Some new deadeye questions

Hi all

I'm still kinda new to the game and made a deadeye. Finished my act 10, got to level 74 and right now I'm doing some misc farming and going to level up just a bit more before I start on Zana's stuff.

And I have some questions and I would like to hear some feedback or thoughts from more experienced players.


Ok, so far, my build is all around the bow. No melee, no shield, no blocking, no armor, just bow and evades. I got the Acrobatics and Phase Acrobatics from the passive tree and I am pretty happy with it. Went with avoiding status ailments and Crystal Skin to go with it. Gear is naturally focused on Evasion and is mostly still rare and just now I am starting to get into some useful Uniques as my leveling is now finally slow so I won't outlevel anything too fast.


Now I have some questions regarding bows and their mechanics and the DPS side of my build. After trying out different skills and whatnot I settled for Blast Rain as my main AOE and Burning Arrow as my main DPS, and some cold damage. really like running Herald of Ice, Herald of Ash and Ice Golem to go with it. Got chill, freeze and ignite for a very good combo that I like a lot.

So first right off the bat, is the bow considered a 1 handed or 2 handed weapon ? Or is it in its own category ? In the passive skill tree, if something says 1 handed weapons, or 2 handed will it work for the bow ? Or only the skills which specifically say "bow" ?

Second question. Me being still a new player, decided to experiment a bit, I put points into poison and chaos damage, where it goes into Fatal Toxins. From that I should have 20% chance to apply poison on hit. But the tooltips in the game for any of my attack skills do not reflect that. None of them say anything about chance to poison or adding chaos damage to either burning arrow or blast rain. Are these only useful for stuff like Scourge Arrow and Toxic Rain etc. ? Did I just waste my skillpoints thinking it would give me a bit of poison / chaos damage added to my elemental stuff ?


Third. I got my basic ranger bow skils all filled out up to Heavy Draw and Deadly Draw, also got Weapon Elemental damage up to Primeval Force and the above mentioned poison / chaos bit.

So going forward, I have a choice of going either for projectile damage or cold damage or crit chance and crit multiplier. Not idea which one will give me best results. really looking for opinions on this, especially if one is better suited for some specific function over the others.



Thanks

Bow is 2 hands weapon.

Your questions are too complicated to answear... for example toxin comes only from phys dmg (there are gloves which can transform elemental to poison but it's exception) and 20% is very low chance. Anyway poison should be stacked in time period and dmg is irrelevant comparing to time of delivery. That's why ppl play quail rain bow for poison... But for this build more suitable would be for example assasin.

Anyway... best thing you can do is play few characters according to some guides. End game or even higher maps requires no mistakes in build or wise equilibrium. If you want play deadeye there are plenty guides. You should take ice shot, tornado shot or elemental hit guide and try it.

Might be worth reading through the wiki/watching some guides on how damage types and ailments work.
Few pointers though

- As mentioned, only physical and chaos damage can poison.

- You really have to go all out for poison if you want to do any meaningful damage with it though, you will do very little hit damage but a lot more damage over time. You would want to be an assassin or pathfinder for this though. Takes some specific building around too.

- There are 3 basic ways to go regarding most bow skills (I'm ignoring poison and some other niche builds here). Physical, where you use the best physical damage bow you can get, and scale with the phys bow damage nodes. Physical conversion, where you do the same, but also convert a lot of your damage to elemental damage - in which case you can also grab weapon elemental damage and penetration. And pure elemental, where you use a fast bow, and try and grab as much flat elemental damage as possible from auras, gear, jewels etc. You need to work out what you want to do, a hybrid approach doesn't really work.
Elemental hit is a bit of a special case of the last one.

- Re damage, increased damage mods are basically all the same, as log as it is valid for the damage type you are doing e.g if you do 100% cold damage with a bow, projectile damage and cold damage have the same effect. If you only do 50% cold dmaage, the cold nodes will only be 50% effective.

- Bow builds nearly always go crit. And getting crit multiplier will be your biggest damage boost.

- If you are mostly elemental or pure elemental. Don't run herald of ash, as you don't have any physical damage to convert.

- Your ignites will be doing virtually no damage. Freeze is good, but don't expect to be freezing any bosses.

- Crystal skin is rarely worth it. In This league it is possible to be totally ailment immune via taking it and crafting chance to avoid status ailments on every bit of gear, but I don't think it's worth it.

- Evasion and acrobatics are good, Especially if you can get a bit more on gear. But only in conjunction with a decent HP pool and capped resists. Have you got 4k+ life and 75% elemental resists?

If you make your character page public, we can take a look.

"

vayha wrote:

Bow is 2 hands weapon.

Your questions are too complicated to answear... for example toxin comes only from phys dmg (there are gloves which can transform elemental to poison but it's exception) and 20% is very low chance. Anyway poison should be stacked in time period and dmg is irrelevant comparing to time of delivery. That's why ppl play quail rain bow for poison... But for this build more suitable would be for example assasin.

Anyway... best thing you can do is play few characters according to some guides. End game or even higher maps requires no mistakes in build or wise equilibrium. If you want play deadeye there are plenty guides. You should take ice shot, tornado shot or elemental hit guide and try it.

Thank you for the answers and the comments, I have been slowly, continuing to work on this character. I'm not sure how to set my profile to public so you can see the characters. I made a change to my settings but do not know if this is it or not, if it isn't can you or someone please point me to which setting it is ?

I also cleaned up my spec a bit, and I am not fully leveled yet and still haven't decided on my final skills and spec so you will see a lot of weird stuff there that I am simply trying out and experimenting with.

I decided to ditch the whole poisons and chaos damage and focus on physical to fire conversion. I like to stick to Burning Arrow, Blast Rain and Ballista as my offensive skills, rest is in just sort of "whatever" phase right now.

I also know my character is a bit too low on HP, its a work in progress and I'll be putting points into more life via the skilltree as I level, going to Thick Skin. In the meanwhile, I have tried to get some "life on hit" and lifeleech to compensate for the low HP, it seems to be helping and is quite noticable.

And I did look at some guides, but none of them seem to go with the type of character I'm trying to create, I'm going for a "theme", but would like to get it to be usable for when I actually get into upper levels. Doesn't have to be great, record breaking or fastest, just be able to complete some good stuff.

"

Carlovski wrote:

Might be worth reading through the wiki/watching some guides on how damage types and ailments work.
Few pointers though

- As mentioned, only physical and chaos damage can poison.

- You really have to go all out for poison if you want to do any meaningful damage with it though, you will do very little hit damage but a lot more damage over time. You would want to be an assassin or pathfinder for this though. Takes some specific building around too.

- There are 3 basic ways to go regarding most bow skills (I'm ignoring poison and some other niche builds here). Physical, where you use the best physical damage bow you can get, and scale with the phys bow damage nodes. Physical conversion, where you do the same, but also convert a lot of your damage to elemental damage - in which case you can also grab weapon elemental damage and penetration. And pure elemental, where you use a fast bow, and try and grab as much flat elemental damage as possible from auras, gear, jewels etc. You need to work out what you want to do, a hybrid approach doesn't really work.
Elemental hit is a bit of a special case of the last one.

- Re damage, increased damage mods are basically all the same, as log as it is valid for the damage type you are doing e.g if you do 100% cold damage with a bow, projectile damage and cold damage have the same effect. If you only do 50% cold dmaage, the cold nodes will only be 50% effective.

- Bow builds nearly always go crit. And getting crit multiplier will be your biggest damage boost.

- If you are mostly elemental or pure elemental. Don't run herald of ash, as you don't have any physical damage to convert.

- Your ignites will be doing virtually no damage. Freeze is good, but don't expect to be freezing any bosses.

- Crystal skin is rarely worth it. In This league it is possible to be totally ailment immune via taking it and crafting chance to avoid status ailments on every bit of gear, but I don't think it's worth it.

- Evasion and acrobatics are good, Especially if you can get a bit more on gear. But only in conjunction with a decent HP pool and capped resists. Have you got 4k+ life and 75% elemental resists?

If you make your character page public, we can take a look.

thanks a lot, I took what you said and worked on it a bit, already experiencing a huge improvement. So thank you.

Please let me know if you can see my character and skilltree now, I don't know if I checked / unchecked the correct option(s), if you can't, woudl you mind telling me which ones they are ?

Ok, I can see your character now.
A few pointers

- You haven't got a real aoe/clear skill. Blast rain is ok, but is still more of a single target skill. The biggest benefit of bows is being able to kill mobs from range, even offscreen.

- You need more life on your gear. EVery piece that can have a life roll and isn't a unique should have a decent (60+) life roll on it.

- Don't take all the starting nodes. Typically they are fairly weak, but you have to take some just to branch out. i.e respec out of the projectile damage nodes (You can keep the first 16% one if you really like)

- Quickstep cluster is a bit of a luxury, if your build doesn't need more life or damage then it's nice for clearspeed, but you aren't at that point.

- On your burning arrow, you are scaling fire damage with combustion, but it's less than 50% of your total damage, which makes it very weak. If you got a 5/6 link and used added fire support it might be worthwhile. It's fine for blast rain though.

- Don't take crystal skin, it's not worth the points.

- Jewel sockets are great - if you have decent jewels to put in them. The unique jewels you are using aren't worth it.

Great information for new players in this thread, thank you. I've managed to finish Act 10 with less than 3k HP and it's clear to me that this is a problem. I've taken most of what I think are the good life nodes near Ranger and try to get Max Life on as much gear as possible. I'm SSF (btw), so my I guess it's just down to farming something like Act 9 to get a few more levels and maybe some gear upgrades?

I will go ahead and add some of the questions I have about mechanics and such as well - any help is appreciated. I've built for physical damage and crit in the passive tree, but I've been using Scourge Arrow for leveling, with poison support and Herald of Agony, even though I feel like it doesn't go along with crit at all, it just seems to outperform every other skill I've tried. Tornado Shot does good damage, but with Scourge Arrow I can shoot and move, and that's what keeps me alive. Reminds me of Frozen Orb (Diablo II), which was my jam back in the day. So, actual questions:

- Cast on Crit? Cast while channeling? Is Scourge Arrow good with crit at all? Can each of the projectiles criti individually?

- I've tried to set up Ice Golem on Cast When Damage Taken. It doesn't seem to be working. Any comment on this?

- Is it worth it to somehow try to apply Assassin's Mark with Cast Curse on Hit? I'm hesitant to try any of the "Cast On" stuff until I can 6L something.

- What is the general thought on the Ranger life nodes that buff flasks? I haven't taken them. Should I consider it?

- I'm struggling choosing Ascendancy points. I've taken Rupture and Pierce (crit support). Should I go Far Shot? Should I go Tailwind? Does it just depend on what skills I land on?

"

Carlovski wrote:

Ok, I can see your character now.
A few pointers

- You haven't got a real aoe/clear skill. Blast rain is ok, but is still more of a single target skill. The biggest benefit of bows is being able to kill mobs from range, even offscreen.

- You need more life on your gear. EVery piece that can have a life roll and isn't a unique should have a decent (60+) life roll on it.

- Don't take all the starting nodes. Typically they are fairly weak, but you have to take some just to branch out. i.e respec out of the projectile damage nodes (You can keep the first 16% one if you really like)

- Quickstep cluster is a bit of a luxury, if your build doesn't need more life or damage then it's nice for clearspeed, but you aren't at that point.

- On your burning arrow, you are scaling fire damage with combustion, but it's less than 50% of your total damage, which makes it very weak. If you got a 5/6 link and used added fire support it might be worthwhile. It's fine for blast rain though.

- Don't take crystal skin, it's not worth the points.

- Jewel sockets are great - if you have decent jewels to put in them. The unique jewels you are using aren't worth it.

Thank you for the reply.

I do use blast rain as an AOE and kill offscreen mobs with it. I tried out some of the otehr skills such as Toxic rain and Rain of Arrows and a couple otehr things ( I forgot which ) but ended up not liking them. So which other bow AOE skills are there ? What else can I try while retainign the same phys-to-elemental theme ?

The jewels are temporary until I get some better ones, they're just what I got / dropped for me while leveling and worked great while I was leveling, now their impact is diminished but I will get better ones.

Crystal skin cluster is also temporary until I get my gear and ascendancies up and level a bit more. its just a little bit of extra survivability for now as my gear often fluctuates on resistances as I am leveling etc. So it kinda plugs up the holes I get.

The Quickstep I took because its en route to Thick Skin cluster for more life as wel las it provides attack speed which seems to give me the biggest DPS return per skillpoint. 3% of attack speed gives me more DPS then 10% phys, projectile or elemental damage according to the tooltip when I check before and after, and of course the extra movement = better kiting = better survivability.


When I experiment with stuff, such as skillpoints, gems etc. the biggest DPS return per slot, according to the ingame tooltip (the biggest gains) come from attack speed for me. Then physical damage, then projectile and elemental, though elemental is hard to gauge because of all its effects such as ignite, chill, burning, freeze, etc.


Now, outside of more life and DPS, what would you and anyone else suggest for utility and the extra stuff ?

I'm currently running Blink Arrow for mobility, tried Phase Run but its not well suited for this character since it goes much better with melee and blink arrow often lets me get over ledges, bridges, small walls etc. Are there any other ranger firendly mobility skills that you would suggest I give a try ?

Next, utility skills.

My current utility skills are just kinda what I felt most comfortable with after trying out a whole bunch while leveling. I run Herald of Ash, Herald of Ice and Arctic Armor. They do give me very noticable survivability boost as well as a little bit of DPS. The evasion one didn't seem worth it to me, it reserved 50% mana and its effect was not very noticable at all, whereas the arctic armor, between reducing enemy attack speed and providing some phys and fire damage reduction is really noticable. But are there any other ones I should give a shot that would give me better return for the reserved mana either for extra survivability or DPS ?

I also run 2 totems, Ice totem on my higher DPS weapon set, and Earth totem on my higher life gain weapon set (little lower DPS). So I can alternate pretty nicely between them to swing one way or the other. Are there any other more useful totems or anything else I can put in their slots that would be better suited ?



Thanks !

looks like youre having a hard time. i highly recommend following an elemental hit or tornado shot guide here in the deadeye index. they are detailed and will enable you to better understand and enjoy the game.

However to answer your first question, bow is its own category not 1 handed, not 2 handed. It scales generically on the tree through the bow and projectile nodes. other nodes such as increased physical and elemental damage can increase your damage but you will need to have a holistic view of your build to know which ones to take.

I encourage you to test and tryout things for yourself but it seems like youre doing so without direction and overall understanding. Item, gem and tree choices dont have synergy and have many flaws. I would hate to see you hit a wall and stop playing all together. So like i said use the build lists and continue learning more about the game. It is definitely my favorite part of the game because after 7 years I still love discovering and researching!

you are gonna have a VERY tough time with that passive tree.. general rules to follow is to pick up around 180% increased life from the passive tree.

basicly everything you are doing right now is conflicting with each other

your character has a physical-bleed bow , but you scaled so much elemental damage on tree... while you have no actual elemental damage on bow

Thing is.. All attacks... bow or melee , they use your main hand weapons damage as their base damage.

and usually people Convert the physical damage in to some type of elemental in some way.

www.poeurl.com/cdQD this would be sort of the tree you are trying to make, but you know.. actually having it work.

Read more in to what each passive on tree does.. it says it right on it...

if you are physical bow, you convert some with the "Winter Spirit" node in to cold , then say you are using ice shot - greater multiple projectiles - elemental damage with attacks - added cold - mirage archer for clearing , ice shot by itself would convert 50% of your physical damage in to cold, therefor giving you in total a 90% cold conversion, and then for your single target setup you could do Barrage - physical to lightning - added cold - elemental damage with attacks - slower projectiles .. barrage and scourge arrow are top 2 single target bow skills.

next thing is.. if you arent spec'd in to something already, dont go for it.. its ALWAYS best to focus on one type of damage and do it good...

if you scale in to elemental bow damage, dont scale in to bow damage over time, or physical bow damage .. BUT if you are converting physical to elemental, you can scale both physical AND elemental.

anyway... i wouldnt suggest trying to make your own build and expecting it to work as a 2nd character you ever made.

try following a couple build guides (preferably try melee, spells, traps/mines , minions) so you could know all character archetypes and what scales what in this game.