[3.1] Icy Siege Ballista

You'll run around at mach speed with 1000+ Dexterity collecting loot while your Siege Ballistas do the dirty work for you. You'll have a lot of evasion and accuracy and an easy time overcapping your resistances, essentially allowing higher flexibility with your gear.

At the time speaking, I have reached 1,000,000 DPS total at level 90. With meme ballistas. ;)

Also, who doesn't love having 6 big ass ballistas firing at will?

-Elder and his guardians: done (white / yellow / red)
-Atziri: done
-Pale Court: done
-Vaal Temple: done

The build can farm Shaped Bog (T15) like no tommorow. The enraged Rhoa boss never even touches the ballistas, because he's pushed back and slowed.

- flexible currency farmer / boss killer
- never worry about melee mobs and bosses thanks to knockbacks and perma-freezes
- lots of movement speed and permanent phasing / onslaught
- cheap to start running, lots of room for optimization
- viable for all content
- viable for SSF
- special. fucking. snowflake.
- fun and diverse playstyle

- no room for fancy IIQ/IIR items
- rather squishy without good gear
- wouldn't recommend for HC
- have to level with different skill until you have enough Dexterity piled up

Simple: kill all them bandits. We need 6 unique jewels to scale into late game, so there really is no other option.

We'll be playing as a Raider as it is most beneficial for this kind of build. Here's how we proceed:
Normal: Quartz Infusion
Cruel: Avatar of the Veil
Merciless: Way of the Poacher
Eternal: Avatar of the Slaughter

What does this give us?

- permanent phasing when at max frenzy charges
- +1 to maximum frenzy charges
- 40% movement speed
- 40% elemental damage
- 28% attack speed
- 18% attack damage
- lots of dodge and evasion & additional ways to gain and keep frenzy charges

Required gear:

Head piece:


My current gear


Since I started the league playing two other characters, I had a good bunch of currency to throw into this build. The investment payed off, though, and you can easily build this character with two five-links as well.

The above is my current setup. It offers great survivability and damage but is by no means set in stone. Personally, I switch out The Writhing Jar for a Ruby Flask for Atziri. Other options are Lion's Roar for the added knockback and if you already have a lot of money, The Dying Sun or Sin's Rebirth will be great assets to your DPS. In general: play what you feel comfortable with.

Recently, I am using a Diamond flask instead of the Writhing Jar one to boost DPS and remove RIP curses we definetly don't want on us. I recommend this switch if you're comfortable with your mana pool. Made my DPS jump from 1 million to 1.3 million with all buffs.

This is how we are able to generate so much Dexterity! The corrupted mods help but are in no way necessary for the build to be successful. For Brawn, look for 6% Dexterity and 10-11% Intelligence,
Rain of Splinters is fine around 32-35% and Fluid Motion should always be 24 Dexterity. If you have great gear already and want to stay around 1k Dexterity, look below for my jewel setup at level 90 which helps a bunch with adding DPS:



If you're looking for corrupted mods, increased frenzy/power charge duration is what we want. Anything else is fancy, but doesn't add much.

6-link: Siege Ballista - Added Cold Damage - Cold Penetration - Pierce -
Elemental Damage with Attack - Increased Critical Damage

If you don't have access to a Tabula early on, prioritize Elemental Damage, Cold Penetration and Added Cold Damage.

5-link, 6 slots: Frenzy - Projectile Weakness
- Volley Support / GMP - Curse on Hit - Power Charge on Critical Hit - Solo: Vaal Haste

Prioritize Frenzy > Curse on Hit > Projectile Weakness > Power Charge > Volley / GMP > Vaal Haste

4-link: Cast when Damage Taken - Increased Duration - Immortal Call - Phasing

Prioritize CWDT > Immortal Call > Phasing > Increased Duration and don't forget to stop leveling your CWDT and support gems at a comfortable health range!

4-link #1: Blink Arrow - Faster Projectiles
- Faster Attacks - Culling Strike

4-link #2: Haste - Herald of Ice - Clarity (lvl 6-8) - Enlighten

These auras give you the best damage output. Enlighten support will help you sustain a mana pool to be able to re-position ballistas frequently, but it is not a must. The instand recovery from the hybrid flask Writhing Jar balances mana outages on those maps with disgusting mods.

1000 Dexterity: having 5 additional Siege Ballistas really lets you feel the change in DPS with every level up. It is certainly possible to get even more, but you'd have to give up on other things for that sole purpose which I do not find efficient.

~115 Intelligence: the build runs 3 level 20 Intelligence gems -
Curse on Hit, Power Charge on Critical Hit and Increased Critical Damage Support. Also noteworthy:
no mana, no totems. ;)

~200 Strength: not having many options for building life or energy shield, having some Strength adds a great deal to your survivability. After all, dodging oh-so-many hits means nothing if the one that actually hits is a 1HKO.

Which mods to avoid:
-Elemental reflect (your totems will just die instantly)
-No regeneration (can be bypassed with Writhing Jar & Watcher's Eye with Clarity mod, but will slow you down considerably. Just reroll)
-Reduced evasion chance
-Rippy numbers of extra damage / accuracy

In general, the build does very, very well on maps with small corridors like Vault or Atoll.
This is due to the fact that you can place ballistas around corners without fear of getting shot at.
When farming low-tier maps like Gorge or Grotto, you can place one ballista in front of a pack and just through it thanks to your high movement speed from frenzy stacks / Quicksilver and only turn around for currency.

Things I learned: you can "push" totems through closed doors that cannot be shot through by stacking them up in front of it. This is especially useful on maps like Vault.

Just remember that this build runs a low healthpool. You won't facetank Shaper beams. You won't laugh into the Minotaur's face while he smacks you with his mace. In fact, he'll crush you if you don't run around frantically while replacing turrets. But in the end, you'll kill him. ;) This build is really good at clearing out big packs of monsters and doesn't fear most bosses. Just some are a pain in the arse like The Eradicator for example who simply is overtuned right now.

The most important factor why I chose to take this one to level 90 and not any other build is simply that it is a TON OF FUN to play. You won't believe it until you've played it!

Here's a screenshot of my first Atziri kill. Died once to a Flameblast at the very start due to lag, but killed her easily afterwards.


Shaped Beach [T5]: https://youtu.be/13PJ_EHVNLk
Caer Blaidd [T7]: https://youtu.be/_CP00H5FezU
Acton's Nightmare [T12]: https://youtu.be/o0Mytd6pYyc
Normal Atziri: https://youtu.be/PC4dfiauGJo

I'll add more pictures and also videos of me running maps at a later point. :)