ZIGGYD's Rain of Arrows Ranger (Top 40 Nemesis 1 Week Race Build) 1.1 Updated!

I was able to liquidate my Soul Taker and some other stuff to "reforge" my ST Ranger int this this RoA Ranger. I still have to do some tweaks with Regrets to fully spec out of mace nodes and go into Projectile Damage.

My Skilltree as planned:


Current Gear (still just stuff thrown around from other characters):



I'm not yet sure what to link on Frenzy with the Carcass, I will update when I worked that out.


This build is amazingly fun and has really fast clear speed; way faster than my Duelist or Spectral Thrower.

Just started playing PoE the other day, and trying this build out. Only level 24 so far, but having loads of fun. Have some questions though, how/when do I get the blood magic gem? Since this is my first character I have absolutely nothing, will this build be viable without any good items?

Thanks!

Bought two Blood Magic gems today for 1.5c each. Were my first trades in this game.

I put my eyes in a Quality Life Leech (I'm pretty noob) and got scared about the prize.

Most of the best builders and streamers tend to rely on wealth, groups, trdes and friends to solve early leveling problems, but a ton of players only run solo and are poor like rats. I give you props for this cheap one and encourage the amateur exiles as me to try to trade.

I'll try to buy a Life Leech gem and it seems that the build will go smooth as hell, but it's true that around lvl 20-25 is a real struggle to sustain both main skills.

The early DPS is also an obstacle and is way more disheartening to trade for armor than for gems, because I can't prize such items and the market lacks of leveling gear. I am wasting some chromatics ans fusings crafting to add DPS gems to the main skills when 5-10 levels later I'm going to have to improve the pieces.

So maybe you can try to smooth things up with some paragraph about those early levels, around Act 2 Normal, when you start to need some pireces of gear ang gems that you cannot get from quests and probably are not going to drop too.

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antrodax wrote:

I'll try to buy a Life Leech gem and it seems that the build will go smooth as hell, but it's true that around lvl 20-25 is a real struggle to sustain both main skills.

It may not go quite as you plan. Hooking Rain of Arrows up with Life Leech is great, but there's a catch: a 130% mana multiplier. That's going to hurt if you link it with Blood Magic and even just Faster attacks as soon as you can. My advice is to use Split Arrow (which you can take as the very first quest reward) for quite a while because its mana cost is lower. If you find gear with mana leech, that's going to be a big help too since the build doesn't take any mana nodes. When you have much more life or have leveled up Life Leech, then you can do well with Blood Magic. Level Rain of Arrows in an extra slot in the meantime.

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The early DPS is also an obstacle and is way more disheartening to trade for armor than for gems, because I can't prize such items and the market lacks of leveling gear. I am wasting some chromatics ans fusings crafting to add DPS gems to the main skills when 5-10 levels later I'm going to have to improve the pieces.

Yeah, it's tricky. It's not really worth crafting when you're starting this game. It takes a long time to save up materials, and really that's what you should be doing because wasting your hard-earned currency on upgrading ultimately crap items is a bad idea. Oh, and especially save your Chaos Orbs; they're really important as the main trade currency in this game (next to Exalted). Don't use them on items and don't even buy anything else until you have a better grasp of the game. Make note of what items you can get through quests so you don't buy anything you don't need to: pathofexile.gamepedia.com/Quest_Rewards.

Early characters are really frustrating. You don't have low level uniques to help you level and it's a slow process. Take your time. Be wary that a bow Ranger, imho, is one of the toughest classes to start with and excel at when you're poor, but it's totally doable with some patience. I actually leveled a character with Double Strike and a two handed sword for a while because bow damage is pretty low at first.

Hey ZiggyD, thank you for your great videos and your well written guides,

a quick question,

would you rather use a 5 Linked EV/AR Armour with some life/resists or a 6 linked Tabula Rasa?

I play mostly softcore and i am pretty broke because i like to try new builds after my main is able to do maps. ;-)

Got 2 EX left, so i can buy a Tabula Rasa easy.

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Stormnight wrote:

Hey ZiggyD, thank you for your great videos and your well written guides,

a quick question,

would you rather use a 5 Linked EV/AR Armour with some life/resists or a 6 linked Tabula Rasa?

I play mostly softcore and i am pretty broke because i like to try new builds after my main is able to do maps. ;-)

Got 2 EX left, so i can buy a Tabula Rasa easy.

Depends if you already have a 5L on your weap or even 4L to make RoA shine :)

"

That nice Build Ziggy

I just start some day ago on this game ( soo yeah am still very new on all this and your Build help me a lot)

My Question is simple :

- Why did you put RoA in your bow And in your Armor?

Thx

Monarchy

+1 i still asking myself why too

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Eldenay wrote:

- Why did you put RoA in your bow And in your Armor?

I wouldn't read much into it. He's probably just leveling another Rain of Arrows gem in an extra slot in the weapon.

As a side note, Ziggy mentions in the video that one downside of the build is that you don't get life regen until late game. That's a huge downside when you're trying to run Blood Magic! What you can do is grab Heart of Oak very early then spec out of it later since it's only 2 points.

Also, I don't think you showed us your dps in the post or in the video. What kind of end game dps are we looking at? I tend to worry about low dps with builds that require both Blood Magic and Life Leech, although you seem to be fine in the video.

If you had a Carnage Heart Onyx Amulet (6-10% life leech), would you consider dropping the Life Leech gem, or is the increased life leech rate with a quality gem important to this build? The Carnage Heart would also help you to get higher Intelligence, which is a concern if you want to run Concentrated Effect. The decrease in life may not fly in hardcore, but maybe in softcore?

Have you ever tried a Chin Sol Maraketh Bow with a Rain of Arrows build? It does limit your efficacy to close combat, but it looks like that's mostly what you do anyway.

Lvl 35 now in Nemesis Act 3 Normal

I only repost to address the resources issue I raised before.

I've been extra leveling to try to work around the sustainability issue with Blood Magic. I decided to dump Blood Magic in my Frenzy gem and swap one of my four life flasks for one of mana for single targets.

I've been testing in Vaal runs and worked as intended. Frenzy is a resource black hole, and I must say that I prefer to use another DPS gem like Burning Arrow than go Split Arrow for AoE.

I've been farming a little bit to cap resistances and get some life regen an as much life as I can gather, and I'm surely going to advance more relentlessly since I have not suffered at all in the sewers, one of my most hated zones.

After some more testing, I'm loving the following combination:



My radius is huge (even with Concentrated Effect) thanks to a Carcass Jack and the Amplify passive, and Carnage Heart gives me enough life leech that I can drop the Life Leech gem completely (life leech is insane if you still use the gem, especially at 20% quality). Carnage Heart hardly even lowers my life because of the strength attribute bonus it provides. I wouldn't call these items cheap for inexperienced players, but I got them both for an equivalent of 1 Exalted 15 Chaos (plus fuse and chromatic to get the chest where I wanted it), which is not bad at all.

My only complaint is that I'm not dealing out much damage, comparatively, but I have saved nearly all of the damage nodes on the Ranger side of the skill tree for last, so I'm hopeful. Now if only I had a 6L Carcass Jack... I'd probably add a Faster Projectiles gem instead of Physical Projectile Attack Damage.

I love CCevo's idea of taking Weathered Hunter instead of Resolute Technique. I'd be really compelled to go for Celerity late game to get another movement speed boost; I've never run that fast before!