[3.1] Windripper Currency Generator (FAQ included)

Demo videos coming soon.

Live gameplay and VODs of the build can be found on my twitch stream.

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 3.4 - 3.7k HP, it does carry around evasion/dodge/spell-dodge numbers of 16k/64%/30% (unbuffed), and 42k/75%/74% (buffed). For those who followed the 3.0 guide, you'll notice the evasion numbers are lower than before. More explanation on this later.

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 Rigwald's Quills for the quiver slot. It gives fork and has some projectile damage, which are both good for clear speed, but does suffer from negative fire resistance. Getting a +1 arrow quills would be optimal (I don't have one yet). Other options are drillneck (you will need some other source of pierce to make this work well) or a rare quiver with some damage and an extra arrow or two. Use your best judgment as to which quiver is better for your playstyle.

- For the amulet slot, I'm currently using a shaper ammy with 10% quantity and some other useful stats on it. Bisco's Collar is a great option as well. I have tested both and have come to the conclusion that either is fine. Bisco's gives a small amount more in terms of drops, while the shaper amulet will make your character feel a bit stronger.

- For gloves, we use Sadima's Touch. I have the Spite enchant on mine, which is pretty nice for defense, but it doesn't matter too much. 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 (unless you have +1 curse somewhere).

- 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 (I have Goldwyrms on swap when I'm with a support, since the speed and damage is plenty in that case), 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.

- 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.

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

Lvl 98 Passive Tree: https://www.pathofexile.com/passive-skill-tree/AAAABAIBAABeBS0FtQYjCC4M8hEvEYEVIBXwFf0WvxcmGY4ZtBqNI_Yk_SaVKgsrCizpLYMuUzBxMHwx-jY9N9Q51DpCPL4-z0HQQzFEDUt4TZJRR1O7VUtaGlsmXfJeRV9wYeJh62JaYqxjp2VNbAhsjG9XcFJ07XXLdvd4GXj5elN6hHsUfXV-3X8rf_uDbYazidOMNo19jX6NgY25jb-S85smm42dqqCfoaSkeKXLp9S0xbVIt7a74702vea-p7_VwaDB1cLswzPEosjwz3rQrdNv037UI9jV2sHb591G3aje-N-Y4dvnVOjW6mLrY-0_7YPvevGK9qP66_1u_rr-yP_e?accountName=itsMartini&characterName=itsBodySwapTini

Many of the nodes are either travel points for jewels or extra damage. If you are not 98, 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 Arakaali and Soul of Shakari both help mitigate chaos damage and degens.

For easy leveling, use a Storm Cloud early on, followed by Death's Harp when you're high enough level to equip it. Transition 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.

- Instant life pot. Suffix doesn't matter too much since we are poison immune, elemental status immune, and have bleed removal on another pot.

- Dying Sun is great for adding extra projectiles, making our herald AoE 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. For more damage and less speed, swap in Atziri's Promise or Vinktar for the Quicksilver.

- 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 abyss jewels should have some combination of flat elemental damage, attack speed, accuracy, and crit multi. Flat life is optional, but I like to kill things faster, so I get damage instead.

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. Decoy totem is used for safety against scary mobs. 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.

- 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.

- Herald 1: Herald of Ice, Curse on Hit, Assassin's Mark, Onslaught
This setup shreds packs, grants power charges, and grants onslaught. What more could you want?

- Herald 2: Herald of Ash, Burning Damage, Swift Affliction, Increased AoE
This is used for the overkill burn AoE damage. You can replace this with Grace for more evasion or Wrath for more damage (needs int though). I find the burn nice for clearing packs. It helps kill straglers that Herald of Ice or Tornado Shot fail to kill.

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

As of now, the zone that I find the best for farming with this build is Shaped Vault. It is expensive to properly sextant the map, but with the right investment, it does pay off. Other than that map, farming any zone with a nice layout and/or mob density will be profitable. Pick and choose whichever zone you enjoy the most.

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 +1 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: 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 typically chisel red maps, use sextants when the blocks are good or the sextants are white, and I reroll reflect, avoid elemental ailments, and no leech.


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. Decoy Totem helps with this.


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


Q: Why don't you use Grace?
A: With the changes in 3.1 to Queen of the Forest. Grace doesn't give us as much movespeed as it did previously. I prefer the AoE clear with Herald of Ash.


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 itsBodySwapTini. Feel free to import and play around with things. My ho tooltip is around 37k, 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.