[3.16]Physical Conversion Bowyer | Barrage + IS/LA/TS | PF/Deadeye | All content

1. Physical conversion bowyer is a very old and classic build, and this guide is mainly following Enahkra's old phys conversion guide: https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/2460575 (One of the best written guides on the forum IMO, sadly not updated after early 3.9). What I'm trying to do here is to include all the updates into this build and add some of my own tweaks, given that a lot have changed since 3.9.

2. This is my first time writing a build guide, so if anything is missing or unclear, please let me know. Your suggestions or feedbacks are appreciated.

- This build is designed to be an excellent boss killer, while still having top tier clearspeed. It requires some currency to start with, therefore not a good league starter (I suggest having at least 15~20ex ready before you start). But with some investment, you should be able to melt endgame bosses including sirus easily.

- Physical conversion build is a popular mirrored build in standard. But the majority of this guide will be more focused on temp league set up. No legacy items are required in this build, and most of the items I link will be obtainable in temp league (I will make a note whenever something I link is legacy).

- The GIF is updated with a 3.15 video to demonstrate how this build is doing after the 3.15 heavy nerf. Gear used is listed in the 3.14 Sample Gear section. Everything can be obtained in temp league, and no legacy items required.

Guide is mostly updated for 3.16 including PoB. There might be some outdated information still in the cluster jewel section, I will clean those up soon. Please kindly let me know if anything is wrong or any link is not working, thanks!

A brief summary here:

1. The passive tree change and Mastery system gives us a significant dps buff. It also offers different choice of tree/gears.

2. Due to the fact that it's easy to get ailment immune now, flask duration is longer in general, easier flask refill, Deadeye is definitely a good choice now for this build, I have added both Deadeye and PF section in the guide and the PoB.

3. I added a creeping frost + bonechill in the gem set up to further boost the bossing dps, you can either use arcanist brand or CWDT for it.

4. Lvl 5 awk supports are now much stronger. The most useful one for us is Awk cold penetration, which gives us cold exposure at lvl 5.

5. Lioneye is actually better than before due to the change on tree, it can now give us access to two masteries which provide leech and suedo culling, which can be very good when you are on low budget and can't afford good clusters. I added a PoB with lioneye and no cluster.

6. Based on what it looks like in PoB, it seems that he ranger side notable changes will make it easier for us to find a decent Lethal Pride.



3.15 Updates


3.14 Updates


3.13 Updates

A9 Sirus recorded in std after the 3.15 heavy nerf, with 3.14 temp league gear. DPS is still good enough to melt bosses:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Xz744umjn4

3.16:


3.14:

Physical conversion:

Single target:

Clear skill:

Dealing with elemental ailments:

Mapping:

Like most typical bow builds, with decent gears, we should be able to fly through maps and shatter almost everything. Our movement speed can be incredibly fast (even without HH) due to quicksilver flask with increased flask effect, plus potentially tailwind + elusive if you are rich.

Bossing:

Barrage is a skill that you need to stand still to deal damage. And to fully utilize Point Blank and Chin Sol, we need to stand right in front of bosses. This can be dangerous somtimes, and therefore our final goal is to be able to reach a dps level that we can melt most stuff quickly enough before they can get their big skills off (even for A8 sirus as shown in gif). You will need some practice to learn to dodge some fatal skills though.

Defense:

We don't scale evasion or armour, but make sure you cap all your elemental resistances. Our main defense against physical hits comes from "15% of phys damage from hits taken as cold damage" from Taste of Hate, and with 50% increased flask effect, this is essentially about 17% physical damage mitigation from hits.

Chaos resistance:

My personal preference here is that I don't really care about chaos res. The most common source of chaos damage when mapping comes from caustic ground and poison. Shakari pantheon + instant recovery on low life flask is the best way to solve this. I have been running with -60 chaos res all the time, I can do sirus A8 deathless easily and my deaths are rarely caused by chaos damage. The most dangerous encounter is probably Hunter, but you can trivialize this by having enough dps to burst him down quick enough.

Feel free to stack some chaos res if you like it that way, just be aware that it's gonna cost quite a lot.

+ Excellent boss killer
+ Excellent map clear as well
+ Permanent flask sustain
+ Shatter everything
+ Can choose different clear skills based on your personal preference

- Not a cheap build to start with, not a good league starter, and not very beginner friendly (I will try to be very specific in each section in order to help new players out)
- Our survival highly depends on the fact that we can insta shatter full screen, so the build would be very squishy if your dps is not good enough
- Min-maxing can be extremely expensive, good rare bows are very hard to craft

Pathfinder or Deadeye:

With 3.15 and 3.16 changes, I would say Deadeye is currently at a better position compared to Pathfinder, and here are some main reasons:

1. PF lost ailment immune in 3.15, which was one of the best QoL in the game.
2. Deadeye is definitely the better choice if you are looking at burst damage as well as better map clearing.
3. There are more ways to sustain flask charges now, and the duration of flasks has been buffed significantly, making it much easier for Deadeye to have enough flask charges in longer boss fights.

Therefore:
If you are looking for damage and mapping performance, just pick Deadeye.
If you feel you are bad at flask management, and find yourself constantly running out of flasks, then you could pick PF. Also, PF would have a bit better survival then Deadeye.

In general, on similar set ups, you can expect about 10% to 30% more bossing dps on Deadeye. Deadeye gain more dps advantage especially on lower budget.


The gears could be exactly the same except that you obviously don't need tailwind boots for deadeye.

The passive trees are also gonna be almost the same, only thing is that you shouldn't plan to get 50% flask effect as deadeye, so you can skip flask nodes (they are still useful for deadeye though).

Pathfinder Ascendancy:

Nature's Boon, Nature's Adrenaline, Veteran Bowyer, Master Surgeon (or Master Alchemist)

With the latest 3.15 change, Master Alchemist becomes quite useless. It does not offer elemental ailment immunity anymore, which means we will still be affected by things like shocking/chilling ground even if we use a flask. Therefore I recommend switching to Master Surgeon, which gives a bit life recovery, and better flask sustain during boss fights. And you can also skip corrupted blood jewel implicit when you are on a budget (although it's still good to have it if you have the money, immunity is definitely better than only remove when you use flask).

Deadeye Ascendancy:

Gathering Winds, Ricochet, Endless Munitions, Focal Point

Personally I love the Point Blank playstyle, so I don't take Far Shot. Also, in real game play, it's much more comfortable to aim bosses right in front of you. Although potentially, you can take both Far Shot and Point Blank to have consistantly higher damage at all range (drop Focal Point in this case).

Here are a list of useful Mastery points:

Life Mastery: 10% life and 50 max life

Crit Mastery: 25% crit multi against unique enemies

Cold Mastery: 40% phys to cold (essential) and curses on enemies on chilling areas have 15% increased effect (we create chilling grounds with Creeping Frost set up)

Elemental Mastery: Exposure you inflict applies at least -18% to resistances

Flask Mastery: 10% increased flask effect (for PF)

Bow Mastery: Chance to gain phasing on kill/increased MS when phasing (this is only for better mapping)

Projectile Mastery: 15% more projectile speed (only if you are using Tornado Shot)

Bandits:

Alira should be the best choice most of the time. On a highly min-maxed set up, an argument could be made to kill all if you desperately need 2 more points for cluster notables or double damage lethal pride nodes.

Pantheon:

Major:
Brine King if you need freeze immune, otherwise:
Lunaris for mapping
Solaris for bossing

Minor:
Garukhan if you need reduced shock effect, or Shakari for poison and chaos mitigation

Phys reflect:

If you have 100% phys convert via gloves + eye, you can safely do phys reflect maps.

If you only have 90% convert with Hrimsorrow alone, your Barrage and Tornado shot will still deal decent amount of phys damage which could potentially kill yourself. Your Ice Shot/Lightning Arrow However, will deal 0 phys damage since they have phys convert on the gems.

Ele reflect:

Level 5 Awk elemental damage with attacks support now grant ele reflect immune for supported skills, but if you are using voidfletcher or creeping frost/wave of conviction, the reflected damage can still kill you. To solve this, you can use Yugul Pantheon + Sibyl Ring on your left slot. This gives you 100% reduced reflect damage taken. Note that this is different from reflect immune. If you are affected by certain increased damage taken modifiers, you can still take reflect damage.

No leech:

You might have mana problems in no leech maps, especially during bossing. So it can be a bit dangerous.

Monsters have #% chance to avoid ailments:

You will not be able to shatter everything with this mod. Sometimes can be a bit dangerous due to some on death effects like porcupine.

Make sure you use the latest version of POB fork. (https://github.com/PathOfBuildingCommunity/PathOfBuilding/releases)

Low/Medium Budget:

High Budget:

Very High Budget:


Notes:

1. This is not a cheap build to start with; even with the low budget, you should expect to invest at least 15Ex~30Ex depending on league economic.

2. If you are using Voidfletcher, the barrage dps that POB is showing does not include void shot damage. So you should manually calculate your final dps by adding your barrage dps and void shot dps. More details are explained on how to check void shot dps in the Quiver section.

3. For High and Very High budget, I did not put seperate PoB for PF and Deadeye, the gear/tree are basically the same, you can just switch the ascendancy points there.

4. Due to the fact we have a lot of good nodes to take on cluster jewels, an extra passive point can potentially give us almost 3% more dps. A level 100 character can thus have 35% more dps than a level 90 character with exact same gear. Therefore, I highly recommend to lvl this build to at least 95+.

Bow:

Quiver:

Body Armour:

Helmet:

Boots:

Gloves:

Amulet:

Rings:

Belt:

Introduction:

Cluster Jewels:

Watcher's Eye:

Lethal Pride:

Abyssal Jewels:

Regular Jewels:

Lioneye's Fall (For low budget):

Quick note: With the huge nerf for flasks in 3.15, most flasks I link here now have legacy modifier/rolls. Be aware of that when you try to buy flasks with a specific roll in new league.

General set up:

Other decent dps flask options:

Suggested set up for mapping:

Suggested set up for bossing:

With 3.15 gem nerf/rebalance, there are a few more dps gems that would be worth using depending on your set up/budget. Some combinations might give higher dps than what I suggested here. So if you would like to find out the best gem links for your own set up, compare them in PoB yourself.

Barrage single target:

Clear Skill:

Auras:

Curse/Debuff set up (CWDT or Arcanist Brand):

Other utility set up:

Note that the high budget set up in the POB with 25M dps is far from min-maxed. This build has much higher dps ceiling even in temp league. And in std, it can be pushed to 200M+ easily with legacy/mirrored gears.

I will not discuss about min-maxing here since not many players gonna need that. Also, personal preference plays a big roll when truly min-maxing, and it can get very complicated to justify different choices due to this.

If you are interested in discussing about min-maxing or have any questions, feel free to leave your thoughts in the thread, or PM me in game.

I have mentioned this multiple times in the guide but I still see a lot of people mess up with this.

Reaching 50% increased flask effect gives us 1 extra arrow from dying sun which is about 10% more barrage dps depending on how many arrows you have in total. Moreover, increased flask effect in general is also giving us a lot more: more MS from quicksilver, more dps and defense from Taste of Hate, more crit and damage from bottled faith, etc.

I've seen people with decent gears, but wondering why the dps displayed in PoB is so low.

To correctly calculate our dps in PoB, make sure you have clicked all the option needed in the configuration panel such as:

Set the enemy to be Boss (Sirus)
Inspiration charges
Frenzy and power charges (if you have Frenzy/power charge generation, min charge does not count here)
Are you leeching
Do you have Alchemist's Genius
Is enemy at close range (for Chin Sol and Legacy Arborix)
Set projectile travel distance to 10 (for point blank)
Do you have tailwind (if you have on boots)
Set exposure type to cold
Is the enemy intimidated (if you have intimidate mod)
Is the enemy shocked (if you have way to apply shock)
Is the enemy on Consecrated Ground (If using bottled faith)
Etc...

If you are not familiar with PoB, make sure you look at my PoB above to check what I have with these settings.

In addition, the barrage dps displayed in PoB does not include void shot dps. Check the quiver section for how to calculate that.

Players who are new to this build might feel lack of dps some times.

Here are some common aspects that might improve your dps:

1. Make sure you correctly followed my general set up. Especially check the 50% increased flask effect part, as I have seen countless people who messed up there.

2. Get as high roll as possible on your uniques. Phys dmg on Bow is extremely important. A well-rolled loreweave is also much stronger than a crappy one.

3. Level up your character. With the correct cluster jewel set up, every passive points can give a dps boost. I suggest to reach at least 95+ for your end-game set up.

4. Amulet/Rings can roll a lot of excellent dps mods. On a medium budget, you should try to get as much res as possible on helm/boots, and free up your Amulet/Rings for more dps mods.

5. Jewels are also important. This includes not only Watcher's Eye and Lethal Pride, but also rare base jewels. They can all provide good dps.

6. Level up your gems. Although gem level here is not as important as in a toxic rain build, it's still important to get them to max lvl. You don't need to rush for lvl 21 corruption or awk gems if you don't have the currency though.

As I mentioned in the introduction, this is not a simple and cheap build, 15Ex is just the bare minimum to start the build. However, when you invest more, the build has endless potential for min-maxing.

First, let's see what defenses we have, or can have rather easily:

1. 78 max res from Loreweave
2. Phys taken as cold from Taste of Hate, and phys taken as fire from helm craft/unveil, can get phys taken as fire on lethal pride too
3. 20% less fire/cold damage taken from Dying Sun and Taste of Hate
4. CWDT + steelskin (both max lvl)
5. Can craft +1 min endurance charge on ring and amulet, try to get chance to gain end charge on kill on lethal pride
6. Elusive, or get chance to gain end charge on kill on boots (you only have room for one, elusive is better in general)
7. Get blind on hit somewhere on gear (most likely on abys jewel)

The combination of Loreweave and phys taken as cold/fire is actually incredibly good for evasion based characters and many people don't realize this. It's basically 15% less ele damage mitigation, and about 20% physical damage mitigation from hits (flask + helm craft). This is almost as good as having 20% of Fortify. Plus, as PF you will have even more mitigation. Therefore, having flask up is very important for our survival, and thus longer boss fights can be very dangerous. That's the reason why PF will have better survival in general.

Other than these, if you would like to get further defensive layers, then you would likely need to sacrifice a significant amount of damage:

1. Grab points on tree that gives spell suppression
2. For Deadeye, drop Focal Point and take Wind Ward
3. For PF, swap in a jade flask, and can grab more evasion points on tree

Now, as for whether it's worth sacrificing dps for more defense, this is a hard question to answer, as it is mostly personal preference. But one thing that we know for sure is that such bow builds that are capable of zooming maps are all glass cannons by nature. No matter how much defense you invest in, you are still not going to get a real tanky character. You couldn't expect such builds to be capable of safe farming maps to reach lvl 100. I mostly delve for lvling after 90 (it's easy and quick before 95), and do Chayula Rota's or 5-way party for lvl 100.

Personally, I'm totally fine with occasionaly getting one shotted, so I don't invest that much in defense, but I always find myself dying less as I improve my dps.

About league start:

This build is not a very good league starter unless you are already very familiar with everything here. If you feel you are still at a state where you need to rely on a guide for your league start, then I would recommend you not to league start with this build.

About leveling:
You would definitely want a Tabula to level with this build, otherwise your damage will free really bad.

You can use any bow with decent amount of phys damage or ele damage or combination of both, no need to be 6L.

The 6L I suggest for leveling is:
Ice shot/Lightning Arrow + ele damage with attack + onslaught + added cold + added lightning + GMP (for clear)/barrage support (for boss).

Here is a skill tree with 78 points, which would roughly be the time where you can start using Chin Sol (lvl 62), the tree is almost same as out final tree:

After that, just socket in lioneye and took those nodes, and get jewel socket whenever you are able to grab a good jewel.