R.I.P. [2.6] Explosive Arrow - Elementalist Build Guide (multi class + version, in depth theory)

Well 1st thing I saw is that you don't use Elemental equilibrium. Your ring adds fire damage attack so with this mod you can't use EE. The flat fire damage on the ring also doesn't help you at all. I took EE myself but if you don't really understand how it works maybe best if you don't take it.

The rings are not the greatest in general. The boots are ok-ish but having an es base with 9 life is a bit of a waste. But ok.

Since you do already have a lot of damage I suggest you to use some rare gloves instead of the Winds of change.

You can still augment and quality up some of your flasks.

You can also drop beacon of ruin now and start using the Elemental proliferation gem and get Pendulum of destruction ascendancy.

When mapping you should rarely use more than say 3 stacks at once.

Please note that if you have 143% fire resist in your hideout and you are running a red map with elemental weakness mod you actually have -34% fire resist from the map mod. So you actually have 49% of fire resist in red maps. In addition if you stand on shocking ground you take 50% increased damage. And if you are additionally cursed by Flammability you loose even more resistance to fire. In that case it can go really bad really quick. Say you make a critical strike. If you don't have a LOT of life you can easily rip your self.

http://pathofexile.gamepedia.com/Elemental_Weakness#Elemental_Weakness_in_maps
http://pathofexile.gamepedia.com/Shock

Some solution can be to use the Ruby flask or to not stack too much arrows if not needed.

Thanks for the criticism.

I've updated accordingly, but could probably still do better on the rings. I'm sitting at 240% fire resistance now though.

Edit: Changing gloves made a noticeable difference, reverted back for now. Stacked fire damage on rings. 200% fire res now.

Sounds good. There's a lot of things that can be done in general. I have invested a lot but even for me there's still room to grow.

Just wanted to drop some feedback of the build for those that may plan to run it. I love it. I've been playing it now for over a week. It literally has anything anyone can ask for. First you manage simply one resource.

Second it's very far away from any yolo ranger I've ever played and god knows how many evasion based ones I've ran. I'm still in Tabula, cause that little pesky bow refuses to link, BUT wit that I've done anything rare corrupted until T15.

The build has such a beginning league/mid/end potential, as with just the bow and a tabula, you can farm red maps. I failed twice on corrupted core malachai, and on the Phoenix guardian. Simply lacked the damage/survival, which is obviously normal for someone walking around in a tabula.

Thank you very much for introducing us to this build. If it was up to me it'd be pinned on top for ANYONE that wants to play a Bow&Arrow build and is sick and tired of dodging to survive.

Have you ever thought about using Orb of storms, Curse on Hit, Flammability, and increased Crit strikes? This can proc both we and elemental overload for you and since the high Crit Chance plus Crit Strikes it gives great reliability for overload. Just wondering about your opinion on this.

@Kodiak97: I don't feel like increased critical strikes is necessary in the set up. Though to be honest I have no idea how effective that would be to proc EO. Increased duration may also be ok. I thought about using orb of storms to proc Mastermind of Discord but not in the way you propose.
I really like to use frenzy for the curse on hit set up as it provides attack speed and a more damage multiplier. Another thing to take in account is that if we use an attack skill we get to benefit from the Quill rain fast attack speed.

There's a lot of different small set ups that you can try. Just about anything will work. Heck even if you have 4 empty sockets you will still do decent damage. Experimentation is the best way to find what works best for you.

@xecutable: Thanks for the feedback, I am happy that you enjoy EA.

How's everyone doing with the new 64bit client? With it I'm getting quite a lot of "kicked due to performing too many actions".

Typical GGG release. It started with a rollback... Game is buggy. It will get better.

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Greengroove wrote:

Typical GGG release. It started with a rollback... Game is buggy. It will get better.

What are your expectations for next league? I've never paid attention to EA and it's my new favorite skill. Usually popular builds with good clear speeds get nerfed (fingers crossed it does not, or the Ascendancy class itself).

It could get nerfed. I sure hope not tho.

Any build that uses 11+ grand Spectrums will be op... These jewels are really hard to get. It took me A LOT of work to get them all. I think the damage they provide is justified considering the price and time investment. Without Grand spectrum jewels this build is still strong and can do (almost if not) all content. But I think it's fine as it is.

Nerfing EA would be bad since there are so many other skills and other things that needs to be worked on. So if they have time to nerf this I would be really disappointed in GGG as a company.

On the other hand we had a strong debate about ignite as a mechanic and the immunity thing. This build currently really suffers with ignite immune mobs. Something like Uber Atziri will be much harder to do with this build. So in the end I think this kinda makes it balanced. It's strong but it can't do everything.

Note also that EA got nerfed hard last patch with the change to Frost wall.

I really hope they find better things to do than nerfing this skill. But we'll see.