[0.10.4b] Bow Marauder (The Shocker (tm)) [**TO BE UPDATED SOON 1.0.0**]
" Since nobody likes too much mumbo-jumbo, lets hop straight into the fray. This build features very high ranged elemental damage and bulkiness. It works for any player, works on any game mode (pick up more HP and less damage on HC!); however requires good gear to truly shine. The goal of The Shocker is to provide stylish effectiveness through comfortable play style. The passive skill tree backbone of this build can be found here. It uses 83 points, which equal to around lvl65, depending on which rewards you picked up from bandits, and when you finished all the other quests. The player is free to modify/expand on that template as he finds necessary. Experience taught me that not everyone shares the same opinion, and some people enjoy some things more than others. Good ways to expand this build are adding more HP nodes, extra Frenzy Charges, Projectile Damage, Attack Speed; however some prefer getting more armour, or movement speed. Which endgame build should I choose?
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Obviously to start with, there are two basic options. Do you want your Shocker to be tankier (HC players), or maybe rather have higher DPS (mostly SC players)?
Next, which auras do you want to run - Purity or Grace? Lastly, would you rather run Blood Magic support gem (tankier) or Chain/Faster Attacks (more damage)? HC players also have all these options available, though playing more tanky usually pays off in the long run. Here I will list some options depending on your answers to the questions above. HC tree - tanky, Purity, Blood Magic support gem. HC tree - Blood Magic keystone, Grace, tanky. SC tree - Purity and more damage, less HP, Blood Magic support gem. SC tree - Grace and more damage, less HP, Blood Magic keystone. Notice that you may not mix Purity and Blood Magic keystone, as it will seriously screw with your character, reserving almost 40% of your HP on auras. Also be aware that these builds are meant to be guidelines on what is best to take considering the set conditions. You are always free to modify the build to suit your desires. Take a look at this post; it contains a very detailed HC version of this build. Which skills to use with this build, and how to link them up?
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The main skill this build revolves around is Lightning Arrow.
4L - LA+LMP+WED+LoH At 5L and 6L, the 1 or 2 additional support gems depend on which build you decided to go for. If you do not take Blood Magic keystone, add in Blood Magic support gem in a 5L. If you got a 6L, add Faster Attacks or Chain. If you decide to go for the Blood Magic keystone, add in Chain or Faster Attacks in 5L, then in a 6L fill up with whichever of the two is left. Tip: level your BM gem in advance, so when you make the switch, it boosts mana cost less! Auras: Anger + Wrath + Grace + Reduced Mana. Endgame auras: Anger + Wrath + Purity + Reduced Mana. Single target skill is a matter of personal preference, though the most commonly used one - for good reasons, is Elemental Hit. Link it to Weapon Elemental Damage, Life Leech and Faster Attacks. At 5L and endgame, add Blood Magic (don't need 5L before you need BM gem). Personally, I am torn apart between Frenzy and Elemental Hit. Both are so, so good. Stacking up Frenzy Charges is accomplished through use of Frenzy. They are easy to stack and maintain once stacked, and provide a major DPS boost. The best Curses to be used are Elemental Weakness and Temporal Chains; the first being more offensive, the latter defensive. [endgame setup due to not having mana to cast them is: EW+TC+BMagic+FCasting] The Shocker appreciates good items. However, some stand out as his favourites!
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He prefers a bow with high fixed Elemental Damage and Attack Speed. Bows with 1.55 base attack speed are preferred, most common one being the Thicket Bow. A bow always comes in pair with a Quiver, which preferably also has high fixed Elemental Damage, ideally in tandem with HP and/or percentile Elemental Damage. Holding a bow may be cumbersome for the ordinary; but The Shocker never forgets to take a pair of gloves. The gloves ideally have a mix of Attack Speed, HP and fixed Elemental Damage.
Being shiny and standing out is The Shockers favourite passtime activity. Jewelry makes for quite a large amount of damage; so he likes to wear rings and amulet with high Elemental Damage and HP. The best amulet is going to be an Onyx one with a high innate bonus to attributes. A comfortable belt will always have HP and percentile Elemental Damage. We all know comfortable sneakers make for fancy moves on the playground - The Shocker always gets high Movement Speed boots, and really likes HP on them as well. Lastly, it is the armour that makes a knight. The chest piece and the helm should be defensively oriented; having high HP and Elemental Resistances. Combining Unwavering Stance and Iron Reflexes brings the player a wide choice of equipment which can be used with no immediate penalty - one can either opt for Armour pieces, Evasion pieces or nearly any mixed combination. The best chest piece to use is Armour Evasion hybrid, because it makes it easier to get desired slots. A short section about Flasks!
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Since this build is all about HP, and mana is never being used (except for auras later), you do not need any Mana flasks or Hybrid flasks. That leaves us with HP flasks and utility flasks. Resistance flasks are not needed with this build, and using them will most likely just hinder your game by using a slot unnecessarily. If you are playing in HC, you might want to consider replacing one HP potion with a Topaz Flask; and you would pop that flask when you encounter Elemental Reflect packs. This is because the majority of your damage will usually end up being Lightning Damage.
Granite Flask - use one, ideally you want to have +40% Charge Recovery and +100% armour during flask duration. Quicksilver Flask - use one, ideally you want to have +40% Charge Recovery, and the second bonus can differ depending on personal preference. I prefer Movement Speed addition. HP flasks - normally you would use three of these. One of them should be an "Instant Recovery on Low Life", and it is your life saver flask. Be careful when you pop this one. The other two are largely personal preference based. Acceptable affixes are Fending, Iron Skin, Adrenaline, Refilling, Warding, Ample, Saturated, Seething and Bubbling. An example of three acceptable HP flasks is shown here. FAQ: Frequently Asked Questions - READ BEFORE POSTING
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Why no Iron Grip?
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Ok so what does Iron Grip do? "The increase to Physical Damage from Strength applies to Projectile attacks as well as Melee attacks." As you can see, I underlined the important part of its explanation. It only boosts the tiny amount of physical damage you do, it does not work like "Projectile damage" nodes in the Ranger section, for example. Since this build is all about elemental damage, you really won't get a high physical base to increase with Physical damage buffs. So considering the amount of points you pay to get there, it is not worth it at all! There are other specific builds which utilize Iron Grip much better.
Does this work in HC? Check the first paragraph of the OP! Why does this not start at Ranger/Duelist/Templar? Because it is a waste of points to start in those positions. You can do it if you want though! Where do I get the Dexterity to use my bow? By the time you finish the build you will have plenty of both INT and DEX for all the skills and items, and in the meantime pick up +30 Dex nodes, use Onyx amulet, and get a Light Quiver if you need even more DEX. Can I use XXX skill? You can, but this build is designed to work best with the skills outlined in the skill section! Should I level up my gem(s)? As the base rule of thumb, always level up every gem. Where do I go in the skill tree first? It doesn't ultimately matter, but if you want Me to make Your choices, go RT>BM>US>IR then Static Blows and Templar WED ring. Is item A better than item B? Go inside an area the highest difficulty you can, find a safe spot, and buff up. Equip each item, and check your stats to determine which item wins! Why LMP and not GMP? Because LMP is better for this build. I do not have Chain, what to do? Just don't worry about it until you do get it, use the 4L variant. Which Bandit rewards should I take with my Shocker? The first, always good option, is to take straight out all skill points. You cannot fail by doing that. If you want to take rewards though, the clear winners are: Normal Oak (+40 HP), Cruel Kraityn (+6% iAS), Merciless Kraityn (+1 Max Frenzy Charge). What do all these abbreviations mean?
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HC = Hardcore
5L = an item with 5 sockets all linked LA = Lightning Arrow LMP = Lesser Multiple Projectiles WED = Weapon Elemental Damage LoH = Life Gain on Hit BM = Blood Magic FAttacks / FA = Faster Attacks   " Life is tough... but it is tougher if you're stupid. Last edited by VenatorPoE on Oct 24, 2013, 5:32:49 PM
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Well god damn, I thought my bow mara was unique, but we have basically the same build so far (more or less of course), but I've kinda ignored resolute technique and went straight for iron reflexes. Speaking of which, what's your opinion on not going for ele damage but physical dmg with bows instead?
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Oh, and by the way, when it comes to early game you really don't have to use maces or anything. Just go for that dex amulet and you'll be just fine for a while. I got rain of arrows around level 5 or so and I'm still using it through act 3. It's really simple:
Molten Shield + Enduring Cry + Rain of Arrows (with ele dmg. and life on hit gems) and you're like a bloody tower. Nothing can kill you or survive your presence. Truly a really fun build to play. |
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" Hahaha, glad you find bow mara as entertaining as I do! Resolute technique is really good because it allows you to ignore accuracy bonuses on items and passive tree, plus you get to ignore the increased accuracy support gem in favor of something better. Also the loss of crits is really not that big of a deal, this build gains a ton of damage through other means. Physical damage bow build? Not even remotely as good as an elemental bow build. Especially so on Marauder. Just try to stack physical damage on projectiles with Iron Grip; you will find your DPS being completely miserable. I wish some diamond supporter made a physical bow... Anyway I contemplated physical bow before; however I found Templar being in a much better position to build it. You can find my idea here, and I was lucky enough to have QueueTip comment on it to end up finding out Ranger is the best candidate for such endeavor. Life is tough... but it is tougher if you're stupid.
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I've been modeling my own Marauder off your guide a lot and so far it's been working pretty well. I was just wondering, what are your thoughts on using Poison Arrow instead of Lightning Arrow and linking it with something like Lesser Multiple Projectiles & Piercing? I'm still fairly new to the game and wasn't sure if the switch to Chaos Damage would yield better damage output than focusing on lightning damage.
Last edited by Card_Counting_Diceroller on Jan 28, 2013, 8:55:17 PM
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" You are not focusing on lightning damage by using Lightning arrow. Lightning arrow is not used for its skill damage type, its used for its mechanics. For this build it is merely a medium by which you inflict damage from other sources to the enemy. Poison arrow would not yield better damage output, simply put. <- it rhymes The poison clouds do not stack, and you hit enemies far less times with the projectiles, and the chaos damage from the cloud just cannot compensate. Also considering this build has minimal physical damage inflicted with your attacks, the % damage added as chaos would be nigh unnoticeable. If you wanted to base a build around Poison Arrow, you would need quite a different build... Life is tough... but it is tougher if you're stupid.
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I've used your old build in closed beta and the only reason the dmg was acceptable was because of the shock stacks. Now the shock has been removed from LA so you cannot shock nor crit.. So my question is, how can your dmg still be acceptable? Not ripping on the build cause I loved it but trying to figure out where the dmg would come from.
EDIT: Didn't see the 20% shock chance passives you took, but still.. Will that be good enough to sustain some good dps? Last edited by Vandenreich on Jan 28, 2013, 9:12:46 PM
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" Thanks for asking, I will very gladly explain it for you. Static Blows ring = 20% chance to shock. That is quite an acceptable and high chance. The old build wasn't critting either, so I can safely skip saying anything about that. Then with items, passive tree and support gems you get up to 250% weapon elemental damage. And all that isn't even counting the multiplicative nature of the Attack Speed; which the old build didn't utilize. Generally this new edition of the build is much more powerful than the old one. Life is tough... but it is tougher if you're stupid.
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" 20% just seems so low but with chain and high attack speed it could work fine. Your old build was my favorite closed beta build so i'll prolly try this again next week or so. Also thanks for the explanation. Anyway, something i've been wanting to ask for a while if it's not too much trouble. (Completely off topic) If you would make a poison arrow/pierce build, what starting class would you use (seeing as it's a bit hard to pull of with marauder I think) and how would you do it? I've been messing around since I really want to play a poison arrow/pierce build (got a 18% quality pierce gem.. 20% in 2 days prolly) but I keep getting stuck at certain points while trying to create a build. Last edited by Vandenreich on Jan 28, 2013, 9:35:55 PM
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Hey your build seems really interesting! As a new player would you mind just giving a brief idea of what type of items I should be focusing on? Also what nodes I should be getting first before it splits N and S since I don't want to make my leveling too hard by going the wrong "route" first
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