SlightRedeye's Rain of Arrows Support Build.

Here is a link to my Elemental Incinerate build thread.
http://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/1116897

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Video clearing a Poorjoy's in a 6 man party. Recorded after my death in Bloodlines.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JGQ073KbERs

Welcome.

Skill Tree @ Level 89: http://poeurl.com/zbT3WD3

The concept behind the build;

- Completely built around playing in groups.

- Boost the clear speed of any group you are in massively, night and day difference.

- Protect your party with ridiculous crowd control and debuffs.

- Become a beefy Marauder with 9k+ hp once you acquire Kaoms. 8K w/ Belly.

- The most loved player in your group. Some will let you map for free because you are so useful to them.

- Play as the pack leader in groups, people follow you because they are less powerful without you.

Bloodlines gear @ level 82:
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Mapping in groups:

Your job is to apply curses, Elemental Equilibrium, chill and freeze to all enemies.

Generally, you will want to stay very close to your group at all times. You should be looking to protect your party members with Enfeeble, Temporal Chains and Freeze. Devourers are an example of a dangerous situation which can be completely avoided with a fast Cold Snap + Prolif freeze. Clear speed and massive dps is great and all, but the safety of others and yourself is always more important. You should be working with your group at all times to get the most out of this spec.

Inversely, your party members can also protect you in return by killing dangerous enemies for you.

Applying your offensive curses and Elemental Equilibrium to enemies ahead of your party is where the increased clear speed comes from. Doing this inflicts enemies with a huge elemental debuff which makes them take considerably more damage, which your team mates benefit from greatly.

Rain of Arrows is the best skill for applying your curses in group play because it can cover so much of the screen and shoot past mobs. This allows you to selectively curse enemies and apply Elemental Equilibrium, which gives you more control of which enemies are resistant to what element. You want to apply Cold Snap after you cast Arc ideally, which gives your freeze a -75% to cold resistance boost.

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Gear Section:

You must have at least one source of flat added cold damage on your gear to trigger EE. This is necessary for the build to function. I recommend finding a quiver with Life + Resistance + an open prefix and crafting the flat cold damage yourself with Tora.

Weapon: Quill Rain is best in slot.

Quiver: Life -> Resistances. (avoid flat added fire/lightning damage at all costs)

Helmet: Life -> Resistances -> Dexterity -> Strength.

Chest: Kaom's Heart -> Belly of the Beast -> Life -> Armour -> Resistances -> Strength.

Gloves: Asenath's Gentle Touch is best in slot. Look for a 30 life roll.

Boots: Life -> Movement Speed -> Resistances -> Dexterity -> Strength.

Rings: Doedre's Damning x2 are best in slot. If tri-cursing, use a Dex/Life/Resistance ring.

Amulet: +1 curses corruption -> Life -> Dexterity - > Resistances.

Belt: Life -> Strength -> Resistances.

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Leveling section:

Leveling is very easy, but relatively slow compared to other builds.

1. Buy or mule a Flameblast gem since Marauders do not receive one from quest rewards.

2. Vendor recipe a +1 to fire gems Quarts Scepter. (ruby ring + magic weapon + Alteration)

3. Link chance to ignite + proliferation support gems as soon as you can.

4. Use a Flame totem or Searing Bond gem as soon as possible, this is a free damage increase at all levels.

5. Rush as much content as you can, farm only for gear. (life on every gear piece, resists capped always)

6. Get to Merciless Docks and farm until 60.

For your passive tree, just follow the build path and pick up all of the life nodes. Flameblast is so broken that you do not need any damage nodes to level with it. Use this and a totem to level to Merciless. It is a very easy spec to level with, you have almost 4k life by cruel Dominus, which is absolutely huge.

Take Blood Magic early on and run 3 life flasks. Roll your life flasks as best you can. Go for remove bleed/freeze and bubbling/seething where possible. Do not cheap out on flasks and upgrade them asap.

Or you can join a party of 6 people and get carried. Both work.

Bandit Rewards: Oak -> Passive -> Passive

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Gems and Links Section:

All gems are in order of importance.

Quill Rain: Rain of Arrows - Curse on Hit - Elemental Weakness - Enfeeble - Asaassin's Mark - Vulnerability

Helmet: Cast when Damage Taken - Enduring Cry - Immortal Call - Increased Duration

Chest: Anything you like. Leave it blank or add another cwdt setup.

Gloves: Cold Snap - Proliferation - Cold Penetration - Added Cold Damage

Boots: Lightning Warp - Reduced Duration - Faster casting - Arc

Arc is solely for triggering Elemental Equilibrium for Cold Snapping. The 700 or so cold damage you deal is enough to freeze mobs in 76+ maps after the -100% resistances debuff. Even if this fails to freeze, the chill + Temporal Chains is so powerful that mobs are unable to attack regardless.

Your chest isn't important to the build, so save your currency for a Belly of the Beast or a Kaom's Heart. In the meantime, buy a well rolled unlinked rare chest on the forums for 2 chaos, since they are basically everywhere and worthless. Do not pay more than 4c for a good rare chest that isn't linked.

Swap the Increased Duration gem for anything you want or replace it with Arc if boots cant roll BBBR.

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Skill Tree Section + Questions:

Q: Why do you take the Marauder resistance nodes and not the Strength nodes? This would save 2 passive points, why did you choose to do that instead?

A: In this build, point efficiency is a lot different than other builds which focus on damage/defence. I chose the resistance route because it makes gearing easier and leveling smoother.

You rely on passive tree resistance nodes to an extent because this build uses the Blood Magic keystone and requires some additional Dexterity on gear. Attributes are suffixes, the same as resistance, so generally you would have to sacrifice one to gain the other.

You also have more passive points to spend on luxury nodes than other builds, because it does not scale damage/defence in the same way.

Q: Why Blood Magic? You could just use mana, equip Clarity and still maintain your ability to cast Rain of Arrows.

A: Convenience is the main reason. You do not need any auras in this build, and scaling them costs too many points to move around the tree. You also have almost zero increased mana regeneration from passives and use Doedre's rings, which means you wouldn't be able to scale Clarity properly.

Blood Magic allows you to ignore mana, ignore Auras and ignore gem slots/colours. Those extra open gem slots allow you to use a Kaom's comfortably, which is also a huge bonus. You can look for extremely high life gear cheaply too, since you do not need stats such as mana regen/resistances as badly. This allows the build to more easily reach 8k+ life.

Q: What nodes should I take past level 89?

A: Anything you want, the build is complete and you have a metric fuck tonne of life. I would work towards acquiring the gear necessary to drop Blood Magic and get some Mana regen/Aura effectiveness nodes in the tree. 80+ mana regen is enough to sustain Rain of Arrows permanently, the rest of your mana can be dumped into extra auras. Use Haste/Grace/Hatred if you want to help out your party members.

You also have the option to spec some damage for Cold Snap. Any sort of scaling goes out of control with the -100% resistance debuff. You also have the option to use Frostbite as a curse and deal some ridiculous damage and freeze for 10+ seconds. Crowd control is a very solid route to take for this build.

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Elemental Equilibrium and Curses Section:

What is Elemental Equilibrium?

"Elemental Equilibrium (EE) is a keystone passive skill which changes the resistance of any monster you hit with elemental damage, increasing resistance to the element you hit with by 25% but reducing other elemental resistances by 50%. Multiple EE strikes will overwrite each other. The effect lasts 5 seconds or until being overwritten." - PoE Wiki http://pathofexile.gamepedia.com/Elemental_Equilibrium


The build uses the -50% to other elemental resistance debuff to boost the damage of our party members. Our curses stack with this debuff, and a 20/20 Elemental Weakness boosted by a 20% Curse on Hit gem and the passive tree results in 51% drop in enemy resistances. The outcome of both of these is -101% to enemy Fire and Lightning resistance and -26% to Cold resistance.

The boost to curses is +10% effectiveness from a 20% quality Curse on Hit gem and +6% from the Whispers of Doom cluster.

Before you start mapping you want to aim for at least 3 curses in your setup. Elemental weakness, Temporal Chains and Enfeeble are the three you want to start out with. Use a 4L to dual curse and a pair of Asenath's Gloves to obtain the third.

Your 4th and 5th Curses are totally optional, as three works well already. It is a decision between more group utility and more defence on your character. You can run up to 6 curses on-hit in this build, with the extra curses coming from a second Doedre's Damning/Windscream Boots/Amulet corruption. All of these sacrifice a gear slot.

Your bonus curses can be anything you choose, although I would aim for Assassin's Mark > Vulnerability > Flammability/Frostbite. My opinion is that quad-cursing is the most efficient, and more is overkill and too difficult to obtain.

Reserve

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I do like to watch playing vids, if you can upload.

New video uploaded showing the build in action.

Poorjoy's is a good indication of how the build is played in a really dangerous map. Enjoy

You are on the build list.
Gz :)

I was building for this in the days leading up to Awakening. Was pretty fun.
If you ever feel like updating your guide for 2.0, know you'll have at least ONE grateful person!