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

Really enjoying this build. Currently at level 68 and in Act 3 Merciless; the furthest I have been in this game. Currently farming at Docks. My Frenzy definitely does not leech enough life back to counter the damage I take.

Am really hoping for a 5L or 6L item soon, but everything seems so expensive. I have some of my support gems in the secondary weapon spots leveling up so they are ready to go. Also struggling to max out resists. Get a new item in one spot and then have to get other items in an attempt to keep resists up.

Current Stats:
Life: 2820
Armor: 1464 w/o Grace
Fire: 75%
Cold: 75%
Light: 10%
Chaos: -47%
Damage w/o Frenzy charges
Frenzy: 968.4
Split: 472.8

Gear:


Also got my first map drop:
Hopefully the first exalted drop is not far away. Never seen one of those.

Any tips on the gear? I know some items are weak and have been looking for upgrades, but some items are hard to replace, like the resists I have on my quiver. I know there are better quivers with WEB and health (can you get lightning damage too on one?).

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Bafflepitch wrote:

Really enjoying this build. Currently at level 68 and in Act 3 Merciless; the furthest I have been in this game. Currently farming at Docks. My Frenzy definitely does not leech enough life back to counter the damage I take.

Am really hoping for a 5L or 6L item soon, but everything seems so expensive. I have some of my support gems in the secondary weapon spots leveling up so they are ready to go. Also struggling to max out resists. Get a new item in one spot and then have to get other items in an attempt to keep resists up.

Current Stats:
Life: 2820
Armor: 1464 w/o Grace
Fire: 75%
Cold: 75%
Light: 10%
Chaos: -47%
Damage w/o Frenzy charges
Frenzy: 968.4
Split: 472.8

Gear:

Also got my first map drop:

Hopefully the first exalted drop is not far away. Never seen one of those.

Any tips on the gear? I know some items are weak and have been looking for upgrades, but some items are hard to replace, like the resists I have on my quiver. I know there are better quivers with WEB and health (can you get lightning damage too on one?).

Basically you need A LOT more life and lightning resist, as well as weapon elemental damage. The first reason your Frenzy dps is so low is because you're not using Weapon Elemental Damage gem. You also need to be using that for your Split Arrow instead of Faster Attacks. It's an absolute requirement. You also need to link your auras with Reduced Mana. One 4-link will do the trick.

Use Enduring Cry to help with the elemental resists. It also adds 4% physical reduction per endurance charge, since your armor rating is also terribly low. Your bow should be good enough, but you need to 5-link it. It's pretty easy to do. It's never taken me more than 50 fusings to 5-link something.

You need a conductive quiver and leather belt with weapon elemental damage. Try to get gloves with attack speed. You also need a new necklace badly. Make sure it has flat elemental damage or weapon elemental damage on it, as well as life and resists. An onyx amulet would be best. Make sure every piece of gear has life on it. Your Iron Ring is doing practically nothing for you combat-wise. Replace that thing ASAP, preferably with a Topaz or Prismatic Ring with life, lightning resists, and flat lightning damage and/or weapon elemental damage. And you need at least a 4-link for your Frenzy.

I'm still not sure how your damage is THAT low. You can see my gear isn't that great yet my Frenzy dps is about 10 times higher than yours and my Split Arrow dps is about 6-7 times higher. No doubt having a 5L with 20% quality gems helps a good deal, and my gear is unquestionably better. First thing's first - link both of your attacks with Weapon Elemental Damage and 4L frenzy. Replace your quiver, belt, Iron Ring and amulet. Look at my gear to get an idea for what to look for. Your lightning resist must be at least 75% before you step foot into a map, or you will get destroyed. Once these things are done, let me know if you're still having trouble and we'll go from there.

Edit: Do you have Inner Force yet? It increases your auras a lot, which is where about 40% of my flat elemental damage comes from. Inner Force is the biggest dps increase you can get on the skill tree for the amount of points spent (should only be 4 points). And do you have Static Blows yet? Shocking mobs is crucial for your dps.

Shit, I also see you're using Projectile Weakness. That's a big no no. It's not compatible with the Chain gem. A projectile that pierces cannot chain. And the game checks for for pierce before chain. You need to be using Elemental Weakness. It will improve your dps by about 50% or so. Projectile Weakness is doing you more harm than good.

Another reason your dps is so low is that your Anger and Wrath are such low levels. If they were both level 20 and you linked Split Arrow with Weapon Elemental Damage, I think you could get your dps up to at least 1500 with that alone. Add in a belt and quiver with 20%+ weapon elemental damage and you should be at 1900 or higher for Split Arrow. Then get a 5L and throw in Faster Attacks and that should bump you up to about 2300.

WOW! Thank you for all that information. Still loving this build despite me butchering my gear setup.

I actually was really hurting on health just yesterday when it was around 1900, and then had to try to put the auras on top of that. But landed some of the +life items I have now. These were actually the gloves I was using until yesterday. Sigh.

I was really hurting on the bow I was using so I bought that, which was the best tri elemental I could find that I could afford.

I didn't realize weapon elemental damage was that important and don't even have one. I am going to start looking for a couple, hopefully leveled up some. I was thinking with split arrow faster attacks will let me get Life back faster to keep away from death. I feel like I am taking a lot of damage so I was trying to get health and +resist items. Guess that is incorrect.

I do have Static Blows and am working toward Inner Force. I currently have 83 passive points. I obviously don't have the 77% resists so I took Elementalist, but did not take the 6% health you mentioned. I do not have weight lifting yet either. I did take a +10 Dex node that you take later for the elemental damage nodes as I was in a currency/gear bind and did not have the dex to use that bow.

I probably hurt myself a lot, but wrath/anger/grace were eating so much health that I stopped leveling them until yesterday when I finally got more health.

Edit: I burned through a few jewelers to get the bow to a 5S and probably 40 fusing to not get a 5L at all. Not even close. I should have researched it before dumping the currency into this bow, but I'm sad now. I'm out of a lot of fuse and jewelers now. Not sure I want to continue dumping currency into the bow.

I did pick up a lvl 12 weapon elemental damage, few gems leveled, and I got the first 3% buff effect. Damage is now Frenzy 1336.2 and Split 789.2

That's a good start. But just in case you misunderstood me, I did not say it is wrong to focus on life and resists on gear. That is the #1 most important thing. All pieces of gear should have life unless you have a piece of gear with amazingly awesome dps stats in addition to IIQ/IIR and you're totally confident that you have sufficient life to not die. This can only be achieved by having high life rolls on all other pieces of gear.

Yes the WED gem is very important. It doesn't simply add the "increased" weapon elemental damage stat, it adds "more" weapon elemental damage, which is multiplicative with all of the "increased" weapon elemental damage you already have. So here's how it goes...

Flat elemental damage: 1,000. This is a practically unattainable number, but let's call min+max = 1000 total damage (287 of it comes from auras)

287 damage from Wrath and Anger modified by Inner Force = 339 damage from auras (1052 total damage)

Now modify that by all weapon elemental damage from gear and passives (NOT the gem - that comes next). I have 126% from gear and passives, which is a bit low, but let's roll with it.

1052 x 2.26 = 2377

Now for the Weapon Elemental Damage gem (80% more WED at lvl 20).

2377 x 1.80 = 4279

As you can see, the WED gem almost doubles your dps. Faster Attacks can't do that. I can understand your concern about your rate of leeching back life via LGOH, but with a thicket bow and the attack speed nodes this build uses (and the 20% attack speed from 4 frenzy charges) you should be attacking fast enough to get life back at a reliable pace, since I assume you have Unwavering Stance. Just know that it will get a lot better once you can afford a 20% quality gem and level it up. And of course, once you get a 5L for Faster Attacks it'll be even better! And if you ever get a Thicket Bow with the attack speed mod, even better :)

I'm sorry about your luck with the fusings :( I feel really bad that I encouraged you to waste half an exalt of wealth. I've 5-linked a few things. The lowest number of fusings it's taken me was 9, and the highest was 52 I believe.

Edit: Just thought of this, but are you keeping your frenzy charges up at all times during combat? Whenever I let them fall off, getting back up to 4 stacks is always the first thing I do before I start AOEing. And this is unrelated, but in regards to your dps... My dps is so high that I don't bother using Elemental Weakness most of the time, but in your case I would highly recommend you curse most packs of mobs that you encounter (only with Elemental Weakness; never Projectile Weakness). The 50% or so reduced elemental resists that it inflicts is massive and should help the speed at which you AOE packs of mobs considerably.

I have taken projectile weakness off completely now and am now using elemental weakness. So, that has made a difference. I can solo docks decently well, but again, magic mobs do hit me for a lot of damage so a little kiting is involved.

I try to keep my frenzy charges at 4 and will hit enduring cry as well if its a big group coming at me.

I'm going to focus on other gear, get the 4L for frenzy, etc. and hopefully level up some more. I'll then go back to the bow but keep an eye out on the store indexer. I did some searches and there really aren't any 5L or 6L tri-elemental bows on there that I would get. Most appear to do less damage than mine.

I need to look at 5L / 6L armor, but last time I did I could not afford any of it.

So, after I have my other gear, then I may go back and try to get 6S on the bow and try for a 5L with the hope that a 6L will land first. But, I'll look into it when that time comes.

What do you do about the chaos resist? Seems difficult to max that one, or you just don't worry about it?

Don't worry about 6L. They are expensive as hell. Even a crappy item with 6L is going to be like 4 ex minimum. A good chest or bow with 6L will usually be 12+ ex.

I don't worry about chaos resist. I only have -42% and I do fine. Since you're playing an archer, you have the ability to avoid chaos damage entirely. It's rather easy to do. Chaos damage comes in 4 forms.

Viper Strike - a melee attack that stacks a chaos damage-over-time on you, dealing maximum damage at 4 stacks. Always kill these enemies from a safe distance. If they have flicker strike, such as the flicker/viper strike spider boss in Spider Lair map, use the tactic I use for all flicker strike bosses: Keep Decoy Totem or Skele Totem down at max distance. This means at the very edge of your screen or even beyond it. Fire a few shots at the boss until he has your totem down to half health, then drop a new one while holding shift. If you're not holding shift, your character might move forward. You don't want that. You want to remain stationary, or if anything moving back away from the boss.

Snake spit or basic chaos projectiles fom those little guys in Vaal Pyramid - Easy to avoid and snakes generally have very low HP and are easy to kill quickly. Simply move out of the way if a projectile is coming towards you. You should have time. For the boss of Bog map, I don't even bother with totem. I just side step a couple feet every time he spits. For the Wharf boss, who fires 5 projectiles, it's a bit tougher. Try to keep the boss between you and your totem so that he will spit in the direction opposite of you. There is also a line-of-sight bug strategy that most people use to kill this boss. Check it out on Youtube if you're interested.

Poison Cloud - don't stand in it. If a poison arrow is fired at you, simply move away.

Basic melee attacks dealing chaos damage - kill them before they can attack you. If they make their way into melee range, run away or drop a totem.

You really shouldn't need any chaos resist at all. It's nice to have a little bit, but not mandatory for an archer. I have never once died to chaos damage on this character.

Ring and Quiver Replaced

OLD:



NEW:



How are they?

Damage is now (w/o Frenzy)
Frenzy: 1462.6
Split: 861.3

Cold / Fire still at 75%
Still hurting bad on lightning resist. Hope to land it on other items. Is it just me, or is that one hard to find? Probably just me.

Edit: got a passive. 1 point away from Inner Force.
Damage now w/o Frenzy
Frenzy: 1473.9
Split: 869.1

Edit2: Took inner force and think some gems leveled
Damage w/o frenzy:
Frenzy: 1659.2
Split: 992.3

Hey there fingerless knight I'm lvl 58 atm and my build looks like this:
CLICK ME!!!
as you can see I took the hp nodes and the frenzy charge on the right side of the tree (in the final build, mine isnt that much different of yours) but that means that I will take all the good stuff (static blows+innerforece) at MUCH later levels. is it worth it? the extra frenzy charge does good? (I think it is, more dmg and more evasion). I'd liek some of your input please :)

I ripped to flickers in merciles so nvm :P

nice