The Shotgun Bitch - ele crit frenzy/split arrow CI bow-witch - 110k+ effective frenzy DPS

Clearing hard gorge map in (effectively) 3:25

http://youtu.be/F4Pr_k2CtWI

Mods:
Fleet, splitting (+3 projs), enraged (3 charges), of exposure (-20%)

+ forgetting auras exist :)

Hey bro!

I raised six chars so far and all of them was different witches (dual totem, summoner, wander, bow master almost like yours etc). Im so tired of them and wanted to try something new so i drew an alternate skill tree, criticise please.

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Bed wrote:

AOE damage is provided by split arrow. Just for reference, Chain is junk ;)

Are you sure about Pierce>Chain? I'm running Davos duelist elemental archer that uses SA/chain and it seems that it compliments that build nicely. High Att Speed, very good leeching with LoH, Self guiding missiles, multiple hits on group of enemies, even when they are weirdly positioned /not in line.

I can imagine situations when pierce will be better but chain ensures safe hits in any situation. I will test pierce tonight but could you elaborate that anyway?

I will mention that since this build uses BM, cost is not an issue.

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Dharmatrooper wrote:

Hey bro!

I raised six chars so far and all of them was different witches (dual totem, summoner, wander, bow master almost like yours etc). Im so tired of them and wanted to try something new so i drew an alternate skill tree, criticise please.

I'm assuming your skill tree starts as a ranger rather than a witch - I think that's perfectly viable, possibly advantageous in the late late late late late game if you get a bow with completely insane dps that outclasses even lioneye's, since you grab 2 extra 20% accuracy nodes with the ranger that would otherwise be wasted with a lioneye's

Getting a perfect skill tree is hardly something that can be easily proven but I can make a few comments:
-making a build using all 120 points is pretty optimistic to start, I use around 105-110 absolute maximum for a "final" build :P
-you miss out the lethality notable cluster near Ondar's Guile - 120% crit strike chance from 3 nodes of pretty awesome, definitely need that for any bow crit build imo.
-Personally i wouldn't go up the duelist start area or towards the master fletcher notable past the frenzy charge near the bottom of the tree - there are some decent nodes there but you can get more dps nodes elsewhere without having to spend 3+ passives on dex that you don't need
-Your build includes +40 strength from nodes (+20 if you exclude Fury Bolts) - unless you have massive stat-boosting gear you'll want at least 1 of the +30 str passives you missed, probably both of them
-Don't miss the Theive's craft +30 int notable - these things are basically +6% ES with some extra mana on top, can't go wrong with that :p

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Thorien_Kell wrote:

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Bed wrote:

AOE damage is provided by split arrow. Just for reference, Chain is junk ;)

Are you sure about Pierce>Chain? I'm running Davos duelist elemental archer that uses SA/chain and it seems that it compliments that build nicely. High Att Speed, very good leeching with LoH, Self guiding missiles, multiple hits on group of enemies, even when they are weirdly positioned /not in line.

I can imagine situations when pierce will be better but chain ensures safe hits in any situation. I will test pierce tonight but could you elaborate that anyway?

I will mention that since this build uses BM, cost is not an issue.

Hehe that quote was meant to be kinda provocative tbh ^_^ I think that they both have their uses tbh. Very generally speaking, I personally consider pierce to be pretty universally dominant for CI archers (although that's a minority), while Chain is better for blood magic archers (or mana-using life archers with ridiculous mana regen maybe). As you say, Chain does synergise far better with LoH since generally you'll be hitting more mobs per shot than with pierce. Likewise, potential mana issues are far less problematic if you run BM. With this build though, LoH does nothing and mana actually does become a problem, so I really wouldn't consider chain particularly viable here.

On the wider question of actual DPS/mob clearing speed (not accounting for mana), there are too many parameters to give a definite answer, but I'll make a few comments, though I'll be generalising a lot ofc (and not accounting for the increased damage of a levelled Chain gem, which does become very significant too).

Assuming a chain projectile does indeed chain twice, its total damage will be x1.5 that of an SA attack without chain. In order to surpass this damage output, an SA projectile with pierce will have to hit at least 2 targets (for >= x2 damage). it could be argued then that for very dense mobs, Pierce would be superior since most projectiles will hit at least 2 targets and so do more damage than an equivalent chain projectile.

Looking at possible damage per shot, Chain's MAXIMUM damage is x9 that of a single SA projectile without Chain. This would need a minimum of 6 mobs. Pierce's maximum damage is pretty huge since it can hit a far larger number of targets in total, but would need a minimum of 9 mobs to equal Chain's damage (and realistically more due to the damage bonus of levelled chain). It might therefore be said that Chain is superior for smaller or more dispersed mob packs while pierce is superior for larger or denser ones.

It should also be noted that Chain's lower damage per hit means that physical damage is less effective due to the non-linear damage reduction of armour on mobs, so pure physical builds may suffer more from using chain than elemental builds (and by a similar mechanism, stuns will be far less frequent than with pierce builds). Shock stacking may also be made harder with chain due to the lower damage per hit - since shock duration is determined by lightning damage per hit, small lightning hits are unlikely to shock. With enough lightning damage this trend may reverse though - mobs being triple shock stacked due to each projectile shocking 3 times separately (may be wrong here, not certain about exact mechanics).

Thanks for clarification, as I've thought, It's all situational.

For me, I'm still gonna stick to chain, because of almost pure ele damage (almost none phys) and very high lightning damage as well in that ratio (btw static blows passive globe works wonders there too) and because of increased tanking abilities - my l.leech is so high that I virtually cannot die when more then three of mobs are present :)

But yes I can see why would you want to have pierce in large mob groups - dps can jump over the roof then. Still, Somehow I believe chain gives more consistency, and safety. If you disregard the cost that is.

I don't know man. That guild doesn't convience me. Only 4k ES, that's really small, you can get the same with life and life is way better. I have duelist based on life + EB, I have 4k life, same DPS as you have (13k split arrow + pierce and that's on 5L not 6L, I would be able to play with DPS support on 6L instead of reduced mana) 6k armor and I don't need to play warlord mark. Also by using that uniq quiver you lose so much leech ability.

Dude, thank for response!

I started at ranger coz it closer to bow stuff than witch and i tried to collect maximum dps nodes. Of course 120 points is too optimistic. :)
Thanks for advise, im really miss some important nodes and now i see! And i have lion eye of course (80-274 dps 1.77 as but 5L unfortunately).

I have some more questions on the way. For example, how works added fire damage? It says "converts" so i thought if i remove that gem dps would be the same but just physical, but no, dps drops. So looks like its really "add" not "converts"? Same shit with blackgleam quiver i assume?

Reworked tree.

Actually i understood why you start from witch. For me its because of lack of ES. You can not carry shield so you lose 250-400 ES without Archon Shield so you need alot of INT points to survive.

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Thorien_Kell wrote:

Thanks for clarification, as I've thought, It's all situational.

For me, I'm still gonna stick to chain, because of almost pure ele damage (almost none phys) and very high lightning damage as well in that ratio (btw static blows passive globe works wonders there too) and because of increased tanking abilities - my l.leech is so high that I virtually cannot die when more then three of mobs are present :)

But yes I can see why would you want to have pierce in large mob groups - dps can jump over the roof then. Still, Somehow I believe chain gives more consistency, and safety. If you disregard the cost that is.

For that particular character I think chain works very well, but it varies on build yes :P

Yeah static blows really is awesome, but unfortunately there isn't much stuff useful to this build on that side of the tree so the cost of getting there would be too high :/

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CookieVortex wrote:

I don't know man. That guild doesn't convience me. Only 4k ES, that's really small, you can get the same with life and life is way better. I have duelist based on life + EB, I have 4k life, same DPS as you have (13k split arrow + pierce and that's on 5L not 6L, I would be able to play with DPS support on 6L instead of reduced mana) 6k armor and I don't need to play warlord mark. Also by using that uniq quiver you lose so much leech ability.

I don't know your character build so I'm not going to try to justify my superiority because frankly idk what I'd be justifying my superiority over :P

Bear in mind though that my gear isn't really that ES-focused - I have a decent hybrid chest but that's about it - it's more than viable to use a pure ES chest and high ES gloves/helmet (if you can get good ones) to get way more than 4k ES

Also 13k is only TOOLTIP dps, effective dps is usually 30k+ due to diamond flasks/curse (maybe your build is similar but idk)

Using a dps 6th gem is definitely possible, something like increased critical strikes or power charge on critical (with a power charge node on the tree) would both be perfectly viable options if you pop the occasional mana flask due to their low multipliers. The reason I don't personally is that I do more than enough dps for my needs anyway, and I'd have to reroll my lioneye's sockets which frankly I cba doing, getting 4 specific off-colours is a pain >.> Somebody using a 6L EV/ES chest would be able to roll the sockets much more easily.

I have 6.6k EV (41% chance) plus a 16% chance to dodge, which is easily superior to 6k armour in the late game (I believe 6k armour is approx 35-40% phys damage reduction..?) since it can negate ele damage as well as physical, and prevents stun on evade completely.

And I don't use warlord's mark (waste of dps) or need leech on quiver - I hit both mana and ES leech caps with my current setup, any extra would generally just go to waste tbh.

And I'd say 4k life < 4k ES since you can use blood rage losslessly with CI while you can't with life (unless you have ridiculous regen, and the blood dance is rubbish :p). For this kind of build at least. Though I do agree, more ES would be nice, 4k isn't that high :p

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Dharmatrooper wrote:

Dude, thank for response!

I started at ranger coz it closer to bow stuff than witch and i tried to collect maximum dps nodes. Of course 120 points is too optimistic. :)
Thanks for advise, im really miss some important nodes and now i see! And i have lion eye of course (80-274 dps 1.77 as but 5L unfortunately).

I have some more questions on the way. For example, how works added fire damage? It says "converts" so i thought if i remove that gem dps would be the same but just physical, but no, dps drops. So looks like its really "add" not "converts"? Same shit with blackgleam quiver i assume?

Reworked tree.

Actually i understood why you start from witch. For me its because of lack of ES. You can not carry shield so you lose 250-400 ES without Archon Shield so you need alot of INT points to survive.

New tree looks pretty viable I think :)

As you say, added fire damage indeed "adds" rather than "converts" fire damage. Blackgleam doesn't add extra damage, it only converts. This conversion takes place AFTER the damage from Added fire damage is calculated though, so the effect of added fire damage is the same whether you use a blackgleam or not.

Blackgleam's effect is still useful since it allows your base damage to effectively be multiplicatively scaled twice - first base physical damage is scaled, some of that is converted to fire, and that that fire damage is scaled further by WED/+% ele damage mods on items, or the quality bonus on added fire damage etc

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Bed wrote:

Blackgleam's effect is still useful since it allows your base damage to effectively be multiplicatively scaled twice - first base physical damage is scaled, some of that is converted to fire, and that that fire damage is scaled further by WED/+% ele damage mods on items, or the quality bonus on added fire damage etc

Oh, i get the trick! Thanks alot!