[2.1] In-depth Guide - Physical Blast Rain / Lightning Arrow

If you are fortunate enough to have a green Nightholds amulet or can afford one, using siege ballista in it is a great way to progress through many stages of the game. You should buy a level 32 unique death bow if you are planning on going physical damage. For bandits I went life, attack speed, frenzy charge; normal, cruel, merciless respectively.

Having a decent balance between damage and defence is important. I believe in having at least one good accuracy roll on your gear if you do not have many accuracy % passives. Although it does make you more likely to be hit by reflect and you roll accuracy twice if you critical hit, I prefer having a high hit chance as it makes my game-play feel more smooth. Try and get diamond rings and critical strike chance and multiplier on necklace.

Would like to six link the coil at some point so that I can run physical damage to lightning support gem in the lightning arrow set-up to further maximize clear speed. The belt is fine but it is missing a decent weapon elemental damage roll and energy shield is completely useless to this build. The rings and gloves would better much better if they had decent tier rarity rolls as prefix's instead of the garbage they currently sport.

The excessive amount of evasion, move speed, and resistances is a personal preference. The reason I have allocated my points in this manner is to maximize my clear speed in maps and allow myself to safely do elemental weakness maps even up to tier 15 where curses are much stronger on players and 169 to all resistances is needed to cap. By maximizing my movement speed I can not only increase my clear speed but also my survivability as movement speed is a great means of escaping as a ranged bow user. I am not heartbroken to lose a few thousand tool tip damage per second if it means a better quality of life and a better chance of survival.

It is important to maximize your defence versus physical damage. The first form of physical damage mitigation comes from lightning coil. A large amount of your gear and passives will normally go to make up for the -60% to player lightning resistance downfall of the coil, but it is definitely worth the trouble. The next step to providing a nice amount of physical damage is to use the unique Sapphire flask Taste of Hate. You want to use this pre-emptively to further keep yourself safe from being one shot. The amulet that I am currently using grants a 10% chance to gain an endurance charge on kill. I use this in my last line of defence to fuel charges to spend using immortal call on a level one cast when damage set-up. Try and off screen with lightning arrow as much as possible as a critical strike can leave an entire pack frozen for a decent duration, leaving you safe to face check an entire pack of monsters. When facing a boss or rather menacing rare monster it is nice to chain a decent amount of damage from the surrounding monsters, if any, and then finish them off with a steady fire of blast rain. To keep yourself safe from elemental damage this build is set-up with the three different elemental flasks, sapphire, ruby, and topaz. They grant 10% additional maximum resistances to their respective elements. The affix's I rolled on the flasks are rather important. The surgeon's mod allows you to sustain flasks during long duration boss fights and keeps you stocked up during map clears. The remove ignite on the health flask is very important and often ignored by many players. Remove bleed and frozen ailment are important to have on a duration flask rather then a health flask as they can be troublesome for longer periods of time.

Half Regeneration / No Regeneration - All you have to do is stop running herald of ash for the map and you will be fine with mana leech from your passives.
Minus Maximum Resistances - It is very important to keep your flasks up as much as possible to fend against elemental reflection monsters that could be elemental resistant.
Beyond - This build uses no chaos resistance so be careful! If you are dying to beyond maps you may think dropping diamond rings for some chaos resistance or getting chaos resistance elsewhere on gear.
Physical Reflect - Although it is doable, I would not recommend. You can use physical to lightning to bypass this mod completely.
Elemental Reflect - Not doable without a lot of investment and vaal pact.
Bloodlines - Congratulations! Necrovigil is very easy to deal with since you have a high critical strike chance and can knock back enemies from the sigil radius. Be careful of bearers as you will be running a rather low amount of life and can easily be taken out by a decent pack.
Elemental Equilibrium - To give yourself an edge in the battle versus EE maps, you must be aware of how EE works. I advise using wikipedia and learning how this mechanic works if you are not aware. You can minimize the damage it does to your clear speed by knowing how to proc all three elements at the same time to give it 25% resistances to all elements.
Enfeeble and Elemental Resistance - Try and make sure you always have taste of hate up to boost your damage. This may take more concentration as you have to be aware that if you face an enemy and you have just wasted your charges of Taste of Hate boosting your damage per second to clear a small pack of monsters, you could be boned. As your main damage per second comes from fire damage from your skill blast rain I would recommend bringing a offensive aura support player if you are daring higher tier maps with fire resistant monsters.

This build I have put together is very efficient. It combines great survivability with an abundance of damage per second which leads to an enormous amount of enjoyable game play. The new 2.1 patch introduced an unfathomable amount of possibilities for the bow class. Not only introducing a variety of new skills, GGG also relented and gave us usable passives for mana/life leech. It is going to astonish you no matter what path you take. Be it chaos damage through Voltaxic Rift, large elemental damage through auras and passives, or pure physical damage with elemental conversion through auras and gems. To conclude, I recommend giving blast rain / lightning arrow a spin.

Current Level / Age / Deaths:
imgur.com/mlmlw3K

Defence:
imgur.com/sxkpuCr

Offence:

Unbuffed

73.60% Critical Strike Chance

(30.6K Blast Rain)
imgur.com/8Du00c7
(14.4K Lightning Arrow)
imgur.com/jF0wcXT

Buffed

90.04% Critical Strike Chance (3 power charges)
5 Frenzy Charges
Vaal Haste
Taste of Hate

(56.7K Blast Rain)
imgur.com/PfUvb7E
(28.6K Lightning Arrow)
imgur.com/z1wjBJz

Level 92 - www.youtube.com/watch?v=31JkAKnigS0