[1.1.x] Party-Friendly, Multi-Purpose, Bow Crit (Physical CoC/Puncture/Lightning Arrow) Guide

Flameblast can be an issue for sure, but the others haven't been so far. And even Flameblast isn't too bad if someone in the party dual-curses (Temporal Chains + Enfeeble). Immortal Call gives a good buffer against physical damage, and most projectiles get evaded as long as your Evasion is over 50%, which you can easily get to with auras and flasks.


Since they recharge so quickly, I can alternate between them and maintain up to 51% damage reduction or 64% chance to evade (party buffed or 22% and 57% solo). It's a lot of button mashing, and outside of the Apex guardians, I'm pretty lazy about it. But that's one way to make it work.

If you really want to go the MoM/EB/AA route, you would probably be better off as a Wander with Cloak of Defiance and dropping the bottom half of the tree? If nothing else, the main advantage bows have over wands is the base damage for leech, so you don't need as much mana to maintain AA. (Before the nerf, I could maintain level 20 with Lioneye's as long as I was hitting something while running. Now I have to flask while running for a level 10, but I think that's more because I'm using an elemental bow.)

Anyway, just some things to consider while you are leveling and making your decisions. Another cheap, fun, unorthodox build is to stack as much added physical damage as possible for screen clearing Split Arrow on, believe it or not, Doomfletch:

http://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/955414

I'll give the build a chance at least reaching lvl 75+

I'm tempted to buy a cheap infernal mantle and 6L lioneye's and try to CoC with that setup.. i'll have less crit than if i was using my 6.8% doomfletch but the enormous physical damage difference should make up for it (hopefully)

I would use a high crit harbinger but cant find any 9%+ crit ones that dont come by default with insane pdps

edit: uhm....yeah maybe not afterall. I just switched to a 5% crit bow and lost 11% crit o_o i dont even understand how that works.. i have 236% crit chance in total.. i dont know how 1.8% multiplies into 11%

The one nice thing about Lioneye's is its insane attack speed and you never miss, which usually averages out to the same proc rate as a Harbinger bow and a lot cheaper for comparable base damage. But you can't evade yourself, which makes perma-flasking a must to keep from 1-shotting yourself against reflects.

If you're just trying the build out, I would spend your currency on things that are relatively cheap and will easily transfer to other builds, like Rat's Nest. Get a cheap 5-link bow and use Voll's to see how it plays fully supported/Power Charged and then decide from there.

If you're leveling as CoC, keep in mind there's a pretty bad rough patch between starting Merciless and when you can equip all your good high level gear. The nice thing about your Doomfletch is it scales really well with Added Physical Damage gear, so the damage gets added to your bow, then multiplies by all the % nodes on your tree plus crit multipliers, and then gets 110% added to it as elemental damage. So you could get some pretty sick base damage stacked on there.

Oh crap i didnt think about the reflect thing for lioneye's.. vaal pact is an absolute must in that case.

Here is what im working with



Since level 31 i've been playing with barely 1k hp, CoC+chain+EK+Arc+PCoC when i had around 40% crit with my power charge, it was killing very fast. Around the end of act2 i tested fireball+arctic breath+LMP+chain and my clearing speed probably doubled even though i'm not getting power charges anymore and its mainly because the 6 projectiles per crit, chain to other further targets after hitting and most likely killing the first one, so it has a good screen coverage. Really loving the trail of ice left behind by the skulls too. Maybe i'll just grab a 6L voll's and see how that plays out. I'll test some added phys dmg to see how much dmg outcome i get and see if i can find affordable life+res+mana regen+phys dmg jewelry thanks for the tip!

FYI, EK is being nerfed by 20% next patch. :\

"

feyith wrote:

FYI, EK is being nerfed by 20% next patch. :\

WTF.......

But since you're going the Chain + LMP + Fireball + Arctic Breath route, you could always do something like this:

Thanks for that but its just temporary XD my crit is too low i have a custom tree for until i have a 9% crit bow but in the end i'll have something similar to your solo tree. I reach about 55% crit so it makes sense to use chaining projectiles to clear out the single targets all over the place that are otherwise a hassle to clean up after the main packs die.. but with ~90% + crit its just a matter of clicking once and it procs :P in my case i can spam barrage 5 times and sometimes doesnt proc..

Sooo.. bought a harbinger bow and blessed it up to 9.1% crit, im lvl 70 now and reaching 86% crit with 5 power charges....lets just say that stuff is dying freaking fast. Been hosting dock runs for the past couple hours and i clear blue packs in 2 seconds with full party.. i dont even need the other party members.... lol. At this point i think i dont even need more crit and dont see the point going with an infernal mantle XD Im considering playing with a 6L lightning coil, change a few points in my tree to get charisma and the other 3 nodes above shadow start so i can run grace+purity of lightning and maybe have enough for a low lvl clarity, which should make mitigate a great deal of damage in the event that i do get hit which is almost never and if im smelling trouble ahead, i pop my surgeon's evasion and armour flasks as you suggested and within seconds they are already refilled before the buff even runs out..

Alch'd myself a near 300 max dmg crappy thicket bow on switch and its really fantastic with 4L puncture, bosses are a joke (so far dominus and a couple low lvl map bosses and rogues)

What this build has over the other generic CoC bowers is puncture which makes for a great improvement because i've seen those ridiculous quill rain bowers and they cant single target for squat.

I dont know if you came up with the idea to use puncture but im glad you made your guide. I've looked at plenty of bower guides and no one uses it

Thanks! My goal when making this character was to address the issues all of the popular CoC builds at the time were struggling with: mainly mana and single target DPS. And Puncture is such an underrated skill. I'm glad it's working for you! :)