1.3 ✮ The Crit DoT Chin Sol build ✮ Puncture Trap / Ice Shot (Build of the Week S3E3)

100% unique setup:

• Run #1 (September 2nd, 2014)
• Run #2 (September 4th, 2014)
• Run #3 (September 4th, 2014)

Budget/rare setup:

• Run #1 (September 10th, 2014)
• Run #2 (September 10th, 2014)

100% unique setup:

• Torture Chamber (72) (September 5th, 2014)
• Dark Forest (73) Pack size (September 4th, 2014)
• Residence (74) Fracture (September 4th, 2014)
• Shipyard (77) (September 5th, 2014)
• Palace (78) Fracture, double boss (September 5th, 2014)

Budget/rare setup:

• Necropolis (75) (September 9th, 2014)
• Courtyard (78) Minus max, double boss (September 9th, 2014)

As you can see, this variation of the build uses 100% unique items. This setup works and hits all of the resistance/stat requirements. Though, the only 2 items that make this build "work" are the Three Dragons helmet and Chin Sol bow (even the Chin Sol could probably be upgraded to a high-crit/DPS Harbinger bow later on).

In this setup, we keep the Chin Sol bow, Three Dragons helmet, Maligaro's gloves, and Belly of the Beast chest.

Aside from the addition of Meginord's Girdle, all of the other uniques in the previous setup are now replaced with rares that offer life, resists, and stats (particularly intelligence). Some other things to have on the rares are mana leech on rings/amulets/quiver (saves you 2 passive points), movement speed on boots, crit chance wherever you can fit it (rings/amulets/quiver), along with some flat accuracy, and flat physical/cold/fire damage. Avoid flat lightning damage on gear, since lightning gets converted to cold damage by Three Dragons, which freezes enemies (shattered corpses can't proliferate burn/shock).

Notice how in this setup, we also use two 5L's, which is the "sweet spot" for this build, but two 4L's is still viable. As you level, I would prioritize Ice Shot over Trap Puncture if you only have access to one 5L. The total cost with two 5L's should be no more than 7-10ex, even in temporary leagues.



Alternative (example of rare bow that could replace Chin Sol):

If you feel like Chin Sol's crit chance is too low for your liking, you can look at some rare Decimation/Harbinger bows with the following mods: %phys, flat phys, attack speed, crit chance. Ideally you want a bow that's close to 300+ pDPS, 1.2+ APS, and 8.75%+ weapon crit chance.

General mapping:

Apex/Atziri:

Alternative to Rumi's Concoction:

Flasks are an important part of this build, as it fills in a lot of gaps that gear/gems aren't able to cover. The affixes we roll on them are equally important. The 3 main flasks that we want on our character at all times are 2 Quicksilvers and 1 Life flask. Since we don't have room for a dedicated movement skill (like Lightning Warp), we rely on Quicksilvers to move around quickly and to get out of dangerous situations quickly. We want to roll the 'Ample' prefix on both to get a minimum of 10 extra charges per flask, which then allows each flask to be used 3 times instead of 2. This means we have 6 uses of Quicksilver before we have to recharge. We also want the 'of Adrenaline' suffix on both for the boost in movement speed.

Next, even though we have leech + Vaal Pact, sometimes we simply need a panic button when we take too much damage too quickly, so we need a Life flask that regenerates a large amount of HP quickly. Usually, we'd roll a 'Seething' flask, but our Life flask of choice is going to be the new 'Eternal' version, rolled with the 'Catalysed' prefix, recovering a whopping 2500 HP in 2.7 seconds, which is further modified by Belly of the Beast's "50% flask life recovery rate".

In the 4th slot, I always have a Rumi's Concoction on me, since the benefits are too good not to have: +3000 armour, ≤40%block, and ≤20%spellblock. Before you are able to acquire this flask, I would definitely still have a regular Granite flask in the setup, which can be rolled with an 'of Iron Skin' suffix as shown above.

For the last slot, the flask will depend on the situation. With the introduction of Strongboxes, you will now always want to carry with you a Quartz flask when mapping, rolled with a 'of Heat' suffix. This allows you to both avoid getting trapped by spawning mobs and avoid being frozen if you encounter a "Freezes you upon activation" Strongbox mod. Now, if you're running Apex of Sacrifice (Atziri), there will be no Strongboxes, so you can then replace the Quartz with a Diamond flask, rolled with an 'of Warding' suffix. This will allow you to crit more often with Puncture Traps during boss fights, which is important because the longer the bosses are alive, the more likely it is that they will kill you. The flask will also allow you to curse Atziri and not have the curse reflected back at you for the duration of the flask.

4L:



Optional:



The reason why we use the Trap gem instead of simply going self-shot Puncture is because Chin Sol requires our character to stand close to the enemy to take advantage of the "100% more bow damage" modifier. In many cases, this is inconvenient and possibly dangerous. Trap solves this nicely by letting our character throw a trap at far-range, and instantly Puncture the target at close-range, while still benefiting from the Chin Sol modifier. On top of that, Trap gem offers a 34% more damage modifier, which is further amplified by Point Blank's 50% more damage modifier. So, while the tooltip DPS of Puncture might seem quite low, it's missing a lot of "hidden" damage.

For the other supports, we choose to use as many gems that increase the physical damage of Puncture, as Puncture's DoT only scales off of physical (not elemental). If your tooltip is below 30% critical strike chance, I would equip the Increased Critical Strikes gem over Increased Critical Damage in a 5L setup.

4L:



Optional:



Unlike our single-target Puncture skill which deals high physical damage, the mob-clearing skill we're going to use is (Ice Shot), which relies heavily on elemental damage to do the deeps. The recently buffed Ice Shot now has a 120% damage effectiveness, with 40% of that physical damage converted to cold. We use the Weapon Elemental Damage gem for a huge increase in elemental damage, which is bolstered by Hatred and Herald of Ash.

It is highly recommended to upgrade to a 5L on Ice Shot as soon as possible, because we use the Life Leech gem along with the Vaal Pact keystone to help us with survivability and immunity to reflect.

But possibly the most important support here is Pierce. Aside from the 1:1 damage increase we get from Drillneck for each pierce % (up to 100%), Pierce allows Ice shot to hit multiple enemies in a single volley, which sprays enemies behind each target hit with a cone of ice. And whenever we crit with Three Dragons equipped, cold damage will Ignite and fire damage will Shock (50% increased damage from all sources including burn), both being proliferated onto nearby foes via the Elemental Proliferation gem.

The other supports that work well (as a 6th link) include Physical Projectile Attack Damage and Increased Critical Damage. With a critical strike chance of 30%, my tooltip shows a roughly equal boost in DPS with either gem, so it comes down to which colors you roll first and if you prefer to crit for a ton more, or have each non-crit shot do more on average.

Alternative (replaces main curse):



For our curse of choice, we run Assassin's Mark. You may wonder, why Assassin's Mark over Vulnerability? While Vulnerability does offer a damage boost to physical and DoT for Puncture, Assassin's Mark offers more benefits to the overall build. Firstly, when we throw down 3 traps on a boss, we want at least 1 of them to crit, because if it happens, bosses will almost always die in 1 hit. If none of them crit, then we have to waste time throwing down more traps (as non-crit Puncture damage is quite low). Since Chin Sol has a relatively low base crit chance, which results in a final tooltip of around 35% chance to crit, Assassin's Mark gives us an additional 9% crit on top of that, bringing us to a solid 44% chance to crit. Furthermore, for our AoE skill (Ice Shot), only about 1/5 of the damage comes from physical. The other 4/5 comes from elemental (fire + cold), and when we crit with Three Dragons equipped, enemies get Shocked/Ignited. Thus it's in our best interest to crit as often as possible, for as much as possible.

Alternatively, depending on the colors you're able to roll on gear (and your playstyle), you could use Temporal Chains as your main curse. This has the nice effect of allowing you to kite enemies better, and set up traps for fast-moving bosses.

Alternative (replaces Frost Wall):



For our CWDT setup, we go with a standard Immortal Call + Increased Duration combination. The only thing missing is Enduring Cry, which is covered if you're using Voll's Devotion + Romira's Banquet, that provides us with a constant supply of Endurance Charges. I also added Frost Wall into this setup, as it's one of the best defensive CWDT gems for ranged characters. Whenever you are hit by an enemy, Frost Wall pushes everything back and gives you time to breathe before you are hit again. With a 100% chance to pierce with your arrows, you can shoot right through the Frost Wall (which lasts about 3 seconds with Increased Duration).

Alternatively, if you are using the budget/rare build (without Voll's), the Frost Wall gem will need to be replaced with Enduring Cry gem.

The two auras/buffs that boost physical-damage-based characters the most are obviously going to be Hatred, and now Herald of Ash. Herald of Ash is an important buff in this build because it is our main source of fire damage when using Ice Shot, shocking enemies on crit via the Three Dragons helm. The 50% damage bonus really helps boost both the Puncture bleed-DoT and Ice Shot burn-DoT. Furthermore, each enemy that is killed by a direct hit from Ice Shot will ignite nearby enemies for any remaining "overkill" damage, whether Ice Shot crit or not. This overkill burn can then be proliferated if you link an Elemental Proliferation gem, which is what's used in the last gem slot. This guarantees that low-HP enemies (that can be easily 1-shot) can proliferate burn onto nearby high-HP enemies, even if you go on an unlucky non-crit streak with Ice Shot.

Link (release)
Link (added 9/3/14)
Link (added 9/13/14)