Explosive Arrow Marauder (Updated for Release)

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NemoSushi wrote:

Thanks, also besides Explosive Arrow , what's the next best gem to get 20% quality on?

I'd say increased burning damage then increased AoE. Personally, I run without chance to ignite and just use the increased burning damage quality bonus + flamability + explosive arrow quality bonus.

I just found out a cool fact from this reddit post reddit.com/r/pathofexile/comments/1d8shv/poe_optimal_infernal_blow_melee_splash_build

The fire pen gem doesn't just reduce the enemy's resistance. It reduces its max resistance at the same time! That is really cool, as it means that enfeeble will be a lot better if I use the fire pen gem. It also means that elemental equilibrium is not required at all for this spec! Right now the only mobs that don't die instantly to me are fire golems and fire skeletons.

So, I will probably do: Explosive arrow + Fire Penetration + Increased Area of Effect + Increased Burning Damage + Elemental Proliferation + Blood Magic

Then, I will swap out Elemental Proliferation/Increased Area of Effect for Concentrated Effect on bosses.

EDIT: Just swapped out Concentrated Effect for Fire pen and I am clearing way faster. The proliferated burn gems 30% more area and the burned mob can be on the edge of the 30% larger explosive arrow explosion, so I am killing mobs off screen with just the burn. In addition, there isn't one lone fire resistant mob left over for me to kill any more.

The single target damage should be around the same because resists on enemies counts twice, once for the initial hit and once for the burning damage. So, since most of out damage comes from the burn, the 35% reduction in resists from fire pen will be 70% more burn damage, which is pretty much the same as conc effect.

I have a feeling that this build will be monstrous with a 6L, Kaom's, no ele equilibrium and 3 40% auras + grace. The damage may seem a bit low since you are dropping conc effect and EE, however right now I am 1 shotting pretty much everything with level 18 explosive arrow. If the enemy had very high fire resist, then EE wouldn't have done anything anyways because the fire pen gem would reduce the max resistance to 40%.

Another point to add is that this build has so few %increased damage passives that %increased fire damage pretty much counts as a multiplier. You can get 17% increased fire damage on a neck and 10% increased fire damage from the quality fire pen gem.

With those bonuses in mind, I think this build has potential to be one of the most solid builds in the game. It would be more solid than kripp's freeze pulser, as it can do more damage and handle reflect better. It would be less solid than Dom's sparker because it does less damage and doesn't shock.

The thing that I am liking the most with explosive arrow is that it needs almost no affixes on gear. This lets me add in a ton of item quantity and rarity.

This is my gear right now:

Ideally my quiver and neck would have attack speed and 90+ hp on them. Other than that I think my gear is pretty much as good as it will get without kaom's and a 6 link. I have 29% chaos resist, and I will have to get chaos resist on my helm when I get Kaom's. Rarity can also roll up to 50% on head slot items, 32% on boots and 32% on gloves so eventually I will want try to up my IIQ/IIR as much as possible.


I am level 82 at the moment. The spec I am aiming for is this:


With kaom's, quality gems, and a 6 link I will be able to clear maps crazy fast and use IIQ/IIR gear. The proliferated burns should be able to kill the room ahead of me and then the mobs in the next room after that will aggro and run into the proliferated burns. I will have 9.4% life regen per second and 350% life. Everything seems just so insanely strong.

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ciuriiburii wrote:

Hello fellow dudes. I have few questions for you, answer if you know, please.

Because of burning, many times, I think I loose the added value from IIR and IQ gems.
To resolve this problem I decided to replace Elemental proliferation and Chance to ignite with Increased Area of effect and Concentrated effect. This means I loose burning, but gain to damage made by explosive arrow.
So the questions:
- Is flammability curse still viable for explosion or it's useless to use it?
- Can I ditch the burning damage and fire damage nodes (or only burning)?
- Is the +% fire damage added from items useless in this case (think Hrimnor's Resolve for example)?
- Does Fire penetration matter for explosion?

Please post other suggestions if you have, to enhance the explosion not burning.

Thank you.

Ok I feel like people need to re research (or maybe I do EE/Fire Pen)
They are seriously your best friends in this spec and quality fire pen is raw fire % which does both effect the explosion

For the longest time I played this spec with lmp/faster attacks/ea/firepen and conc effect and it was amazing
However pastramy has it sorted once you get to silly gear levels your gonna wanna get the burn damage nodes and put in equal / ignite its just insane what you can do but I think that is largely reliant on 6L (I'm using my quill)

Deltrus
And delt as much as I thought the minus resists stacking was a mistake I honestly think its unbeatble for scaling our damage. ATM I run windscream,fire pen and ele quil. I don't use increased area of effect on higher maps and basically swap conc and increased area of effect based on the map <sub 70s for example... Really don't understand what your saying interns of why doesn't ee reduce the resists from 40% ie take it down to 15 from 40?

I have kaoms and 6L quill and honestly the quad minus resists of ele weakness,flam,fire pen,ele equil is unreal can almost 1 shot any mob in the game (1arrow) and with faster attacks up to like 6aps

Also delt I couldn't find 3 40% auras worth running if your using kaoms determination is really underwhelming, as we're at 6 or 3 aps already and I use windscreens (haste is underwhelming) purity is easily achieved on gear minus the max resists but I dont have inner force honestly 6aps and blood magic was just incredibly controlled and I really think is worth trying, in the end it's all preference.

Also don't forget fire % rings man there insanely important as is hrimnors like another 40%+ from jewlwery and 30% on hrimnors (remembering how many 6% fire nodes we grab that makes that gear unreal) my biggest concern is how much the price on all the good explosive arrow fire gear is about to rise :p

Fire Pen does two things.

If they are at capped resists, it works like the -max resistances mod on maps.

But, even if they aren't capped, it will still subtract that same amount off of their resistances.

So, it does stack perfectly with EE and curses. Let me give you an example.


Say a mob has 125% fire resist (that is, 50% over capped). Let's also assume that its immune to curses. This means that, with just EE, they would get down to 75% fire resist (that is, EE would do nothing). Fire pen would then take them down to something like 45% fire resist (that is it would penetrate something like 30% of its resistance).

Now, take the same mob, but assume it isn't immune to curses. Then, with EE+Flammability, the mob would get to 75% from EE and something like 35% from Flammability. THEN, fire pen would take effect and it would go down to 5% fire resistance.

If the mob was instead at 75% (rather than 125%), EE would take it to 25%, Flammability would take it to -15%, and Fire Pen would take it to -45%.

My point is that EE is generally going to be very strong, and so is Fire Pen, and I would always suggest using both if you can.

People have done builds with EA before that enhanced the explosion damage. My build intentionally stays away from that as much as possible (meaning that being able to include chance to burn rather than conc effect is AWESOME) because I don't want to die to reflect. So, rather than suggesting how to increase the explosion damage, I would steer you away from it--as this build is more focused on a hardcore setting.

Finally, I wouldn't suggest putting IIQ/IIR on EA.

What I'll be doing is this:

I'll have two different Split Arrows.

Split Arrow #1: Split Arrow+Chain+LoH+Blind(or w/e else you prefer)
Split Arrow #2: Split Arrow+IIR+IIQ+Culling Strike


Also, I've been noticing a lot of interest in EA gear. It makes me happy, since I love the spec, but also sad, since it means I'll have to pay more. :P

Hrimnor's would be good once I get kaom's, I think. Right now I lose like 8% of my HP and a bunch of IIR/IIQ stuff.

I will explain what I mean with fire pen.

Enemy has 180 resists. This means EE and flammability will take it down to 81 and fire pen will take it down to 40.

Fire pen by itself brings it to 40% anyways.

However, I definitely see your point. Not every mob has 180% resists and if the mob has like 0 resists then both EE and flammability will double your damage.


I think everything needs more testing. I am not 100% sure that the damage I will do will be great without EE and Concentrated Effect. If I do kill mobs in 1-2 seconds then my changes will be more than worth it because I will have much more survivibility. My version of explosive arrow is also more group friendly because I can group with people using wrath/anger. But on the flipside I will be less useful to the group because I will do less damage.

If it is viable to get more survivibilty then I will 100% go for it because I play while tired and get disconnects every now and then. With 13k hp, 9.4% regen per second and good armor with determination I could probably tank entire rooms while afk.

I will do some testing on level 70ish maps without conc effect and EE. My gems aren't levelled all the way so it wouldn't be 100% accurate.

That's what I run for mfing past just find mfing really underwhelming lol
Thanks heaps for explains ee and in all honesty I often just retalenting it for the night Deltrus if I'm running with mates using anger for the whole night and in all honesty I think you can easily cope with someone using wrath, I use it when I solo / group with frosty mates.

And tbh think pastromy hit the nail on the head if your playing hc defiantly wouldn't recommend scaling your explosions one shot myself countless times makes any reflect map semi dangerous (often change up gearing gems to accommodate)

Now that I think about it I will make a spreadsheet to see my dps with all of the different things I could do. My goal would be to have 15k-20k burn dps (5 arrows). If I can't manage to theorycraft that amount then I will change things up until I can get it. I will run the numbers and report back tomorrow.

I really like MFing. Just 60% quantity and rarity gives me much more uniques and rares. I get enough alterations now so that I don't have to buy any more alts to get good affixes on maps. I think I will follow Pastromy's advice and do the split arrow + culling strike stuff for now.

Yeah i dd the same for a few weeks but ran like 300 rarity 40 quant the increase on drops nowhere near compensated how much it slowed down clearing speed leading to way less potential drops IMO

I am running on 270 IIR & 100 IIQ..with MF gems on EA. doing good MF on this build. found like 10 crap uniques & an astramentis within these 2 days. :)

Alright, I am back with the numbers.
My goal is to get 15k-20k dps with: Explosive arrow + Fire Penetration + Increased Area of Effect + Increased Burning Damage + Elemental Proliferation + Blood Magic 

I consider my dps to be (initial hit + the burning damage)/4.

With flammability and fire pen on a monster with 0 resists I would get 12k dps with no conc effect.

If I add on EE, I get 18.8k dps.

With EE and Hrimnor's I get 23k dps.
With EE, Hrimnor's and conc effect, I get 39.6k dps.

Minus resists seem to have a drastic impact on dps because they double dip on the burn damage. This double dipping is very good because it means that the burn does much more dps than the initial hit. If I do conc effect and no EE, then I get the same dps as with EE and no Conc effect, but then the initial hit is 16k instead of 8k, which is enough damage in one hit to make me extremely worried about reflect.

Shock damage has the same double dipping effect on burn damage. With 3 shock stacks, elemental weakness, EE, no conc/hrimnors, and flammability my dps would be 123k. 153k with Hrimnor's. So, ideally I would want to group with a dual sporker that has tri-curse. Only one target has to be shocked/burned because the burn will proliferate to the rest.

Overall I think I will stick to my idea of using the blood magic gem + auras, but I will drop the middle regen area for elemental equilibrium, giving me 8.2% life/second. I might use a 30% hrimnor's but I am not 100% sure.

To put everything into perspective, Kripp's freeze pulse marauder does around 20k dps, and dominions dual sporker does around 45k dps. That is with ele weakness and without shock stacks. This spec has potential to do more damage than either of them with shocks + full curses because of the double dipping on ignite. Overall it seems to be a top tier build but only on equal standing with other top tier builds, not above them. Props to GGG for making this game so balanced.