[3.4] Explosive Arrow Guardian (WIP)
First place to start is addressing the question of "Why".
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I play SSF and was looking for a league starter for Delve that would make use of the new Guardian changes. So I wanted to find a build that would be a summoner fighter that could operate with little gear. I also did not want to play as a melee summoner, I wanted to use a bow.
For a top left guardian bow character I saw four options for myself. Elemental hit, Doomfletch Prism, Caustic Arrow, and Explosive arrow. All of these scale off of gem level, or in the case of Doomfletch, it scales off of flat phys, which Guardian gets a lot of. Drawbacks to using all the other bow skills is that you neglect Herald of Purity's bonus entirely, which feels like a waste. So these as my options, this is the path I took. The synergies.
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In selecting what skill I wanted to use I tried to find what skills would function the best with Sentinels and Specters. The two strongest specters at the moment are both fire based, and scaling sentinel damage off of fire, altho not the best scaling, is easily doable. With Explosive arrow spreading Combustions -19% res to all ignited targets it is a clear damage boost to all characters involved, along side running Flammability to increase everyone's damage once again. I have a weapons swap to a Sinvikta's Mettle, I use this to proc rampage and weapon swap back to quillrain. Ideally I would gain rampage in some other gear, but for now it works well. Rampage double dips for us as we scale from both the increased damage and the increased minion damage from rampage, in addition the weapons and tornadoes summoned by rampage are minions and scale with out minion damage as well. This resulting in some very nice bonuses gained from rampage.
Current Gear and Tree.
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POB: https://pastebin.com/JE5Ldgrk Does it actually work?
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So far I have only progressed to T9 maps, which is nothing to show, but in Delve I have achived around 250 without feeling too painful, and am still headed down. For a simple Atziri fight (Which I know is not flexing much) you instaphase her just with your minions. Only two Tukohama Vanguards so far on a four link, but their single target DPS is amazing. As single target is one of the difficulties of explosive arrow this is a massive boon. eventually I will find a Bones of Ullr, and have three of them, potentially upgrading them to a 6 link.
Overall at the moment my damage is sustaining very well, and with a lot of room to grow. I am at about a third of my explosive arrows potential with this build at the moment. I do believe that it will scale quite well into the endgame, with the bosses being handled at ease with a +3 level bow, 3 Tukohamas, and the 4 sentinels. What is the BIG idea?
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Eventually running as a mana guardian would supply both major offensive and defensive gains. As a mana guardian you stack mana where ever you can find it which naturally gives a massive amount of mana regen, which completely covers for explosive arrow's mana cost which is so high to effectively play it, people usually go full blown blood magic. So we gain a smooth explosive arrow without linking blood magic, and still having a lot of room for auras. Switching for Mana guardian would free up our 6th link for elemental damage with attacks which is an incredible damage boost. Running anger on generosity would boost Sentinels and Solar guards when/if you choose to run them rather than Tukohamas, Along with essence crafting flat fire damage onto your gloves for even more flat fire damage on your Sentinels (Which scales VERY well even on a 4 link simply due to the inherent 200% MORE damage multiplier on the gem itself.) Again, a bones of Ullr for a 3rd specter, Not using a Vitis Mortis as we would be using a Shav's, but the loss is not a major one.
Why not just go Elementalist scaling minion damage and using bloodmagic, and tukohama warriors and just drop the sentinels? I dont know. I think that this might be the simplest method to carry the same idea, and it would operate very smoothly I believe. (Also a similarly played necromancer or occultist using toxic rain or caustic arrow, putting decay and withering touch in sentinels of purity sounds very efficient, again utilizing the base 200% More damage multiplier to convey a strong decay, and withering touch to boost damage from all sources.) Why not elemental hit or doomfletch? I am SSF. I cannot very easily obtain what I need to run these, in addition Explosive arrow does not scale at all from crit, so worrying about accuracy and crit just not a thing, so is easier to gear for. With better gear and access to trade league, I do believe both of those are the better options. I plan to flesh this character out and update this thread as I do so, I am interested to get some ideas and feedback on the character. I do realize it may not be the most optimal minion character, or optimal bow character, but by balancing the strengths and weaknesses of both, I believe this is a very practical build. Last bumped on Sep 28, 2018, 1:18:33 AM
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