Does the freezer from single target ice shot work on kosis? in your opinon guys for those who tried both options wich one is better barrage or ice shot for single target? i would like to use ice shot but if barrage is better overall ill take it.
20/03/2020: Updated POB to version 1.09, tweaked lvl 100 league tree to include cluster jewels, fixed rare bow only having +1 arrow instead of 2.
15/03/2020: Amended gearing section regarding death opus.
13/03/2020: Updated POB, swapped out death opus for a rare bow.
11/02/2020: Updated POB, swapped Fork for Chain, added awakened version of clear and single target.
06/01/2019: Updated pob, swapped some gear around to improve survivability. Darkray removed from end game league, added warlord gloves for +1 max frenzy. POB V1.05.
23/12/2019: Updated gearing section with 3 new bow swaps, re-added taming. mentioned damage on full life swap in gem section, better-explained FAQ. POB amended with 2 new bows, made standard jewels relic, expanded notes. POB V1.04.
21/12/2019: Ammended pob and gem section regarding links.
18/12/2019: Updated POB, combined bandit/pantheon/ascendency into the POB section.
13/12/2019: Added a 4th build into POB, an extreme budget setup. Levelling tree adjusted so claw cluster is no longer included taking into account Lioneye's fall will likely be expensive. Previous budget gear renamed to End Game League.
12/12/2019: Added refined levelling guide, subject to change with Barrage Support.
11/12/2019: Removed temporary levelling guide. Removed level 100 passive tree. Removed Mapping and Bossing POB, this information is now merged in to one POB.
11/12/2019: Added temporary levelling guide.
05/12/2019: Changed second gif showcasing clear.
23/10/2019: Added second POB for clearing variant.
09/10/2019: Guide created.
"I love the sound of shatter in the morning."
- Aquarism
Pros and cons
+ Insane clear
+ Good single target damage with investments
+ High move speed
+ max attack/spell dodge
+ Cheap to start
- Expensive to gear up and min-max
- Squishy, one shot if you do get hit from big attacks
- Cannot do elemental reflect maps
- Cannot do physical reflect maps if you use barrage
- No leech maps will be a pain
Tools
Spoiler
Mandatory
Before you start, you need to download Openarl's Path of Building (POB), this is an external tool designed to more accurately represent player damage. After that download LocalIdentity's Fork, it expands on the current POB with more features.
Recommended
POE Overlay helps you price check items in-game without the need to alt-tab and search for yourself, you can also ctrl scroll through your stash tabs without the cursor in your stash. A loot filter will also make your mapping experience infinitely better, try Neversink's loot filter, you can either subscribe to his filter to receive updates automatically or download the zip file.
- Additional arrows
- Critical Strikes
- Frost bomb
- Frenzy charge
- Onslaught
- Power charge
- Assassin’s Mark
- Aspect of Spider
Barrage is a skill that scales incredibly well with additional arrows, by default it fires 5 arrows, we can bump that number to 12, 15 in standard, using:
Frost bomb applies 25% cold exposure, use this at bosses for a nice damage boost, it also stops enemies from regening.
We take the best of raider ascendency and use it for deadeye, frenzy charges. Using the syndicate mod "5% chance to gain frenzy charge on critical strikes", by having a high attack speed, high crit chance and a lot of arrows, we will have 100% frenzy up time against bosses.
Power charge boosts our crit potential, we can get it from killing enemies cursed by Assassin's mark, or cluster jewel "Storm Rider"
Onslaught makes us move and attack faster. You can only obtain it via on kill effects, it will make mapping very smooth and fast.
Assassin’s mark amps our crit potential.
Aspect of Spider slows enemy movement speed by up to 90%, and 15% increased damage taken.
What is inside
Included in this POB is a collection of 4 builds: Endgame Mapping and Bossing setup that uses Legacy and very expensive min-maxed gear, serve as a benchmark for the potential of this build, uniques and rares with now unattainable stats will be marked as “relic” with green text. The third build is a league version with nothing too crazy, expensive items are notably the watcher's eye and dying sun, as they drop only from shaper and elder, the numbers here is what you can achieve with medium investments. The last build is a levelling/budget version that uses almost all self-crafted rare gear, along with a full levelling tree. Rare gear from league and budget version all uses in-tool generated values, at default they are about tier 3-5 rolls, with resist and stats going to tier 1-2 to fill the requirements. Read the notes in POB, some commonly asked questions will be answered there.
Difference between setups
Bossing setup can do: 17.2m Shaper DPS, 5.5k life, burst 283 ms
Mapping setup can do: 10.4m Shaper DPS, 4.9k life, burst 384 ms
League setup can do: 9.5m Shaper DPS, 4.6k life, burst 272 ms
Budget setup can do: 3.6m Shaper DPS, 4.5k life, burst 259 ms
How to use
To see different builds and tree, select tree in POB, go to the bottom left where the drop-down table is, select the one you wish to see. For items, it is at the very top of the list of your items, you can select the appropriate one.
Config
When switching between builds and trees, make sure the correct configuration is checked, disabling enabling onslaught/frenzy/power/on kill etc can bloat or deflate your dmg. This guide also assumes you have frenzy/power and onslaught. Actual DPS may vary depending on the situation, frenzy takes time to ramp up, no power or onslaught if no mobs are present, etc.
Bandits
Help Alira.
Pantheon
Mostly down to preferences, but I took:
Major: Lunaris
Minor: Garukhan
These two combined gives a nice speed boost while mapping.
We take Gathering Winds first to take advantage of the 20% action speed modifier, which makes us move faster, attack faster and cast faster. Then far shot next to help clear with ice shot. The order for the last two choices is flexible, Ricochet if you want better clear, or Endless Munitions for better single target. At a certain number of arrows, Fast and Deadly will be better than Endless Munitions, it also caps our accuracy, you can always decide which one to pick later on.
Notes
- Depending on playstyles, you can take point-blank or opt to not take it. Point blank deals max damage at 10 units away, slowly decreasing to no bonus damage at 35 units, any further it deals less damage. Far shot deals max damage when reaching 70 units, refer to this image for visualisation: Distance.
- Vaal pact can also be good if you are degening too much, double the max life leech is incredibly potent in staying at high or full life.
- You need a decent jewel to justify spending 2-3 points pathing to it, if you cannot get one then spend your points elsewhere.
Gear
Spoiler
- Death's Opus use to be the BiS bow for any crit bow build, but after getting nerfed twice this is no longer the case. It is still a very potent bow to use while you transition to a better one.
- Arborix can also be used, it performs better than death's opus early on when you have low crit, the downside is you only do better damage every 8 seconds, iron reflex also interacts poorly with acrobatics. The price is cheaper but not really justified, just an option.
- Chin sol is great too, it does more damage than death's opus as soon as you get any source of additional arrows. But you need to take point blank and be in melee range. At end game, it does about 1.5m more DPS. Using this bow also means you would have at most 5 arrows on ice shot; Flask(2), ascendency(1), Quiver(1).
- Currently, the best bow would be a rare bow, of base Imperial or Harbinger. You would want to look for +2 arrows, high added and percent increase physical, elemental damage with attacks, and critical strike chance/ multiplier.
- Standard, you can use a legacy reach of the council for its +4 arrows. essentially adding a 7l GMP to ice shot and barrage with no drawbacks, this helps clear and adds about 80% dmg to barrage. Only downside is lower base crit, you would need watcher’s eye and perhaps bottled faith to have capped crit chance.
- Prioritize enchantment first, we are looking for the enchant "Barrage fires an additional projectile", in standard you can get +2. If you cannot score a barrage enchant, the next best would be "30% increased Assassin's Mark Curse Effect" "40% Increased Ice Shot damage" or reduced Hatred/Herald of Ice mana reservation.
- For the base, you can use devoto for 20% more ms, more attack speed. Rat's Nest for attack speed, huge crit chance and some ms, or Starkonja for some attack speed, crit chance, and life.
- Ideally, you would use a rare helm with the delve suffix, "nearby enemies have -9% to cold resistance". The range of nearby is about a full screen from testing in PVP arena.
- Hyrri's Ire is the undisputed best DPS option, it provides cold damage topping a level 17 added cold damage support. In standard make sure you buy the legacy version, which is about 10% more damage.
- If you are struggling with resist and life, use Queen of the Forrest. or any rare chest would work.
- Another option is to use Lore weave, can be quite powerful if rolled correctly.
- A corrupted 6l armour, if you can get the right colours it is way better than Tabula, the downside is you can not use it at level 1.
- On quivers we want crit multi, ele with attacks, max life, +1 arrow on shaped or warlord, and one open suffix to craft crit chance/frenzy on crit hybrid, you cannot craft this mod if you already have crit chance on the quiver. This will serve as our primary frenzy generation. The 5% may seem low, but we have 100% crit chance, attacks 4 times a second, every attack fires up to 15 projectiles, you would usually achieve max frenzy in 3 seconds from bosses, or 2 pack clear with ice shot.
- Voidfletcher is another option when you have +4 additional arrows, but that means no permanent uptime of frenzy charges at boss fights. Due to how projectile behaviour works, we also do not want any source of piercing in our build, any corrupted implicit is better in this case for voidfletcher.
- Double Abyss tomb fist is still the best DPS option, the downside being low life and no resist, make sure you have a Murderous eye to intimate enemies, that's a 10% inc damage taken on enemies.
- The next option is any gripped gloves with resist and life, you want at least t2 life, if not t1. If you can spare resist elsewhere, aim for attack speed, inc projectile dmg, flat added damage, increased elemental damage and dmg agasint chilled enemies. Best DPS roll is +1 max frenzy/culling strike on warlord base gloves.
- Another option is to get gloves with +1 max frenzy corruption, slink is the best base for this since corruption rerolls implicit, the best case is you get warlord influence for the sweet +2 max frenzy.
- Oskarm is a cheap way to get power charges early on, some life and decent spell dodge chance.
- Surgebinders synergises well with darkray, we can get up to 56% increased elemental damage at 8 frenzy charges. But, it has no life and resists.
- Dark ray gives +1 max frenzy and decent move speed when we have full frenzies, as well as some dodge. In standard you can buy a +1 max frenzy corruption, giving us 2 extra frenzy charge.
- Best boots would be to use rare with a lot of life, resist and move speed. We can get max frenzy on gloves corrupt. Redeemer base has the affix chance to gain elusive on crit, which acts exactly like withering steps except it cannot be refreshed.
- Synthesized boots with onslaught implicit are the best we can get, try to buy or roll good life, resist and move speed. Permanent uptime on onslaught will be a huge boost.
- Rare shaped amulet with crit multi, ele with attack, gain x% physical as extra cold, ele pen, damage per dex is all good rolls, we use onyx here to alleviate some stat requirements.
- Redeemer amulet with 5-6% increased damage per frenzy charge, cold pen, +lvl to all cold skills. Hybrid shaper redeemer would be crazy if rolled correctly.
- Yoke of suffering is good because of the affix, your elemental damage can shock, a somewhat reliable way to shock enemies, works great with the taming.
- Pandemonious gives increased cold damage, cold pen, and blind, the chill when hit is mostly useless as we always chill when we hit with ice shot, but the permanent blind is helpful with survivability.
- For anointment, get "Throat Seeker" for DPS, "Graceful Assault" if you have no other form of onslaught generation, "Freedom of Movement" for more ms, "Cruel Preparation", "Purity of Flesh", "Discipline and Training", "Constitution", "Soul of Steel", or any other defensive nodes you want.
- A rare shaped ring with the suffix "Curse enemies with LVL X Assassin's Mark on hit" is insanely good, it gives a huge chunk of crit chance and some crit damage, killing cursed enemies will also have decent chance to get power charge, further boosting our crit potential. An opal ring is the best base but can get quite expensive, you can instead use a diamond ring, stats we want are life/resist/damage.
- Mark of the elder works great with our shaped ring, gives some cold damage and a very big damage boost to attacks.
- Circle of fear is also good, you will need X% increased Cold Damage while affected by Herald of Ice and Herald of Ice has X% increased Buff Effect to be good, if you can't get these 2 together then mark of the elder is better, implicit try to get inc damage while leeching, % inc cold damage, increased elemental damage with attack skills, the very best would be gain onslaught on hit, but this with the 2 desired affix will make the price stupidly high.
- The Taming will be the best way to fix resist, up to 40% of all res is nice. The bonus damage is hard to get though, we can only reliably ignite enemies, we don't get a bonus from chill only freeze, but we can't freeze end game bosses. We can't reliably shock either because we do many little hits and to shock we need a single hit of 150K lightning damage to shock for the minimal amount.
- If you can’t get curse on hit for some reason, then any ring with resist and life will do.
- For a clear speed build, HH is the obvious choice, gaining a rare monster's mods is the single most powerful ability in this game.
- For bossing or lower budget, a stygian with life/res will work just fine.
- A lot of options when it comes to flasks. Firstly it is mandatory to get an instant life flask, with bleed immune on it, a quick double-tap will bring you back to full life from near death.
- Atziri's Promise is the cheapest way to get a huge chunk of damage out.
- Bottled Faith is really strong against bosses you can easily reach 100% crit with this flask.
- Taste of Hate, works well both defensively and offensively, gaining 20% phy as extra cold means we will be getting 20% inc cold damage as we fully convert to cold damage.
- Wise Oak if you can over cap cold res as dying sun gives 50%, getting a nice chunk of cold pen.
- Dying Sun is a must get for this or any bow builds, it gives +2 arrows, equivalent to death's opus.
- If your crit chance is low, squeeze in a Diamond flask, "Lucky" means you roll your crit twice and takes the higher value, this will help you cap your crit chance.
- Cinderswallow performs better than Atziri's Promise only when it has crit chance veil, and when you have any amount of fire damage to proc ignite. It is also an onslaught flask, meaning you can free up gear choices.
- Have two quicksilver flasks on hand, one for suffix inc movement speed, one curse immune, swap them if you get temporal chains in maps.
- A big bulk of our dmg comes from abyss jewels, prioritize resist first, then if you are under 4k life you need at least t2 life on them. For damage, we want crit multi, flat added dmg, inc crit multi if we killed recently, inc dmg if we killed recently, inc attack speed if we crit recently.
- Lioneye's fall is mandatory, it goes into the socket directly above the "Acrobatics" keystone, this allows us to grab some powerful claw crit nodes, notable "Soul Raker" provides the much-needed mana leech.
- Then we want a watcher's eye with crit chance hatred, this is to help get our crit as high as possible and make frenzy gen more reliable. If you want more sheet DPS, go for added cold then cold pen. If you can't afford double hatred, get precision with any hatred mod, flask charge on crit, crit multiplier, inc attack speed.
- One way to generate frenzy charges is to use a green nightmare near "survivalist" or "Golem's blood" and take the respective resist nodes.
- Alternatively to green nightmare would be a well-rolled brutal restraint, try to look for gain frenzy on kill, as all timeless jewels are unique, plug in the ones you have into POB and see if yours is better than the green nightmare.
Notes
- Try to aim for 5.5k life, 5k should be the bare minimum, this is where you would survive shaper balls, 5.2k will let you barely survive Sirus.
- You want a good balance between rare and uniques, the only "mandatory" Unique is Hrri's Ire. the rest can be swapped around as you see fit.
- Gears that give you the most damage, in order: Rare +2 bow - Hyrri's Ire - Dying Sun - Curse on hit ring - Barrage helm - Other unique ring - Good rare amulet or a unique one - Rare quiver with frenzy on crit.
- Ways to get frenzy charges: Green nightmare, Brutal restraints, Icebite Support, Quiver craft.
Crafting
Spoiler
While uniques can be easy to obtain and gear up, rares eventually outperforms them. This section will detail some of the crafting methods I use. Use POE Data Base to check for mod weighting and Ilvl requirements.
Base
It is essential that you use the right base before crafting, this usually means the base type of an item and its item level. Certain tiers of affix can only roll on high Ilvl bases. Optionally, you would want to use perfect fossil in a primitive resonator to get 30% quality. You can still use syndicate bench craft to get 28%, but for pure min-maxing 30% is the way to go.
Bow
The base needs to be either Harbinger or Imperial, Ilvl 86. Best way to craft is to spam alterations on it until you hit "Bow Attacks fire 2 additional Arrows". This affix is extremely rare, only a 1/782.5 chance to get it from suffixes, even lower chance including prefixes, therefore it is better to craft on a base with no influence to avoid hitting other influenced affixes. I recommend imprinting the base before further crafting.
If you have a prefix from alt spamming, it needs to be minimum t3 inc phy/flat phy/inc ele, rest of the prefix is simply not good enough. If you only have +2 arrow, imprint first then use augmentation orb on it to hit one of the 3 mentioned affixes. If you hit anything else, use orb of annulment to get rid of the undesired prefix, use the imprint if the +2 arrow is annulled instead.
Next imprint again, then use a regal orb on it. What you want to hit is the three mentioned prefixes, or inc as/inc crit/inc crit multi suffixes. Again, needs to be at least t3 rolls. If the regal hits an undesired affix, you need to annul and exalt slam until you hit a good affix. If you annulled off +2 arrow, scour the item then use the imprint on it to restore it to the imprinted state.
When you have +2 arrow and 2 other desired affixes, you can multimod the bow to complete the craft. What you craft here is dependant on the roll you already have on the bow, usually its the 6 aforementioned affixes, but I recommend checking with POB to determine what is best for you.
Gloves
Use griped gloves, Ilvl 85. Spam Pristine/Prismatic/Sanctified fossils to hit decent life and resist rolls. Warlord exalts slam to hit +1 frenzy, or culling strike, 125/6000 chance for frenzy, and 250/3000 chance for culling strike. You can change the odds a bit by crafting cannot roll attack modifiers.
Or you can craft by hitting frenzy or culling, then try to hit life and resist from here.Alternatively, you can buy gripped gloves with incursion suffix damage against chilled enemies.
Rings
Opal ring, ilvl 81, you are looking for the suffix "Curse Enemies with Level x Assasin's Mark on Hit" with odds 1/532 for lvl 12 curse. Best way is to alt spam to hit it, imprint, augment, regal to look for atleast t3 max life/ele with attacks/inc as. Similar process to Bow.
Boots
Slink boots, Ilvl 86, all you need here is high life, resist and movement speed rolls. Spam with Pristine/Prismatic/Shuddering/Sanctified fossils. Once you are satisfied with the results, block suffix, and slam with redeemer exalt and hope to hit "Chance to gain Elusive on Critical Strike" 1/10 chance to hit.
Or you can craft using a redeemer base, alt spam for elusive, augment regal and hope for high move speed life and resist.
Helmet
Lion Pelt, Ilvl 85, redeemer base. Spam with Frigid/Pristine/Prismatic/Sanctified, try to get high life /resist rolls and "Nearby Enemies Have -9% to Cold Resistance"
Quiver
Spike-Point Quiver, Ilvl 86. The same process as bow, first alt for the prefix "Bow Attacks fire and additional Arrow" it has a 400/35400 chance of rolling in prefixes, lower including suffixes. imprint, augment, regal. Desired affixes are ele with attacks/max life/inc as/crit multi. The important thing here is we do not want inc crit chance, as it blocks the ability to craft frenzy on crit.
Amulet
Onyx, Ilvl 86, redeemer base. alt for the affix "Increased Damage per Frenzy Charge" or if you feel you need more mana to run aspect of the spider "Hatred has% reduced Mana Reservation". imprint, augment, regal for max life/crit chance/crit multi/ele with attacks.
Notes
- Crafting is for the absolute min maxing, you can usually get equal or even better gear with fraction of the cost to craft. You might spend 100 ex to craft a bow that gives you 20% more dps than a 60c death opus.
- Gear that worth crafting is Bow and Quiver, rest you can try just buying off the market.
- If you manage to score a magic bow with +2 arrows and a deirable T1 prefix, you can try to dupe it using split and imprint beast, then sell a coppy for profit. (Woops I spilled trade secret!)
Gem Link
Spoiler
Links
Spoiler
Single Target
Clear
CWDT
Aura
Movement/Utility
Explanation and Swaps
Spoiler
- We have 2 single target setup we can choose from, traditional barrage or barrage support with ice shot. Barrage does about 30% more damage, but ice shot can permanently freeze bosses without "Cannot be fully slowed" affix, this applies to all map bosses, this advantage is gone however when fighting end game bosses like Shaper/Sirus.
- Inspiration can be swapped for Increased Critical Strikes, this will max out your crit at 100% but if you are fine settling with 90% crit then use Inspiration.
- You could use skitter bots for the nice shock effect, but you would need to have enlighten level 4 linked with all 3 auras. If you want to use an aspect, enlighten can be level 3 paired with -mana cost on rings.
- Clearing links should include one of these gems to enhance clearing: Chain, Fork, Mirage Archer. Chain allows you to get targets behind walls, Fork will make you one-shot an entire screen, Mirage archer will pick off stragglers and attack while you are looting.
- Set CWDT and Steel Skin level to the ones you desire, mine is around 25% of my hp.
- Grace is only used in Mapping setup with Aul's uprising, we mainly use vaal grace for tough encounters to max out our dodge chance.
- Portal gem is not needed, it is just a nice quality of life link, you can swap it out for level 1 precision.
- Before you can sustain at least 7 frenzy charges, added cold performs better than ice bite, after that you can use ice bite for a bit more damage and reliable frenzy gen while clearing, you still need quiver craft to sustain at bosses. Awakened added cold would be better than ice bite starting at level 2.
- You should always be at full life when you get "Soul Raker" or any life leech nodes. If you degen too much or taking too much damage, swap damage on full life for another support gem.
- If you cannot burst down bosses and are getting targeted a lot, consider using decoy totem and/or Ice golem, this will give you a few seconds of DPS window.
- Always prioritize single target links.
Levelling
Spoiler
This will be primarily focusing on newer players and at league start with no access to levelling uniques. With the reworked early act boss health and resist, beating the campaign will take some time until you can get decent gears.
Gear
Spoiler
Bow base types have been buffed slightly, more APS, DMG and crit, this makes levelling as a bow character not as excruciating as before. That being said it is still very item dependent, make sure you constantly upgrade your weapons for more damage.
Item Progression
- Bow Progression
Swap them out as soon as you can for the next tier higher, make them at least magic if not rare. We use chest and another piece of gear for 4 sockets.
- Quiver Progression
The base type you want to stick with is serrated and broadhead, of course, if you encounter any quiver with better affixes use them, later on, eventually upgrade to Spike-point.
- Armour Progression
It is less important to frequently upgrade your armour, instead, look for a 4-5 link early on, here you will put your barrage setup, use another 4 links for ice shot. focus on life and resist on the chest.
-Helmet Progression
Focus on life and resist, if you can, upgrade to the next tier.
- Rings Progression
At the start go for double iron rings, we will fully convert to cold by level 10 so this will boost dmg by quite a bit. Upgrade to Diamond rings by level 20, at that point more crit will scale better. Towards mapping swap to opals.
- Boots Progression
When you first arrive in Act 1 town, type "nn" in the search box, you are looking for boots with the "runners" affix, this lets you speed through the first few acts of the game, later on, focus on dex based boots with decent ms.
- Gloves Progression
The same goes for gloves, life and res, except we want some DMG mods, like increased attack speed, elemental damage with attacks, gradually upgrade them, in the end, we want to end up with Gripped Gloves.
- Belt Progression
Start with a rustic sash, upgrade to a leather belt, gradually use higher iLvl of the leather belt until you have access to a Stygian Vise, stick with stygian and gradually upgrade it with better stats until you can afford a Head Hunter.
- Amulet Progression
Use paua amulet for some mana regen at the early Acts, later on, switch to bases that fill the gap of your stat requirements. Note that if you swap to a different amulet, certain skills may be inaccessible, sell the skill gem with a scour orb to de-level that skill by 1 lvl. You can also sell any amulet with 3 skill gems of each colour to change it into an onyx amulet.
Notes
Ideally, all gear would be rare, and you have maxed all resist by act 5. As you progress, always look for items with 4l+, having a 4l skill will be a huge boost early on, Act 5 onwards 4l will drop more frequently. Stats to look out for on these rare gears will be Resist - Life - Damage in that order.
The number one way to scale our damage is our bow and quiver. we will look for 3-4L on helmet, boots and gloves, and 4-5l on chest towards later acts. Always prioritize single target links. If I can swap for a bow upgrade every zone I would.
Uniques
If by chance you got lucky and have a unique drop, or this is not your league starter, try using these to help speed up levelling:
Gems
Spoiler
Certain vendors in act 1-4 will sell skill gems once the quest relating to it is completed, this is usually the main quests so you won't miss it. Siosa in Act 3 sells gems from all classes, Lilly Roth in Act 6 and epilogue will sell all gems in the game after completing the quest "Fallen from Grace"
Gem Progression
Act 1:
- Ice shot [Enemy at the Gate]
- Shrapnel Ballista [A Dirty Job]
- Mirage Archer [Mercy Mission]
- Onslaught Support [Mercy Mission]
- War Banner [Breaking some Eggs]
- Lesser Multiple Projectiles Support [The Caged Brute]
- Smoke Mine [The Caged Brute]
- Added Cold Damage Support [The Caged Brute]
- Precision [The Caged Brute]
- Barrage [The Siren's Cadence]
Act 2:
- Elemental Damage with Attacks Support [Sharp and Cruel]
- Herald of Ice [Intruders in Black]
Act 3:
- Hatred [Lost in Love]
- Hypothermia Support [A Fixture of Fate]
- Damage on Full Life Support [A Fixture of Fate]
- Frost Bomb [A Fixture of Fate]
- Flame Dash [A Fixture of Fate]
- Steel skin [A Fixture of Fate]
- Increased Duration Support [A Fixture of Fate]
- Cold Penetration Support [A Fixture of Fate]
- Ice Bite Support [A Fixture of Fate]
- Elemental Focus [A Fixture of Fate]
Act 4:
- Summon Ice Golem [Breaking the Seal]
- Cast when Damage Taken Support [The Eternal Nightmare]
- Greater Multiple Projectiles Support [The Eternal Nightmare]
- Barrage Support [ The Eternal Nightmare]
Act 6:
- Inspiration Support [Fallen from Grace]
Notes
- Smoke mine will serve as our primary movement and blink skill; it is faster than blink arrow even after the nerf.
- We take war banner early on to help with damage, take it out as soon as you can achieve 100% cold conversion.
- use onslaught support with ice shot early on to move faster, swap out when you have onslaught flask as a quest reward.
- have precision in there, swap out or de level when you can use both hatred and herald of ice.
- link ice bite to ice shot when you take frenzy nodes, or earlier for frenzy generation.
- Ice golem will help with crit.
- Swap out LMP for GMP when you can.
- always use frost bomb on bosses every 5 seconds or so for a nice damage buff.
- Take Omen on The Winds threshold jewel as a quest reward when offered, use this until you take chain in the ascendency.
- Skills mentioned here are temporary, it will smooth out levelling, remove them in favour of better gems as you progress.
The basic idea here is to use ice shot for clear, use Ballista as a meat shield and draw boss' attention. Use Barrage for single target.
Frost Bomb - Curse on Hit - frostbite/assassin's mark
FAQ
Spoiler
Q: Why is my damage low?
A: In leagues, a big power spike will occur when you can get any of the uniques that is not Darkray. try to follow the recommended rare swaps in the gearing section. In standard, you will need a lot of investment to reach similar values. Things to focus on, better abyss jewels, helm enchant, +1 quiver.
Q: Why not endless munitions instead of fast and deadly?
A: There is a threshold where fast and deadly becomes better than additional arrows, for me fast and deadly gives a far bigger DPS boost than endless munition. this differs from person to person, if you are using voidfletcher then endless munition might be the better option. tweak your build to see which is best.
Q: Can I league start with this build?
A: Ice Shot got buffed twice in a row, but early bosses got a ton more hp, do not expect to waltz through the campaign with this build. Your clear will be crazy good but single target will be lacking until you can get good gear.
Q: What about Frenzy generation?
A: We start by using an Ice Bite Support to generate frenzy, later in the game try to get crit/frenzy hybrid craft on quivers, this will give permanent uptime on frenzy charges during boss fights.
Q: What if I do not have access to Lioneye's Fall?
A: Simply ignore the claw/dagger cluster until you can get one.
Q: How do I sustain mana?
A: from "Soul Raker" claw node after you get Lioneye's fall, before you can get that jewel, spec 1 or more points into mana leech near "Arrow Dance" Keystone. If you still can’t sustain mana, use flask.
Q: Why is my damage on barrage/barrage support lower than ice shot?
A: Tooltip accounts damage only for a single arrow; you need to times the tooltip DPS with the total number of arrows. For clear DPS is accurate because mobs can only be hit by one arrow per attack.
You can also read this reply for some insight on this build from another exile, Slottm, page 69.
First of all, thank you Aquarism for keeping this up to date and posting such a great build. I switched my 'main' to this build after trying it out.
For people trying this build out I would like to give the following heads up:
DO NOT buy Reach of the Council.
Why? Because it spreads the arrows like a real MoFo. We are talking about wider barrage than Ice shot with +2 bows, +1 quiver and having a dying sun active.
I was thinking for the longest time why am I not taking the bosses down faster. I need to use my necromancer to kill bosses while I've already invested nearly 20 exalts on my ranger, I wouldn't even think about taking her to Elderslayers or Sirus.
I didn't know how barrage was supposed to look like but it felt so wrong that I decided to try Arborix instead and holy hell did it work. My first attempt was T16 map with Einhar and instead of having to mess around with tougher delirium enemies or yellow/red beasts, it oneshot everything except the red one, that took 4 ice shots, which by the way is now 13k higher damage on paper.. Map boss went down in three seconds rather than having to kite it around.
Reach of the council has beautiful spread with ice shot that swipes the entire screen as long as you have relatively weak stuff in there but it is absolute trash against bosses and I would go as far as to say that barrage DOES NOT WORK with that bow. I also noticed that the mana cost of barrage or ice shot went down by 50% when I switched bows which is huge when you have 75% mana reserved to begin with.
Other than getting jebaited by Council this build absolutely shreds, love it!
So I think I'm pretty much close to maxing out on this build (within my budget...barring two line Watcher's Eyes, 50ex bow etc.). Got a few jewels left to upgrade, and then maybe I'll look into crafting a bow..
Belt was self crafted. Ring was self crafted after buying a base. Everything else I bought for 3-15ex, most expensive was probably the Large Cluster Jewel, quiver and then the amulet.
You most certainly can spec the build into a fairly tanky one whilst still maintaining high DPS. I'm currently on 5.9k hp and 10m Shaper DPS. I would say the belt is a huge factor, if you're not running HH, get a Hunter Stygian Vyse and spam Pristine fossils until you get something good.
PoB: https://pastebin.com/0LcYT4bH
Thanks again for the great guide! Had lot's of fun this league.
Last edited by sk3l3t0nz#1874 on Apr 18, 2020, 7:32:59 AM
this is my gear atm still got 8ex to spend on wha should i be focus to update now i feel my hp kinda siquish
Barrage helmet with life for sure. Anoint Constitution on your amulet. Get your other 6L. You can have a go at crafting a +% Life Stygian Vyse (refer to my post above), but be prepared to rearrange some resists on your boots and gloves.
