The Easiest of the Easy Beginner Build Guides [1.1 SotV UPDATED]

"

roilev wrote:

How important are Static Blows and Resolute Technique?

Lightning Arrow builds get most of their DPS through shock stacks on enemies: they will take much more damage with increasing number of shock stacks. LA does a lot less damage by itself because of LMP/GMP and Fork/Chain so shock stacking is an important part of compensating for this.

There are only a few ways of getting shock on enemies: Critical strikes from lightning attacks/spells, Static Blows cluster or Conductivity curse.

Resolute Technique eliminates the need to get accuracy mods on gear and/or passives, and is an indirect boost to dps since chance to hit is otherwise capped at 95%. However, since LA can no longer crit, Static Blows is the only reliable way to get shock stacks on targets.

LA builds that do not take RT+SS bump up their critical strike chance via the passive tree (base crit chance on bows is a mere 5%) and/or gear mods. The notable passives to grab are Bloodthirst, Assassination, Mental Acuity, Lethality, Pressure Points cluster and Deadly Draw. All the increased %crit chance is added up before the total is used to multiply the bow's crit %.

So your suggested passive tree would suffer from poor DPS because it doesn't apply shock stacks often enough to mitigate the decreased projectile damage from support gem use. A crit LA with blood magic build modified from your posted build would look more like this.

I would recommend checking out the Ranger subforum for crit LA builds, though many of them do require much better gear to be effective, while skipping Blood Magic and using BM support gems instead to counter the high mana cost of supported lightning arrow.

Thanks for the suggestions, esp. the Deadly Draw cluster! Since I am already there, 3 points for +40% phys.damage, +40% crit chance and +30% crit multiplier are priceless! Though I am not so willing to invest that heavy in crit, going up for Assassination and Bloodthirst are 7 points

I have a question to ZiggyD, why not use the Decoy Totem more, but kite the mobs? I know it is up to play style, but with Decoy and Temporal chains the mobs are basically ignoring me, while I DPS them with no interruption.

I'm using this build atm for my first character and it is fun so far, thanks for the well written guide.

1 minor issue though, for a total noob like me (played 1 day ^^) I needed additional information from other threads / sites to fully comprehend what the guide said.
Bandit quest for example Now I know I'll need to help oak in the 2 first difficulties, for the life and the phys dmg and someone else for endurance or frenzy charge in the last difficulty.

Then again if you played for a couple of days and then came across this guide you should know enough by then to completely comprehend the guide, after playing a bit more and reading the guide again so much more became clear.

(I was wondering what the next meant)
Lightning Arrow
- Lesser Multiple Projectiles
- Pierce or Chain or Neither (if you instead rely on pierce from Projectile Weakness)
- Weapon Elemental Damage (preferred over added fire due to high ele conversion)
- Life Gain on Hit
- Faster Attacks

After playing and reading some more I now know that its a 6 linked item with those 6 skill gems in.

So it might be my own fault more then it is the guide / writers fault ^^
Maybe some food for thought though.

Thanks again for all your video's and guides, they made alot of the game clear for me and I'll surely use them in the future.

I accidentally Killed oak in Act 2 Cruel and got a passive skill point instead. Any thoughts on how to adjust for this? Thanks

"

Miniduper wrote:

I accidentally Killed oak in Act 2 Cruel and got a passive skill point instead. Any thoughts on how to adjust for this? Thanks

You can't.. It's gone.

You can change your bandit reward, it will cost you 20 orbs of regret but here's the link on how to fix it http://pathofexile.gamepedia.com/Deal_with_the_Bandits scroll down to Quest Reward Change and it will tell you how. If you are only on cruel it may be cheaper to start over depending on how much time you invest in the game. Or just go without it until you can afford it. One thing to make absolute certain about is if you decide to change it MAKE SURE YOU ARE IN CRUEL DIFFICULTY when you use the book also make sure to have 1 free point when fixing it so the game can take it away. If you are in normal or merciless you will screw up those instead of fixing the other.

I want to try this out but I am brand new to the game. Sorry, for the very basic noob question, but when i read this in the write-up

AoE Primary Skill

Lightning Arrow
- Lesser Multiple Projectiles
- Pierce or Chain or Neither (if you instead rely on pierce from Projectile Weakness)
- Weapon Elemental Damage (preferred over added fire due to high ele conversion)
- Life Gain on Hit
- Faster Attacks


Single Target Primary Skill

Frenzy
- Added Fire
- Life Leech
- Faster Attacks
- Physical Projectile Attack Damage
- Wildcard slot

Does this mean I would carry two different bows set up with 6 linked gem slots and switch between them depending on the scenario (aoe vs single)

Thanks

"

gamerocker wrote:

I want to try this out but I am brand new to the game. Sorry, for the very basic noob question, but when i read this in the write-up

Does this mean I would carry two different bows set up with 6 linked gem slots and switch between them depending on the scenario (aoe vs single)

Thanks

You could do that, but I believe the original intent of the build was to eventually end up with a 6-linked bow and 6-linked chest armor piece.

It might cost more currency to get your hands on a 6-linked chest piece, and if you're able to get two bows, and can deal with the swapping mid-fight, then go for it. You should probably equip a second quiver too.

Question for Ziggy, Tanakeah, Skywalkerfx and all:

If you grab Heart of the Oak and maybe the two Stun Recovery and Stun Mastery nodes, it sounds like you would not need to grab Unwavering Stance. Taking that another step forward, if you don't grab Unwavering Stance, would it be a good idea to not take Iron Reflexes as well? My thought is that you could then balance out your Armor and Evasion Rating to deal with multiple little hits from the mobs, but also the big one shot hits from bosses.

Does that make sense or am I making some poor assumptions?

"

ZiggyD wrote:

Updated OP! Will post a video for passive tree progression route pretty soon!

"

Tanakeah wrote:

...

1. This one doesn't take Unwavering Stance and instead goes through HotO to reach Ballistic Mastery. I know you're quite big on US since it synergizes well with Iron Reflexes, but I find that as a ranged character you're not quite a dependent on stun protection as compared to melee and the extra life regen can make a difference.

Why take the added fire damage support for frenzy and not one of the other added damage gems?

Also if you take resolute technique, you don't crit any more and you wont ignite mobs.
So I was thinking why not take the added chaos damage it adds flat chaos damage and it doesn't do anything special on crit, would that translate to more DPS or does the % added fire damage even without chance to ignite add more damage then the flat chaos damage?