Explosive Arrow Marauder (Updated for Release)

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on 1.
Too bad! :) I thought I had a good idea there, hehe. So what should I replace Fork with now? Ideas? As I have a green socked left now, how about Pierce? Does pierce trigger the charge?

on 2.
Thanks for going into detail with gear. Im using the indexer since it came out basically, very great tool. I already built a startup kit, just from the stuff I had around in my stash. Was lucky to find a decent Alphas as well. Not beeing able to be frozen or stunned should help in the later game. The gear I planned for the starting phase looks like this:



3. Why dont u use Blood Magic :o? I thought it is key for this build to work?! I have no single mana node..

I also got all the gems, some even Q, that I need for the build. I just need to level them with my main character. Only thing I still need is the increased aoe gem. So I hope Ill be ready for a first try of this build at the weekend.

What do you think of this gear for starting?

At the moment I am lvl 58, at the beginning of act 3 merciless, and this is my current passive tree:

What do you think of it? I already decided for BM and now going for Iron Reflexes so I can benefit of Alphas how big armor bonus and other EV/ES items as well.

Still need IIR/IIQ items tho! How much is an Andvarius these days?

You can go for the BM support gem or get the keystone. It is a matter of preference. You get more survivibility from the extra auras in exchange for all of your 4L gem combos needing blood magic, which can be a huge pain.

Some of your gear is good, but you really need max HP on all items. You get a ton of damage just from the gems. Tankyness + damage = win.

Andvarius is 3 ex for a good one and 1 ex for a bad one last time I looked.

So everything but your belt, helm, bow and chest should be looked at to be replaced.
My favorite 5L combo is Explosive arrow - Increased Burning Damage - Elemental Proliferation - Increased Area of Effect - Fire Penetration. Increased Area of Effect can be replaced by chance to ignite if you want.

Thanks for the quick reply!

I think Ill go for the BM keystone, because adding BM to EA and all the other active skills, takes away a huge part of the defensive bonus that I gain by the additional auras. It would indeed be great to run Determination and Purity or Vitality, but maybe I can find a way to do it once I have a really big life pool. Because there are four “reduced mana reserved” passive nodes available close to my current build path, plus the 8% from Alphas, plus reduced Mana gem. Im not sure if those passives work for your life pool as they do for mana, but Ill test this.

What do you think of Spell Totem + Skelletons + Minion/Totem resistance + Minion Life or Faster Cast? Im not sure with this taunt totem, it has such a low life, plus I made pretty good experiences with Skelltotem. Especially against bosses it’s so easy to distract them.

Yes, everything but the Belt, Armor, Helm and Bow is absolute crap. I took it from the stash tab that I usually just vendor for chaos orbs  so it should be easy to find decent upgrades via the indexer. I’ll also look out for an Andvarius (is it advisable to start with an Andvarius right away, or should I wait for endgame viable gear first, and then replace it?)

I think I need to change the colors of my armor then. It should not be too hard to get GRRBB on a EV/ES chest. But if I cannot get two reds, I might just go for another blue one and add Chance to Ignite or Item Rarity.

What do you think of Culling Strike or Pierce tho? Will Culling Strike be triggered by the burn damage? I guess it should.

I have a taunting totem that I barely ever use. You're going to be doing such ridiculous levels of damage with EA burns, the only time you ever need to bother with distractions is with extremely lethal bosses like Brutus. The primary reason why everybody uses skeletotem is because when they want to DPS bosses, they have to stand still. With this build, you just have to land five shots and you'll be DPS'ing the boss while fully mobile. This is another reason why I love Cloak of Flame for this purpose; burns last so long I only have to apply it two or three times with most major bosses.

So you can use one of your four-links with skeletotem, but I just use taunting totem and dedicate the rest of my links to more useful things, like curses.

Culling Strike doesn't interact with Explosive Arrow very well (well it does interact with the skill - getting a culling strike with the skill will cause the arrows to prematurely detonate), but it does work well as a possible five-linked or six-linked utility skill in combination with IIQ and/or IIR gems. Something like, Split Arrow, Chain, Culling Strike, Life on Hit, IIR, IIQ sounds like a great way to increase your drop quality.

Thanks for the reply!!

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gilrad wrote:

Something like, Split Arrow, Chain, Culling Strike, Life on Hit, IIR, IIQ sounds like a great way to increase your drop quality.

Umm, but I think to apply things like a passive gems IIR/IIQ, the mob has to die directly by a hit with the linked ability. So it will be very hard/impossible to kill any mob with my Split Arrow, because what actually kills them, is the burn dmg from EA, which is not linked to the IIR/IIQ then.

The question is, if the IIR/IIQ effect stays on mobs, once you hit them. Which imo would be crazily imbalanced if it worked :)!

Maybe Ill try Cloak of Flames in the future, but I would loose a lot of life and defensive stats to it. I will focus on buying decent boots, rings, amulets and a quiver first.

I have another question to anyone using this build:

Which str, dex and int requirements do the skill gems need after you’re lvl 70, and how much str, dex and int does your passive tree provide you with? Because Im planning out my gear and I wonder how much str dex and int I need on it, to provide all my spells.

Would be great if you could help me out here

My initial thoughts on the above setup was to try to have Culling Strike get the killing blow on most enemies, but now that I think of it, I think it's possible to get the benefit from regular burn damage.

I may be mis-remembering, but I believe the IIQ/IIR bonus is applied the same way most skills apply on-hit effects that don't deal damage to mobs (such as Infernal Blow's explosion effect), which is with a 0.5 second debuff. If this is true, simply spamming your utility attack should be enough to benefit from the improved drops.

Yeah, now that I think about it, there was a fixed exploit when fighting Hillock in which effects applied to him while he was doing his transformation animation didn't wear off. When the devs explained the exploit, they specifically mentioned that IIR/IIQ gems apply a debuff.

I'm just assuming they are 0.5 seconds since this is the same span of time the "exploding" debuff Infernal Blow applies is. In all reality, as long as it's somewhere over 0.2 seconds you have a reasonable chance to benefit from IIR/IIQ though.


Anyway, shifting gears, as far as Cloak of Flame is concerned, the only real thing you're losing by using a rare chest is the base defensive stats (armor, evasion, and ES), which aren't all that useful unless you stack the hell out of them. If you want to know whether Cloak of Flame's 15% damage reduction is better than +98 life, compare your life total with the chest, and without the chest multiplied by 1.15.

Of course, the largest downside to it is the fact that it's a unique. In other words, you can't just take the shortcut to getting a decent 5-linked items, buying some junk and scouring/chaosing it until it gets one or two useful stats. You have to fuse it the hard way, which I can tell you is pretty sucky.


For requirements, I'm at: 113 intelligence, 371 str, 187 dexterity.

I've got 19 intelligence from items, and while it's enough for my core setup (or maybe slightly under once my gems hit 20), the only gem that looks like it may have trouble later on is Faster Casting, linked to my curse.

I've got around 80 dexterity from a damn awesome quiver, though much much much later in the tree when I started poking around in the Duelist area, I started filling out my dexterity and at this point removing the quiver places me 32 points below requirement (with core gems at level 18).


When leveling up, I did go for those 30+ off-stat nodes. Eventually as my tree started filling out or when I started getting awesome gear that also had stats I needed, I was able to respec out of them.

Carcass Jack is really good until you get a Kaoms, that's for sure.

I'm currently wondering about my 5l gem for EA. Chance to Ignite, ele prolif and fire penetration are a given but I'm not sure about either increased AoE or Increased Burn Dmg as a fifth link.

Anyone got some valuable opinion on the two or crunched the numbers? Increased burn damage does have a lower mana cost % and with quality gives more chance to ignite, both are favourable.

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Nagarashi wrote:

Carcass Jack is really good until you get a Kaoms, that's for sure.

I'm currently wondering about my 5l gem for EA. Chance to Ignite, ele prolif and fire penetration are a given but I'm not sure about either increased AoE or Increased Burn Dmg as a fifth link.

Anyone got some valuable opinion on the two or crunched the numbers? Increased burn damage does have a lower mana cost % and with quality gives more chance to ignite, both are favourable.

Increased burn damage is much better than increased AoE imo. Already you will have enemies that are ignited at the edge of the screen, and then those enemies will proliferate burns offscreen. Area of effect isn't too big of an issue. You can get carcass jack if you really want more AoE.

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DeltruS wrote:

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Nagarashi wrote:

Carcass Jack is really good until you get a Kaoms, that's for sure.

I'm currently wondering about my 5l gem for EA. Chance to Ignite, ele prolif and fire penetration are a given but I'm not sure about either increased AoE or Increased Burn Dmg as a fifth link.

Anyone got some valuable opinion on the two or crunched the numbers? Increased burn damage does have a lower mana cost % and with quality gives more chance to ignite, both are favourable.

Increased burn damage is much better than increased AoE imo. Already you will have enemies that are ignited at the edge of the screen, and then those enemies will proliferate burns offscreen. Area of effect isn't too big of an issue. You can get carcass jack if you really want more AoE.

Got a Carcass Jack, that's why I was doubting between the two. I am playing the build a little different (also have blast radiu for example) so then i guess burn dmg outshines aoe. Or is conc effect still a viable contender?

I don't really like conc effect. I'd rather buff the burn damage because it isn't affected by reflect. Conc effect also has the downside of less AoE. Play around with it yourself if you really want to find the perfect gems for you.