[2.3][Chieftain] Ranged Attack Totem Blast Rain

With that quiver one can have three totems which neutralizes the totem penalty and the loss of a gem socket (for rat).


As the totems are in the line of fire there is no need to avoid Chin Sol. Besides being very cheap, it comes with a big more multiplier on short distance without putting you in jeopardy as the distance is measured from the totems, that can be placed near the enemies.

Main skill would be Blast Rain. After some testing it looks like it has better clear speed (and much much better single target damage) than Rain of Arrows or skills like Tornado Shot that require either GMP (another socket lost here) or Reach of the Council. (For a RAT version with a ranger and Reach of the Council, using Tornado Shot on a RAT + Frenzy as supporting skill, you can look at my ranger char FasterPussycatKillKill).

Using Chin Sol + Blast Rain made it reasonable to take Point Blank in the tree (for additional damage at close range) and Avatar of Fire to get 100% fire damage which would make the curse choices more effective than with a build with mixed damage types. As Ancestral Bond is mandatory it seemed efficient to stay on the outer route for the tree.
Because of that i decided to go with Blood Magic (despite the mana stats on the quiver ) as the scion life wheel would be a bit hard to reach and i HATE running chars with less than 5k life.
That makes
with Anger a mandatory item unless one wants to run no auras.

https://www.pathofexile.com/passive-skill-tree/AAAABAEDAAPWBS0Gww48FCAUcRR1FgsWbxhqGJEY2xo4Gj4dFCFgIq8lvCcvKS4ppSoTKo0shSynMfsyfjbYOFM6UjpYPfxAoEMxRrdHfkkbSsRVxlZIVw1YB1hjWOVZ81oaWiteE18_YVJlTWZUZp5oZXIPcql07XTxdct2rHbneC9673uzfLh85X_jggeD24TZhmCMz41-j0aQVZHOlG-WbJuho_KkwqajpwismKyqr423trl-u-28n702vWC-p8RYxgTG2M9-02_YJNl82sHbT9-_4MPjauoY6mLsVe8O707xbPGs8kHzm_ZI9q73MvfX-Ov60g==?accountName=Bada_Bing&characterName=BloodSweatAndBeers

Point Blank, Iron Will, Whispers of Doom (extra curse) Elemental Overload for damage;
I still have mixed feelings regarding Elemental Overload. The low crit rate makes it very hard to keep EO up all the time. In theory it should be enough to use frenzy (linked with curse on hit to curse the mobs) to proc EO, but i hardly fire enough for that to happen frequently (opening chests, picking up loot, reply to chats … stuff you do when the totems do all the work:) ). It might be a reasonable option to pick Resolute Technique instead. One looses the occasional 40% more damage boost but improves form 85% hit chance (approximatly) to 100%.

Blood Magic, Ancestral Bond (build enablers)

Iron Reflexes for defense; Art oft he Gladiator is mandatory for lab runs because oft he movement speed.

LEVELING:
The biggest obstacle is getting enough dexterity to be able to use bows. I therefore took Versatility and then went straight for Point Blank (without taking it; just to get the dex transition nodes). Only then did i start taking life nodes and laid the path towards Ancestral Bond. Don’t take Blood Magic unless you have at least a four link for your main skill. Before that it should be no problem running the skill on mana with an occasional use of a mana flask.
Bows used for leveling (using split arrow as first leveling skill and Death's Harp before upgrading it):


In hindsight i think it is better to just level using a two handed melee weapon with the melee skill of your choice (molten strike or whatever) throughout normal and cruel. Fated uniques like

are so good, they can be used without speccing into melee nodes in the tree while leveling.

ASCENDANCY:
Chieftain, getting Ngamahu in normal lab and Hinekora in cruel lab. The life leech one gets from the totems after that is a HUGE benefit.

BANDITS:
Oak (life)
Kill all (point)
Kraytin (frenzy charge) or help Oak for an endurance charge if you want a more defensive build.

I have the BBBGG link for the curses on the bow instead oft he chest. That’ll cost you a minimum of 285 chromes using Vorici’s bench to get three blue sockets on the bow (and hope the other two roll as the expected green ones). Only try rolling that by yourself if you are very even-tempered.
The reason for not using an evasion/es hybrid chest fort hat is that one looses a considerable amount of armour ifo ne isn’t wearing an ar/eva hybrid (and you want armour + life reg for running über lab).

MAIN SKILL: Ranged attack totem – Blast Rain – faster attacks – wed – fire penetration – added fire damage

Fire penetration has diminishing returns the lower the fire resistance of an enemy is. With two curses one has an argument that there might be more efficient options. On the other hand there are curse immune mobs (and map mods) as well as bosses like atziri that i can’t curse with this build which make fire penetration the best of all support choices for those cases. As i don’t like switching around supports all the time (or reroll map mods) i stick to fire penetration.

CURSES: Frenzy – gmp – coh – Flammability – Elemental Weakness (or Enfeeble as defensive option)
Frenzy is used for coh to get frenzy charges.

AURA: Anger inside an Essence Worm ring.
Hatred isn’t used because of Avatar of Fire which would half its impact (unless one uses Pyre which would waste our second ring slot which is needed to get resistances). Besides, as a non-percentage aura, Anger gets much more out of +2 levels than Hatred.

CWDT: cwdt (Max level) – Molten shell – Immortal Call – increased duration
Probably it would be better to have IC not linked to CwDT and have instead the endurance charges up all the time; have IC unlinked and selfcast only when needed (which is reasonable but runs contrary to my lazyness)
cwdt (lvl1) – Ice Spear – gmp – increased critical strikes support
I only use this (instead of Arctic Breath) to help getting Elemental Overload procced.

OTHER STUFF:
Vaal Haste, Blink Arrow, Summon Stone Golem (imo the life reg ist he best choice fort he lab)

BTW The Quartz Flask with anti freeze is used only for opening boxes. Works better than other choices to get out away from the spawning mobs imo.

5.8k life at level 91
The7.7% life reg from the tree/ascendancy give me 445 lifereg/sec (550 with the golem up) without the extra from charges.
The Blast Rain tooltip sits at app. 2k (which is per fireball). Not included in this number are the 150% more damage to nearby enemies, the 40% more damage from EO, 104% reduced fire resistance (from Flammability and quality Elemental Weakness) as well as 58% fire penetration (from gem, tree and ascendancy).

Viability:
I’m using this char to farm Überlab (skipping days with charge disruptors); Elemental Essences can be tricky as the golems sometimes become victim of collateral damage, resulting in the loss of a treasure key.
Otherwise the damage and tankyness is good enough to complete the dual boss challenge up to tier 15 (only kaom though).
If one is looking for a dual totem build for Hardcore, i recommend using spell totem – bladefall though (see my char BackFromTheGrave if interested). Being able to use a shield and have block is a huge defensive upgrade over a quiver.

Überlab Izaro (gargoyles + lieutenants)
Village Ruin bosses
Gorge run has some hiccups during the first few seconds