[2.2] Chin Sol, Herald of Ash Railgun

This build is a variation of the Point Blank Chin Sol Ice Shot build created by r4wb1rd. It was created with the help of xMustard, who originally intended it as a Burning Arrow build. So all credit for the build goes to these guys. I am sure someone has played this build before, as xMustard mentioned this, but I was too lazy to search for old threads. If you happen to know any feel free to link them.

For technical details, I suggest you read the thread from r4wb1rd. I don’t think it’s necessary to write this down here as well. There are some changes, but I am going to explain these in the skill section.



Skills:
The main difference between r4wb1rds build and this one is, that we are going to use Herald of Ash to deal burning damage and proliferate it to all enemies nearby.

GGRBG: Ice Shot – Increased physical Projectile Damage – Weapon Elemental Damage – Elemental Focus – Pierce – (Slower Projectiles)


This is the main attack skill. Elemental Focus is important, as crits could freeze/shatter enemies which does prevent elemental prolif. You can play with Burning Arrow, the single target damage will be higher, but the map clear speed is 20% slower. In low lvl maps, Lightning Arrow and LMP (instead of pierce) works great as well.

RBBBR: Herald of Ash – Elemental Equilibrium – Concentrated Effect – Increased Area of Effect – Increased Burning Damage – (Empower/Enhance)


This is the only Aura we use. Because of the support gems, it does reserve 82% of our mana. Elemental Prolif was nerfed (probably too hard compared to “balanced” chaos dmg) so the radius is quite small. It’s still good enough to burn everything to death that did not get oneshot from Ice Shot. Good luck getting the socket colours on evasion armour.

RRRG: Cast when Damage taken (1) – Immortal Call (1) – Increased Duration (4) - Blink Arrow


Some sort of defence. Maybe it will save your life one day…mostly it doesn’t. You could use Flame Dash instead of Blink Arrow, if you manage to roll the right colours.

BBGG: Assassins Mark – Increased Area of Effect – Faster Attacks – Frenzy


Assassins Mark is our power charge source. It also increases the crit chance and recovers life, which is great. Use Frenzy during longer Boss fights to generate frenzy charges when there are no other mobs around. Otherwise you don't need it at all. (Maybe Vaal Haste would be an interesting option here as well.)

GRGB: Blood Rage – Increased Duration – Vaal Grace – Vaal Lightning Trap


Blood Rage creates frenzy charges. We get some minor life degeneration from it, but normally that doesn’t matter. Vaal Grace is our emergency skill, contrary to Immortal Call this can definitely save your life. Throw Vaal Lightning Trap in Boss fights if there are no mobs around.





Required Gear:
Chin Sol

This bow is really cheap because most people run around with Windripper or Voltaxic. Which is great! Get one with 180% increased Physical Damage. Dexterity and increased Attack Speed do not matter (still nice to have). All other stats are fixed.

Other gear:
Rares are fine. Make sure you have maximum elemental resistance if you start mapping. Chaos resistance should be 0 or higher. Other than that you want Life and Evasion on pretty much every piece of equipment. You also need 300+ Accuracy to get a decent hit chance on higher maps. 80% should be fine, as we only need to shoot one mob, everything else is explosion and burning. All other stats, like additional weapon damage, is nice to have but not required.
For Ascendancy enchantments, make sure you do not have any auto trigger damage stuff. If the mob we are shooting does not have full HP, we won’t get 100% more crit chance (Ambush).




Flasks:


The Stibnite flask is probably the best addition for evasion builds this patch. It’s simply awesome. It blinds everyone near us, which makes it harder for them to hit us. It also increases our evasion (which makes it even harder to hit us), and it also has quite a long duration and a lot of charges. I am sure they’ll going to nerf it.

Everything else is pretty much standard. Surgeon is maybe the best prefix on the flasks, but other prefixes work as well. One insta-heal flask might be good. You could change the Jade flask for a Basalt flask, to mitigate some of the melee oneshot stuff that happens in higher maps (and Izaro), but the flask charge/use ratio is terrible.


Map Mods:
Monsters from Beyond: This build can kill large groups with one shot. So you will meet these guys definitely. They are not too hard, one of them uses destroy undead so make sure you’re not standing in the group you killed moments ago.

Elemental Reflect: You will die.

Physical Reflect: Annoying, but manageable. Make sure you don't you dont pull "the biggest group ever" and hit 10 enemies with the Ice Shot arrow.

Immune to curses: Not much of an issue. You will do less crits and won’t get life from Assassins Mark. You still have max power charges almost all the time from the Ascendancy passive.

Elemental Equilibrium: You will do less damage if you can’t oneshot the enemy. Just takes longer to clear the map.

Blood Magic: Can’t use Herald of Ash, so I wouldn’t play it. Even in random groups I have never seen anyone playing this map mod.

Cursed with Vulnerability: You will take considerably more damage from Blood Rage. If enemies are curse immune as well, this can become a serious issue! You might want to remove Increased Duration from Blood Rage, because you could easily kill yourself when you have no flask charges left.

Avoid Elemental Status Ailments: Seriously, why is this in the game. It's rather common and can completely shut down some elemental builds. Chaos/Poison builds on the other hand don't give a f*ck at all. That being said, you will do (far) less damage. 60% avoid chance probably takes 25% more time to clear. I did not play an immune map yet, but I don't think it's worth the time to run these maps. Maybe if you remove the support gems from HoA and use Hatred as well, to get at least some sort of damage boost.

No video = Didnt happen :)

looks pretty good.

i like how you do a few things here, like not using a pet because it'll damage enemies and such like that. once i get enough of my CoC ground slam build im going to transform my other shadow into this build.
it was me who did the build previously, back in 1.0 up to 1.3 or 1.4 or whatever it was that nerfed elemental proliferation. this build will play quite a bit different now because of that massive radius nerf.

and yes its basically relegated to a glass cannon build. in all honesty if you put all passive and gear towards damage you should be able to break 8 million DPS on herald of ash burn. this isn't at all ideal, its just to show the absolute power HoA has with its scaling...its insane.

the usage of ice shot looks great. i'd probably try to throw in phys to lightning as a 6th link...and if you don't go full pierce i'd replace pierce with it. just because you have elemental focus and WED so gaining 50% of your phys damage as added elemental damage will boost its damage incredibly well.