[3.0] Windripper Currency Generator (now with FAQ section)

I'd like to share a few videos of the build in action for those who would like to see the playstyle before continuing to read through the guide.

T12 Vault:
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/176813782

T11 Spider Forest (w/o Headhunter):
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/176815009

Apex of Sacrifice:
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/176816310

Alluring Abyss:
Warning -- This is not an Uber Atziri farmer. This footage was for demonstration purposes only.
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/176817977

Aipytos Testing Zana Mod Profit in Vault:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4kBdZdIDaQg&feature=youtu.be

I'd like to start this guide with a discussion that should be addressed for any character -- Defense. A dead character deals no damage.

While this build only rocks 3.4k HP, it does carry around evasion/dodge/spell-dodge numbers of 37k/64%/30% (unbuffed), and 62k/75%/74% (buffed).

These stats, along with a ranged attack and leech, have proven through many hours of play on this character to be a very reasonable form of defense. It is by no means a super tank, but since the focus is on magic find and high clear speed, this setup has worked wonders for me. More details on where these numbers come from can be found below.

These are the core pieces of gear for the build. Along with a description for each item slot, I will address possible substitutes for those players unable to obtain certain items or wishing for a slightly different playstyle.




- Windripper is the core item we build around. It is a bow with decent attack speed, high critical hit chance, and most importantly, quantity and rarity bonuses. Since the bow has little physical damage, we will build the character around adding and scaling sources of flat elemental damage. For the wealthiest of folks out there, grab yourself a +1 arrow Windripper for maximum clear speed and damage. Note that either the bow or the body armour should be six linked.

- Queen of the Forest is our body armour of choice. It provides life, resistances, a lot of evasion, and most importantly, movespeed scaling through global evasion rating.

- Devoto's is the BiS helm for movespeed (and therefore clearspeed), but you can go with a rat's nest for a little more crit, or a rare helm with high evasion and life+res if you feel too squishy.
Note: make sure you grab a helm with the 2 tornado shot projectiles enchant. This greatly increases our clear speed and is more important than the base helm itself.

- I use The Fracturing Spinner harbinger quiver. Since this is a full unique build, it can be difficult to get stats and resistances where you need them, and this quiver provides both, along with some nice flat elemental damage rolls as well as a harbinger that gives your projectiles additional properties*, lasting 4 seconds with a 4 second cooldown. For slightly more consistent pack clear, Rigwald's Quills gives permanent fork, but does suffer from negative fire resistance. Getting a +1 arrow quills is also much harder / more expensive than doing so on a fracturing spinner. Use your best judgment as to which quiver is better for your playstyle, but I have been very pleased with the Fracturing Spinner. If you cannot afford a +1 quiver in either variant, don't worry, you'll be fine with the uncorrupted version.

- Bisco's Collar is the amulet of choice for obvious quantity and rarity bonuses. No other amulet can replace this one effectively. Aim for as high of a quantity roll as possible.

Update: Since the posting of this guide, I invested in
Although getting a Bisco's with +1 frenzy is quite expensive, I would highly recommend it if you have the currency. The extra speed and damage really helped when pushing this character to lvl 100.

- For gloves, we use Sadima's Touch. I have no enchant on mine, since it doesn't matter too much, but feel free to enchant them however you wish. 16% quantity roll is recommended. Elemental Weakness on hit corruption would be decent on these gloves, but it would conflict with our curse on hit setup for Assassin's mark, so I wouldn't recommend using this corruption.

- Darkray Vectors corrupted with +1 Frenzy are BiS for this build, as they give lots of movespeed, dodge, a bit of lightning resistance, and loads of damage. For a slightly slower playstyle, Goldwyrm boots corrupted with +1 Frenzy would do fine, but I would personally go for an uncorrupted pair of Darkray's over those.

- The belt slot is an interesting one. The end goal is to use a Headhunter on this build, so make sure your resistances are capped without a belt. That being said, Perandus Blazon and Bisco's Leash are two completely viable replacements if you don't have or don't want to use a headhunter. More discussion on this below.

- Lastly, we have the rings. Say hello to our good friends Ventor and Ventor. Ventor's Gamble is BiS for both slots. Our goal with these rings are to cap out our resistances, get as high quantity as possible, and then get as much life as possible (in that order). For most people, including myself, getting near perfect Ventor's rings is impossible, so do your best to find a pair that work well together to finish out the build. Note that rarity on the rings is of little importance, since this build mostly farms currency and divination cards, which are not affected by rarity.

*additional properties: Your projectiles will have one or all of the following --> one additional projectile, +1 chain, fork, +1 pierce.

For the bandit quest in Act 2, help Alira for the res and crit multi.

Lvl 97 Passive Tree: https://www.pathofexile.com/passive-skill-tree/AAAABAIBAABeAdEFtQguDPIRLxGBFSAV_Ra_FyYZihmOGbQajSLqI_YknST9JpUqCyo4KlsrCizpLYMwcTB8MfoyATY9N9Q51DpCPL4-z0HQQzFEDUt4TZJRR1LsU7tVS1oaWyZd8l5FX3Bh4mJaYqxjp2VNbAhsjG9XcFJ1y3b3eBl4-Xn2eoR9dX7dfyt_-4NthMWGs4nTjDaNfY1-jYGNuY2_kvOXBpsmm42btZ2qoJ-ly6fUr-uyGbTFtUi3trvjvTa95r6nv9XBoMLswzPDOsSiyPDPetCt037UI9jV2-fdRt2o51To1upi62PtP-2D73rxivaj-uv9bv66_sj_3g==?accountName=itsMartini&characterName=itsRippinWindTini


Many of the nodes are either travel points for jewels or extra damage. If you are not 97, chop off excess nodes wherever you feel best. The evasion/res nodes are highly valuable, so I wouldn't recommend losing those.

Pantheon Powers: Soul of the Brine King for stun avoidance/recovery. Soul of Yugul for reduced reflected damage taken and reduced cold damage taken.

I used a Storm Cloud early on, followed by Death's Harp when I was high enough level to equip it. I transitioned from Death's Harp to Windripper at level 66. Standard bow leveling, nothing too special.

For those looking for more help than this, SC leveling is mostly about getting to maps as quickly as possible. If you don't care about your character dying a few times, just pick up damage nodes (ele damage, crit, multi) to make your leveling faster. Getting a little mana leech will help with sustain so you don't have to use a mana pot, and slotting in 1-2 Static Electriciy jewels early on should give you all the damage you need until you reach maps.

- Life pot with poison removal. Since our life total is so low, and we have no real chaos res to speak of, poison hurts. So this pot removes it and keeps us alive through other degens we can't leech through.

- Dying Sun is great for adding extra projectiles, making our herald of ice explosions larger, and providing us with some nice fire resistance. Vessel of Vinktar (attack version) is a viable substitute, but after much testing, the playstyle feels a little smoother with the Dying Sun. If you want to go full HAM, swap the life pot for Vinktar (you will probably RIP to degens with this setup though).

- Diamond flask of staunching. This is a necessary pot, as we need to crit to shatter our enemies for the extra quantity bonus from Windripper. This is also our only utility pot where we can fit bleed removal in, which you will die to if not removed.

- Jade flask of reflexes. This is where a lot of our evasion comes from. I would highly recommend using one of these both for survivability and movespeed.

- Quicksilver of Adrenaline. GO FAST. Helps us get from pack to pack, as well as maneuver quickly to avoid large hits.

These are my current jewels:


The unique jewel Inspired Learning acts as a 'mini headhunter' when placed in a slot touching four notable passives. We accomplish this with the jewel socket to the right of the ranger start, touching 'Herbalism', 'Fervour', 'Heartseeker', and 'Survivalist'. This jewel is not mandatory (similar to how Headhunter itself is not mandatory), but it does make the build more fun for mapping. Note that the one mod you gain from this jewel does stack with the all mods gained from Headhunter.

Lioneye's Fall is used in conjunction with the claw crit nodes leading to Soul Raker, which provides life and mana leech for the build. If you do not have this jewel, don't take the claw nodes. Instead, you will want to grab the leech nodes near the duelist (Vitality Void, life and mana leech).

Rare jewels should have damage and evasion if possible. Move faster, kill faster, loot faster. Life is not necessary.

As can be seen in the videos above, the playstyle is fast-paced. Try to keep your four utility flasks active, as they provide movespeed, damage, and coverage. Frost bomb is used only on the tankiest of mobs to slightly boost our damage. Use blink arrow for quick mobility if running won't cut it, or if you need to hop a ledge. Other than that, fire away with tornado shot and watch everything on the screen explode.

For tornado shot single target, make sure to attack right behind the mob, as the initial projectiles will always pierce, then the secondary projectiles can hit the target again.

Let's talk about reflect. As it turns out, with the Yugul Pantheon and the Primeval Force notable passive, we have enough life, evasion, dodge, and leech to effectively be immune to reflect, assuming we are not using Headhunter.

I have never died to reflect on this character except when wearing HH. This belt can cause you to get so much damage that one little arrow from tornado shot kills you. Keep that in mind, but don't let it deter you from wearing the belt. It is a SC build anyway. If you're looking to level above 95, you might need to occasionally swap out HH for one of the other belts listed above to ensure you don't kill yourself.

- Main (6-link): Tornado Shot, GMP, Ice Bite, Added Lightning, Elemental Damage with Attacks, Damage on Full Life

Note: If you only have a five-link, remove Damage on Full life. Also, Ice Bite is stronger than Added Cold Damage when paired with 9 frenzy charges. With fewer than that, Added Cold Damage is a stronger support for pure damage but lacks the inherent freeze chance and frenzy charge generation. Use your best judgment as to which of these works best in your setup.

- Defense: Cast When Damage Taken (lvl 1), Immortal Call (lvl 3), Increased Duration, Vaal Grace

Note: Vaal Grace can be replaced with Vaal Haste, but the clearspeed difference is minimal. The defensive boost from Vaal Grace is unbelievably good, and I would highly recommend using it on this build.

- Defense: Cast When Damage Taken (lvl 1), Arctic Breath (lvl 4), Temporal Chains (lvl 5), Greater Multiple Projectiles
This setup is great for slowing enemies down that manage to hit you.

- Herald: Heral of Ice, Curse on Hit, Assassin's Mark, Onslaught
This setup shreds packs, grants power charges, and grants onslaught. What more could you want?

- Other: Blink arrow + Faster Attacks, Frost Bomb, Portal, Grace, Summon Ice Golem
Grace, Ice Golem, and Blink arrow are musts, Frost Bomb and Portal are nice to have.

As of now, the zones that I find the best for farming with this build are Spider Forest and Vault, as the divination cards they drop are quite valuable. Besides targeted divination card farming, most zones will end up dropping roughly the same amount of loot, so pick zones you like the most, and happy looting!

If you have Zana lvl 8 in your hideout, make sure to put Breach on every map, as the loot gained from +2 breaches almost always outweighs the cost of the map mod.

Q: I'm struggling to kill the boss, what am I doing wrong?
A: You and/or your gems are probably underleveled. If you are the underleveled one, you're probably missing damage nodes/jewels on the tree.


Q: Should I use barrage for single target?
A: Probably not. Barrage is not as OP as everyone thinks unless you use a +2 helm and extra projectiles everywhere. TS has plenty of damage. The one exception is against something like Atziri ad phase where you need the control of barrage over the random spray of TS.


Q: Why not Rigwald's Quills?
A: The 'Gear' section describes the differences in enough detail.


Q: Which ascendancy path should I take first?
A: Way of the Poacher -> Avatar of the Slaughter should give you the most damage and clear speed while leveling. Avatar of the Veil is a great node, but is less useful for speed leveling early on. Pick this one up for your final ascendancy point.


Q: How do you roll and sextant your maps for maximum returns.
A: For this question, I can't guarantee my way of doing things is necessarily the best, they are merely the decisions I have made and the playstyle I prefer. I use one white sextant on t11 Spider Forest. I use 3 white sextants on t10 Burial Chambers. I run t12 Vault and t15 Abyss with no sextants. Zana breach on all of these maps. No, I don't chisel. No, I don't re-roll for pack size.


Q: The Vault Boss one-shots me. What am I doing wrong?
A: You're getting hit. Vault boss is actually one of the strongest pre-guardian bosses in the game. You probably have somewhere in the range of 3-3.5k HP. If you think you can stand still and face-tank his slam, you are mistaken. This is a ranged build that doesn't use point blank. Move around, use blink arrow, don't, get, hit.


Q: Should I use IIQ gem in standard?
A: Of course. Probably replace damage on full life support.


Q: What's your tooltip?
A: PoB has the ability to import characters from public profiles. My account is itsMartini, and the character name is itsRippinWindTini. Feel free to import and play around with things. My ho tooltip is 33.7k, mapping tooltip is around 200k with charges up. My record tooltip (that I checked) while mapping (with inspired learning and HH buffs) is 2.8 million. This number and all of the other numbers mentioned in this answer are irrelevant, though. As long as you kill everything quickly and loot their bodies quickly, you're gonna have a good time. If you french fry when you're supposed to pizza, you're gonna have a bad time.