3.9| DEADITOR |Elemental Hit w/ Ballista Totem Support| Use Any Gear! (Need a Big Investment Though)

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Katalaeia wrote:

If the weapon is such a major focus, maybe I just need a better explanation of what makes a good bow with regards to the EH skill? The build guide says "whatever bow you like" and that's obviously a way to [unintentionally!] severely restrict what your character can do, so it might be helpful to expand this section a bit.

I'm really looking forward to hearing your thoughts on progression as you work your way into maps and face more Metamorphs. It's entirely possible I'm missing something obvious in how I play the character, so I'm not writing it off quite yet.

On Page 8 or so, Wrecker of Days wrote that crit chance, attack speed + general damage is most important on the bow.
I think I did the mistake for example that I looked for + purchased a bow that has +x damage to fire + lightning + cold damage. While the flat damage is nice so the percentages yield more, it only boosts every 3rd attack. While general +damage, crit chance + attack speed would yield better results!

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Aeris85 wrote:

On Page 8 or so, Wrecker of Days wrote that crit chance, attack speed + general damage is most important on the bow.

That's fair, and I'll admit when I started getting frustrated I didn't reread the entire thread. I think my recommendation to mention something about desirable bow stats in the main guide still stands, though - that's what I use to try answering quick questions, and I doubt I'm the only one.

I play largely self found (not a SSF character; I just don't like trade so I rarely do it) so I'll start keeping my eye out for different bow bases to try crafting with. I'm wondering whether an Imperial Bow (+20-24% elemental damage with attacks, 1.45 aps) or a Harbinger Bow (30-50% increased critical strike chance. 1.2 aps) is better.

It does appear that most folks posting in this thread are posting that they're having difficulty with the build, so it might just be that Ballista totems are a little on the weak side.

Oh yes, I'm totally on your side, the section about what gear to use could be much more precise!!

Different topic:
Shouldn't Ancestral Call Support work with Elemental Hit - instead of Ballista Totem Support?
I just tested it, it does NOT seem to attack +2 nearby enemies... though AC does require a melee strike skill, and Elemental Hit has melee + strike in its tags... ?? And the tooltip also says it should work.

My build before was a Frostblades Ranger, with a Claw. And with that, it was specifically very visible that you could even hit enemies behind you, because the +2 nearby enemies chosen by Ancestral Call could just stand behind you. And I don't see that with Elemental Hit when testing a few mob groups.

UPDATE:
I have changed the build now a little, or better: added sth else to it. I kept the Elemental Hit Totem the same.
But on top, I now have a 4L:

Elemental Hit - Mirage Archer Support - Ancestral Call Support - EDWAS

And this I shoot manually on my own. I thought I need more damage output, but why not the same just manually? And then I thought the Mirage Archer is nice anyway, because it also shoots on its own. And trying out the Ancestral Call as mentioned above...

I just don't use Arctic Armour anymore, because that would be too much Mana reserved. Placing the Totems + shooting the EH on my own costs that much Mana.

=> That all sounded super nice. But I don't feel that much of an improvement... I mean, I don't have the new gems leveled that high, okay. But still, I thought it would be 2x better right off the bat.
I am still dying pretty quickly, and I have only reached T3-4 Maps...

my League starter trying this build reached T5 maps in SSF viable manner
playing since late 3.7 and came across your guide in 3.8

I am not complaining, but offering my take/ ideas for people having troubles

I had some Issues and still have..
Balistas are slow and have narrow range and my char is still squishy ( almost 4k now)
I changed EH - Ballista to a 3 link EDwEA to clean up the trash/ for safely progressing, the damage is sufficient to kill leftovers.

but my main damage source is my 6L bow EH- EDwEA- Lesser Multi Proj.- CritDmg - CritChance- Mirage Archer.

The attack speed and range are better clearing and bossing seem faster, even surface abyss and delve seem easier to me, there is some kind of control what goes down first and the totems and mirage grant some extra damage and safety

while coloring/ crafting i also tried to get MORE (Damage on Full Life support did not work well, but Inspiration felt pretty nice)

so I think its not wrong to say it is your 3.8 build with a 2nd button

I do know that my gear is a mess (why else would i craft 10 lightning res on my bow that already rolled +2 to bow skills 3 times in ~ 40 chaos and i had to ditch it..) and I Do know that I skipped Life nodes.
Still working on last trial too

We have multiple Totems and each one will shot a different element, so how will it affect EE?

Noob here:


if i have added "elemnetal damage" to gear- Lets say Lightning damage- would Elemental Hit hit the target with Lightning AND the elemment it chooses?
(Or if i use Storm Cloud bow- which does lightning damage, would EH hit with it chosen element and my bow would do lighning damage, right?)

How does this affect elemental equilibrium? What element would EE choose to give minus resistance to if hit by 2 elements at the same time?
?

Hope you can understand what im asking. im a little confused.

added ele damage only applies when EH chooses that element, so the stormcloud´s merit is the 50 % attack speed, whereas the lightning damage is only applied (statistically) to every 3rd attack with EH

if by any chance a target is hit 2 times in a row with the same element (due to multiple totems or other sources )it will have 25 % higher resistance .. I don´t know if we deal any significant damage then..

But EH has a high chance of inflicting ailments ( even with non-crits) and our critical ele damage from other sources will inflict ailments as well, giving us MORE damage and AoE multiplier .

We just hope our next hit will profit from the -50% res, take smore damage due shock, cant fight back cause its frozen and has it´s health diminished by burning

Hello everyone, and happy new year.

This is my first post in this forum which is not of the kind "placeholder for Acquisition" or "thank you for carrying my sorry gameset and patethic excuse of a character in my way for achieving the 36th challenge before a 1-2 month vacation before next league". Admittedly, I've not experienced this feeling since 2008, and didn't expect to feel it again.

I wish to give some general suggestion both on equipment, support gems and extra skills that I feel have been skimmed for the sake of critting or for following the "1-button" theme. While they could not be the best course of action, I think could help a lad getting through in case of unfortunate socket colours. I'll try to help the tl:dr; nature of the post and put in spoiler a bit of history both of me and the character, which is secondary to the purpose of this post.

Equip

- Bow: since EH does not scale with bow, I'm a bit surprised to see no one has suggested Death's Harp/Opus so far. The 100% critMulti and 30-50% critChance comes pretty soon in game and should help until you get a Shaped- or Influenced- alternative.
- Quiver: Yes, Skirmish is rather good. More Ballistas = more damage sources = more DPS against bosses. However, even to my surprise, Hyrri's Demise came up as a good alternative, with the extra damage offered compensating the loss of a ballista. It made me think to what a Doomfletch's Prism could do for this build but, then again, the idea is having a skill that doesn't use the basic weapon damage to live on
- Helmet: I am currently exploring Flamesight as a way to get even more damage, both with the +x% eleDamage it offers and the Scorch. While there is a downside in sacrificing Ignition (do remember, though, that Scorch is an Elemental Ailment and will get the +10% moreDamage and 80% moreAoE from EH if a fire damage scorches a scorched enemy), I am intrigued to see what it could do for red-tiers.

Skills

- Frost Bomb. I don't know you, but metamorphs with Extra life, life regen and allies regen life regenerated more quickly than my DPS could chip off. Then this skill came, and they become way less godly. The skill also provides a Cold Exposition (thus easier to chill/freeze), and EE is not bothered too much from the cold damage of the skill
- Wave of Conviction. Rather than Blasphemy curse, I went for Skill-COH-Curse. Wave would provide both a proccer of ProjWeakness (+x% Damage taken > -% Resistance) AND an Exposure to Lighting and/or Fire, depending on the roll it. Combining it with Frost Bomb exposure, it's basically like having an (extra) eleWeakness on the opponent


Support
(for EH)

- Hypothermia: just because it doesn't affect tooltip doesn't mean it is useless. Our EH would most likely always chill the opponent (by nature or crit), thus the +40% MORE damage against these enemies would most likely always activate. Also combo well with +x% damage against Chilled enemies that Incursion gloves or Cameria enchantment could give. Furthermore, the "freeze-the-chilled" helps in blocking Rare in high tier and sometimes even freeze bosses in low-mid tier, depending on the damage

- Inspiration: good olde Reduced Mana was revamped with the Inspiration Charges mechanics. With this on, ballistas would cost around 15-30 mana per placing, and with the quick placement speed (0.3 base) of ballistas, it takes literally 2 seconds to get the 5 Charges on. In exchange we get 40% incCrit and, most important, 35% moreDamage in a Red gem

Unrelated and not sure if relevant but taking a peek at PoE Ninja it seems that this style of play is just not that popular this league, whether it uses totems or not. In trade league, there are 7 EH Scions on the leaderboard and none use totems. In SSF league, 6 out of 9 use EH with totems, but the gem setups vary. Here are the totem builds currently listed in SSF along with secondary setups, as general "food for thought".

#1 - EH/Ballista/Dmg on Full Life/Ele Dmg w Atks/Faster Atks/Pierce (uses Frenzy setup and Skitterbots)
#2 - EH/Ballista/Ele Dmg w Atks/Incr Crits/Faster Atks/Slower Proj (uses Vaal Rain of Arrows and Projectile Weakness)
#3 - EH/Ballista/Ele Dmg w Atks/Hypothermia/GMP/Dmg on Full Life (uses Frost Bomb and Projectile Weakness)
#6 - EH/Ballista/Ele Dmg w Atks/Hypothermia/Incr Crits/Faster Atks (uses Frost Bomb and Rain of Arrows)
#7 - EH/Ballista/Ele Dmg w Atks/Hypothermia/Faster Atks (uses Herald of Agony, Culling Strike, and Vicious Projectiles)
#9 - EH/Ballista/Ele Dmg w Atks/Incr Crits/Incr Crit Dmg/Faster Atks (this guide's setup!) (also uses a 2nd EH with GMP and Mirage)