Explosive Arrow Marauder (Updated for Release)

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Version 0.10.7
Content:

Added a new Strenth/Intelligence Support Gem - Increased Burning Damage. This is first offered to the Witch, Templar and Marauder at the Medicine Chest quest in Cruel difficulty and to the other classes in Act Three of Cruel difficulty.

might want to check that out when it's deployed!

I absolutely plan on checking it out.

The burning damage gem should be pretty cool. "burning" isn't an element so this gem will be a good improvement to dps while still not negatively impacting the build vs reflect. I will be very interested to see what the quality bonus will be. I am crossing my fingers for "Enemies will be burned x amount faster". Hehe that would be pretty OP with this build.

Most EA'ers will drop fire pen for this gem if it is good. I am not 100% sure what I will drop. Maybe I can drop increased area of effect and just use carcass jack until I get koam's.

Hopefully the burn damage gem will be red so I don't have to put in any more chromes. 500 fusings so far. I was going for a 6l, but that will have to wait for later.

EDIT: The new gem is str/int not int/str so it will probably be red.

Hi guys

quick question.

When leveling should I get BM first or should I get extra HP at templar, im level 27 I have my 4 link quill rain ready and I just feel useless at the moment. Im even using a quality 17 EA with the 3 recommended gems. I was heading to the HP before I got BM but I dont know if I can progress without getting BM first. Any ideas?

I hear quality bonus is 10% chance to ignite at 20% qual for the new gem. So maybe you can drop chance to ignite for it?

EDIT: Dropped chance to ignite for 20% qual increased burn damage. Works really nice still and groups are getting ignited 95% of the time.

Any thoughts on switching to the new unique ring and dropping blood magic? This build is gear-independent so you can probably make up what you lose on the ring slots through other slots easily, and you gain the ability to wear auras in return, while not really worrying about mana.

The idea for hardcore should have always been to skip blood magic and only link it to EA, since auras give you a shit ton of survivability. You lose damage, sure, but in HC its not very wise to sacrifice life for damage.

I honestly dont see why the new unique is necessary. By 50 your health regen will be so high that life leech wont be needed anymore (unless you use a 6L).

The only other auras I would gain survivability from would be purity (max resists) and determination.

I go blood magic because it halves the cost of Explosive Arrow (which costs over 100 mana) and saves me a socket. By liking EA to Blood Magic, I sacrifice a ton of life.

I was thinking the ring might be useful because you don't need to waste a link with blood magic, since your secondary skill could probably put you to Max mana pretty quickly. Also it would double (or more, since you are no longer paying life) the effectiveness of life on hit for the secondary skill. The only time you might have mana trouble is with single target bosses when there aren't many other enemies around, and a potion could probably work there since these situations are scarce enough in my experience.

In return you could get three or four auras that can boost various defensive stats.