[3.3] Elemental MoM RATs, Endgame vialbe, Barrage & Tornado Shot Totems - Shaper Down!
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Guide stays mostly unchanged for 3.3. as none of the stuff was changed.
Hey guys, I wanted to share my Ranged Attack Totem build since I don't really see any RAT builds around. I'm still kinda new (Beastiary is the first league I'm playing, but I was playing Standard during Abyss) and this is my first build guide, so please be gentle. If you have any suggestions for improvements I'd be happy to hear them. I'm currently level 91 with the build and red maps are fairly easy including bosses. I did beat red Elder, all Guardians and Shaper with the build. Hydra, Chimera and Shaper are really easy as you have lots of movespeed and can concentrate on dodging while your totems shoot. Minotaur and Phoenix were a little harder, but I guess with better gear/more skill they should be just as easy. I didn't record the shaper fight, but I only died once due to placing an anomaly in the zana safe zone...
Videos
T13 Core
T14 Plaza T12 Summit with The Enslaver T11 Primordial Pool with Elder (died twice, one time I don't know what killed me second time was me being stupid - first time ever red Elder) T16 Lair of the Hydra (a better player would not have died - first time I ever played Hydra)
General/Mechanics
We use Ranged Attack Totems with Barrage and Tornado Shot. The Lioneyes Glare bow makes it impossible to miss and to scale our damage we convert everything to cold with Hrimsorrow and passive nodes. We pick up Elemental Overload since we don't have enough points/room to scale crit effectively. Since we can always place our totems up close to the enemy we get point blank.
Defensively we use Mind over Matter to mitigate damage. The Hierphant ascendancy is perfect, since we get an additional totem and more MoM. As second ascendancy we choose pathfinder to sustain health and mana. Since with totems we don't have any leech or gain on hit, we have to rely on flasks. We also throw in Acrobatics since we path along there anyway. In the tree we pick up totem, flask, life and elemental damage nodes.
Pros and Cons
Pros:
- Basic gear is very cheap (works on 5 link) - Can do any map mod - Totems do all the damage so you can focus on dodging/surviving - Good clear and single target damage Cons: - Lategame gear gets a little more expensive - Slower mapping due to using totems - Can be kind of hard to level
PoB of my current char
https://pastebin.com/VmKGZXbU
Passive Tree
~level 20
~level 50 ~level 70 ~level 90 (my current tree) Possible level 100 tree (grab more life and one jewel) There are a lot of optional nodes you could get depending on how you feel with the build. I'm at 5k health and feel like it's enough with MoM. There are a lot of life nodes you can pick that i did not pick yet. You can get the defensive totem nodes if you feel like your totems die too fast. Some offensive tree option would be Berserking, Celestial Judgement or Deadly Draw. Defensive options would be going to Alchemist and picking up Cruel Preparation and Deep Thoughts on the way, Iron Reflexes and Phase Acrobatics. There are also plently of jewels sockets that are 2-3 points aways.
My current gear
Gear breakdown/Alternatives
Bow
You can use any high DPS bow, but it's probably hard to get a better one than this. It slightly cancels out the negative effect of Point Blank with Far Shot, cannot miss (so no need to look for accuracy) and gives extra mana for MoM.
Quiver
You absolutely need Skirmish for the extra totem. It's also good because it gives more mana and regen for MoM. On top of that Skirmish is extremely cheap even with the additional arrow corruption.
Gloves
Required as we use Hrimsorrow to convert half of our damage to cold damage to scale it. Luckily Hrimsorrow are very cheap.
Helmet
Devotos Devotion is a very good helmet as it gives movement speed, attack speed and is relatively cheap to get with additional barrage arrow enchant. Alternatively you can use any rare helmet with life and resistances.
Body Armor & Boots
Rare with high life rolls and whatever resistances you need. I advice for boots with at least 30% movement speed. For the body armor I just bought a cheap 6 link evasion/energy shield base and used a life essence on it.
Jewelry
Essence Worm so our Wrath does not reserve mana and we have the full pool available for MoM. The rest of the jewelry is just rares with good life rolls and resists. For the belt you can try to get a high ilvl Shaper base as those can roll extremely good flask mods. Other than that just go for added damage on the rings and amulet.
Flasks
One movement flask. Rotgut is good because it also gives Onslaught, but it has only 1 use. Getting a Quicksilver flask with more total charges or less charges consumed enables you to be permanently fast. You need an insta heal flask that removes bleeding. I first used a life flak, but it felt like I didn't have enough mana regen so I started using a hybrid flask and it felt a lot safer to sustain mana for MoM. The drawback is that hybrid flasks only have two uses. Use Seething or Bubbling. I like Bubbling more as you get some more over time regen after the initial instant recovery. Mana regen for MoM and in case you take a big hit and lose all your mana it allows you to still cast totems. Awesome flask that makes us immune to stun, freeze and curses (take that Temporial Chains) and gives onslaught for more DPS. Dying Sun is of course the best flask for any bow character, but Atziris Promise works good too for even red maps.
Jewels
Rain of Splinters is mandatory as it gives us two more projectiles. Make sure to get one with low reduced damage roll. For rare jewels you need to have life on them. Other than that look for anything with attack speed, projectile or totem damage. I picked up some with totem life as I felt that my totems died too fast. This is completely optional, but highly recommended! The damage taken gained as mana mod increases your survivabilty by a lot as it provides mana for MoM. The other mods dont matter, but if you can find one with additional damage when affected by Wrath or additional Clarity mods you should definitely pick it up.
Leveling
I'd rather not use this build as starter build as it would be good to have some funds and items to make leveling easier.
For the first acts you can just run with self cast split arrow and self cast barrage until you reach ~level 20 from where on you can use Skirmish and switch to totem only by skilling Ancestral Bond. Just start using the gems from the gem section as soon as you can. Using a Quillrain and Tabula makes early game much more easier/faster. When you feel like not doing enough damage anymore get a cheap 5 or 6 link bow from PoE.Trade (Filter by bow and a minimum of 5 links, put the maximum you want to spend (e.g. 10c) and sort by DPS). Pick up Rain of Splinter ASAP and watch out to get one with low reduced damage. When you buy Skirmish, pick one up with the additional arrow corruption as they are pretty cheap. Important for leveling: - If you didn't play totems before: Their health scales with their level. So you want to start leveling your totems as soon as possible and you want to level 4 of them. When your RAT gems reach level 20 and you want to upgrade them to 20% quality and you don't have a second set of level 19/20 totems as backup you are going to have a bad time because the level 1 totems die immediately. Of course you can always buy a high level/quantity gem. - Our tree starts out with only STR and INT nodes and all our gems require DEX. This is a problem you have to work around by either getting gear that has a lot of dex or skilling some dex in the tree that you later on refund (there are two +30 nodes close to the nodes we pick anyway). I just used Astramentis. - Because of lack of dex you want to do your first three labs ASAP so you can start skilling dex in the Ranger part of the tree. Good thing is, with the totems the labs are really easy and you can do them way before reaching the recommended level. If you are doing the labs at the levels you are supposed to, you might have some spare skill points since you already filled out the left of the tree. Either keep the leftover points or spec whatevery you feel like and refund later.
Ascendancy
Pathfinder > Path of the Ranger > Hierophant
Bandits
Kill all and take the two passives
Pantheon
Soul of Ryslatha for more life recovery from flasks.
Soul of Solaris for more defense. (Don't need Brine King because Kiaras Determination makes us stun immune.)
Gems
Gems listed in order of importance. As I said before, the setups also work until lategame with only 5 links
[Bow/Body Armor] 6 link for clearing
Pierce doesn't give any big damage boosts, but clearing feels a lot better with piercing projectiles.
[Bow/Body Armor] 6 link for single target
Early on I was swapping gems for bosses, but you definitely need the two 5/6 link setups as there are bosses that spawn ads and barrage totems cant really handle those. You need to be able to place both kind of totem at the same time.
[Helmet/Boots/Gloves] CwDT setup
Typical CwDT + Immortal call and Lightning Golem for more DPS. I threw in a Blood Rage since I really didn't know what to do with the slot. I guess you could replace that with Increased Duration.
[Helmet/Boots/Gloves] Orb of Storms
We use Orb of Storms to curse with Projectile Weakness and proc Elemental overload with crits.
[Helmet/Boots/Gloves] Frenzy/Blink Arrow
Blink Arrow for movement and Frenzy to generate Frenzy Charges and proc Elemental Overload. If you are not using the Watchers Eyes you can replace Clarity with whatever you feel like.
[Ring] Wrath
Wrath aura for more DPS Since you have 4 totem slots available, you could also try using only 3 DPS totems and one utility like decoy. I did not try that yet.
Playstyle
Place your totems and spam all your flasks. With the movement speed from boots, helmet and Rotgut you are pretty fast and need to use Blink Arrow only for obstacles or if you are stuck. Because of the ascendancy and all the flask notes from the tree, you should have charges all the time.
Make sure your mana stays as full as possible. Since we have a pretty small life pool we heavily rely on MoM. Concentrate on dodging attacks and projectiles while your totems clean up. Don't forget to occasionally throw in an Orb of Storms and some Frenzy Shots to increase your Damage. If you can't defeat a boss because your totems die, try placing them differently. Place one to the left and one to the right, so they cant be attacked at the same time or place all 4 in front of the enemy and then blink arrow behind them and replace 2 totems there. Use tornado shot for clearing and place a barrage totem if there are some tougher mobs like red beasts. Use barrage against bosses without ads. When they spawn ads, use one or two tornado shot totems. Always place the totems next to the boss so you get the maximum Point Blank bonus. If the boss moves, replace the totems.
Map Mods
As pointed out you can play any map mod, but watch out for elemental reflect and additional monster projectiles. The reflect is annoying because your totems one shot themselves. You can still play it, but you will be constantly placing totems. The additional monster projectiles is hard because your totems will get killed vs certain mobs before being able to do anything. Try placing them more spread out or just spam them till the monsters slowly die.
Proximity shields can be a real pain if the mob that has it moves around quickly. Last edited by load231 on May 30, 2018, 6:47:04 AM Last bumped on Dec 6, 2018, 11:05:22 PM
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Updated with videos
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Great looking build. Will try it out and let you know!
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Build is unchanged for 3.3. None of the core items/gems were modified in a major way that would impact the build
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This build looks pretty fun actually. Quick question. What do you think think of grabbing elemental equilibrium and replacing tornado shot with the new and improved elemental hit? The reason I’m asking is because I’ve been wanting to work with EH and think this will be a great way to test it out safely. Especially considering the attack will now actively avoid using the same element twice in a row, the support gems are all the same as your current, and the damage scaling is a lot better now. I don’t think it could compete with Tornado for clear, but it could be fun.
If I ran this route, what changes would you recommend in the tree? | |
" Thanks! I was thinking about Elemental Hit as well, but it seems the proper way to play it is conversion with Avatar of Fire and Cold to Fire for example. I didn't play elemental hit before, but I'd guess clearing is not that good and it would be better to instead replace Barrage with Elemental Hit for bosses as converted Elemental Hit seems to have a really high damage output. If you use multiple elements + EE, the physical to cold conversion of this build will only work every third hit (or second if you block one damage type with one of the new jewels) and you cannot use Wrath as it gives a permanant lightning resist buff through EE (you also cannot use any adds # elemental damage to attacks). You'd probably want to drop Winter Spirit and Fangs of Frost from the tree and Hrimsorrow and Essence Worm from the Items (or use a different aura). Instead pick up for example EE, Berserking and Celestial Judgement. Since your are not dealing any physical weapon damage anymore (if I understand EH correctly), you might want to try out Quillrain?! You will lose the Hits cannot be evaded but have a much higher attack speed. Might be worth checking that out when PoB is updated. If you drop Hrimsorrow and Essence Worm and use good rares instead, you can use Shroud of the Lightless as body armor instead for a slight DPS buff. If you end up playing the build with EH I'd definitely be interested in how it goes. I'm planning on doing a conversion EH build based on this build later in the league after there is some general feedback available for the new EH. Last edited by load231 on May 30, 2018, 2:49:45 PM
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" We are balancing a lot of options. Unfortunately, I will be missing the first two weeks so any testing will be done late. Depending on how much you like the league, you may already have play tested it by then! However, thanks for answering so quickly. I'll play around a little in PoB once the update kicks in (which, as we speak, is well under way). Regardless, I think one of us will figure this out. Last edited by Icelus on May 31, 2018, 9:10:59 AM
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great build !
ive played it with some changes: chin sol deadeye and obscurantis to compensate for accuracy the nomad belt pure talent jewel dual curse ele/proj weakness + crap curse amulet (for the moment) the PoB is here https://pastebin.com/4M0PgN5y no flasks yet. HF IGN:MuaddDibb
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Kinda interested in running this as a starter for Betrayal, nice totem buffs for us!
twitch.tv/Owwlll
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