[1.1] Davos Seaworth's Elemental Split Arrow Build - Solo every map with ease!

I feel that Split Arrow is one of the most underrated attacks in the game, and I'm here to let you know just how awesome it can be. This build does not require great gear. The one important thing is that you have a decent tri-elemental bow with an attack speed of 1.50 or higher, along with jewelry that has flat elemental damage and a quiver with 20%+ weapon elemental damage.

I play primarily solo, and I can run level 77 maps with just about the hardest mods possible. The only mods I ever consider rerolling are -20% max resist + elemental reflect. I can handle elemental reflect on its own, but coupled with reduced max resist or elemental weakness can cause problems. However this combination can be done by swapping out WED gem for Life Leech.

Once you get to about level 80 with my build and have followed my gearing recommendations, if you're unable to solo ANY map, you are doing something incorrectly. And I will be more than happy to help you figure out what that is. I will collaborate with you until we've found the problem and you're plowing through maps like a machine.

The great mix of survivability, dps and ability to kill from a very long range that this build offers make it a great choice for Hardcore.

Abbreviations used in this guide:


Pros:


Cons





Finished Build (105 points)


Ranger Version


- Unwavering Stance: Sadly, I dropped it in this new version of the build. Though now my dps, armor and life are so high that I seriously doubt it will cause any problems. It's still close enough to take if you want it though. It's only 5 points away, so if you're lvl 92 or higher you can get it without losing any passives. Otherwise, my suggestion would be to drop a mix of life and WED nodes.

- Anger and Wrath auras are absolutely positively 100% mandatory for this build (endgame)! Make sure you're using them BOTH, no matter what. Your damage will be terrible without them. My dps goes from 1600 to 4600 after applying them. It is also possible to use Grace without resorting to Alpha's Howl. You need a lvl 20 Reduced Mana gem as well as all of the reduced mana reserved passives that you see me take in the build. If your Reduced Mana gem isn't yet lvl 20, you can pick up one or both of the 4% reduced mana reserved nodes northwest of where Templar starts.




Skill point progression:



Note: Static Blows is mandatory for this build. You'll be fine until you get it; just try to get it as early as you can. Since this build uses Resolute Technique, you won't be able to stack shocks without it. Three stacks of shock more than doubles the damage a target takes, so get as much lightning damage on your gear as possible. You can get it on weapon, quiver, gloves, rings and necklace.




Bandits:
Normal: +40 HP
Cruel: Attack Speed
Merciless: +1 frenzy charge (recommended) or passive point if using Elemental Hit

Stats
Life: 6379
Armor: 8811
Resists: 77% / Chaos -34%
Split Arrow DPS: 4597 (w/ Chain & 4 frenzy charges)
Frenzy DPS: 11944 (w/ 4 frenzy charges)

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Skill & Support Gems

For support gems, I will list them in order of importance. You'll need to have at least three 4-link items for this to work properly for end-game. 5/6L will make your dps skyrocket.

AOE
1. Split Arrow
2. Life Gain on Hit (quality highly recommended)
3. Chain
4. Blood Magic
5. Weapon Elemental Damage
6. Faster Attacks

Single target
1. Frenzy (quality highly recommended) OR Elemental Hit
2. Life Leech (quality highly recommended)
3. Weapon Elemental Damage
4. Blood Magic
5. Faster Attacks
6. Added Lightning Damage

Auras
1. Wrath
2. Anger
3. Grace
4. Reduced Mana

Utility 1
1. Elemental Weakness
2. Decoy Totem
3. Enduring Cry
4. Blood Magic

Utility 2-A
1. Lightning Warp
2. Reduced Duration (this will reduce the time between cast and teleport)
3. Faster Casting
4. Blood Magic

*OR*

Utility 2-B
1. Immortal Call (20% quality)
2. Increased Duration (20% quality)
3. Blood Magic
4. Whatever your heart desires. Detonate Dead can be nice for dealing with necromancers if your damage is low.

*OR*

Utility 2-C
1. Frenzy
2. Item Rarity
3. Blood Magic
4. Culling Strike or Item Quantity

*Note: In order to use all 3 auras, you will need a level 20 Reduced Mana gem in addition to a total of 23% reduced mana reserved passive nodes. If you do not have access to a level 20 Reduced Mana gem, take the two 4% reduced mana reserved passives above the templar starting point.


Curses
Elemental Weakness for damage (quality preferred). Enfeeble or Temporal Chains for survivability. In my opinion, the only time you should use a defensive curse is against hard hitting bosses. In most other cases, a good offense is the best defense. I would recommend using Elemental Weakness against all non-boss enemies. The faster you kill them, the less damage they will do to you. I can usually kill all mobs before they are in range to hurt me, with the exception of flicker strikers of course. However they can be killed off screen most of the time.

Totem
Your choice between Decoy Totem and Skeleton Totem. I personally prefer Decoy Totem, and now that Cast on Damage Taken is in the game, you'll probably have no room (as well as no reason) to use skeleton totem.

Enduring Cry
This is very useful in difficult maps, and it really shines in Elemental Weakness maps if your resistances aren't overcapped by 44%. This build only utilizes 3 endurance charges, but those can still go a long way. Those 3 charges provide 15% physical damage reduction (the equivalent of a very large amount of armor rating once your AR is past the 6k mark) as well as 15% elemental resists. I don't use Enduring Cry most of the time, but if I'm running a lvl 76/77 map with mods such as Vulnerability, Fleet, Deadly or Elemental Weakness I try to keep those charges up 100% of the time.

CWDT
I don't like it and I don't fully understand why people use it. When you self cast, you have perfect control over exactly when and where to use your utility spells. Immortal Call can protect you in an extremely dangerous situation, but if you're using a low level IC linked to CWDT, there's no guarantee it's going to be up when you need it. If you cast manually you can decide exactly when to activate your 10 seconds of complete physical damage immunity. And low level decoy totems get wrecked. You also need to actually take the damage before it will activate. When you self cast a totem, you can cast it out in a group of mobs before they attack you at all, then pick them off from a distance without taking damage. And finally, it's more fun to self cast (at least it is for me).

Weapon Swap
1.0.0 update: I no longer use Brightbeak for my weapon swap nor do I use an alternate Frenzy with IIR+IIQ+Culling for finishing bosses and rares. This is partly due to the fact that all skills now need to be linked with the Blood Magic gem since the BM passive is no longer viable (why does it even exist?). Now I use a 5L Reaper's Pursuit axe. It has built-in Culling Strike AND 40% IIR. So I link Leap Slam, Blood Magic, IIR, IIQ and Faster Attacks. This serves as a finisher for bosses and rares as well as a means of mobility. It doesn't allow you to leap as quickly as Brightbeak does, but it's plenty fast enough to get you out of sticky situations.




Gearing

Next I'll show you generally what to look for in gear. You want life on every piece of gear, and enough resists to maintain 77% all resist. For endgame, your weapon should have a total of at least 40 min and 150 max elemental damage and an attack speed of 1.50 or higher. A thicket bow with a bonus attack speed mod is preferred. Try to get weapon elemental damage on quiver and belt, with flat elemental damage (or WED, or both) on rings and amulet. Movement speed on boots is a must. Look for gloves with 10% attack speed or higher, and preferably some flat elemental damage.

You'll also need at least 15 intelligence on your gear to use level 20 Wrath, Elemental Weakness and Added Lightning Damage. A +15 Onyx or Turquoise Amulet should do the trick. However this can be avoided by taking the +30 intelligence node between the duelist and ranger starting areas. The following gear slots can have intelligence: helmet, amulet, rings. It's possible to get intelligence in other slots, but not with armor or evasion based gear. For instance, ES or EV/ES chest pieces can have intelligence, but you want a chest with pure evasion or pure armor. The ES is wasted.

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Gearing example


Note: In my opinion, the first gem you should worry about getting quality on is Life Gain on Hit. Make this gem 20% quality before concerning yourself with any others.

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Gameplay Footage
I have not played this build in quite some time, and am no longer able to do so in any case, aside from starting it from scratch. My gear for it was in standard league, and when I quit standard league I gave most of my stuff and all of my currency away. Jack89 recorded a video of him playing this build a few months ago and was kind enough to post it this thread on page 68. He followed the passives and appears to have been using the same gem setup aside from the fact that he is using CWDT, linking it with Enfeeble, Molten Shell and Enduring Cry, whereas I recommend self casting Enduring Cry, Immortal Call, Decoy Totem (if necessary) and Elemental Weakness. So keep in mind he is not cursing mobs with Elemental Weakness in this video, which would increase your overall damage output by 40% or more.

Jack89 running level 75 Plateau map: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VdUOHNKFBEc

Hey,
I guess I am the first to respond. I amcurrently lvl 62 running this build and I like it alot. I have a decent tri ele bow and using none q gems.

Here are positives
* No super uniques needed ( kaom \ shavs)
* Great at pack clearing
* Dmg scales well with level
* Clean screen ( no la )


Here are negatives
* my single target still weakish
* ele rflect ofcourse
* can be life hog


I am having fun with this build and being a little more unique is great. As for guide I would like to see a better breakdown of links in text. I found them in the pics though. Good guide and build. I LL do a follow up post soon.

I'm glad you like it :) What do you mean by better breakdown of links in text?

As for your single target dps, what are you currently linking with Frenzy? I will say that having a high quality Frenzy gem makes a huge difference in your single target dps, probably moreso than most other single target skills. Each quality percent will give your Frenzy 0.35% attack speed per charge, which is 1.4% with 4 charges. So a 20% Frenzy gem basically gives you an extra 28% attack speed for Frenzy.

Feel free to try Elemental Hit to see if that gives you better single target dps. In fact, I'm fairly sure that it would. However, I think the benefit of using Frenzy over EH outweighs the single target dps loss. With this build, using Frenzy gives you 20% attack/cast speed to ALL attacks and spells. It's a free 20% attack speed for Split Arrow, as well as cast speed for curses and totems. I have never struggled with single target dps; I can drop just about any map boss in less than 20 seconds. I feel that having that extra AOE dps is more crucial to success :)

Hello, I'm relatively new to PoE but I rolled a bow Duelist on Onslaught, am 48, and my build has turned out to be quite similar to yours. The difference is that I went for RT by going up into Iron Grip. This shaves off about 4 points and allows you to pick up a few 10% health nodes later on, at the cost of BM and Unwavering. At 340 strength, Iron Grip gives me an extra 68% physical, so its pretty handy.

My question is, how essential is BM and Unwavering at higher levels? Lightning and Split Arrow are roughly the same efficiency atm, with faster killing from LA and easier leeching from SA. I have a mid-quality Frenzy gem too, so I've been considering going up into the Shadow tree for the additional charges and lightning weapon damage. Not sure if this is feasible or not. Thoughts?

"

Tiers wrote:

Hello, I'm relatively new to PoE but I rolled a bow Duelist on Onslaught, am 48, and my build has turned out to be quite similar to yours. The difference is that I went for RT by going up into Iron Grip. This shaves off about 4 points and allows you to pick up a few 10% health nodes later on, at the cost of BM and Unwavering. At 340 strength, Iron Grip gives me an extra 68% physical, so its pretty handy.

My question is, how essential is BM and Unwavering at higher levels? Lightning and Split Arrow are roughly the same efficiency atm, with faster killing from LA and easier leeching from SA. I have a mid-quality Frenzy gem too, so I've been considering going up into the Shadow tree for the additional charges and lightning weapon damage. Not sure if this is feasible or not. Thoughts?

Well here's the thing... With a tri-elemental bow, you're hardly doing any physical damage at all. I have about 350 strength and Iron Grip only adds like 30 dps to my split arrow. Definitely not worth it. However, the alternative to a tri-ele bow is a bow with a high percent physical modifier (125%+) in addition to 2 high elemental damage mods. This is useful for running Added Fire Damage gem in addition to Hatred, which theoretically is quite a bit more dps than my build. With a bow like this, Iron Grip may be a good option, but elemental damage will still be the largest portion of your dps.

As for Blood Magic... The Blood Magic passive is perfect for pure elemental builds. Since I have no extra physical damage on my bow, Hatred aura (30% mana) won't add much dps. However, Wrath and Anger (non-percent auras) add an extremely large amount of dps granted you have a good amount of weapon elemental damage and are using the WED gem. The problem with the Blood Magic gem is that it uses up a precious gem socket. You pretty much need a 6L to make this work properly: Split arrow > Life Gain > Chain > WED > Blood Magic > Added Fire. Without the 6th link for Added Fire, you're sort of defeating the purpose of using a high physical bow with Blood Magic gem in the first place.

As for Unwavering Stance, it's absolutely amazing. It has saved me from death more times than I can count, and since you're using Iron Reflexes, there is no drawback to it whatsoever. In my opinion, Unwavering Stance is the single best passive on the entire tree. Getting stunned lowers your dps, prevents you from quickly moving out of a dangerous situation, and can also interrupt your constant attacking which you may need to stay alive via life leech or life gain on hit.

I see, that makes a lot of sense. I was under the assumption that if you went too much elemental or physical as a ranged you could blow up on offscreen reflect auras, so I was trying to build both. Thanks for your help, I think I'll respec to the BM route.

I haven't killed myself with elemental reflect so far. I have come close though, but usually only on maps with elemental reflect combined with reduced max resists or elemental weakness. I have killed myself with Lightning Thorns however, but this was before they nerfed it. LT doesn't seem to be that dangerous since the nerf.

Made some changes. Added a skillgrimage section to make leveling up easier for you!

Very similar to a build I made, but marauder based. Here's the thread if interested. I used Pierce instead of Chain. Chain probably works better for shock-stacking though. I never got to test its full potential in higher level maps.

Edit: Btw, Thunderfist would fit perfectly in this build - like it does with LA builds as well :)

"

DavosTheOnionKnight wrote:

I haven't killed myself with elemental reflect so far. I have come close though, but usually only on maps with elemental reflect combined with reduced max resists or elemental weakness. I have killed myself with Lightning Thorns however, but this was before they nerfed it. LT doesn't seem to be that dangerous since the nerf.

I've been seeing a lot of builds that are mostly ele dmg based like LA, for example, start to run with a ranged attack totem with either LA, Ice shot, or something similar linked to it for ele reflect packs. RoA might be a good choice too, since it hits a wide scale of things and you can stack it right ontop of the reflect boss.