Explosive Arrow Marauder (Updated for Release)

Fire Pen is a must have. It double dips (increasing the damage of the initial hit and the damage of the burn).

Iron Grip doesn't work with EA because it specifically works with projectile attacks. The EA explosion isn't considered attack damage.

So what do you guys do for single target damage? I am lvl 36, and it can be a pain at times.

Personally I never leveled as EA before the 50s as I feel ea really benefits and comes into its own with some links. I know that some people like to run lmp and just rely on the explode while lvling. Other options is to just get another skill, I hear searing bond is the current fotm lvling ability.

at 70 atm using a variation of this build in invasion. StrongEnoughIII is finally StrongEnough. You really seem to need a 5l or 6l to make explosive arrow work, it's very lack luster with 4l. Using searing bond atm which is getting pretty slow at this level so really hope I can manage to score that 5l soon..

The perma blind aspect of this build is just amazing and is the only reason the searing bond totem (oh and myself) isn't getting insta-killed in some of the maps I'm running.

I do feel long term if you want high survival rate in invasion then you need to use some additional mechanics, not just high hp/armor. I'll definitely get the individual +1 lightning/cold/fire nodes soon, I'll aim for the lightning coil chest, I'll cry that I don't have any spell block (although there's a new quiver for that! no life on it though..)

What happens in the 50's that makes EA that much better, does the scaling kick in then? I already picked up EE, RT, and BM. I am in Invasion and it is touch and go for me at the moment.

Not sure, just personal experience. Probably cause you start to get at least 4links and curses+ee actually do something at this point, not to mention you actually got some ignite chance and some larger aoe. Early game there's so many better lvling options (and to be fair, you probably lvl faster up to 70+ with something else even still, especially how insane sb is atm).

Im close to 60 in invasion (playing it slow this league + waiting for friends to relvl when they rip) and I don't have any problems at all atm. Capped resists in early merc with around 3.2k hp with pretty bad gear. Chaos is the only annoying factor really so gotta work on that.

I really feel EAs real strength lies in the fact that it's so cheap as a first char in a new league. Also, due to the nature of EAs stack and kite feature it lets you kill many bosses many other builds cant. I did so many insanely rolled maps and their bosses when nobody else would even try (as full IIR even!).

I posted this sometime in the first month of Domination as reference

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It's weird describing it actually.

I hated my damage output in my 70s when I compared it to everyone elses but it did fine for the most part. Now with my gems maxed I feel the build does way more damage then I ever expected it to do. I don't think it'll ever be at the top among other builds when it comes to raw dps but I never thought it would be there in the first place. We can't really scale crazily from gear like some other builds. EA got few mods on items that benefits us much in our scaling. One of the main scaling mods we can get is really dangerous for us since we'd blow ourselves up even harder.

I sort of feel like eleref is heavily unbalanced compared to physref overall. Just recently when I hit 87 and I had just gotten my 6l I jokingly said to my friends that I'd probably die to a single reflect mob. Well, it turned out to be true. 6k hp 77r wasn't enough to mitigate a fully stacked EA explosion on a single mob with reflect debuffed with EW and EE. Good thing I'm on Domination. I can't say I even notice physref on my other char and neither does my phys friends while we run maps. An eleref mod would mean constant danger.

The build does have it's place however since it works wonders as a first character on a new league, it's so easy to gear up. A Quill that you link up with some quality gems and you're done for the most part.

It's precisely that reason that made it ideal for me when the leagues started. It was affordable and I were able to run IIR in a group setting while still doing good damage.

tldr: Build isn't toptier for dps, still serves a purpose, there's other skillgems out there in a far worse position.

Ok, I need someone to reason with me here.

About Enduring charges!
Since cwdt is a thing that exist these days is there any reason for a hp/armor sponge to not just link cwdt+endcry+ic+something instead of keeping lots of enduring up? Seems to me that speccing lots of enduring charges might be completely wasted since I could just link up a cwdt (not sure on lvl) with IC instead.

At first I was thinking, "man it's gonna be sweet with 6charges for 24% additional mit after armor". Then I was like "why not just IC it right away for immunity?", and then my thoughts were "why even spec enduring charges in that case?".

Pre cwdt era everyone would obviously spec endcharges due to the extra mitigation and you'd have a selfcast IC when you needed (with a high chance you wouldn't react fast enough when you actually needed it). Now tho, is there any reason to ever selfcast this stuff as a armor/hp sponge with cwdt being available to us?

Maybe it makes more sense to just skip the endcharges nodes and get more hp or something instead? Although that would mean we wouldn't have endcharges and the 24%mit on the true onehit deaths. Do they even happen? And would 24%mit prevent them? Isn't it mostly just a few bigger hits in quick succession that kills us?

I'm a bit conflicted what to do as I'm about to do the bandits in merc soonish. At the moment I'm leaning towards to just ignore more endcharges and link IC up with the cwdt link. Am I wrong in my reasoning here?


edit: asked in the gameplay section too since they got way more traffic than our thread here and sort of came to the conclusion to skip endcharges at first, get IC, and then maybe later revert back once armor and hp values is high enough on their own.

I did the math for EA finally to check what I could expect in the reflect area for my char in invasion. Results surprised me a lot. Some of the data is here or here for the sort of messy and badly made spreadsheet.

With the dmg nodes I was planning on taking and a few extra with using a kaom, dualcurses, I could do anywhere between an avg2k to avg80k dps in an stack-explode-burn cycle. Curse immune mobs drops our dps hard since we cant get them in the negative. Curse immune ontop of a highly resist mob would drop you to avg2k. A curse immune mob that are still capped resist after EE+Firepen on explode with enfeeble on you would drop you to somewhere around avg1k dps.

If you somehow manage to get a hold of a +1+2bow with the fastest AS mod on a thicket and link a corrupted empower in it for a lvl28 EA you'd do anywhere between avg4k-112k dps in a dmg cycle (with factoring in the new aps).

A lvl20 Quill EA would do (5.4duration burn)
546,824 during 0base resist on the mob
147,426 with 100resist on the mob which we curse and negate away
12,987 with capped resist still
total avgdmg to a mob

A lvl28 Thicket+3bow+13AS would do (5.4duration burn)
845,058 during 0base resist on the mob
361,802 with 100resist on the mob which we curse and negate away
31,871 with capped resist still
total avgdmg to a mob

The topend hits would let you reach 120k dps and 134k dps respectively. Largest explode hits seems to reach 77k/95k so that's the magic numbers we want to look at while trying to not die to reflect. Keep in mind that all these values is vs a single mob! Multiply them with the packsizes you hit to get more true dmg values.

Is there any info out there on how much resist the general mobs have in merciless? I just did a 100resist value since I don't have a clue what they got. Does fire resist mean he's def 75% capped and more ontop of it?

TL;DR
EA dps is heavily dependent on what mods and curses the mob has applied, or what we have on ourselves for that matter. Expect anywhere between 2k-80k average singletarget dps during endgame depending on what you're hitting and which map you're in. If you got godly gear you can reach some top end 134k dps cycles on singletargets.

The corrupted "Adds an additional arrow" makes this build completely insane.

I'm currently melting everything in maps (invasion).

Key items:


This is even without EE, which a plan on taking late at 86.

Reflect is a problem, so one needs to be careful.

Build:
https://www.pathofexile.com/passive-skill-tree/AAAAAgEAAdwCcQPGBLMFLQn2C2ESaRQgFE0UcRccGJEZhRo4Gj4abBv6JKolrSXfJy8pLilPNuk8BT38RtdHflBHVElVtVhjWK9Z813GXz9gS2EhZU1uaXF5cql07XgNeWh673y4fNmDOITZhO-HKYuMjM-QVZ2uns2f36IApBmnCKcwp4SoGKvFrKq1BLyfvoq-p8APwBrBBMbY0k3fv-Fz4urjauOf5CLqGOw47SDvDu988B_xrPIv8932SPcy-Ov9Cw==

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