatively, so they are actually better than "increased damage" mods.

Do not be deterred by the conversion because this is addressed by Ralakesh's Impatience. This means that even if Olesya's Delight converts your Frenzy Charges to Affliction Charges, you will still enjoy the effects of Frenzy Charges because of the said unique boots.

Flasks

• Bismuth Flask
• Quicksilver Flask
• Eternal Life Flask
• Replica Sorrow of the Divine
• Progenesis

Scourge Arrow of Menace Pathfinder uses quite a lot of unique items, which makes it a bit challenging to cap your elemental resistances. For this reason, you are going to use the Bismuth Flask to help you raise your fire, cold, and lightning resistance to 75%.

The Eternal Life Flask is included just as a means of sustaining the effect of Master Toxicist. Use this every five or six seconds so that the "more damage with poisons" multiplier from the said notable ascendancy passive skill is always up.

The Quicksilver Flask aids in enhancing your mobility. We feel that this is the better choice of flask to use considering that your Ballista Totems will do the heavy lifting anyway; whether you are mapping or fighting bosses in PoE.

Progenesis works in tandem with Petrified Blood, making you virtually unkillable. When this flask is active, 25% of the life you would have lost after taking damage is spread over a four-second span instead of being applied immediately. This gives you more than enough time to use your Divine Life Flask to save yourself from dying.

Now, Progenesis is a bit expensive. If you do not have enough PoE currency to get one, you can use the Amethyst Flask in the meantime.

You might have noticed the inclusion of the Replica Sorrow of the Divine in this build's flask setup. Well, there is actually a pretty good reason why. You see, GGG has implemented a bunch of changes to mana reservation and mana cost of skills in the previous league.

To put it simply, you might have a hard time sustaining mana because of the many skills you have to use to maximize the build's potential. Having said that, Replica Sorrow of the Divine grants you the effect of Eldritch Battery when the flask is used. This keystone passive spends your energy shield before your actual mana. Because of this, you have the freedom to use whatever skill you need without worrying about mana at all!

Flask Mods

• 14% Increased Movement Speed (of the Cheetah) OR 55% Chance to Avoid Being Shocked (of Bog Moss, only if using Stormshroud)
• 20% Additional Elemental Resistances (of the Rainbow)
• Corrupted Blood Immunity (on Life Flask)

Jewels

The good news is that there are no mandatory gems for the Scourge Arrow of Menace Pathfinder. However, this does not mean that you shouldn't use any jewels because there are certainly some that can elevate this build to new heights!

Start by getting a Watcher's Eye with the duo of "+% to Damage Over Time Multiplier" and "Damaging Ailments You Inflict Deal Damage % Faster" while affected by Malevolence. The "% Increased Life Recovery from Flasks While Affected by Vitality" mod is also nice.

To improve your survivability, one of the things that you should get sorted out is your elemental ailment immunity. If you already have 100% spell suppression, you can use Ancestral Vision to give you a 50% boost to your chance to avoid elemental ailments.

If you do not have a high enough spell suppression, you can opt for the Stormshroud instead. Just make sure that you have the flask mod "55% Chance to Avoid Being Shocked" along with a 25% increased flask effect prefix to ensure full elemental ailment immunity.

Thread of Hope is a unique jewel that enables you to get some notable passive skills without being connected to the tree. That said, acquire one that affects a Very Large Ring so that you can allocate points to the following passives:

• Careful Conservationist
• 10% Reduced Flask Charges Used
• Flasks Applied to You Have a 5% Increased Effect
• 20% Increased Flask Charges Gained if You’ve Dealt a Critical Strike Recently
• Hunter's Gambit
• +10% to Chaos Damage Over Time Multiplier
• 10% Increased Skill Effect Duration
• 25% Increased Damage Over Time with Bow Skills
• Revenge of the Hunted
• 18% Increased Evasion Rating
• 10% Increased Maximum Life
• +10% Chance to Suppress Spell Damage While on Full Life
• Replenishing Remedies
• 15% Increased Flask Charges Gained
• Life Flasks Gain 2 Charges Every 3 Seconds
• Mana Flasks Gain 2 Charges Every 3 Seconds
• Heart of Oak
• 8% Increased Maximum Life
• 20% Chance to Avoid Being Stunned
• Regenerates 2% of Life per Second if You’ve Used a Life Flask in the Past 10 Seconds

Unnatural Instinct is another jewel you can obtain to get the effects of some nodes without spending a ton of passive skill points. You will insert this into the jewel socket that is near the Elemental Equilibrium keystone passive to gain increased attack damage, increased damage with bows, increased attack speed with bows, and a small chance to gain the "Phasing" buff.

A single Large Cluster Jewel and a couple of Medium Cluster Jewels are great additions to the build. On the Large Cluster Jewel (Chaos Damage), use Harvest Reforge Chaos from the Horticrafting Station until you get these notable passive skills:

• Unwaveringly Evil
• 30% Increased Chaos Damage
• Chaos Skills Ignore Interruption from Stuns
• Wicked Pall
• 30% Increased Chaos Damage
• 5% Increased Skill Effect Duration
• Unholy Grace
• 30% Increased Chaos Damage
• 10% Increased Attack/Cast Speed

Get two different Medium Cluster Jewels. One of them should have increased flask duration and the other must have increased totem damage.

On the flask effect duration Medium Cluster Jewel, use Harvest Reforge Caster to obtain Spiked Concoction and Brewed for Potency. For the other Medium Cluster Jewel, use Harvest Reforge Attack until you acquire Ancestral Echo and Sleepless Sentries.

If you are wondering what the passive skills on the Medium Cluster Jewels do, here is a rundown of their effects:

• Brewed for Potency
• 24% Increased Damage Over Time
• 10% Increased Flask Charges Gained
• 20% Increased Life and Mana Recovery from Flasks
• Spiked Concoction
• 5% Increased Attack/Cast Speed During any Flask Effect
• Gain Alchemist’s Genius When You Use a Flask
• Ancestral Echo
• 20% Increased Totem Placement Speed
• 10% Increased Attack/Cast Speed if You’ve Summoned a Totem Recently
• Sleepless Sentries
• 20% Increased Totem Duration
• You Have Onslaught if You’ve Summoned a Totem Recently

The Lethal Pride is also a great addition to the build. This unique Timeless Jewel allows you to get bonuses to totem damage and totem placement speed. Moreover, it can provide you with other useful mods, such as double damage, additional STR, and increased maximum life.

Because you'll be utilizing Ballista Totems to attack the enemy, you have the option of adding Rain of Splinters as well. Although this unique jewel reduces your totems' damage by a considerable amount, this is compensated by the two additional projectiles they can fire at a time.

Gems

To maximize the Scourge Arrow of Menace Pathfinder’s potential in Path of Exile 3.25 Settlers of Kalguur League, some changes have been made to the gem setups for this build.

Body Armor

• Scourge Arrow of Menace
• Ballista Totem Support
• Awakened Void Manipulation Support
• Awakened Unbound Ailments Support
• Awakened Greater Multiple Projectiles Support
• Awakened Deadly Ailments Support

As you can see, this build now uses the Ballista Totem Support. This support gem allows you to summon several ballistae that will attack enemies using the Scourge Arrow of Menace.

The Covenant gives your totems a significant boost to chaos damage thanks to its unique effect. That is precisely the reason why you insert the Transfigured Gem into the body armor as opposed to the bow.

Anyway, to further increase your chaos damage, you will put Awakened Void Manipulation Support as well. At max level, this particular support gem raises the level of the Scourge Arrow of Menace by one.

Awakened Deadly Ailments is a support gem in Path of Exile that makes your poisons become even more potent. Awakened Unbound Ailments makes it so that poison duration on your enemies is increased by a considerable amount. Be sure to increase the quality of the gem to get even more damage for your poisons.

The transfigured version of Scourge Arrow only fires a single arrow, leaving behind a single Spore Pod in return. Luckily, it is possible to spawn more Spore Pods just by increasing the number of projectiles fired on every use of Scourge Arrow of Menace. Hence, the presence of Awakened Greater Multiple Projectiles in this setup.

If you do not have the PoE currency yet, the normal versions of the support gems mentioned here are fine. However, we do encourage you to get the Awakened Gems just so that you can get the most out of your Scourge Arrow of Menace.

Weapon

• Frenzy
• Despair
• Temporal Chains
• Awakened Hextouch Support
• Greater Multiple Projectiles
• Enhance Support (lvl 4)

Your Ballista Totems will do the heavy lifting, so your main role is just to weaken your enemies, making them so much easier for your ballistae to kill.

That said, you cast Frenzy on every monster you encounter so that they will be cursed with Despair and Temporal Chains. How is this possible, you ask? Well, that is thanks to the support gem – Awakened Hextouch Support.

By default, Frenzy only hits one enemy at a time. Therefore, it is imperative that you link the said skill gem to Greater Multiple Projectiles. This is so that you can fire several projectiles at once, thus enabling you to inflict curses on more enemies.

Helmet

• Herald of Agony
• Malevolence/Grace
• Petrified Blood
• Enlighten Support (lvl 4)

Even though the Snakebite unique gloves provide your totems with a very high chance to inflict poisons, there are still instances that they might not apply the said damaging ailment on your foes. That is why you will activate Herald of Agony to guarantee that enemies get poisoned with every hit. This is achievable if you equip the two Circle of Nostalgia rings mentioned earlier as well.

With the removal of the Divine Blessing Support, you now have to put Malevolence in the same equipment slot to that of your other auras. For this reason, you now have to choose whether you want more damage (Malevolence) or more evasion (Grace).

Petrified Blood greatly boosts your survivability. When you use this skill, it reserves a sizable portion of your HP. It does this because whenever you get hit by the enemy, the damage you receive will be lost over four seconds rather than in an instant.

Enlighten Support provides reservation efficiency so that even if all of the above-mentioned auras are active, you will have some mana left in your tank for your other skills. 

Gloves

• Vitality (lvl 1)
• Vaal Haste (lvl 1)
• Flame Dash/Frostblink

Vaal Haste is mainly there to give your totems a bump in attack speed, making them unleash Spore Pods from the Scourge Arrow of Menace at a faster rate. You do not need to activate the permanent aura; you just utilize its Vaal skill whenever it is off cooldown.

Use Flame Dash or Frostblink to traverse maps quickly. You can choose whichever you prefer.

Vitality is only included in the build to activate any Watcher's Eye mods that require the said aura. If you do not have such a jewel, you can replace it with any gem that you like.

Boots

• Steelskin
• Blood Rage
• Automation Support
• More Duration Support

In the previous version of the build, this used to be reserved for Malevolence. However, that is no longer possible because GGG has removed Divine Blessing Support in Path of Exile: Settlers of Kalguur. This is the reason why you now see a different set of gems in the boots.

Since you do not have a lot of armor to work with, you could use Steelskin or Immortal Call. The former grants bleed immunity, while the latter reduces the physical and elemental damage you take.

All of the gems mentioned above are automatically activated whenever they are off cooldown. That is because of the inclusion of the aptly named Automation Support.

On top of that, Increased Duration Support is now called More Duration Support in Patch 3.25. This means that it significantly increases the duration of both Steelskin and Bloodrage.

Tattoos

• Tattoo of the Tawhoa Warrior
• 5% Increased Chaos Damage
• Tattoo of the Arohongui Shaman
• 5% Increased Effect of Herald Buffs on You
• Tattoo of the Tawhoa Herbalist
• 4% Increased Flask Effect Duration
• Tattoo of the Ramako Fleetfoot
• 2% Increased Movement Speed
• Tattoo of the Ramako Shaman
• +2% Chance to Suppress Spell Damage
• Tattoo of the Tawhoa Naturalist
• 8% Increased Life Recovery from Flasks
• Tattoo of the Tasalio Tideshifter
• 10% Chance to Avoid Being Stunned

Passive Tree

POB

Scourge Arrow of Menace Pathfinder

Final Thoughts

The Scourge Arrow of Menace Pathfinder is still a great build in Path of Exile 3.25 Settlers of Kalguur League despite the fact that its mechanics have changed dramatically. Although you are no longer the one dealing damage, it is fun to watch your Ballista Totems bombard the screen with Spore Pods and thorn arrows.

Sure, this build is not a league starter, but the items that you need for it to work are relatively affordable. So, you just have to save a bit of PoE currency and you can obtain the necessary pieces of gear in a week or so after a new league has begun.

This build can take on whatever content you want to do in PoE. It is not only a competent mapper but it also has enough damage to defeat even the uber bosses in the game; even more so now that you have fast-firing ballistae to do your bidding.

All in all, the Scourge Arrow of Menace Pathfinder will not disappoint, especially if you are the type of person who enjoys DoT builds in Path of Exile.

With that said, good luck on your adventures in Wraeclast, Exile!

PROS

+Deals potent poisons to make quick work of the enemy

+Great mapping potential

+Able to defeat pinnacle bosses with relative ease

+Most of the items are not that expensive

+Deceptively tanky

+Still great in Patch 3.25

CONS

-Some upgrades cost a lot of currency

-A slight delay in damage due to the nature of DoT builds

-Totem playstyle might not be your cup of tea

-MF version no longer viable