Totemless Poison Nova Scorpion Beastmaster Build Guide

Fully capable of doing endgame content with easily farmable gear

Good group clear, Venom Nova has respectable AoE, drops strong poison stacks and you can do it twice in a 1.5s or lower rotation.

Doesn't -need- to be in melee combat to deal respectable damage, as you can send your Primal Scorpion forward and reset Nova cooldown using Eterra's Blessing.

Doesn't really care about any specific echo modifiers. So long as you're not stacking silly amounts of increased damage it can handle anything.

Comfy survivability. You have two easy sources of cleanse and invincibility, every button on your bar heals you, and you don't really need to care about your Primal Scorpion's HP as it has absolutely absurd EHP and Swipe fully heals it from the Primal Resonance 1/1 node.

Lots of routes for up-gearing using uniques/legendaries as detailed in the Endgame section.

Somewhat poor general movement speed through maps without legendaries. Your haste sources do not last very long and require you to hit something and you have no generic movement speed bonuses from skills.

A little hampered by multiplayer and/or other summons. Eterra's blessing will prioritise other allies over your Primal Scorpion sometimes so other players, their minions, or just random ice beetles and bees from shrines can get in the way and reduce your damage.

The basis of this build is the Venom Nova companion ability from your Primal Scorpion, casting it using triggers from the Primal Resonance 1/1 node in the Swipe tree and either holding the button down or numlock-autocasting (use a numpad key as the secondary binding for the skill, activate numlock, press and hold the key, deactivate numlock) it while resetting its cooldown from the Encourage 4/4 node from Eterra's Blessing.

Your sustain is managed through active healing from every skill on your bar. Warcry and Fury Leap heal through healing nodes in their skill tree (Breath of Eterra 3/3and Wings of Endurance 3/3, respectively) while Venom Nova, Swipe, and Eterra's Blessing (casted on your minion, resetting Venom Nova cooldown) will trigger heals from Call of the Pack 5/5 due to the trigger or direct cast of Venom Nova as a companion ability.

Your basic rotation is simply alternating Swipe and casting Eterra's Blessing on your Primal Scorpion, fitting in Warcry to maintain its 4 second poison chance buff from Toxic Companions and using Fury Leap to either travel between packs when going through a map or to avoid predictable moving area AoE's when bossing, such as the lasers from Stone Titan's Heart in Lightless Arbor or Shade of Orobyss' large comet attack.

If your Attunement isn't up to par to maintain the casting of Eterra's Blessing + Venom Nova that often, then do it every 2-3 swipes to maintain its buffs

you can switch to this as soon as you unlock scorpion at roughly level 28, higher depending on how many enemies you kill in early campaign. Prioritise attunement and minion damage, then get defensive stats. your early game weapon will be an Oak Sceptre and later you can get a Sickle, combine these with a PrefixMinion Damage off-hand catalyst.

You can't find SuffixDamage Over Time for Minions weapons before area level 45, but the build is capable of completing echos in the first monolith (with area level 58) right from the get go. Given you still want to get your passive points, idol slots and item faction choice i advise only potentially ducking in there at level 35 to get some SuffixDamage Over Time for Minions shards as that is the first level you can equip an item with any tier of that affix. if you do get a weapon with that affix i recommend swapping to using a shield in your offhand and stop prioritising regular minion damage, instead look for strength.

look for helmets/chests/idols with PrefixIncreased Aspect of the Viper Effect to run once you can reach it on the passive tree (they start dropping area level 46).

Some useful potentially character found leveling uniques are:

• Arboreal Circuit for movement speed, minion armor, and a useful distraction tree.
• Font of the Erased increased health is good and can get random useful affixes from weavers will.
• Isadora's Tomb Binding for a serious amount of armor for its level.
• Dedication of an Erased Primalist for 15% more damage and some random stats from weavers will (Potentially PrefixLevel of Summon Scorpion, but more likely some resistances, health, armor or attributes.)
• The Scavenger for speeeeeeed.
• Eterra's Path also for speeeeeed, can make targeting your scorpion with Eterra's Blessing difficult however. better to use if low attunement.
• Ribbons of Blood from first monolith boss. increased health, fire res, allows your scorpion to ignore crit modifier monos just like you will.
• Lethal Concentration good increased minion damage and some extra scorp survivability with the leech (not that you'll actually need it any time soon)

There are two main paths for this build to go in endgame. The first (and current strongest) is a Low life 1h setup using Cleaver Solution, Last Steps of the Living, Exsanguinous and gloves (eventually Frostbite Shackles) with PrefixExperimental Ward per Missing Health.

The other route is a life based 2H setup.

this would use at least a Titan Heart and a 2h weapon with T5 SuffixReduced Bonus Damage Taken from Critical Strikes and SuffixDamage Over Time for Minions.

Best in class legendary weapons include Lethal Concentration for damage (least valuable as we have plenty anyway), Torkrefin's Hunger or Usurper's Mandate for survivability or even Battlemage's Endeavour to farm quicker. leech does not stay around in the background after reaching full helath, this makes Merophage useless to us as the amount of time we stay leeching is very low.

For gloves you can use Ravens' Rise for more scorpion movement speed or even a pair of Ravenous Void's if you find one.

For the chest piece you just want a better titan heart such as this: Titan Heart.

+ level to all skills is very nice so fitting in a well rolled Omnis and/or a Dedication of an Erased Primalist with PrefixLevel of Summon Scorpion is great, however there's not much payoff to pushing Summon Scorpion past level 24, as after getting Deeper Puddle 4/4 you have basically nothing useful to put points in.

technically something like a Herald of the Scurry purely for its disgusting increased health values would be BiS if you're willing to commit that gearing sin.

• "But I heard that Poison is bad since they nerfed it?"

stacking absurd amounts of poison is far weaker, but this build doesn't do that. This build is relying on the insane amount of more damage multipliers to Venom Nova's poisons that the Summon Scorpion tree provides. Combined with the Artor's Loyalty and Natural Bond nodes on the Beastmaster tree and the general mechanic of minion power and you are totaling up to 76.28x damage multiplier for poison inflicted through your Nova and a 30.51x multiplier for poisons from its regular attacks at level 100. It's pretty insane. This isn't to say that the build wouldn't have been better off pre-nerf, just that it's not absolutely crippled by it.

• "but Call of the Pack says "This effect does not trigger when your companions abilities are triggered automatically" "

That only kicks in if your companions trigger their abilities on their own, say with the Battlecry node for wolves or the Challenger node for raptor.

• "Nova only seems to spit out projectiles, what AoE?"

Nova's AoE vfx has its offset set wrong and currently occurs under the floor. Have your Scorpion stand next to a cliff or on a staircase and you'll be able to see the effect.

Added because of YT comments

• "Nova scales off your own stats, not your scorpion's"

No it doesn't, I've tested this and it doesn't. Also if you hold alt and hover over the skill there's a note at the bottom of the tooltip saying "Scales with your scorpion's stats rather than yours"