3.9| DEADITOR |Elemental Hit w/ Ballista Totem Support| Use Any Gear! (Need a Big Investment Though)

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kirjami wrote:

Btw, I don't think EE is as strong as expected (or shown in the linked PoB). EE works 100% with one EH source, but "It tries not to pick the same element twice in a row" cannot work with 3 to 6 ballista totems, unless they are fireing at different targets.

The "don't pick the same element twice in a row", when using a Ballista, is transferred on the EH from that ballista. That means each single ballista will not pick the same element twice. Of course, this is not shared between all ballistas, so your reasoning is right: with more than 3 ballistas, at least 2 of them will fire the same element.
However, the chance for all of them to choose the same element is 1/3 * N where N are the ballistas in play. Thus, the more ballistas, the more unlikely for this to happen.

Consider, however, that while ballistas may choose the same element of another, each one of them will hit the opponent in a separate time/case : no matter your attack speed, your placement speed or the timing in which they trigger - there WILL be a delay, and that delay is what makes the EE on the opponent change so quickly in order to (hopefully) always give the -50% resistance to the (next imminent) shot incoming.

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kirjami wrote:

Also, the addional projectile from Deadeye seems to use the same element, and afaik they cannot hit at the same time. The new barrage support won't help, then it's four cold hits, four fire hits, ...

Addictional projectiles added to EH will have the same element chosen, so Barrage and Arrow Nova will use the same element.
Barrage would mean "four cold hits, four fire hits" as you suggest, thus, supposing a 6 projectile EH would mean proj #1 will give the +25% resistance, which will make the other 5 less effective.
Using EH Barrage with Ballistas, however, could work if two or more ballistas with different elements sync with each other and release their barrage overlapped with each other.
Suppose Ballista #1 choose Fire and Ballista #2 choose Cold, and have 6 proj, we would have:
* fire proj n°1: expose to Cold
* cold proj n°1: expose to Fire
* fire proj n°2: expose to Cold
* cold proj n°2: expose to Fire
* and so on. And we are talking about something that takes one cast and happens in way less than 1 second

I would not suggest this for two reasons, though:
* Ballistas' shooting cannot be controlled at will, and it is extremely unlikely those barrages actually manage to fully overlap to each other
* Barrage support has Less damage, which in addiction to the Less damage from Ballista support might make the skill lose too much Average Damage, which could make non-damaging ailment difficult to proc and to last.
Always remember: when you trade a Less damage for a potential More damage, you are not just losing the Less Damage - you are losing also the potential More damage you would have got from that rejected support

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In other news: managed to get to Sirus battle. Wasted a month of family quarrels, unslept holidays and a lot of Bile on T14 Drox for something... really scenografic, but that I will never try again and will hurl together with "Shaper", "HOtG", "Uber Atziri" and "Uber Elder" in the "Very cool battles that I will pay lotta chaos for someone else to make becausa I need the damn 36th challenge ASAP". Though, like Uber Atziri, Elder and Mastermind, should be a battle way more simple to do if a player could train itself with low-level version in order to understand mechanincs and movesets. Pretty demoralized, overall, but I can still kick Conquerors' butts, which is something.

Hey Everyone,

Leagues launched in December are always difficult for me to find good amounts of time to play PoE. So I'm sorry it's taken me a long time to properly test this build out after the 3.9 changes to Elemental Hit. Unfortunately, this guide does not meet my satisfaction for the standards I have with my guides. It's not good for SSF. It requires too expensive an investment for it to be successful both in damage and survivability for anyone to just pick up and play. So I won't be supporting this guide any further this league :(. I'm sorry to those that spent their time on this build and expected the same quality of gameplay as my other guides. I honestly didn't think the 3.9 changes to EH (decrease in damage) would be this harsh. But coupled with the new monster defences and the new swarms of enemies that appear in Conqueror maps, this build is inadequate without significant investment.

Please feel free to start/keep playing the build! Make any changes you want and use whatever equipment you think is best! It's not a bad build, it just needs lots of money, which isn't the point of my guides.

Thanks for understanding.

Eh, no problem Wrecker.
Totally fair, honestly, I too expected totems to work better with all those revamps. I guess they were only made to - barely - put them in par with other self-cast builds.
Unfortunately, I don't have space/time to do more than 1 build per league, so I will stick to this for this next month. If anyone have some question on this topic I'll answer gladly.

Thank you for trying, though. Good luck with the next build :)

So glad I saw this today. Was going to start a new SSF tonight and was looking at this build or your ranger so I guess it's the ranger.

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Wrecker_of_Days wrote:

Unfortunately, this guide does not meet my satisfaction for the standards I have with my guides. It's not good for SSF. It requires too expensive an investment for it to be successful both in damage and survivability for anyone to just pick up and play. So I won't be supporting this guide any further this league :(.

Hopefully this wasn't too painful to write, but I am really glad that this is the conclusion you came to because I've been intermittently kicking myself for giving up on the build so early. I suppose I'm just happy that it wasn't all in my head, if that makes sense.

Hopefully your remaining builds escape this league unscathed and I can choose another to try for the next one. I think I'm going to stick with my arc witch for the rest of this league because after playing Necro for the last five consecutive leagues, I really wanted a break from it.

I'm pretty new to Path of Exile, only started in Blight and am playing my 3rd character now (but have a lot of Diablo experience).
I honestly thought that you rushed through this build in 3.9, that you were one of these super fast players, so that you could confirm all of the recommendations. Also with the title "...from League start to end".
I read the guide thoroughly, and only in later comments found out that you didn't play this till Lvl90 or so, let's say.

While I am a little disappointed, I truly want to compliment you for being this open and honest here! :)
And the fact that you replied to every single person here, and truly took your time to work through our comments, is an outstanding thing!

I also loved the format of your guide so much! How you structured it, when you get which gem from Quests etc... truly superb format! Keep up the good work!
I'll be Freeze Pulse Totem-ing my way through the Atlas now with my Templar... ;)

Thanks Everyone,

I appreciate your encouragement. This is the first build that I've had to scrap. I meant no deceit or "over-hype". I spent two leagues making sure this character was strong enough to write a guide on. It was really strong until 3.9. I saw the cuts to damage in the 3.9 patch notes prior to release, but I assumed (as maybe GGG thought as well), that it was simply balancing the gem. As we discovered, the Elemental Hit got hit TOO hard. (It wouldn't surprise me to see EH get increased again.)

When new content gets released, guide writers have to guess or assume as to how their builds will be in the upcoming content (otherwise, no guides would be available at the beginning of leagues). Because of the power of this build in the previous two leagues, I didn't think the nerfs would have been as harsh as they were, but I was obviously wrong.

I'm sorry for those that had such a hard time with it and I'm sorry for wasting your time. I'm really disappointed as well.

Anyway, thanks for your understanding, encouragement, and honesty. I really appreciate it.

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Wrecker_of_Days wrote:

As we discovered, the Elemental Hit got hit TOO hard. (It wouldn't surprise me to see EH get increased again.)

If EH gets brought back to a point where it'd be useful again I'll definitely give this build a second chance :) I really like the idea of the build, it's a shame the nerf neutered it so much.

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Katalaeia wrote:

If EH gets brought back to a point where it'd be useful again I'll definitely give this build a second chance :) I really like the idea of the build, it's a shame the nerf neutered it so much.

Thanks Katalaeia,

Ya. I really liked it as well. Oh well, we'll have to wait and see.

Hey All,


I only casually play one build a league, so I've been chugging along on this guy. I've gotten Path of Building DPS up to ~130k shaper per totem without EE (200k with), and it seems to be doing ok and there's still alot of room for equipment improvement. Still super easy to die in reds, but I figured I would leave my thoughts + my path of building pastebin(https://pastebin.com/efGTBduT)...

Overall totems feel like they are in a super weird spot: having to stop to place them AND then wait for them to fire and clear things is just inherently dangerous. The best way to survive in PoE is to just kill things before they can hit you, and totems explicitly slow that process down AND make you stand still.

This is even weirder when you can functionally double your DPS by standing still and constantly laying down totems... (after the first totem their attack rate becomes the totem placement rate rather than their attack speed). You need to stack something like +400 attack speed to get those two numbers anywhere near each other. But standing still is always super bad, especially against things you need that increased DPS for. Using Tukohama can help with this, but it still is scary given how generally squishy evade builds are - any chaos DPS ground is going to destroy you before you can respond, too.

Actually maybe useful tips:

I have found that easiest way to increase EH damage is by increasing the gem level. All league there have been pretty cheap (20c) bricked 6-link bows with the right socket colors: https://www.pathofexile.com/trade/search/Metamorph/JorQkYhl

That being said, inspiration and hypothermia (as suggested by others here) make the build feel a lot smoother. 2B-2G-2R linked bows are even cheaper and in that case replacing inspiration with elemental proliferation can make mapping feel better in terms of clearing packs fast.

After that from messing around in path of building.. improving damage (from best to worst) you generally want:
Elemental Penetration
Attack Speed
Critical Multiplier
Accuracy until you hit 100%
Elemental Damage
Critical Chance
Bow Damage / Projectile Damage / Damage

I use a diamond flask, sulfur flask and a granite flask. A good granite flask will give you 20% physical reduction.. which made it possible to push into t14+ without dying instantly. Consecrated ground is basically the only only non-life flask way to regenerate life, and gives us increased crit chance against things (it is super super unfortunate totems don't trigger our inquisitor ground effect). Lucky crit chance is a solid 15% damage boost and makes +crit multiplier even more value.

I'm also using Hyrri's Ire as a chest piece.. a solid rare one with a good life roll and "take %of physical damage as elemental damage" would almost certainly be better.