[2.2] CI Rain of Arrows Trickster - Chaos Conversion (WIP)
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Hi everyone! I'm DinhoSenos_ and I'm bringing a build that's been, actually, a pain in my ass. I've tried lots of ways to make this work and, finally, I've reached an acceptable build that's able to run tier 8/9 maps with just my lag and FPS as a threat. By posting this here, I'm looking for some insights to how I can make this work better and, if possible, feedback from those who were brave enough to test this build with me.
Please, I know Darkscorn is a low-DPS bow. I know this build has less flat ES than we would want for a CI build. You have to read the guide to understand my choices. If you don't have suggestions please don't come with the obvious. Also english is not my first language so if anything's hard to understand due to language misuse, feel free to say so.  OVERVIEW (All items will be described in detail in the right section) This build makes use of the natural synergy between 2 uniques, a keystone, and the Shadow. Those would be the Darkscorn Assassin Bow, which converts 25% of physical damage both taken and dealt to chaos damage; Chaos Innoculation (CI) which makes you immune to chaos damage (although changing your life points to a flat 1); Soul Strike Spike-Point Arrow Quiver which gives flat energy shield (as a CI build, it's a necessity) and flat chaos damage; and, finally, the starting Shadow nodes which increase both chaos and physical damage, making them too good to pass. The main skill is Rain of Arrows (ok AoE + no need to use support gems like Chain or GMP which would make our already lowish DPS even lower) and our main defense mechanism is an insanely fast ES regen coupled with some evasion to trigger that regen even when surrounded. Those were the things that gave me the idea of the build. I added a few stuff and, at the moment, it's a fun, fluid build to play and, most of all, it's not a meta build so you can sleep with a clean conscience, feeling good inside knowing that you're not a CoC Discharge. The items used are out-of-meta, so most of them are pretty cheap. That being said, I believe that the true power of this build comes with min-maxed items. With expensive rare items you can find here a pretty good HC build.
Gearing
There are more than a few items that are NEEDED to make this build work as it should be. Those are:
This one is a low-DPS bow, but it converts 25% of your physical damage to chaos damage, making it works wonders with the Shadow chaos+physical nodes, turning it into a mid-DPS bow with a huge boost for survivability, giving you a free 25% physical damage reduction since we're CI and, consequently, immune to chaos damage (converted from physical damage) we would take. Since we have a bow build, we can't use a shield (for obvious reasons). It is essential that CI builds have large amounts of energy shield in order to make use of the ES% nodes, so the lack of a ES shield could f*ck us defense-wise. Luckily there's a quiver that gives us a good amount of ES, chaos damage (that will be multiplied by our chaos damage nodes) and a nice faster start of ES regen which makes the build very fluid since our ES starts to regen really fast. This is not a crit build but there's no good corrupted implicits for this unique (I looked it up) so just leave it be. We actually do crit now and then. Stun chance and duration is based on maximum life - in our case, as CI, it's based on how much life we would have if we didn't take the CI node (which is really low). That means that although this unique doesn't give any truly usable stats, we need it in order to not be permastunned. Believe me, I tried going without it. Past level 70 it's just impossible. At least we can ignore the -20% to life. This belt has a niiiiice flat ES amount, which is multiplied by all our ES% nodes. Besides, freeze and stun work in similar ways, making this unique our safety measure not to be permafrozen. Take that fear and Let It Go™. You might ask "why do we need an Amethyst Flask if we are immune to chaos damage?". The answer: this particular (and cheap) unique flask gives extra chaos damage for its duration. With the % chaos damage nodes this flask boosts DPS immensely. 20% quality on this is highly recommended. Also you need magic (blue) flasks with modifiers to remove Bleeding. One to remove Burning/Ignite should be good too (more explanations on Playstyle section). Desirable stats in items In order: 1 - 75% Elemental Resistances 2 - Flat ES 3 - Flat Physical Damage 4 - Flat Chaos Damage 5 - Flat Evasion / Attack Speed 6 - 105% Elemental Resistances (to counter Elemental Weakness curse)
My personal gear
I had to put these on spoiler since they're still a work in progress and a personal choice, not essential items. Please help me with suggestions for these.
I personally use this for the high amout of ES given and for the +1 to gems, which allows me to use Enlighten better, linked with my auras in order to achieve 2 active auras and a herald. Plus it gives evasion. I highly recommend the use of at least one EV/ES hybrid on gear. Preferentially two. But they need to have high ES numbers in order to work with CI. I think the choice on helm is pretty solid. After much consideration, I settled with Carcass Jack as my final choice for this build. If offers a great boost in damage while offering almost the same survivability as Cloak of Flame, which I was using before so I could double dip on conversion mechanics. There's also Incandescent Heart, which would be a great pain to get the right colors on and would require some strenght in the skill tree/items, but it would ridiculously improve our defenses. This is still open to discussion, though. These are just examples on what to look for. Boots would definetely be better with movement speed. Rolls are all lame.
Gem setup
In order of priority (in a 4-link, drop the last two, in a 5-link, the last one)
MAIN SKILL (Setup 1): Rain of Arrows + Physical Projectile Attack Damage + Concentrated Effect + Added Chaos Damage + Slower Projectiles + Faster Projectiles/Void Manipulation SINGLE TARGET SKILL: Puncture + Poison + Rapid Decay + Slower Projectiles + Faster Attacks + Added Chaos Damage CURSE ON HIT SETUP: Frenzy + Curse on Hit + Vulnerability + Greater Multiple Projectiles AURAS: Discipline + Haste + Enlighten + Herald of Ash DEFENSE MECHANISM + GOLEM: Vaal Discipline + Increased Duration + Vaal Grace - Summon Fire Golem/Summon Lightning Golem Rain of Arrows is a wonderful skill since it has a high DPS for an AoE skill, meaning we can use the 5 support gems to go full damage (although to use Concentrated Effect you NEED a 20% quality Rain of Arrows, or your AoE will be too low); Puncture and Poison work very well with the hit-and-run strategy, giving time to recharge the ES; Vulnerability boosts our flat damage and damage over time from the single target setup, and linked with Frenzy allows us to keep both curse and frenzy charges with a single setup; Discipline is a must for ES builds since it scales with ES% nodes and Haste makes the playstyle a lot more fluid - Herald of Ash gives a fine boost for damage but the reserved mana cost is only affordable when auras are linked with Enlighten. To finish, Vaal Discipline and Vaal Grace can save us from tough situations with a stupidly amount and instant recharge of ES, plus chance to dodge. Golem is a choice - you can go Summon Fire/Lightning Golem for DPS or Summon Chaos Golem for (even more) survivability.
Playstyle
This build has an INSANELY FAST (like, Need for Speed fast) start of ES regen. The game doesn't show numbers and I didn't use a chronometer to test it, but I'm sure it's below half a second. That means you need not to get hit by less than 0.5s in order to start your ES regen, and between 1 and 2 seconds to get it to max. That is a nice mechanic, but forces us to follow three rules: avoid being in the middle of large packs of mobs (strongly avoid it if they have high attack/cast speed), beware damage over time (DoT) effects such as Ignite/Burning and Bleeding, and you HAVE to dodge stuff that would one-shot you.
In sum, try to kill packs of mobs from a distance, but don't mind too much if they reach you - you can take a fair amount of damage if you keep walking to give you time to recharge. Just don't get surrounded, don't stand too much in burning ground, and use your flasks to remove ignite and bleeding. For bosses, get your frenzy charges up (and cursing them at the same time) and hit them with Puncture as long as you think it's safe. Keep moving and dodging stuff so you can keep your ES recharging. Remember to mantain the curse/frenzy setup active. For strongboxes and when in trouble, pop Vaal Discipline and Vaal Grace. You can survive almost anything with those up.
Trees, leveling and bandits
Might make a Scion version of this in some point.
Trickster Skill Tree (121 points, finished) In the jewel socket next to Melding, use an Energy From Within jewel which will eliminate the useless life points in that wheel.
Leveling
The core of this build is made of 60+ lvl items. Until then, use the usual leveling bows:
Tips: - You don't need the crit multiplier from Death's Hand nor the additional arrow, so as soon as you get a rare bow that gives you more DPS, use it. - Things can get a bit hard when you get to Act 4 Cruel and it's nearly impossible to kill Malachai without at least Darkscorn. If you have patience, farm Dried Lake until lvl 62 and then begin merciless - if not, ask someone's help through Harvest/Malachai and level up in Merciless Ledge. - Spec into CI as soon as you notice that damage taken almost never reaches your life (apart from Chaos Damage). From there you need to work around your gear to be able to wear Eye of Chayula and keep 75% in all elemental resistances. With all set, reserve 4 passive points to get CI and the subsequential 3 ES% nodes at the same time. - If having mana troubles, drop an aura. I suggest dropping Herald of Ash and/or get a Clarity instead, but it's up to you. You just need to keep Discipline up. - You don't have to strictly follow the leveling skill trees; if you feel the need for more damage/survivability/mobility, go for it.
Leveling skill trees
Bandit rewards: Normal: Help Kraityn for 10% increased Elemental Resistances or kill all bandits for a passive skill point Cruel: Help Oak for 16% increased Physical Damage or help Kraityn for +8% Attack Speed Merciless: Kill all bandits for a passive skill point
Stats
Right now with bad gear (not completely bad, but bad):
DPS (5-link)
 Only auras and golem up.  Auras, golem, frenzy charges, Atziri's Promise and Trickster 20% Attack Speed when ES has started regen recently. I believe the only map mods that makes us worry are "patches of Burning Ground" (can mean death in certain situations) and "players are cursed with Temporal Chains" (affects the ES recharge start/rate). Maybe you can remind me of another. Monsters Poison on Hit and patches of Desecrated Ground are free map mods that you can get free quantity/rarity from. Well, that's it. As said earlier, this is a work in progress and I would appreciate SO MUCH if you could give me insights on this. Help me on my dream of making an out-of-meta build work on endgame content. Last edited by DinhoSenos_#4217 on May 21, 2016, 9:15:11 PM Last bumped on Dec 17, 2016, 4:40:26 AM
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edit 1: added a few prints, changed the skill tree website, and added the thought on Carcass Jack
edit 2: added a leveling section along with skill trees (downgraded the skill tree website) edit 3: I accidentaly started a less regen map and noticed that it doesn't affect the ES recharge, so it's doable edit 4: changed the finished skill tree back to poedb builder while scrapping out the Assassin version, changed the body armour section, and added a few thoughts on the Overview section edit 5: thinking a lot about Cloak of Defiance (got a legacy one), plus, new character picture! Last edited by DinhoSenos_#4217 on May 21, 2016, 3:43:54 PM
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i think moving points out of melding would be good. the life points dont really do anything.
what i did while looking at the build was move down to Foresight (energy shield wheel). then take the first point in witch (energy shield/mana regen) off and move it up (energy shield/recovery) same technical point value in energy shield%, +6 flat energy shield, -25% mana regen, +10% energy shield recharge rate. passive link: | |
" I forgot to explain that I use an Energy From Within in that jewel socket next to Melding effectively doubling it's ES potential. Foresight is a nice option if you think you should, tho. It's the same number of points. About moving off the first point in witch, this build has 100 points so it isn't absolutely final, and since the ES recovery gained isn't necessary to make the ES fast regen this builds rely on (most of it comes from the quiver actually), I just chose to pick that up only in the final tree. Here it is, if you want to see it. Maybe I should put it on the guide. Anyway, thanks a lot for the feedback! Feel free to ask any more questions. |
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Do you perhaps have a video for us of a map run (t9 recommend)? Just to have a small look on the build.
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" I would love to do so, but my PC doesn't allow me (it's a budget laptop). I'm on a friends house so maybe I can borrow his desktop to record something. Will try to do this by tomorrow morning. |
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Hi, I just starded a shadow on HC Perandus and I have some questions about this build, at what level should I spec into Chaos Innoculation? Could you maybe create some levelling trees to help?
Edit: Also please update the skill trees, they aren't loading properly because they're out of date Last edited by rodmir#7512 on Mar 14, 2016, 3:11:29 PM
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" *sigh* I make the skill tree. They change it 3 days later. I must've been cursed or something hahahah. I'll update both skills trees and create a leveling section by tomorrow. Finally at home! Plus, I've recorded some gameplay footage but the file is too big and my Vegas apparently doesn't want to compile it. I'll have to convert a 12GB video file to another extension. I'll start converting before going to sleep and, hopefully, I'll get it done by tomorrow with the leveling section. Furthermore, I'm happy to see someone trying this with me hahahah. In my leveling section you'll see that I actually don't have a fixed leveling strategy, so go for CI when you feel you should. But probably with 2k+ ES while affording to wear the Chayula. IMPORTANT: Don't go CI without it or you'll have a hard time. Personally I was being annoyed by the poison bomb throwers at Act 3 Cruel, so that's when I've picked CI. Maybe you should do the same. |
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I will be playing this build when my work schedule calms down a bit more.
Currently the build itself looks to cost about 10-15c with all required uniques, which is very friendly. The one thing that concerns me a little is the strong preference to not do Burning Ground maps, but I suppose it's a good trade-off with Descrated Ground (which is usually a more annoying map mod) being free quantity. Crawling through the Leagues, as usual.
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" Without a 5 or 6L that's the price, yes (although I highly recommend at least a 5L). Burning Ground is doable but it's hard since you have to keep moving all the time and, in some boss fights, choosing between stepping on Burning Ground and taking a hit from the boss can mean death. Besides I've played a less regen Zana map and, surprisingly, it doesn't affect your ES recharge (I thought it would)!! So beside the mana issues it's a totally ok map mod. By the way, thanks for joining me on this experiment! I hope you enjoy the build as much as I do! |
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