[1.3, BoTW S3/E10] The Arcane Archer - Chaos Arc by CantripN

Ok you totally forgot to mention the biggest issue to make this build viable, off color chroming...
Man I spent over 500 chromes on my voltaxi and the best I got is 2 blue.
Finally figured out I would use frenzy-gmp-curse on hit-assassin mark-faster attacks to apply the curse and get frenzy charges.
And someone said lightning coil is the best chest, you gotta be kidding me....

I bought some lv18-19 q20 lightning spell gems, arc, ball lightning, spark included. I have to say, arc is the best out of best. Ball lightning is hard to use. It is aoe spell, but aoe damage nodes don't help its damage. Only when you have quite a big pack, the damage of ball lightning is superior to arc. Spark is still sh/t, especially since we will use cwdt-frost wall. I haven't got a high level storm call. I think it should be ok to be used for killing bosses.

Yeah, aiming for more than 3-4 off color (and using Vorici for that) is unwise, at best. I'd honestly use Split Arrow / Chain to apply curses, or maybe EK / Chain, but something with not quite so many off-colors (if you don't like spending Chromatics). Your idea for GMP / Frenzy is also viable (but your accuracy will be horrible with an attack of any sort).

You can also just do HoT *or* Arc / Curse on Hit / Curse / Curse = BBBR. With Vorici, that's doable. The 5th link can be Enhance for more Lightning Damage on HoT if it's Green, or perhaps Arctic Armor (or Poacher's Mark).

Playing with RNG will fuck you over, again and again. Use Vorici!

--

As for Spark, you're supposed to use Pierce Gem and a Drillneck, getting 100% with the passives, allowing it to pierce Frost Wall, as well. And get 100% Increased Damage from the quiver.

Ur build rocks, only problem is i suck at dodging with ping over 320 :D

Voltaxic ftw (Still need those colors...)

Yeah I found the accuracy issue with frenzy. Actually it is a setup from my tornado shot ranger. EK is a good choice. It's green and thanks to the high crit chance, EK will freeze the enemies for a short duration, which is quite helpful.

I found this spark build thread (with your comment in it) http://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/1038601
The tree is very interesting and one can get nice number of dex nodes on it. I will try using drillneck with spark if I manage to get a cheaper drillneck :) Oh yeah I enjoy respecting passives.

OK I bought a drillneck from my friend and chromed a BBBRG lightning coil from Vorici.
The dps of spark is about 5.5k, with 6 power charges and 3 frenzy charges.
With assassin's mark and Victario's Acuity, pcoc is not quite necessary. But if you want to use discharge, pcoc is still needed.

Really nice :)

Hopefully that's with Empower on that R, not Life Leech? I'm guessing Spark / Crit Damage / Echo / Pierce / Empower? If it was easier to get 4B, I'd add Faster Casting instead of that red.

I have been using the Tabula this league so much, I forgot how much chroming chests and 2h weapons can suck...

Actually it is life leech, not empower. I haven't got a leveled empower yet :(
You are right about other gems.

And the damage is without herald of thunder, just HoI
The damage of lv18 spark(+lv18HoI+lv15+6 power charges+3 frenzy charges) is 7.5k. It is totally beyond my imagination.

Today I replaced life leech with increased duration and it is not bad in parties.

Btw, can you get life leech from Doryani's lightning damage belt?

Sadly, no leech from belt or any other "leech 1% lightning".

Guess it's worth saying Vaal Spark is very much usable. If you want to clear a 4L or such for it, you can.

I've started carrying one around sometimes, using it on my 6L instead of PCoC to one-shot some bosses, adding GMP instead of Faster Casting :).
PCoC in general is a comfort link more than a DPS link.

I have vaal spark on my bow, linked with spell echo, gmp, lmp. Pretty good for onshotting some annoying bosses and party members.

I'm still optimizing the build and gem setup for my spark build. I removed CWDT-IC-IW since I have leech linked.
BUT TIL molten shell does not provide additional mitigation except for the additional armour...So I will remove lv18CWDT-molten shell-IC.
Maybe I will put cwdt-ic-iw back again and replace leech with empower. Just got a lv3-unsuccessfully-vaalled empower from my buddy. Leech from Atziri's promise is quite enough.

Vaal storm call seems interesting after I watched Mathil's ball lightning build, but I'm not sure the strikes will be same powerful in my build, since I have zero aoe damage nodes.

The damage of spark is still quite unstable and full of randomness. The post by Jonathan about randomness in POE on reddit explained about the randomness but it didn't enlighten me.
I read the wiki about spark and it seems I should put some nodes on cast speed so I can keep more sparks at the same time, which sounds like a threshold for cast speed. I will do more test about that.


HoT+curse on hit is really really life quality improvement. Power charges all the time with Victario's amulet.