worthless standtard roa garbage guide

109 Points US/IR
108 Points IR/Heart of Oak
111 points US/IR/IF



Relevant Uniques:

Acrobatics:


I really don't like acrobatics because it seems way easier to build for lightning arrow than rain of arrows, and it doesn't seem that worthy to go to the other way. This is also really poor theorycrafting, I haven't played an acrobatics character, just got some feedback from a baddie lvl 90. It seems to be a bit harder to gear for too.
It's the only way to mitigate damage if you have RT or lyoneye so I'll probably post a real build later.

Quality on conc effect will be mandatory, blood magic becoming quite costly


No advice on leveling, if you need some with all the streamed races going around you're terrible.

Requires 5L for half/no regen or reflect maps, 6L for great dps

Remove faster attacks in your 5L

Rain of Arrows and Gear

Rain of Arrows is a great ability that, once linked with concentrated effect, allows you to deal huge amount of aoe damage as well as single target. It's one of the easier skill to gear for since it doesn't require accuracy or expensive gem
edit:wrong as of patch 0.11, resolute technique will be necessary if you don't have accuracy or lyoneye's glare
and you don't need quality on bm - conc. It also saves you skillpoints as it doesn't require resolute technique and you gain a considerable amount of intelligence/dexterity from skilltree for gems/gear requirements. You can play with both physical and elemental bows, but you'll mainly gear for ele damage. Physical bows are reserved for people who want to benefit from life leech on gear (jewelry, gloves, quiver or blood rage) and you need to add hatred to the aura list, which require some specification in the skilltree or alpha's howl.
Lyoneye is definitely not the best bow for this build since you don't benefit from its uniqueness, any ele bow with high attack speed and more than 60 average elemental damage would do similar or better damage. Blackgleam is a good addition to tooltip dps, but you're killing your physical damage for it, which is really bad the way armor works. Considering the usual gear (alpha's howl, kaoms heart), I don't think it's the best piece of gear to sacrifice for that extra 1k dps.


Build

Marauder and Duelist are really similar, Ranger is going all out on the damage and usually requires kaom's heart, 6L bow and alpha's howl. Shoutout to Yazuki for his 29k hc tooltip RoA.
About the build, going by the left side of the Duelist Skilltree rather than the right rewards more interesting stats but is more costly. it also helps if you're using a physical bow if you're fine on the dexterity side.
You can switch to ice shot on your main link for boss fights, permachill is a broken mechanic worth the drop in framerate.

Bandits

Assuming kaom's heart and ele bow, Kill them all in each difficulty
If you're a poor begger like me, help normal Oak.
If you like physical damage, help Cruel Oak.
If you're playing with frenzy charges, I don't think Helping kraytin in merciless is worth it unless you're already speccing heavely into those.

Point Blank

It's a keystone I neglected for a while, I really expected the damage bonus to be too much for reflect, but it turned out to make it easier for me.
Playing in melee always happens, and I have 25 exalt worth of gear - which is 1/5 of the regular 85+ player.
With the current state of the game, you're taking survival nodes anyway because you're going to get hit at some point so why not benefit from it ?
the 50% increase is huge, roa works really well with point blank, and it doesn't cost much to get it. If you're playing with static blows, you'll trigger shock on more targets, and you can reach stun threshold level. There's no equivalent on the skilltree for such a bonus (outside of pain attunement - and even then it doesn't compare).
Against Reflect, as you're going to run in melee range, you'll have more time to react, and since you're paying more attention to mob composition, exposure and such, it's safer to play with a dangerous playstyle.
Against hard physical hitter, you can still benefit from a decent bonus while hitting them with the edge of the aoe, don't be ballsy.
You need to be melee to snipe loot anyway
edit: I was wrong about this point, it's working as described in the tooltips, the only thing that matters is where roa originated: either you or rat.

Static Blows
It's not a keystone I like despite how powerful it is, I don't think it's worth taking it unless you're solo most of the time or playing without shocker in your team.

Iron Grip
Only works with physical bows

Lightning Arrow Vs Rain of Arrows and their synergy in a team

disclaimer: what follows is my personal observation over the months I've spent playing this game and the different people I've met in hardcore. I'm quite attentive to the efficiency of other's people character and how they play the game. It's reserved for high end farming with more than 10k single target dps - for non crit build. When I use the word skill it'll be within the limits of an arpg, it's a contraction for "people keeping their monitor on when playing path of exile".

In order to make lightning arrow work, you need to apply both Chain and Lmp which apply less projectiles damage twice so you can deal AoE damage. They have a high increase in mana cost, and the low damage per projectile doesn't help with stuns/elemental ailments. La also converts part of the physical damage as lightning, but reduces the physical part of your damage (usually lyoneye) to a point where little armor is enough to mitigate it - that's ironically the only case where I would use a blackgleam. Against immune to curses combined with high resistances ennemy type (necros, golem), the main part of your dps will be strongly mitigated. In a ideal situation, you'll hit 36 different targets, but when confronted to a few hard hitters, you'll usually hit them with 1 - 2 arrow and they'll be spread out so you don't benefit from the implicit AoE from the skill - which makes you barely tickle them while spamming your high cost skill the same way as usual. Speaking about spamming, the auto aim behind chain and the spread and pray with lmp is a particularity that usually bring the worst into the players, they'll spam the walls for tens of second before realizing it, and prioritizing necros or problematic mobs/vaal totems isn't part of their gameplay. It's also an attack that you don't really control, and that's been a wake up call (or insta death) for some people who don't pay attention to reflect or lightning thorns - that you'll trigger multiple times.

I also want to speak about the composition of the team at end game, which will usually comprise a totem sporker with high crit or Ek players. These guys are going to do the aoe damage, better than you and multiple screens away - while shocking. Ek players are going to tank shit and snipe the loot. Compared to a crit user, you'll be a little spider. But do you want to be a useful spider making a minor difference or go into the walls and bounce ? In my eyes, if you're not playing crit, you should try to aim for a high single target dps, aoe should be the last of your concerns - and certainly not worth sacrificing your 6L for it.

Rain of arrows only require concentrated effect, which pushes the damage of RoA close to a single target ability. The high value per target will provide a decent regen from life leech in dangerous situations, and being able to stun/freeze mobs can save your life or your teammates'. The aoe is a bit limited, but strives you to target between mobs so you can maximize it.

Dual Ranged Attack Totems

Tooltips = ~ 8, 487 dps per totem before point blank

Supported with thunderfist, point blank (keystone) and decent dps gear.
I was able to shock a few high life targets but there's a few different things that makes it less viable than a spellcaster.
Cast time is 1 sec, on a character with low to non existant cast speed increase. Combine that with the slowed attack speed and the little delay, it feels quite slow to play with it.
Rain of arrows really seemed like a good idea for totems, but it targets the closest mob, so half the aoe is usually wasted. The hypothetic gain in dps is wasted since a player will usually aim betweens mobs. The totem, while castable at range, doesn't have great range on its own, it's probably below the point blank threshold for reduced damage. Getting stunned while the animation will cancel the attack, that's nothing new but it's worse for totems with their low life.
40% less dmg on bows: impossible to play with physical. It's already hard to obtain a decent physical value, you can only dream of it on totems.
The advantage to avoid reflect issues isn't really worth it since you can't really spec crit/crit dmg (on a life build anyway and even for bows), and I really missed the life regen from life leech in comparison.

The general feeling is that it seems hard to make totems work without a fork/chain direct attack (such as spark, ek, split arrow or lightning arrow) due to the limited range. The constant need to recast really hurts on a ranged character, no wonder no one's using it. I haven't tried split arrows/lightning arrows though !
As a gimmick to use ice shot it's quite powerful though.

Edit:
Quote from Solus Coda, another point of view on dual totem RoA

Show you gear)) Cool Mara))

I don't really believe it's interesting for people to see my shitty gear but here goes

end result with 42% blackgleam:
regular dps:
Keep in mind I'm playing in hardcore so I can't really afford to pickup a lot of dps nodes
The build I'm using has 3 points in mana reservation for auras instead of iron reflexe as I don't have a lot, I'm waiting to lvl a bit to go iron reflexes
could spare a few skillpoints If I had int on gear

wait... this is on HC? wat?

how do you deal with turbo maps, piety, end-game bosses immune to curses? etc....

The delay between the moment you shoot and the dmg from reflect allows you to granite/pots/stop and I like the way it's going up and down (I'm around 2k/s with life leech)
I think our party has done the hardest maps in hc, but I mostly have to thank theory for triple curse and kerkrom totem for the tanking part
we've had pretty bad rng between the type of mobs and the affluence of minus max res/temp chain/lmp/added/vulnerability on our maze rolls with usually 2 of the above combined
77 piety

Rain of Arrows isn't considered a projectile right?
Have you tested your DPS with Blackgleam quiver?
What's your physical damage reduction? with and without determination

Rain of arrow isn't a projectile but benefits from projectiles dmg and speed I think
the screenshot above is with blackgleam, otherwise I'm only at 16K7 dps on my regular gear, 13k2 with life leech
I currently have 8k5 armor and 7k life but in 2 - 3 lvl and minors upgrades I can get back to 7k5+
5k2 without determination

Wouldn't be Point Blank a huge single target DPS incrase?
I assume that it's range modificator counts from the center of impact of RoA, right?

thanks for answering. and hmmm i do wonder about point blank...

yeah it would be but
my dps is already quite high, this is an hardcore character, I have to unequip wed for ele reflect with 85% all res
it's also really helpful in party to be able to snipe rare/totems and some mobs don't really allow you to be in melee - in hard maps
I think it can be really great while getting the gear though
and yeah the dmg from point blank is applied from the center of the aoe (so really great while kiting) according to my race gameplay
edit typo:
I've always meant that the damage you gain from point blank (aka the distance between you and where you hit the mob) is applied on the distance between you and the center of the aoe, I now see where the confusion originated and I'm sorry for this misunderstanding.