[3.2] Sygh's HC Ele Tornado Shot (Deadeye/Trickster). MF/Boss/Clear

Brief Intro:

I've made a good number of Pathfinder, Ascendant, Raider, and previously Champion bow characters in the past. Phys, Phys conversion, Flat Ele all work (and can work here with a modified tree). There's also multiple skills you can use but I will always recommend Tornado Shot. It acts as single target, reliable clear (without having to target stray mobs), and scales incredibly well (rivaled only by Barrage for potential).

Elemental characters have the most flexibility in becoming an MF char or a pseudo-MF char, while also having a wider array of options to personalize your character.

-Tornado Shot scales exceptionally well because of how the skill works as it gains projectiles. On it's way out, Tornado Shot pierces automatically, creating explosions that send secondary projectiles out. Getting additional projectiles makes more of the explosions, and every explosion can hit the same target because they originate from different areas. We get to 9 projectiles (with 5 secondary projectiles), meaning we have a good chance of hitting the target we target TEN times per attack. This is why Tornado Shot can be used as a single target skill and scales so exceptionally well.

Pros
Can have very high single target
Dodge Capped and nearly Spell Dodge Capped
High evasion
Can be built for MF
Scales extremely well with investment
Can be started for cheap
Can do Red Elder, Shaper, and Guardians safely
Ebony Tornado Shot+Sin Herald of Ice looks amazing
Can do NEARLY any map mod

Cons
Low physical mitigation
Lower MS without QoTF as chest
Levelling as a Scion and as a Bow char can be a struggle

Important Gear


---Windripper is the obvious choice for a bow. Shaper rares can be competitive if not more dps with certain mods, but don't offer the free Quantity/Rarity. Default to this. The most important rolls on it are Crit and Attack Speed. Flat ele can be compensated for via jewelry/jewels.

---Tombfist are basically the best gloves in the game for any attack build that doesn't get intimidate through other means. Get a Murderous for this and make sure both have life to outclass anything a rare could potentially give you. One-socket Tombfists are FINE until you can afford two-socket down the line. Intimidate is the important part.

---Drillnecks are extremely cheap without the extra arrow and give Tornado Shot substantial damage due to it's pierce mechanic and our Deadeye Ascendancy. A rare Shaper quiver with additional arrows and ele damage/multi can be better, but extremely expensive. Just grab a Drillneck and eventually get the extra arrow.

---I use Shroud of the Lightless as a hybrid offensive/defensive option for a chest. It gives me an additional Abyss Jewel, putting me to 8 as well as giving me a 6l that scales all of my damage effectively for single target.

---Invaluable for Magic Find. Slot it in if you are planning to use the character to farm heavily and don't need the raw stats.

---Darkness Enthroned is extremely cheap and gives an insane amount of damage and solid health.

---Dying Sun is a large damage multiplier for Tornado Shot due to Tornado Shot's interaction with multiple projectiles.

---If you 6l your bow then you can use Kaom's Heart as a way to get a higher health pool to survive damage.
---Queen of the Forest is an option for speed clearing and I highly recommend it as a cheap introductory option to the build. It's by far the best for farming low level maps with Quantity gear.
---Sadima's and Goldwyrm are necessities for farming low tier maps. You won't need heavy stats for low maps and can utilize the quantity on them to farm Divination Cards/Currency extremely quickly. Ventor's Gamble can be another option if you can get a well rolled one (Which can even be a default ring if it has good resists!)


Rings -
---Ignore the implicits, you want to keep resists here or have your rings be Opal. Look for Elemental Damage with Attacks, heavy resist, and potentially Accuracy/Flat Elemental damage.
Much of our resistances will come from here.

Boots -

---Movement Speed is high value here because of our lack of Shield Charge for consistent mobility. Getting good resists here is paramount, and you can put up to 64 life on boots (max is baseline 89) to fill out a cheap pair without it already.

For enchants, look for Pen, Lightning Damage if you haven't killed, Cold if hit, or Avoid Stun.

Helmet -
---I vaal'd my helmet out of frustration when my character died :x

***The helm enchant is a MASSIVE damage increase. As much as a 50% MORE multiplier on your single target and substantially improves your clear on straggler mobs that might otherwise get away.

Helmet fills the same role as Ring for filling out the remaining stats you need. Look for Accuracy and Resistances. Starkonja's is also an option here if your other pieces are exceptional.

Jewels - GET LIFE ON EVERY JEWEL
Here's some example jewels.


For Abyss Jewels, focus on flat elemental damage and attack speed. This is where a large % of your damage will come from. The flat health here is also VERY substantial. Shoot for 35+ life on every jewel. Look for one with Onslaught and one with Blind. Blind on one jewel makes you a ton safer and Onslaught will naturally increase your clear speed. Murderous goes in your Tombfist.

You want one Viridian Jewel with Mana Gain on Hit to make sustaining easier and to ensure there's no down time to shots.


Might of the Meek goes here~

This gives us Health, Regen, Strength, Resistances, Attack Speed, Dexterity, and Multi.

Pure Talent you can put anywhere for the stats. It ends up giving us Movement Speed, Leech, Crit, AND Attributes. Incredibly valuable and helps us level our gems and meet gear requirements.

Watcher's Eye is an endgame alternative to an Abyss Jewel if you can get a very good one. Multi with Anger will outdo a 2 damage mod Abyss Jewel while giving comparable life.


Defenses

The build can get up to 7500 life while having an extremely high chance to Evade+Dodge. We keep Vaal Grace up near indefinitely to protect us against bosses and stray damage. We even get to complement our evasion through the Blind that we reliably apply from our Abyss Jewel. We can use Grace if we have Queen of the Forest or want a bit of extra Evasion so that it's more reliable as a defense.

For Major Pantheon we take Soul of Solaris to protect against burst and to make us safer against single targets (groups are basically never going to be an issue with out coverage and damage).

For our Minor Pantheon we take Soul of Shakari (This is optional) to minimize chaos damage that we take since it's hard to get meaningful chaos resistance with all the uniques that we are using.

We use a standard CWDT-Immortal Call setup to mitigate physical damage with our constant supply of Endurance Charges that we get through Curse on Hit.

As long as we are killing, we get 50% increased Life Leech recovery due to Trickster.

Gem Links

Tornado Shot-Greater Multiple Projectiles-Elemental Damage With Attack Skills Support-Damage on Full Life-Mirage Archer-(Increased Critical Damage/Added Lightning Damage)

---Tornado shot needs extra projectiles for its single target scaling as well as to make clearing more reliable. As soon as you can get LMP (more importantly GMP), Tornado Shot will feel amazing to use. After that we stack more multipliers and Mirage Archer because Mirage Archer keeps outputting damage and autotargets stray mobs even when you're moving. This increases your clear speed substantially and your boss dps while you avoid mechanics. Highly recommend it, but if you want more raw damage, you can slot in a different gem.

***These links are going to go into your chest if you use a Shroud, but if you use a Kaom's or link your Windripper with any other chest it can go there.

Herald of Ice-Curse on Hit-Warlord's Mark-Onslaught

---This is our basic setup to generate Endurance Charges as well as give us some more reliability on our Onslaught procs. If HoI gets the kill and not an arrow, then you'll get a long-lasting Onslaught. It's not constant, but paired with one Abyss Jewel it'll feel great.

CWDT(Level 1)-Immortal Call(Level 3)

---This is to provide some safety from the stray physical damage that we don't otherwise mitigate well.

Vaal Grace-Vaal Grace-Increased Duration-Efficacy

---We cycle these 2 Vaal Graces while we kill trash and then use them for intense parts of boss fights. This puts our Dodge to 74% and our Spell Dodge to 64%. Massive increase in safety. Don't take for granted!

Ice Golem-Culling Strike-Blink Arrow-Anger(or Grace)

---Culling strike on your pets allows for shaving off the end of bosses without any real investment. Blink Arrow is our burst mobility skill. I took Grace while i had QoTF, and switched to Anger when I had a good Watcher's eye for it. Anger is easier to use than Wrath because of the large Intelligence requirement. If your damage links are in your chest, you'll have extra slots here for Decoy Totem or Mirror Arrow or whatever you want really.


Levelling and Passive Tree

25 Points

We get almost no damage at start, but uniques can easily offset this power trough. I recommend a Storm Cloud (which we can use literally until Windripper), Sadima's, and a Prismweave belt when you can.

46 Points

We get 2 damage nodes (Primeval is really good), as well as some health notables. We're done with the pathing in this part of the tree, and the rest from here is valuable nodes! Roth's Reach can be used while levelling but sacrifices boss DPS for clear speed. Make sure you're using Tornado Shot as soon as you can link it to GMP (before then it's uninspiring). Get a Drillneck when you can, you'll use it forever.

68 Points

Finish out the big Life notables, grab the good bow Crit clusters, and by this point we can start putting in some decent Abyss Jewels to scale our damage really well. From here, the build should run into no problems. After you do Cruel Lab you can have the Deadeye Ascendancy which is the more important of the two to rush because of the pierce+projectile.

97 Points

Here we're grabbing the jewel slot for Might of the Meek (you can wait longer if you don't have the jewel yet) as well as finishing out ALL of the accessible life that we can. Our damage is more based on Abyss Jewels, so at this point we want to be scaling our defenses up to survive burst damage. We finally grab the Trickster Ascendancy, which gives us charge generation, recovery, some damage and stun protection. If you get Uber Lab done by now, you can use these points in the Shadow area (where we get a lot of our flat damage).

Finished Tree

This is what we look like when we have all the notables that we want to hit. The Intelligence Node and the Mana Leech node offset some of the needs I had from the gear I was using. Another MGoH jewel can offset the leech node, and gear can offset the Intelligence need. We finish up the crit nearby, as well as filling in the Shadow area for a large portion of our damage. We have every Jewel that we want and we're good to go! Now we focus on getting really good Abyss Jewels and optimizing our gear for projectiles.

You CAN take Vaal Pact in this build. I prefer not to take it so that I can out regen some small degens to keep Damage on Full Life's bonus active.

Bandits: Kill all. (Resistances can be a little tight so Alira has some merit.)

Map Notes
We can't do Ele Reflect without the Sextant.
No leech isn't safe but is doable if careful. (Requires MGoH jewel)

All other mods are fine. Be careful around multiple damage mods because of our low mitigation (particularly with Crit/Minus Max).

Videos

Chimera (+Zana)

Someone in stream at the time said you can't do anything in HC without capped resistances so this is a vid I have with my resists well below cap. Only vid I have since past broadcasts all cycled out. I should've made the guide sooner. If I make this character again or play around with it in softcore then I'll put more here!

Closing Notes
I loved playing this character, it's actually the only character I've had fun playing well into the 90's and always felt like there was more I could get for the character. I invested a ton of time into the character and always feeling like theres more to chase after keeps me interested in a character for a long time. The scaling potential of elemental damage and Tornado Shot in particular really appeal to what I want out of a long-term character.

I'll be frequently streaming live at https://www.twitch.tv/sygh where you can ask me ANY questions ANY time...or just hang out.

Bonus Death Clip

Looks great Sygh!
I am going for a Scion windripper build for the flashback league, and got some great inspiration here.

I dont really agree on the trickster pick. I see the quality of life it provides, but i think assassin would overall be better. What are your thoughts on trickster vs assassin?

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michwad wrote:

Looks great Sygh!
I am going for a Scion windripper build for the flashback league, and got some great inspiration here.

I dont really agree on the trickster pick. I see the quality of life it provides, but i think assassin would overall be better. What are your thoughts on trickster vs assassin?

I find it extremely easy to get close to capped crit (if not capping outright) without the added base crit chance from Assassin. After you take away the crit, Assassin offers very little except for power charge generation on bosses over Trickster.

The damage I get from the chaos conversion is higher than the base crit when simulated; so at that point, the recovery and bit of safety from occasional stuns is essentially free. The generation of Frenzy charges also frees me from Blood Rage degen, which makes low/cannot Regen maps feel better. I genuinely don't think Assassin offers very much if you can reach very high crit levels without it, and prefer the safety afforded by Trickster. I do think Assassin is a viable alternative to scale boss damage slightly higher though.