[2.2] Arly's Lightning Arrow - Elemental Pathfinder

Build metrics: Clear speed:4, Survive:2.5, map versatility:4, ST potential:4, cost:2 (higher meaning less expensive)
About the build: I have been playing PoE for about 3 years now. My first character was marauder and one of the first 3 marauders to ever reach level 100 on standard. He was a bow marauder and the origin of the build you see here.

How expensive is this build:The starting cost is a pair of Thunderfist and Rigwald's Quills(or a 5 link chest) and a decent elemental crit bow which should cost less than 15 chaos total even on a fresh league. The cost at level 88 to hyper clear ~T10 maps is 55 chaos + the cost of a Tabula rasa or a thunderfist + Rigwald's quills if you're on a budget but keep in mind a lot of thought has to go into your itemization and this no means a guarantee. You must eventually get a voltaxic rift which will raise the build cost by 1 to 2 additional exalts.

Build mechanics: This build is centered around two unique items:
-Voltaxic rift to convert lightning to chaos damage and grant you immunity to reflect as well as ignores elemental resistances and EE maps
-Blood dance to gain .5-1% life regeneration per frenzy charge and use life regeneration both to sustain cost of skills as well as a an effective health wall. They also let you gain frenzy charge per kill (30% chance).

The following ascendancy passive:
-Herbalist which allows you to poison on hit 100% of the time as long as you are actively using a flask. This will mean the converted lightning damage from voltaxic will poison enemies for both blast rain and LA.
-Master surgeon which will recharge a flask on crit 10% of the time in conjunction with diamond flask

Flask are an integral part of the build and you will want the following all with the experimenter's prefix to extend duration:
-A quicksilver flask of adrenaline
-A diamond flask to proc master surgeon and to sustain your crit chance
-A Basalt flask to provide physical damage mitigation
-An Atziri's promise to boost damage output as well as give a huge amount of chaos leech

-A seething divine flask of heat since we dispel bleed on any flask use


Pros:
- one of the top Tier 1 end game map builds and what I would consider an apex build
- Essentially immune to reflect
- Able to achieve an immense amount life regeneration
- Built around solo play but strong in groups as well
- Able to do any map except blood magic but including hard ones containing -max , dual reflect, no regeneration

Cons:
- Takes time and knowledge of game mechanics and affix equivalences to be successful. You can not slap random gear and level 10 gems on a level 70 character and expect to steamroll Tier 10 maps blindfolded. This is not a beginner friendly build nor one you that can play itself in your sleep.
- Reliant on skill to do difficult bosses since you are certainly not a tank build and not built to face leech your way through the game
- High level and gear requirement to be optimal but not very much to be effectual

99% Solo play from level 1 to 90

-Please note there is a lot of flexibility in this build and you can opt to take phase acrobatics if you desire but I never found the need.
-You will also need to account for your attributes if your gear does not provide additional int.

Primary build - level 93 :


Passive tree

LA + WED + GMP + Chain + Added light + [Added cold, FA, Crit strikes, Crit Dam, VM] - The last link is up to you. Added cold will help proc herald of ice as well crit dam.
Blast rain + WED + Concentrated effect + Added light + FA+ VM
Herald of ice + CoH + Assassin's mark + frenzy
CWDT + Herald of ice + blink arrow + ice golem
Increased duration + vaal haste + wrath + [vaal lightning trap, mirror arrow]

The end game goal is to have the following items:
-Voltaxic rift
-Lightning coil
-Blood dance
-The retch belt or a rare belt with increased flask effect duration

For a temp league fresh off, grab a storm cloud for about 1 chaos then invest in inexpensive life/resist gear. Stormcloud can take you all the way to level 60+ if needed but try to find a decent 150-200 EDPS bow for a few chaos by level 40. Try to get a blood dance by around level 50.

your first big item should be a tabula rasa which tends to run for 30 chaos a few days after launch OR a thunderfist which runs for 2 chaos - though any 5 link chest will also work if your level is too low for thunderfist and you do not want to invest in a tabula rasa. Additionally, if you can get a Rigwald's quills then you can effectively simulate the power of a 6 link in a 4 link item with fork replacing chain. This should be all you need to progress to 90 effectively. The most important item for the build is a voltaxic rift and everything should be devoted to get one after your tabula rasa or 5 link chest.

The final major item purhcase will be a lightning coil but I would not recommend this until you have 6 linked a voltaxic rift which is a tremendous undertaking and I would recommend simply selling your 4 or 5 linked voltaxic + currency for one already 6 linked. However, you do NOT need lightning coil to progress past even level 93 and you can simply use a tabula rasa or an inexpensive 6 link but if you can afford it, go for it.








Run wrath and herald of ice and use mana to cast your attacks. Pick up the large mana node near ranger starting and one attack mana leech node either near ranger or duelist this will be enough to fully sustain your mana. Having mana gained on hti jewels will help immensely even end game on lowered regen maps. Use bloodrage to generating frenzy charges once your life regen is comfortably high.

Bow: An elemental bow with high crit chance and flat cold/light damage is ideal and will bridge the gap between storm cloud and voltaxic rift. Keep in mind you can master craft either IAS or crit chance on bows. It is VERY important that the bow either has high crit, can mastercraft crit or already has crit chance as an affix. Crit multi will do wonders for your dps as well and I would suggest searching for [200 edps min and 30 crit multi min] and find bows with crit 20+ rolled or an open suffix to roll 27 crit chance. I would aim for at least 1.5 APS after all mods are placed but ias is not the most important stat.

A brief summary of bows:
Voltaxic - reflect immunity and the end game goal
Lion's eye - absolute suicide for this build due to ele reflect
Non-legacy Windripper - massive crit chance but actually does not do as much damage as it seems. The following rare ele bow actually does significant more DPS without attack speed mastercraft and the same DPS without it however, even if 2 bows produce the same dps, the one with higher crit chance will win out due to consistency, ailment procs and p-charge generation.




Rare ele bows - potentially the highest possible elemental damage so far but you have to find additional ways to counteract reflect. I would not recommend using an ele bow + acuity because its simply too expensive for the gain. The one linked above is everything you should be looking for in a bow. The lack of edps is not a big deal as long as it has crit and crit multi.
Mirrored harbinger bows - the highest possible damage with LA but I would never recommend anyone buying these for any build. The cost is astronomical for something that can be made obsolete should GGG ever return reflect to it's former strength and even now still requires you to sac your life regeneration or buy acuity's just to survive reflect.




As you can see, stormcloud is amazing for this build and is actually rather hard to beat even with much higher DPS bows due to its high base crit and ridiculous attack speed.


As a rule of thumb: try to get as much flat life as possible on all your gear slots and buffer resists using jewels.
Quiver: You can stack life and resists here and go for more offense oriented affixes like WED and crit damage later on.

Helm: Starting out, I will generally try to get int/life on here and use it as a placeholder. Late game you can try for rat's nest or a high evasion rare is ideal. A balanced choice is to go with a high evasion helm with int or accuracy life and resists. You will need accuracy and likely INT on at least one of your gear slots and I recommend putting it on your helm.
Rings: At the first, you should use these as placeholders for flat ele damage and resists. Later on, It is very important to try to get flat cold damage her especially once you make the leap to voltaxic rift as this will greatly help your shatter chances. Besides that, I would try to get WED + as much resists as humanly possible to free up other gear slots - keep in mind that flat elemental damage will do as much as WED and sells for far cheaper. For reference, 40 elemental flat damage equates to about 28 WED once you have about 230% increased damage from WED + projectile damage and other sources. Life is a luxury to have but very useful obviously.
Amulet: I would dedicate this slot solely to dps affixes and life. Having crit damage here would be ideal as there are very few places to get it. Accuracy can also be placed here.
Belt: The retch is ideal for this build but a rare belt with increased flask duration and some life resist WED is almost as good. Headhunter is also an option but very expensive for the gain.
Boots: Ideally legacy blood dance but you may want to use goldwyrm if you want to use the build to do IIQ/IIR. Rares with life and resists work too if you're lacking in that department. If legacy blood dances are not available, then I would simply go with a rare.
Gloves: Thunderfists are great unless you have a 5/6 link chest. Otherwise, life and resists are important here unless you want to go all out dps with maligaro's or IIQ/IIR with sadima's. This is one place you can easily place accuracy.
Armor:A tabula rasa is a good choice to start or any random chest + thunderfist. End game goal is lightning coil but an evasion chest will also work. Belly of the beast is not a good item and a bit of a noob trap.

jewels: Starting out I would use these to bow attack speed and projectile damage which will give a huge damage boost and they generally only run 1 chaos or less. You can regal them if you have the currency. Jewels with projectile damage and lightning damage/bow attack speed in addition to resists are the second best jewels to build around with life/APS/projectile damage being the best but ridiculously expensive.

Q: Why is my dps so low relative to other builds?
A: Dps is not what determines clear speed, read the preface and choose a build that suits your preferences and goals.

Q: What is clear speed?
A: Clear speed is how fast you can clear a map and takes in account movespeed, damage, aoe multiplicity and range. A simple metric is how long it takes for your build to clear mountain ledge, shore, strand, gorge map, plateau map but also factoring in how many times they were in danger of dying.

Q: What does that translate to?
A: efficiency measured by EXP/MIN which is determined by clear speed factoring in deaths.

Q: Why is my dps so low relative to yours?
A: Check you're above level 60, have relatively high leveled gems, itemized properly, and understand basic game mechanics. Take the 2 minutes it takes to ready my progression and take a look at my recorded gear progression before asking the questions that have been answered many times.
For an in depth explanation:


Q: Can I replace LA/TS with [insert bow skill]
A: Yes, you certainly can. Bow skills are versatile enough to allow you to use what ever you prefer.

Q: Can I play this build as a shadow, marauder or duelist?
A: Yes, you certainly can.

Q: Can I Atziri?
A: This is one of the best Atziri in the game.

Q: Can I use this build on a new league?
A: Absolutely. I have detailed my progression in 2 temp leagues.

There are 3 primary class choices for this build once ascendancy is released:

I've been playing a lot recently and think I've reached what is pretty much the end of the road for me due to the cost of rolling maps and the time needed to progress. I wanted to share my stats and show that this build can be done very effectively for less than the cost of a Voltaxic.





I was using static blows up until now when I finally decided the shock stacks weren't enough as since they weren't coming off a crit they weren't applying to the entire pack, only parts of it. I initially exited out of the life regen side of Scion and I specced out of that in favor of the projectile damage side around level 86. The hanging 30 int node is because with my current tree and gear I have 11 less in than I need for Wrath which could be solved by acquiring an onyx amulet to replace my amber one, though anything I've found that is a meaningful upgrade is at least 15 exalts, though I find it hard to believe my amulet is worth even a quarter of that.

I initially took the two reduced reservation nodes by Templar, though I found myself running only 4 auras with them anyway. If I could run 4 60% and 1 40% I would but I don't ever need to turn on purity as I have at least 119% resists for every element which allows me to run elemental weakness maps that also have elemental reflect.

Losing the regen from scion wasn't that noticeable as I dropped from approximately 160HP/s to 56HP/s.

I eventually decided to get the 30% aura radius notable as I have a ridiculous effect on my group, doubling to quadrupling their DPS.

Now the fun stuff, my stats. With the above tree and gear I have the following stats with 6 Frenzy charges using Grace, Haste, Wrath, and Anger:

Lightning Arrow DPS: 5162.3
Frenzy DPS: 22193.9
HP: 5480
Evasion Rating: 10583 | 50% Chance to Evade

I flipped some of my level 20 gems to 20Q with the vendor recipe and those haven't hit level 20 again.

I have no issues with reflect unless it is double reflect on minus max. I can swap in life leech for weapon ele and still have 3319 DPS on LA, fully charged, and do that combination just fine.

I can't believe I achieved this level of damage without putting a single point into crit which I felt I couldn't do. Getting enough accuracy to actually hit things reliably while still getting life, even while entirely ignoring resists, I've found is simply prohibitively expensive.

I really enjoyed this build. This has been my most successful character ever beyond a shadow of a doubt and has been an incredible amount of fun to play. I'd never even thought I'd had 40 exalt combined yet somehow I managed to build this character.