[3.18]Bleed Explosive Arrow Ballista totem| league starter| cheap | 2m+ w starter gear

Dear ebadr!

I have now stumbled upon your another build which is Kinetic Blast ballista totem.

Can you please tell the major pro and contra between those two builds?

I do believe you can compare them because you are the author of both.

I have not greatly invested into EA build yet and I am almost lvl84 now.

Is your KB build harder to play compared to EA? Or easier?

Thank you very much :)

"

oxapmc wrote:

I could not find EA duration in stats yet :(
I took Increased duration in the skill tree and it does feel better now.
Also as I was not using Bone Offering because I am speedleveling, I reskilled into Deadeye (Tailwind, +1 projectile, increased initial hit damage for far hits) for now, in order to level up faster.

How big is the effect of added physical damage? I suggest it is scaling to Bleeding DoT?

you can find the EA duration in calcs tab under Skill-type specific stats

going deadeye is fine but you can then remove glancing blows as it will be useless if you don't have other block sources than bone offering

the effect of added physical damage will depend the amount and current setup
you will have to use PoB to calculate the value of the upgrade
but generally the damage for bleed scales with the following
- base physical damage (includes all sources of added physical)
- damage over time multi
- faster bleed / ailments
- generic/dot/physical sources of increased or more multipliers

"

oxapmc wrote:

Dear ebadr!

I have now stumbled upon your another build which is Kinetic Blast ballista totem.

Can you please tell the major pro and contra between those two builds?

I do believe you can compare them because you are the author of both.

I have not greatly invested into EA build yet and I am almost lvl84 now.

Is your KB build harder to play compared to EA? Or easier?

Thank you very much :)

The EA build is more starter friendly not much uniques required and you can build slowly and grow with it in power, can be tanky if you invest in max-block
also it is more frame rate friendly :)

The Kinetic Bolt build requires uniques that can be expensive in a league start and flasks cluster jewels. it is super tanky and fast mapper/ bosser but KB throws projectiles with each direction change so it may be hard on some machines :) -> check the videos to see how it looks
now at this point of the league I think with your budget it would be cheap to put it together. some one commented that he is playing it with 5 ex

"

ebadr wrote:

"

oxapmc wrote:

Dear ebadr!

I have now stumbled upon your another build which is Kinetic Blast ballista totem.

Can you please tell the major pro and contra between those two builds?

I do believe you can compare them because you are the author of both.

I have not greatly invested into EA build yet and I am almost lvl84 now.

Is your KB build harder to play compared to EA? Or easier?

Thank you very much :)

The EA build is more starter friendly not much uniques required and you can build slowly and grow with it in power, can be tanky if you invest in max-block
also it is more frame rate friendly :)

The Kinetic Bolt build requires uniques that can be expensive in a league start and flasks cluster jewels. it is super tanky and fast mapper/ bosser but KB throws projects with each direction change so it may be hard on some machines :) -> check the videos to see how it looks
now at this point of the league I think with your budget it would be cheap to but it together. some one commented that he is playing it with 5 ex

thank you very much!
I am already talking with Poor_Exile guy who followed your build and went even further.
I think I must check if PS4 can handle it. If not, I switch back to EA and continue developing it :)

By the way:

how would you imagine a really better bow than that unique?
You have mentioned some elder bow?

Would it be something that is used by bleed bow glads (meta)?

Maybe I will craft one while waiting for Poor_Exile to discuss the KB version :)

a better bow would be a typical bleed bow
high physical damage
high increased physical damage
60% chance for Bleeding inflicted with this Weapon to deal 100% more Damage (elder mod)
and if possible dot multi and attack speed

same as the glads meta :)

Hello! This build looks pretty interesting, will you be posting an update for the Ultimatum update?

"

Hello! This build looks pretty interesting, will you be posting an update for the Ultimatum update?

will have to check first what will be changed in the patch notes

Hi, thanks for taking the time to post this build, I'm currently thinking about playing it as a league starter.

I've made a rough initial build tree based on the new patch notes, I'm not entirely sure how I feel about the tree as I've not played this build before or how the new skills will effect anything yet but it still looks fine as a league starter.

https://poeplanner.com/b/6ob (Using PoePlanner as the passive tree for PoB isn't updated yet)

My initial thoughts after having read the patch notes is that we have some passive points to play with seeing as if how the Chainbreaker changes work the way I think they do then we won't be using it or the rage nodes at the start of scion. As an end game alternative I'm thinking of using a watcher's eye with malevolence damage over time multi instead. Depending on how cheap a Watcher's eye with that mod would be, alternative gems could be Transcendent Mind or The Green Dream/Nightmare for frenzy charges on kill and potentially dodge chance.

This version also plays around with the idea of dropping the old Red Storm Node/New Vitality Extraction and instead picking up the new Vanquisher Nodes. You do need to invest an extra point(4 vs 3) to get Vanquisher and I'm not entirely sure if it's worth taking seeing as whilst it does offer a large chunk of increased phys damage the Crush part might not ever be applied as it has a 'You' wording and only applies when enemies have full life.

Comparison:
(Old)
14% physical over time
15% increased damage with bleeding
30% increased physical damage

vs

(New)
12% phys over time
12% increased phys dam
(total of 52% increased phys dam if taking extra 4th point
*Maybe Crush enemies)

We're also losing a bit of Attack Speed by dropping the early rage nodes, so I had a thought about taking Exceptional Performance instead as this might also allow for easier use of the 'Divergent' EA with extra arrows. I'm still not sure if it's worth taking at 4 points but it'd also apply to our other skills and with the nerf to the trigger socketed spells on skill use which, whilst I don't think affects the unveiled mod on Crimson Storm it might do possibly.

I think of the new gems the only 'definite' choice to take would be Cruelty Support over Chance to Bleed as it's up to 50% more damage over time compared to 29% damage with bleeding and it also seems to add some flat damage like Chance to Bleed does. Whilst we don't have solid gem numbers yet my hope is that Cruelty's 'more damage over time' applies to the bleed from the final EA explosion as it seems to calculate it from the 'hit' and we'll have a very big one if fully stacked.

My other thoughts on the new gems is that if we're using Lifetap Support we'll need to take out either Unbound Ailments or Deadly Ailments for it and drop some points to take the new Vitality Extraction/Old Red Storm wheel. I don't know if this would be a damage gain as taking Vitality Extraction + Life Tap's damage buff might not outweigh your totems dealing damage to themselves and dropping the current gem setup. The upside to taking VE+Lifetap is that it gives you a bit more survivability as well but from the wording I've read it as you'd also need to take Lifetap Support on Ensaring Arrow or some other skill(maybe movement or other clear skill) to get the recover life effect.

As for Ensnaring Arrow I think it might be possible to take Corrupting Fever over Maim Support as if we take Ancestral Bond we deal no damage ourselves but Corrupting Blood is a debuff and therefore shouldn't need us to deal any damage and might even be scaled by some of the passives we've taken. This might outperform the enemies take 14% increased physical damage from Maim.

Here's a link from Mark clarifying Corrupted Blood: https://www.reddit.com/r/pathofexile/comments/mn2jxk/314_ultimatum_new_gems/gtw4esd/?context=10

I did also think about taking Onslaught over Maim as our totems get the extra attack speed as well as ourselves but wasn't sure how well that translates into damage versus just having more damage hitting mobs.

Lastly I do think there might be some room to experiment with this build and taking Petrified Blood/Arrogance for Low Life stuff. I think Petrified Blood actually would work well with our build as it should add to our EHP and since we take Ancestral Bond anyway we can't really leech. If we do take Petrified Blood it would also mean that we probably wouldn't need to take Life Tap on other skills and could take Vitality Extraction more readily.

If on my example tree we take the life and reduced skill cost wheel around Tireless we could drop the early increased physical damage nodes on Scion and take a shorter route south as before to get to the scion life wheel. This would give us the same hp node for node but would mean that we could essentially take a Banner skill for free if we link it to Arrogance support, and if we linked it to 1 of other auras, either Malevolence or Pride we could be under 50% life for Low Life to affect us. Another possibility could be using Essence worm for either Pride/Malevolence and having the other linked along with a Banner and Arrogance Support. This should also bring us into Low Life territory. I'm also toying with the idea of having some sort of combination of all of this along with Skitterbots and seeing how that plays out.

Tl;dr - This passive tree might be even more point starved but the new skill gems might make up for the changes to the passive tree and allow for more EHP/damage depending on gem numbers/scaling. Waiting on PoB to update to test more.

"

Narelen wrote:

Hi, thanks for taking the time to post this build, I'm currently thinking about playing it as a league starter.

I've made a rough initial build tree based on the new patch notes, I'm not entirely sure how I feel about the tree as I've not played this build before or how the new skills will effect anything yet but it still looks fine as a league starter.

https://poeplanner.com/b/6ob (Using PoePlanner as the passive tree for PoB isn't updated yet)

Thanks for sharing your ideas. while it is hard hard to really discuss the new gems before they are released / tested there are some few points we can talk about.

The Crush part as I understand reduces the armor which does not really affect this build as armor does not work with ailments

if any of the new blood nodes incorporated with the build it may actually be good to keep the old point in the new tree to get flask sustain and a bit of extra damage as this build does not have huge regen

the loss of rage is unfortunate but We can get some attack speed and onslaught from totem cluster. we can also keep Chainbreaker/Berserk as Défense/offense on bosses (but not sure how that will work)

Cruelty sound good and can be a good damage increase but I still don't know how the dot increase will scale with the initial hit (btw I don't think they mentioned any flat damage)

LifeTap sounds like a good option and may remove the need for mana rings and allow us to reserve the full mana but still needs to see the number :)


Corrupting Fever as I understand it is not a support. it is a separate skill gem. I don't know how its numbers will be. it think it can defiantly be used if another 6 link is used and trigger it with ensnaring arrow (no trigger bow in this case -> maybe go for Asenath's Chant)

Btw the trigger bow nerf will not effect bone offering since it has a high duration (5 + 1 per corpse )so you will get around 9-10 second and that is before duration increases. but the nerf will affect the curse which you can get on a ring or glove corruption
btw I was using Vulnerability but I think for single target Poachers mark is better. if Corrupting Fever is used then Vulnerability is better

for low life options Bloodthirst seems interesting. they didn't show how it will scale with gem levels yet but it will give a flat damage based on max life which enable investing in more life to get damage, but you will have to use Petrified Blood then and maybe reserve another aura on life

Too many options so little information :)