[3.3] Poet's Pen Wander with KB Barrage and Arc -because it's 3.3

I am currently experimenting with 3.4
There are definitely some changes that I'll make to the build. Herald of Purity looks real nice and plays fine. Still need to experiment a but and get into red maps before I want to make a judgement
tree doesn't change tho and it should still play fine the way it was

T16 Pit of the Chimera
T15 Shaped Bog Map twinned Bosses, shaper influence
T11 Lair Map

and if you want to watch something really messy...
T15 Lava Lake 8 mods

• Temporal Chains
• Monsters have 365% inreased critical strike chance
• +43% to monsters critical strike multiplier
• 30% monster movement speed
• 44% monster attack speed
• 35% monster cast speed
• monsters reflect 18% of physical damage
• Unique boss deals 25% increased damage
• Unique boss has 30% increased cast and attack speed
• monsters gain an endurance charge on hit
• monsters gain a power charge on hit
• monsters cannot be taunted
• monsters cannot be slowed below base speed

3 deaths on boss... with that much attack and cast speed it'd have been a miracle to survive. but 0 deaths on the map and incursion

Inpulsa feels better than Queen of the Forest!


Turned in cards for a unique belt and got a
what can I say. Yeah it's nice but not necessary.

Pro:

• start leveling as wander from level 12 on! (with (vaal) power siphon)
• fast, fun, flexible ! The gear and tree allows for a lot of modifications to adjust it to your preferred playstyle. MF, labfarm, mapfarm, you do it!
• it's on par with any other wander - it's just a variant
• very good and fast clear on maps, incursions and temple!
• you are hexfont
• you Arc like a pro

Medium:

• not super expensive (top notch gear will always cost you... but it's in the medium range for a working build)
• Bosses that cannot be lured against a wall take a while to kill
• no regen, Enfeeble, Vulnerability, Ele Weakness, monsters deal extra damage/crit more can be run with a little adjustment of gear or playstyle - and the occasional death. also depending on map tier
• Temporal chains can be run at a good speed but only do this if you have to

Con:

• Ele reflect maps cannot be run.
• No leech maps cannot be run (because mana)

I do a lot of self found so I don't have all content done that I can do with this build.

Done Content on Softcore:

• normal Atziri (some things still oneshot you in the Atziri fight but you can walk out of them. make sure you don't attack the Minion with the Mirror)
• All white Maps, yellow Maps
• A lot of red Maps of all tiers
• Guardians: Chimera and Minotaur
• Red Elder Guardians (Lightning is a bit rippy the others are fine. The physical guys weapon throws are rippy)
• Red Elder (with 1 death)
• T15 Lava Lakes with all kinds of Curses on me - deathless
• 81 and 82 Temple of Atzoatl, full clear including boss - deathless
• Couple of Labruns full clear, all silver and gold keys, Argus.

Know that it is possible:

• All Guardians - Hydra will be unpractical. The others are fine
• full atlas clear
• T16 Corrupted Vaal Temple Map should be possible depending on the mods.

very unpractical content

• Shaper and Uber Elder are probably possible with very well rounded gear - meaning expensive gear. You need Dying Sun and really good jewels (including Watchers Eye) for this. It's definitely easier to do with other builds
• Uber Atziri if your damage is good should be possible, but a more defensive build might be nice for farms.

This Build makes use of several offensive mechanics.
Damage conversion, added extra damage, shock and Critical Strike. I want to explain how we use the physical damage of the Poet's Pen to maximize our elemental damage. This is for the interested reader:


Poet's Pen has a base physical damage and an additional damage that is increased depending on your character level. The damage however is physical and with a wander it is easier to push elemental damage than physical damage.
So we want to convert this physical damage into as much elemental damage as possible. Preferably lightning damage because Lightning has better buffs on gear and tree than cold or fire.

Conversion works like this:
Let's say you have 100dps physical. you have 80% of that converted to lightning and another 60% converted to cold. That is 140% total but you don't get 140% of 100dps. you get 100% of your physical converted to those two elements at the ratio that they are at. The ratio is 4:3 which is applied to 100% of your damage and not to the sum of 140%. So you lose no conversion but it is distributed. So in the end the 100dps will be split up in around 57% lightning and 43% cold damage. So we have this:
100 physical dps
> 80% of physical converted to lightning damage
> 60% of physical converted to cold damage
57 lightning dps
+53 cold dps

the sum is still 100dps even though we have more conversion. Conversion does not add damage it converts percentages.

The next step is added damage.

This gem gives a 50% phys to lightning conversion and the higher you level it the more "physical damage as extra lightning damage" you get.

Lets take our 100 physical dps example again. lets say we use this gem and Hrimsorrow gloves (which convert the other 50% to cold damage).
meaning we now have 50 lightning dps and 50 cold dps.
This gem now adds 29% of our physical damage as extra lightning damage. Even though we do not deal lightning damage because we converted everything the game still knows that we originated from 100 physical damage. So we get:
50 lightning damage + 50 cold damage + 29 lightning damage
79 lightning damage + 50 cold damage
= 129 elemental dps

How do buffs apply?

This gem also provides a 10% buff to lightning damage and a 10% buff to physical damage.
Now I don't know the mechanics of how it is applied - but since you cannot double dip any more in the end you get a 20% buff on your lightning damage. and a 10% buff on your cold damage.

This is not how it works:
100 phys dps +10% = 110 phys dps.
50% cold 50% lightning conversion:
55 cold dps + 55 lightning dps = 110 ele dps
10% increased lightning damage:
55 cold dps + 55 + 5.5 lightning dps = 115.5 dps


This is how it works:
50% is converted phys to cold which is affected by 10% buff to physical damage:
55 cold dps
50% is converted to lightning which is affected by both 10% buffs:
50 lightning dps * 120% = 60 lightning dps
So in the end we have 115 elemental dps total.
Not 115.5 dps.
Yes it's only 0.5dps in this example but this obviously has been an issue in the past so it got changed.


Plus this build makes also use of Shock.
Because it's 3.3 and everyone is using Arc *cough* we make use of Arc as well.
Every spell socketed in our Poet's Pen is autocast on attack. Apart from the curse that is an Arc + Innervate combo.
Arc does some lightning spell damage, but it also has a chance to apply shock.
Every lightning skill has a chance to apply shock - but they usually only shock on a critical strike. Out Kinetic Blast does lightning damage and with a critical strike the target will 100% be shocked. But we do not always Crit. Some of our hits are normal hits. And this is where Arc + Innervate comes in. Once you have them on 20% quality this combo has a 40% chance to shock on its own - and that is with regular hits. critical strikes of Arc still have a 100% chance to shock.

"

Shock no longer increases the damage taken by enemies by a fixed amount for a variable duration. Now, Shock will apply to enemies for a duration of 2 seconds and increase the amount of damage the shocked enemy takes based on the Lightning damage dealt to the enemy. A purely Lightning hit which removes 10% of an enemy's life will increase the damage that enemy takes by 50% for 2 seconds, scaling linearly down to 0% at no Lightning damage dealt. Shock is still only applied by critical strikes or based on your chance to shock.

From the Oriath Patch Notes

Shock is a debuff applied lasting for 2 seconds if you hit the target with enough lightning damage.
Our Arc does not hit the Target for 10% max life in one hit. So the increased damage taken from shock will probably not be 50% - but it should hit within the threshold to actually set of the shock effect and allow for some increased damage taken. And with Inpulsa we get a little under 50% increased damage if we have shocked an enemy recently - which we do. Also shocked enemies we kill explode and as far as I see they explode quite a lot.

Actually I don't know if that is the be all and end all of damage increase you can do in a build, but since I wanted a Poet's Pen build this seemed like the smartest thing to do with it. You can only make use of spells in the poets pen and spells deal spell damage - but we deal and buff mostly attack damage which is something completely different. But having an incredibly high chance of applying a debuff reliably on an enemy seems like a no brainer. Especially since you can link it with Innervate - which grants the "Innervation" buff on kill. This buff gives us flat lightning damage - both spell and attack damage. Arc does enough damage on my build to actually kill enemies - quite often at that. So yes you get this buff quite often and yes that is the added lightning damage of two tier 1 rolls on an abyss jewel.

obviously. If you can get a corrupted with +flat damage like this one or "+x% attack speed" or "penetrates x% elemental resistances" you can but you don't have to. Make sure your weapon is 20% quality and you have three blue sockets on it because the linked spells are being autocast on your attacks. So this is important.

Chest


Damage conversion


Other slots / Notable Uniques and Rares


Flasks


Jewels

Tree

No-brainer copy this tree:
Level 90
Mid Leveling Tree
Take Arcing Blows and Wandslinger after. Then life nodes then sockets

Build your own tree advice:


PoB?
my profile is public. Import account "JeansJoe" and Character "FourFoxSakes" level 92 Pathfinder Incursion. And then you can PoB it yourself. each 3 Frenzy and Power charges.



Bandits
Help Alira - if you want it easy going
Kill All - if you have really good jewels that you want to use

Pantheon
Solaris or Lunaris is Major. I am leaning a bit more towards Solaris
Ralakesh and Garukhan are good options but take whatever you like

Ascendancy Pathing as Pathfinder
I use Pathfinder because its the fastest and most defensive of the Rangers. If you want to use Deadeye or Raider you can.
Pathfinder gives you immunity to elemental ailments during flask effects - means no chill, freeze, shock, ignite on you. So you only need to be able to remove bleed and curses. It gives you extra damage from your physical - guess what that's 10% damage on top. Your Flasks (almost) never run out.

"

shoutout to Queenliness

6 Link Main Attack goes in Chest and is 3 Blue 1 Red 2 Green:


or




4 Link Secondary Attack


When you use this I strongly advice you to use it in a Thunderfist Glove!
you definitely need the GMP and Conversion gem.
can maybe be switched with

OR

4 Link Barrage
is a little tricky. Those 3 are set:



can be gotten from shaper gloves and then you need one of these 2


Weapon / Poet's Pen 2 Blue + 1 Blue

This is where the magic happens. First of all you curse enemies - as long as you have your mouse over them. Meaning you need to attack them by mousing over them not by shooting in their direction. You will soon get use to it.
Also Arc Procs a lot, shocking enemies and doing some lightning damage
Arc is linked with Innervate and Innervate gives additional chance to shock - especially when with quality! It also gives you a buff on kill giving you extra lightning damage. who doesn't like extra damage? Lucky we have a lot of +%lightning and +%ele damage on our tree so this Arc-Innervate combo actually does do some damage and it kills enemies quite often. So yes you get the buff a lot. And you can always expect that your enemy is shocked.

CWDT Defensive Setup

To make full use of this Link use Blood Rage with it. Make sure to cap CWDT and Immortal call to a limit where you feel safe. meaning they both need the same required character level.
Increased Duration gets as high as you can have it. You might only be able to get it to 19 because it needs a lot of Strength. The Quality on Increased Duration increases the duration further.
Blood Rage gets level 20, we use it to generate Frenzy charges and get increased attack speed. Make sure to recast it during longer single target fights! Also beware that having it with a 20/20 Increased Duration makes it tick for quite long. If you don't leech or regenerate life during that time it can completely drain your health.

3-4 Link Herald + Golem

On a 3 Link drop onslaught. The usual wander setup is to use Assasins Mark with Herald Of Ice, but since we curse with Poet's Pen we can liberate this link a bit. Having Culling Strike on Herald Of Ice lets you clear a little bit faster and safer. Meaning you kill single enemies that would otherwise still be alive. For bosses we use our Ice Golem to cull enemies. make sure to recast the Ice Golem whenever there is time for it during a longer fight - and make some time to recast it once the boss is in culling range!

Movement

Flame Dash is the only movement skill we can use as a wander. Use it with Faster Casting and maybe link a Portal Gem to it. My advice is to 20% the Portal gem and then corrupt it. 20% gives the Portal gem 10% increased cast speed and corruption might result in a Breach gem. Never happened - but the quality definitely helps to cast it faster

Unless you prefer portal scrolls...

I will not give you a step by step walkthrough, but some advice on gems and items.
This build isn't exactly a starter build. I have made one starter as wander and got lucky with nice wands around level 40 and 70 (ssf). A wander is more of a second build. Once you have enough currency to buy a Piscators or Poets pen you can level a wander. Sometimes you can get a decent rare for a few chaos.

For this build I recommend having the Poet's Pen before starting to level!
Do whatever you like until level 12.
Which means, frostblades or spectral throw with a redbeak or any rare you find.
or using a rare bow, Silverbranch or whatever people can use at this level.

This is your starting tree:
Click here
after that you do the bottom part of the final tree, then the top part. and then remove what you don't need later on.

Once you are level 12 you use Poet's Pen and Vaal Power Siphon. Why Vaal Power Siphon you ask? Because you can use it at level 12, because it's hella fun, because it got reworked in 3.3, because it's better to level.


Main attack:

Power Siphon goes with Chaining instead of Greater Multiple Projectiles.
Add things like +cold +fire +lightning damage to it and switch to the other gems you use with Kinetic Blast later. In the end you run Power Siphon instead of KB and chain instead of GMP the other 4 gems stay the same.

The gems in the Poet's Pen are the same as endgame. You can use volatile dead if you like. It adds some extra fire damage


okay belt

better belt


helps with mana, a clarity gem can also help until you get to use wrath or need to use wrath.


adds way too much damage.


is obviously the best choice as a chest for leveling.

Conversion while leveling.
50% still comes from phys to lightning. In the first levels a +cold damage and +ele damage with attacks support is enough. you don't need to convert physical to ele from the get go. Physical damage is still damage!
you can use items like these later on:




other nice items are

high attack speed!


And Wanderlust boots that I can't find atm.


Vaal Power siphon helps you clear incursions really fast and some areas with high density. in most cases a regular PS attack is enough.
Use 2 Life 2 Quicksilver and one Mana flask. If you do the incursions when you find them you get so much experience that you can't underlevel even if you leave half monsters you pass alive.

Get a Barrage (I think its level 12 Merveils caverns) from Nessa and start using it as second skill. as long as your 6link isnt complete on your Tabula Rasa you can link it in there with Power Siphon. If you like do the sidequest in Act 3 Library and get Kinetic Blast and start leveling it. You can also just get it Act 6 or act 10. Power Siphon easily carries you through white maps. In general use the gem setups that you would use endgame with the exception of Kinetic Blast and GMP. Blood Rage can be leveled but is not necessary.