3.23 EXPLOSIVE ARROW BALLISTA ELEMENTALIST - League-Start to End-Game. Easy mode.

Is it mandatory to have an extra source of reservation efficiency to run lvl 20/21 precision in the chest 6L with a lvl 4 enlighten ? Which is the preferred source for this ? I have the nodes on the tree (Grace efficiency and general efficiency). Thanks for the great guide.

"

Schejian wrote:

Also kinda finished with my def-focused setup for now. Farming mostly Simulacrum with it.

Wave30 Simulacrum Setup:

https://pastebin.com/AjtGtabF


No super expensive stuff in there, but can easily take Wave30 deathless.
And gear can be switched quite liberally.


Def Highlights:
-5,5k HP
-56k Armor
-64k effective maximum hit Taken / 328k effective Hitpool
-200% Movespeed (Needed for Reward maxing. Phaserun+Smokemine)

Off:
3 ApS (20fuses after around 1,15s)
44M Ignite

Misc:
-Still using "The Gull"
-Annointed "Blood Drinker" for the QoL of 2% life on Kill
-+2Arrows on Bow for QoL Clearspeed. (preferable to raw DPS for mapping imho)



For Bossing / PoB-DPS:
Switch in:
Elevated-Blizzard Crown (+22%more DPS)
Offensive Watcher's Eye (+12% more)
Annoint "Dirty Technique" instead (+10% more)



If you are considering Min/Maxing you could really look into double corrupted (+4lvl) Body Armors and socket your EA there.
This opens up the use MAX +Ele Dmg on Bows, and the DPS potential of Using Both (+lvl and Ele-DPS) is staggering.

This let's you take up sooo much more Def potential elsewhere. Or Push to 100M ignite Glasscannon, if you really want to.

I'm quite happy with the stats atm, and I'm not even using Polaric Devastation or an expensive +Skill Amulet. Aside from the BodyArmor (8ex) the Rest is rather cheap-ish and/or just self-crafted.

Thanks, very interesting setup with skin of the loyal. I will take a closer look, when i have time.

I have checked trade and the cheapest skin of the loyal with correct corruption is 12 exalted and has the wrong colours ! So did you get lucky with just 8 ex ? Which week of the league did you buy yours ?


I just have 2 things to add after a short look:

1. Check out alternate versions of Smoke Mine: 10% attack speed and longer effect.

2. POE has changed alot in regards to chaos damage from monsters in the last 5-7 leagues with more and more chaos damaging monsters added to the game.
So with no chaos resistance without flask is not really recommended or fun.

"

I Khabat I wrote:

thank you for showing me how to callculate fuses. Is it good or bad to have durration? if i quality explosive arrow it will have 20% more durration.

It's good to have. It will ensure you get 20 fuse explosions / ignites on bosses, even when something gets in the way or blocks an arrow or two.

It increases the delay when mapping very slightly, still worth it IMO.

"

Lightz wrote:

Is it mandatory to have an extra source of reservation efficiency to run lvl 20/21 precision in the chest 6L with a lvl 4 enlighten ? Which is the preferred source for this ? I have the nodes on the tree (Grace efficiency and general efficiency). Thanks for the great guide.

Absolutely not. You can get enough accuracy on gear that you can drop Precision entirely, or drop back to a level 1 if you're using a Watcher's eye with Precision effects.

"

grimjack68 wrote:

"

Lightz wrote:

Is it mandatory to have an extra source of reservation efficiency to run lvl 20/21 precision in the chest 6L with a lvl 4 enlighten ? Which is the preferred source for this ? I have the nodes on the tree (Grace efficiency and general efficiency). Thanks for the great guide.

Absolutely not. You can get enough accuracy on gear that you can drop Precision entirely, or drop back to a level 1 if you're using a Watcher's eye with Precision effects.

Sorry, I worded my post poorly. I meant to ask if it was necessary to have additional reservation efficiency sources if I need need to run a lvl 20/21 Precision (because I do not have enough accuracy on my gear). Even with enlighten lvl 4, I am unable to run it in the standard 6L gem setup so I was wondering if I was missing something obvious apart from the two efficiency nodes I mentioned

Welp, got my 40th challenge today and I did them all with this build. It was amazing as a league starter, doing t16s on a 100c budget, and in the end I got it up to just over 40m ignite dps with decent survivability. I had a total of 52 deaths at level 98, and like 15 of those were from Maven's stupid memory game lol.

I'm also really liking some of the more defense setups I've seen in the comments. Schejian's *very nice* +5 gems Skin of the Loyal pisses me right off lol. My setup melts bosses and can comfortably do juiced maps, but I doubt it could survive a 30 round Sim (I never bothered to try). I think I'll try to gear it more defensively next league if EA doesn't get hit (too hard) with the nerf hammer.

Hi,

could anyone still playing this build offer me some pearls of wisdom, please?

I'm really struggling with it right now. OK my gears not endgame, but I have tried to invest into it as much as I'm able to.

My main problem is that a feel really glass cannon. I die pretty much every t15+ map at least once when putting in a few scarabs, tried to do maven witnessed shaper and elder and failed them, can't really progress past lvl94 right now.

My damage also doesn't feel as high as POB reports it should be. I feel like I've put something together wrong.

I guess I have about 7ex right now to spend and was saving for an unnatural instinct jewel next but will invest elsewhere if that would help more?

here is my pob: https://pastebin.com/03Y8Gqvy

If there are any suggestions that are cheaper than the big save for the unatural instant jewel then im happy do do that first if it helps me out.

I also have a better bow cooking right now but it still needs to be 6l and a bit more crafting.

Anyway, thanks for any help.
Matt

"

Kharadas wrote:

"

cloudmonkeyz wrote:

Finally kind of min-maxed my gears for comprehensive in both offensive and defensive end.

With mage blood, i got almost immune to curse, 90% physical reduction, 85% evade chance, 100% spell suppression. At defensive end, all resist (including chaos) reach 75. With vitality, got about 410 hp regen per second at around 3.9K HP. Offensive end still have around 30M DPS! I can run 6 aura with this setup, super tanky!

If i run bloodrage, attack speed is able to reach 3/sec, maybe I will buy divergent EA for the next step.

A nice setup with Mageblood you have here.

If you can afford a mageblood, then you can afford the Alterations to roll the reduced effect of curses on your stibnite flask to Tier 1 and get curse immun. No excuses here allowed :)

You are going strong for evasion with all the pieces and flasks.

I am pointing out a few ideas/suggestions(This is also with nerfs for 3.18 in mind, where we might need more damage !):

1. Armour + Molten Shell is more important and better. So get 60% increased armour instead of 60% increased evasion on the flask.

This video explains alot in detail about armour and evasion and it is not only for simulacrum: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4B4Djvi6fVA

Take the time to watch the whole video and let me know, what you think.

2. You dont need the stibnite flask(check 1.) and attack speed as suffix on flask(check 8.) and can use some offensive flask or chaos resist flask as example.

3. Just pointing out: Your hit chance with explosive arrow is only 95%, so should aim for 100%.

4. Your Quiver has not even one dot multiplier.

5. You sacrifice alot damage on gear and the passive tree to get vitality and malevolence into the build and have also only 3900 life with this setup in general.

Just my opinion( and also some hardcore players). You dont need grace aura for bosses and can do fine mapping with all this damage without malevolence.

So just swap grace for malevolence for sirus, shaper,... all problems solved easy. Just think about this, but its your choice sure.

6. You dont the hextouch setup. Arcanist Brand - Flammability - Flame Surge is better and gives more damage(bosses), where you need it.

7. You should consider using a watcher's eye(with mageblood, you can afford this too). There are lot nice mods for grace, determination, precision.

8. Your cobalt jewel has no attack speed. A viridian jewel with 8% attack speed with bows, +20% inc burning damage and 1-2 other mods(fire dot multi,...) is alot stronger.


I hope this helps you in some way and this are just some suggestions/ideas for you to improve.

Since you like building tanky. I show you my body armour. It is not perfect for the suffixes as i wanted, but good enough.

Thank you for your comments, it was very useful indeed! I didn't realize stacking armour is a better way. Will definitely follow your comments(Arcanist Brand setup, watcheye and cobalt jewel etc) to optimize the build!

"

Schejian wrote:

"

cloudmonkeyz wrote:

Finally kind of min-maxed my gears for comprehensive in both offensive and defensive end.

Nice to see a mageblood setup in here. Looking quite good!


Also kinda finished with my def-focused setup for now. Farming mostly Simulacrum with it.

Wave30 Simulacrum Setup:

https://pastebin.com/AjtGtabF


No super expensive stuff in there, but can easily take Wave30 deathless.
And gear can be switched quite liberally.


Def Highlights:
-5,5k HP
-56k Armor
-64k effective maximum hit Taken / 328k effective Hitpool
-200% Movespeed (Needed for Reward maxing. Phaserun+Smokemine)

Off:
3 ApS (20fuses after around 1,15s)
44M Ignite

Misc:
-Still using "The Gull"
-Annointed "Blood Drinker" for the QoL of 2% life on Kill
-+2Arrows on Bow for QoL Clearspeed. (preferable to raw DPS for mapping imho)



For Bossing / PoB-DPS:
Switch in:
Elevated-Blizzard Crown (+22%more DPS)
Offensive Watcher's Eye (+12% more)
Annoint "Dirty Technique" instead (+10% more)



If you are considering Min/Maxing you could really look into double corrupted (+4lvl) Body Armors and socket your EA there.
This opens up the use MAX +Ele Dmg on Bows, and the DPS potential of Using Both (+lvl and Ele-DPS) is staggering.

This let's you take up sooo much more Def potential elsewhere. Or Push to 100M ignite Glasscannon, if you really want to.

I'm quite happy with the stats atm, and I'm not even using Polaric Devastation or an expensive +Skill Amulet. Aside from the BodyArmor (8ex) the Rest is rather cheap-ish and/or just self-crafted.

Thanks for the comments! I was planning to upgrade my armour with skin of the loyal and switch out +3 bow, but then I was look into other directions to optimize afterward. Nice defensive end with your build!

"

Mattyd_UK wrote:

Hi,

could anyone still playing this build offer me some pearls of wisdom, please?

I'm really struggling with it right now. OK my gears not endgame, but I have tried to invest into it as much as I'm able to.

My main problem is that a feel really glass cannon. I die pretty much every t15+ map at least once when putting in a few scarabs, tried to do maven witnessed shaper and elder and failed them, can't really progress past lvl94 right now.

My damage also doesn't feel as high as POB reports it should be. I feel like I've put something together wrong.

I guess I have about 7ex right now to spend and was saving for an unnatural instinct jewel next but will invest elsewhere if that would help more?

here is my pob: https://pastebin.com/03Y8Gqvy

If there are any suggestions that are cheaper than the big save for the unatural instant jewel then im happy do do that first if it helps me out.

I also have a better bow cooking right now but it still needs to be 6l and a bit more crafting.

Anyway, thanks for any help.
Matt

Well, I took a quick look at your PoB and there are a few things that jump out to me right away regarding your dps. First of all, you have PoB set to 20 fuses with Explosive Arrow, but your fuse rate is about 13.5. You can calculate your fuse rate with this equation: your attack rate (2.06) * hit chance (91%) * Duration Mod (1.2) * number of totems (6) == 13.49.

The second thing that jumps out at me is you have a fire damage mod on your ring "Adds 27 to 47 Fire Damage against Ignited Enemies". I'm no expert, but I'm pretty sure this is killing your dps. Added fire damage causes Elemental Equilibrium to make enemies resistant to fire damage, and even though this mod is adding it to ignited enemies, I think the initial arrow from Explosive Arrow is applying ignite (via Shaper of Flames) and then every arrow after that is triggering EE. *You should have absolutely no added fire damage on any gear*. You can easily see if you're adding any fire damage to Ballista Totem in PoB by going to the Calcs section, setting the socket group to Explosive Arrow, then looking at the elemental damage breakdown under the Skill Hit Damage section. Hover over Fire for either Added Min or Added Max and all you should see there is Explosive Arrow. In your PoB you'll see EA and your ring. That is bad.

The last major thing that jumps out to me is that you're way over-capped on elemental resistances. Not figuring in endurance charges you have 122 fire resistance, 128 cold resistance, and 117 lightning resistance. At most you only need 75% for each of these unless you're getting +maximum resistances some place, which you are not. Anything over that is doing absolutely nothing for you. Overcapping a little (maybe by 5-10%) can be okay if you can't avoid it, but ideally you want those to be as close to 75% as you can get them without going under. Also remember that endurance charges add resistance, so turn those off in PoB or just look at your character sheet in-game in your hideout for accurate numbers. Losing resistances on your gear will free up a lot of space to fit in other more beneficial stats like attack speed, accuracy, life, etc. Your chaos resistance is also -46%. I try to shoot for at least 0% or more if I can reasonably fit it in.

So, how do you fix all this? There is a lot of work to be done to be honest, and I only poked over your PoB for about 5 minutes or so, but I made a list of some simple and relatively easy things you can change that should help out a lot.

1) Get rid of that ring. As I said above, you don't want any added fire damage on any gear or from any skills.

2) Unspec the Defiance Banner reservation mastery and don't use Precision. You need to get your hit rate up, but there are better ways to get accuracy and better ways to spend that point.

3) Use the unspeced point to pick up the Damage Over Time Mastery "15% increased skill effect duration". This will increase your duration mod from 1.2 to 1.35, which will increase your trigger rate, which will greatly improve your dps.

4) Take out Rain of Splinters. This is great for clear speed early on, but that jewel socket can be better used. Try to pick up a jewel with %Attack Speed with Bows (8% max) and maybe % to global accuracy rating. Also life if you can find one/afford it.

5) Get a white socket in place of one of your red sockets on your bow so you can use Ignite Proliferation in place of Elemental Damage with Attacks. Without Rain of Splinters your clear will feel bad and this is how you fix it. It will cause your ignite to spread throughout packs and will totally decimate them. The easiest way to get a chance to add white sockets is by putting Vorici in the research syndicate safehouse. It might seem like a dps loss at first thought, but remember that you'll be gaining back 35% increased damage when you remove Rain of Splinters, and you'll also gaining a ton of damage by increasing your trigger rating with that same jewel socket. Also, with enough ignite dps you won't really need to swap in Elemental Damage with Attacks except when doing the pinnacle bosses.

6) Try to get a better large cluster jewel, or change your pathing on your current jewel. I'd recommend getting an 8 passive increased fire damage or elemental damage jewel with some combination of 3 notable passives. This way you can only use 5 points to get both jewel sockets instead of 7 like you are now. My large cluster was on an elemental damage base with Prismatic Heart (since I needed the resists), Sadist (nice because we both ignite and shock), and Disorienting Display (unallocated). You'll have to play around a bit with various cluster notable setups in PoB, but those 2 points can be used elsewhere to greater effect.

7) Get Sleepless Sentries instead of Snaring Spirits on your medium cluster jewel. Without another way to get onslaught, this will vastly improve your attack speed provided you drop a totem once every 4 seconds.

8) In a pinch, use one of those saved points from your large cluster jewel to spec into the 10% Skill Duration node in the Potency of Will cluster. While maybe not the best use of a point, it will go a long way to helping you reach 20 triggers until you can improve your attack speed, and getting your trigger rate to 20 (or just over) is the best way to increase your dps.

9) Get more accuracy. You ideally want to be at 100% hit rate, but slightly lower can be okay if you have the duration or attack speed to make up the difference in your trigger rate. This shouldn't be too difficult, but will require some regearing. Without precision you'll need about +900 to Accuracy Rating to reach 100%, or about +700 with a jewel that gives 14% Global Accuracy Rating. You can easily get accuracy on your new ring *without added fire damage* (lol just trying to drive the point home), your amulet, or your gloves. And dropping some of that resistance should make this a relatively inexpensive task.

10) Get more life on your gear. This one seems like a cop-out on my part, but there's no other way to say it. Most of your gear has crafted life, but you can cheaply find gear with much more life, especially this late in league. I'd say that at level 94 a comfortable life total is about 4400 or so. My character is level 98 with about 4550 life.

Making these changes in your PoB now reads like this: attack rate (2.31 with Onslaught checked) * hit rate (1) * duration (1.45 with the small 10% skill effect duration passive allocated) * number of totems (6) ** 20.097 trigger rate under ideal conditions. It also more than quadruples your ignite dps up to just over 10 million, and that was without changing any of your gear except Rain of Splinters, removing the fire damage from the ring, and assuming you find the appropriate amount of accuracy.

This was a bit of a hack-job on my part, and I'm sure others will have more useful input, especially when it comes to defenses as I didn't really touch on that, but like the guide says, getting your trigger rate to 20 is the absolute best way to increase your dps. Once you can reliably get 20 triggers, then you can pile on the other damage mods. Even at 10 million dps, a bit more life, chaos resist, and armour (I just noticed that it's a bit low) you should be able to tackle most things in the game without too much trouble.

Good luck, exile!