IMPORTANT:THE GUIDE IS VERY, VERY OUTDATED. THE GAME HAS CHANGED A LOT SINCE I'VE MADE A GUIDE. BUILDS COME AND GO AND WHILE IT'S POSSIBLE TO PLAY TORNADO SHOT, PLEASE FIND AN UP TO DATE GUIDE.
I CONTINUE ROCKING THE GAME, BUT I PREFER PLAYING DIFFERENT BUILDS EACH LEAGUE (OFTEN PLAYING IN SELFFOUND). IF YOU WANT TO KNOW WHAT I'M CURRENTLY PLAYING, PLEASE CHECK OUT:
If you're a very new player and don't know where to start - then check out the latest youtube videos by content creators such as Zizaran, Mathil or Tarke for their league-starter guides.
I also ended up making (and updating) a very popular lootfilter for path of exile and I recommend grabbing that, if you're a new player. It helps you highlight useful/expensive items and hide items you won't need.
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IMPORTANT: If you have questions, please ask them here in this thread or on my Twitch stream. I'm NOT answering build-related questions in-game and rarely check PMs! I hope you understand. Also please don't sell and trade items here. Thank you.
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WELCOME: Welcome to the Tornado Shot Guide - however, this guide no longer covers just tornado shot though. This guide - once called the ranger tornado shot guide - tries to accomplish 2 things at once: provide some nice polished finished builds for beginners and people who don't wanna mess with PoE's mechanics AND the in-depth information that will guide you towards becoming an expert in all thing bows and will teach you to create your own bow builds.
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BACKGROUND: This build is nearly 3 years old and was designed before the release of the "Forsaken Masters" add-on. I've spent countless hours with a friend (C4pture), improving it and figuring out the right skilltree. It had everything - decent defenses, high damage, speed, flask nodes etc. and the build has received a lot of attention. A lot of time was spent on improving and fine-tuning it and creating a guide that explains the full depth of the build.
Path of Exile - has changed in the time. It has become faster, with new threats, mechanics and new bosses. At this point: there are builds that deal more damage or survive more - however, the strength of this build is in it's potential - you can start off playing PoE or a new league with it, beat all content with it and transition to something else - even other builds. This build also has one of the higher clear-speeds out there with the right gear. It's designed for new and experienced players both and aims to provide a smooth gearing/leveling experience. The level of gear you require to be efficient is very low, while the upper cap for top gear is incredibly high.
There's always ways to get better, even if you're already super-strong :) [Text intended for Version: 3.0]
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A WORD ABOUT SKILLGEMS: One of the magic aspects of archers in Path of Exile is how they can swap out attacks, with just very minor changes, without reducing efficiency.
You can rely on any of the following gems if you intend to run this build:
Tornado Shot - requires no single target, secondary attack
Split Arrow
Lightning Arrow
Ice Shot
(secondary) Barrage
(secondary) Blast Rain
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MEDIA (3.0): coming soon! I'll have to test the build a bit, once 3.0 hits live, see the new uniques and make some videos. Check back in some weeks!
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OTHER MEDIA: These videos are pretty old, yet the gameplay hasn't changed much - it just got a little bit faster, the videos provide a good example of how the build behaves.
Hundreds of Atziri kills. Capable of reliably clearing apex. Capable of speed-runs.
Cleared all maps with pretty much any mods at very very fast speeds.
Cleared level 80+ maps
Cleared the vaal temple map.
Cleared every single unique map including poojoys, mao kun, death and taxes, lost trove olmecs etc
Reached 800+ forum pages. Thank you for your support guys :)
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GUIDING DESIGN PRINCIPLES
Value defence - If the defensive mechanics of a build fail, that build is bad and you should feel bad. That's why this setup relies on several combined defensive mechanics to protect your skin.
Optimize damage - We attempt to focus on one of the 2 general playstyles: either focus on the physical damage and use elemental damage to enhance it OR go for a full elemental conversion setup.
Maximize utility - High speed, comfort non-conditional features, freezing attacks, corpse shattering, no-overly-edgy mechanics
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SUMMARY OF 3.0-CHANGES - The 3.0 patch has brought a lot of changes to the meta. I'll do a quick recap here as an introduction for returning players
Double Dipping is Gone - Double Dipping (a pre-3.0 technique that resulted in crazy damage over time values) was removed in 3.0. There's a new damage over time system.
Damage over time - "go big or go home" - On paper the numbers are actually quite impressive. You can achieve 3mil++ voltaxic poison barrage DPS, but you lose instant damage, vaal pact and leech, have to use awkward support gems and it is really poor when it comes to leveling. Overall: it's no longer a complimentary option. Poison no longer scales with projectile damage. That means - unless you focus on poison, focus on poison support gems - your poison will be useless. Summary: focusing on damage over time is not a focus in this guide.
Penetration is sexy - Elemental arches on the other hand have received quite a helping hand. There's a lot of elemental damage penetration with attacks on the tree. We can get up to 4 relevant clusters, each granting a bit of elemental damage and penetration. Penetration is a very powerful mechanic for elemental damage dealers and this opens a lot of new possibilties
Flasks and Pathfinder nerfs - Several flasks and pathfinder were nerfed. We'll still be running the flasks, but picking pathfinder is way less interesting now - especially considering the poison nerfs
Energy-Shield-Archer is dead - Yep. No vaal pact, lower numbers, discipline, CI nerfs - there's no point on focusing on ES as an archer.
Less focus on shock - Shocking was severely changed in 3.0. Some would say it was gutted. I tend to agree. The bottom line is, shocking the target is not quite as valuable as it was before, now that the schock effectiveness scales with the damage done.
Less focus on power charges - Power charges now only grant 30% increased critical strike chance, instead of 50%. Yep. Obtaining them is no longer the priority.
Return of the Scion - In light of the Pathfinder and Assassin nerfs, Scion and Raider have emerged as the primary ascendency classes.
Pierce Rework - Pierce is no longer random. All +%chance to pierce nodes and effects have been replaced with +pierces X targets. The new effect is much more consistent. We can also easily pick up 3-target-pierce from the skilltree. This is quite an opportunity for tornado shot.
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THE EMERGING BUILD TYPES
Focusing on physical damage and only using elemental damage to amplify it - this is an effective way to build for tornado shot
- edit, after a lot of calculations, I've decided to only stick with the second version. It's ultimately stronger than this one
Focusing on full physical to elemental damage conversion and elemental penetration - lightning/ice shot type builds, supported
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OTHER 3.0 ARCHERS The skilltrees are somewhat similar for both of them and we'll talk through both variations.
Of course there are several other builds - such as caustic arrow, explosive arrow, ballistae, voltaxic setups and some 3.0 DoT shenanigans, yet for the sake of simplicity and because this guide doesn't cover those options, we'll focus only on the 2 builds listed above.
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HC-VIABILITY CONCERNS This build is HC viable. However, HC viability doesn't come without sacrifices. To gain a reliable increased HP buffed, the player frequently should decrease his damage or pick another ascendancy. You'll find more details below.
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Abbreviations - *section still work in progress*
Spoiler
ABBREVIATIONS:
TS - Tornado Shot
LA - Lightning Arrow
IS - Ice Shot
SA - Split Arrow
GMP - Greater Multiple Projectiles
LMP - Lesser Multiple Projectiles
FA - Faster Attacks
PPAD - Physical Projectile Attack Damage
LL - Lifeleech
PTL - Physical to Lightning
AFD - Added fire damage
WED - Weapon elemental damage
ICSM - Increased critical strike multiplier
PCOC - Power charge on critical
COH - Curse on Hit
CWDT - Cast when damage taken
EC - Enduring cry
RC - Rallying cry
IC - Immortal call
ID - Increased duration
HOA - Herald of Ash
HOI - Herald of Ice
HOT - Herald of Thunder
AA - Arctic armor
BA - Blink Arrow
FP - Faster Projectiles
SP - Slower Projectiles
Ranger skill compendium - *section still work in progress*
Spoiler
ABBREVIATIONS: PICK ONE PRIMARY ATTACK:
PICK ONE SECONDARY:
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( BUILD 1 ) TORNADO RAIDER
This is your default raider ranger. Your D2 bowazon. That very fast girl that wipes mobs of the screen and from the next 2 screens with one shot. It focuses on physical damage, but converts most of it to elemental and uses flasks and elemental penetration to maximize it. You can also switch to LA/barrage at any point.
Why raider? Raider: this is my default recommendation for 3.0. If you're new to the game, if you're not sure what to pick, you won't go wrong with the raider. The class offers damage, speed and quite a bit of defence. Frankly all "pathes" work well on the raider tree.
In the very endgame pathfinder tends to be better. That being said, you first need to acquire all those flasks and the difference is not so massive too.
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(BUILD 2) ELE-EYE/ELE-ASS LA/BARRAGE SCION
This build is a tiny bit more advanced. We rely on 100% conversion. We use the scion to min-max our resources, stack up elemental damage and protect us against reflect. This is somewhat harder to level (this is a scion after all) and is best done, when you already have some gear.
RETURN OF THE SCION: The ascendant has received significant buffs in 3.0. Not only did several of her ascendancies receive reworks, but she also receives 2 additional skillpoints. Quite a lot of her picks are still very lackluster, yet there are some aamazing ones.
The elementalist scion is amazing - it solves all reflect problems, while providing a LOT of power. 50% reduced reflect damage taken + 6% penetration + conflux (a really neat thing) + an additional golem. We also get +40 int. This is big.
You can combine it with either assassin or deadeye. I've been fiddling around with pathfinder a lot and they're very similar on paper. Personally I like deadeye more if you wanna run tornado shot. The pierce and additional projectiles are awesome
Why not pathfinder?
WHY NOT PATHFINDER: Previously Pathfinder was without doubt the best pick. The only reason not to pick it was assassin + reach of the council. With the nerf to the alchemist cluster, the massive ES nerfs, the weak poison of 3.0 (compared to the double dipping poison of 2.6) and nerfs to the flasks themselves, pathfinder took a massive - even if well deserved hit.
With a full flask equip (Dying Sun, Taste of Hate, Atziri's, Diamond/Vinktar) you can still respect and go pathfinder, yet this is pretty pointless early on.
Pathfinder also offers elemental damage and penetration. Those nodes are very powerful. Yet I believe that scion has way more to offer at that point.
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(BUILD 3) AVATAR-SCION
I've played this build during the 3.0 Harbinger league and had an absolute blast while playing it. Due to forum post length limitations, significant differences to the guide and a better format, the guide for this sub-build only exists in YouTube Form.
DoomPrism "Avatar" GUIDE - A way too long and very detailed, whopping 30min guide on the Doomprism Avatar Scion
DoomPrism "Avatar" DEMO - Note that the footage was taken during week 2 of the Harbinger league (and I also have to work fulltime), so my gear wasn't too great at that point. Still it demonstrates the potency of the build quite well
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Please don't PM me ingame with filter/guide questions, post them on the forum, after reading the FAQ.
Last edited by NeverSink on Aug 28, 2020, 12:04:56 PM
You might've noticed that the builds above only talk about the skillgems in your primary attack. So what about the others? Why didn't I just add them there. Remember what I said about archers having a lot of flexibility. Well there's also one thing we DON'T have a lot of: free sockets. You'll be able to pick 3-4 combinations you like, but you can't use them all. I'll recommend some, but really - do play around, there's so many cool things you can try out!
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PICK 1 - AURA RESERVATION STRATEGY
Recommended: Hatred+CurseHerald
This is my favorite combination and a very potent one. It relies on Hatred + Herald Of Thunder (or Ice).
Hatred provides a very strong damage boost, while also providing defenses - frozen enemies don't move and don't leave corpses, which disarms some of the most dangerious effects, such as "porcupines".
The herald provides a tiny bit of damage, while generating charges and applying curses. I like Herald of Thunder more, because it's also good VS bosses, but it requires fairly high INT and a source of lightning damage - usually lightning arrow and/or physical to lightning.
Link [herald of ice] to [curse on hit][assassin's mark] and [ice bite]
Link [herald of thunder] to [curse on hit][assassin's mark] and [innvervate]
Don't link hatred to anything, unless you have enlighten or mana reservation reduction and want to add another aura/herald.
Grace+X
Grace is awesome if you intend to use "Queen of the Forest". With evasion optimized gear and our acrobatics-dodge, you will evade most attacks, while gaining tons of movementspeed. This is especially hilarious on a raider/pathfinder who is fast anyway.
Personally I prefer hatred for it's massive freeze and damage boost, but especially on HC this can help a lot (note: on HC you should consider using Kaom's over QOTF)
A word about Herald of Fire
Herald of fire is best used in combination with mana reservation reductions and a full conversion+penetration scion/pathfinder.
However, while it DOES provide more damage than HoI/HoT, the fire herald can't apply curses, which makes it inferiour - that is - as long as you don't have someone else to apply curses, or an elemental weakness on hit enchant or run enlighten to run multiple heralds
Arctic Armour
There's 3 reasons to run arctic armour.
You're using the "Perfect Form" unique and get it for free.
You're running into reflect problems. Usually the second one is countermeasured, by runing CWDT/Scion/the anti-reflect panteon and improving your VP-leech. That being said arctic armour can also be useful on hardcore. The defensive boost is quite big.
Haste, Anger, Wrath...
Haste is only useful for farming super low maps or dried lake... or whatever it's equivalent in PoE 3.0 is.
Anger/Wrath can be useful in Windripper and Voltaxic builds. But we havn't talked about those yet, so shhh.
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PICK 1 - MOVEMENT SKILL
Recommended: Blink Arrow + X
There is really no big choice in here.
Actually there is one. Do you want to run blink arrow or blink arrow + faster attacks or even add faster projectiles?
The choice is really up to you. I usually try to use Blink Arrow + FA, but you can also skip it.
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PICK SEVERAL - BUFFS
Bloodrage
Bloodrage is a great way to generate and sustain frenzy charges. It also grants leech and attack speed. It does cause us to take damage, but the damage is pretty low, as long as you stay in action and keep leeching and using your flasks.
If you're playing raider and took the frenzy branch - you CAN skip bloodrage, but don't have to.
Ice Golem (+second golem for scion)
Golems barely do any damage, frequently die and don't pay taxes, BUT they do provide pretty useful buffs.
The ice golem in fact is a pretty massive DPS boost, because we rely on both accuracy and critical strike chance. You can also add a second golem, Fire/Lightning/Stone, if you're a scion. Fire golem probably will give you more DPS than the lightning golem, but if you want to know for sure: check path of building!
Also: you can link golems to CWDT, if you find summonning them too annoying.
Enduring Cry (HC)
This thing is really annoying to use. You have to recast it over and over, it takes 0.5 seconds to do so, but all this - has an advantage - if combined with cast when damage taken, you'll receive a very formidable shell, that is well worth consideration. Also good for physical reflect and porcupines.
You can link it to increased duration.
Decoy Totem (HS/SSF)
These dudes are great early on. You can drop them while levelling or during early endgame - if you have the strength and enjoy some piece and quiet, while picking mobs apart.
Later on they're simply way too slow.
Vaal Haste / Vaal Grace
The glory days of vaal haste are somewhat over. It's way weaker now and it's duration has been decreased. Personally I don't recommend using it anymore, but it does provide a small boost. Really: matter of taste and free sockets.
Portal
Not... exactly a buff skill, yet especially if you're running the same shaped map over and over or decide to farm dried lake/atziri fragments, it's something that really improves the quality of life a lot.
Also I never pick up portal scrolls, so it's a godbless.
Jaw of Agony + Multitrap
This is an offhand setup to generate power charges. It's useful for boss fight preparation. Switch to your offhand (you need the jaws of agony shield equipped). Throw any trap (such as bear trap) linked to cluster/multitrap. You will generate power charges this way. Edgy, but pretty neat.
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PICK NONE TO SEVERAL - CWDT-DEFENSES
CWDT - cast when damage taken - is a trigger gem that activates, once you take a certain amount of damage. It has a 3s cooldown and can activate higher level gems, if it's own level is higher. I recommend keeping CWDT around level 1-7. You can also use a high level CWDT to keep golems up.
CWDT+IC+ID
Immortal Call + Increased Duration - if you're runing the raider, you basically NEED to pick it up to prevent spikes from porcupines and reflect spikes from being too deadly.
It's much more effective if you keep using enduring cry all the time... which is also very annoying. the increased duration is optional, but helpful.
CWDT+Ball Lightning+Blind+Knockback
You don't need to use the whole combination, but it's pretty neat, if you can afford the sockets. Blind is great for us (if you don't already use a stibnite) and increases our evasion chances a lot. The knockback can help you in sticky situations too.
CWDT+Warlords Mark
Assassin's mark is usually our curse of choice. In boss fights however, warlord's mark is pretty amazing, by providing us with leech. This setup will also grant you endurance charges here and there.
CWDT+Frost Wall
This setup is strange. It saved me at times, but it killed me a few times too. I only recommend using it, if you're desperate for defenses.
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EQUIPMENT:
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This chapter is dedicated towards gearing, crafting and buying the right combination of items!
It doesn't only provide easy and straightforward choices, but also gives you an idea of what's available, when it comes ot options.
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RESPECT THE TEN GOLDEN RULES:
GET MORE LIFE - Try to get life in every item slot (except for your bow). Replacing some items with uniques without life is OK, but you need to compensate the HP. A dead ranger doesn't do much damage. You should feel pretty itchy, if your build doesn't have more than 5000 life on level 90. On hardcore or if you want to reach level 92+, consider using Kaom's Heart.
CAP RESISTANCES - 75% fire/cold/lightning resistance are your goal. You don't have to cap them while leveling, but if you will die in acts 5+, without some resistances. In the endgame, capping your resists is mandatory. On hardcore you want to overcap your resistances to be unaffected by the elemental weakness curse
DON'T GO OVERBOARD ON UNIQUES - Unique items often provide great advantages. Yet they come at a great cost: most of them lack defensive mechanics. Using too many of them WILL often get you killed.
TRY TO KEEP YOUR ACCURACY AT 90% OR HIGHER - This is absolutely important. Each critical strike checks your accuracy rating TWICE. Once to see if it hits and once to see if the crit hits. If you fail the second roll, your crit willbe downgraded to a hit. In order to counteract this, we need accuracy. You can get quite a lot of it from rare rings, amulets and gloves though.
KNOW YOUR WEAKNESS - Undestand what effects are dangerous to you and put thought into minimizing risks. Optimize your flasks. You're (likely) not bleed/freeze immune - enchant flasks to help with that. Keep distance from things that can burst you down, adjust the pantheon to help with stuns. Run CWDT+IC to get reflect protection.
INVEST INTO GOOD ITEMS - I know this sounds silly - yet don't be afraid to spend currency. Even overpay for something. If you see an item, that will be a guaranteed upgrade over your current one, just get it, even if it's somewhat overpriced. You'll be farming faster afterwards. A good rule is to upgrade your current worst items to the best thing you can afford. If you can afford several "best" things, then you should've upgraded long ago.
PRIORITIZE EVASION BASES - That evasion can and will save your life. When upgrading your equipment try to use as many evasion bases as possible
DON'T UNDERRATE FINETUNING - 20% quality on your bow, flasks and all armor pieces. Get enchants, bless your habringer to give it 50% local crit chance, get your gems to level 20, with 20 quality. There's this ongoing believe that "attack characters don't scale with gems". These steps can make a huge difference in DPS and survival
DON'T NEGELCT YOUR ATTIRBUTES - Depending on your setup, you'll want up to 155 strength and up to 155 intelligence. You can save valuable nodes by optimizing your equipment
THE CRIT AND ATTACK SPEED ON YOUR BOW IS LOCAL - The crit chance and attack speed on your bow is a LOCAL multiplier. That's actually better than a global multiplier, because everything scales from the stats of your bow. When picking between the two, prioritize crit chance over attack speed.
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Single equipment piece options:
I HIGHLY recommend reading at the very least the bow section.
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BOWS, QUIVERS, CRAFTING, LEVELING UNIQUE BOWS:
BOW
Please note that build 3 is currently using the Doomfletch Prism Bow. Other can rely on a wide range of bows, but usually use Rare Harbinger Bow
There are several bows available that we can use. Rare versions of the harbinger bow is the best bow we can use. That being said, other bows might provide unique advantage and build opportunities. Also: a "very strong" 450+ harbinger bow can be extremly hard to get and pretty hard to craft.
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A "DECENT" CRAFTED HARBINGER".
You should look for the following bonuses:
1) Physical DPS - A viable harbinger has ~300 physical DPS. Anything over 340 is pretty strong and over 400 insane. A perfect bow has around 560 DPS. A decimation bow will also do at the start of the league by the way.
2) Critical strike chance on the harbinger. It's a multiplicative modifier and will skyrocket your DPS. Don't forget to bless your harbinger to 50%
3) Attack speed. It's local attack speed and boosts your overall DPS, by a significant amount.
4) Critical strike multiplier
5) Resistances, leech and high ele damage are decently helpful, but should be never prioritized above the bonuses above
So how does one get such a harbinger bow?
1) (unlikely) find one.
2) (likely) buy one from someone else (use this link to find all online players who sell harbinger bows with 300 PDPS or more: like this )
3) (likely) Craft one yourself
HOW TO CRAFT YOUR HARBINGER BOW
Please note, that crafting depends on your luck. Be prepared to invest and lose quite a bit of currency. If you're aiming on high 350+ DPS results you might need THOUSANDS of alteration orbs and a lot of luck.
First of all, you want to find or buy a base. The means a white/magic/rare harbinger bow. You want as high item level as possible. You can also buy a high level harbinger from another player.
Harbingers start dropping somewhere in merciless act 3. You can also use a decimation bow for early crafting in a new league, which are weaker, but much easier to find.
To find out the itemlevel of a item, hold the item and enter " /itemlevel " into the chat. The highest base that is of interest for us is level 77. Higher bows don't get any new mods.
Levels of interest are:
1) iLvl: 60: 130 to 149 (Cruel) - Local Physical Dmg +%
2) iLvl: 65: 24 to 33 / 49 to 57 (Tempered) - Local Min/max added physical damage
3) iLvl: 73: 150 to 169 (Tyrannical) - Local Physical Dmg +%
3) ilvl: 73: 75 to 80 / 100 to 135 (Emperor's) - Local Physical Dmg +% / Local Accuracy Rating
4) iLvl: 77: 29 to 38 / 58 to 68 (Flaring) - Local Min/max added physical damage
5) iLvl: 83: 170-180 (Merciless) - Local Min/max added physical damage
5) iLvl: 83: 170-180 (Dictators) - Highest Damage/Accuracy mod ingame
The most important level is 73. In addition to the mods listed above it also adds the top crit chance and crit damage rolls. And even with flaring being an insane mod, you can attempt to craft some quite good items using ilvl73+ harbingers. If you're just looking for a small temporary solution and don't want to invest too much currency at the beginning of the league you can stop at 73. Obviously if you can get your hands on a 77 or a 83 bow, it's much much better.
You should also watch out for the internal critical strike affix on the harbinger bow. It can go from 30% to 50%. You can reroll the affix with a blessed orb. The orb is very affordable and should not create big complications. So this should not be your primary criteria, when shopping for bows.
Once you have such a bow. You should transmute it (if it's not magic already) with:
then start applying:
The goal is to get a harbinger bow with one of the mods listed above and a second decent mod (crit chance/attack speed/crit damage). The exception is "tyrannical" and "merciless", if you get this mod simply proceed crafting, no matter what suffix you get with the augmentation orb.
Once you have two good mods, apply a regal orb.
With a bit of luck you'll get a third good mod (Crit, Crit chance, Hybrid PhysDamage/Accuracy, high accuracy, attack speed). If it's the start of the leauge, you might also be happy with anything, since the crafted result later amplified by a tora-craft will still be decent.
However, if you're trying to create an upgrade and are not happy with the regal result:
...and start over.
Even if the mod is bad (especially in the beginning of the league) you can then bring the bow to "Tora - Master of the Hunt" and apply the "other" physical mod. Here's a screenshot of some of the things a (already level 5) tora can do:
Alternatively if you have a good 3 stat rare bow, you can ask a playing with a level 8 Elreon to add the "can receive multiple master craft bonuses" on it and then add 2 bonuses on it (usually crit chance and damage. Note that this is expensive and should be done with very good results only.
Also: if you get a single stat blue item after alterating with either Flaring/Tyrranical, you can attempt regaling it. If you get the other one (so you have Flaring+Tyrranical), congratulations, you managed to create the holy grail of crafting in new leagues. Ask a trustworthy player with level 8 elreon+tora to add Crit chance/damage (or attack speed/returning arrows) + WED (now that Hybrid damage/ac is gone) and you have a godlike bow that can reach 400-500 DPS.
Finally improve the number of sockets, links and quality with jewelers, fusings and blacksmith's, adapt the colors and enjoy your new killing machine. If you want to try your luck you can also try improving the bow using the following orbs:
The whole process can be frustrating, but if you're smart and a lil' bit lucky, you can also make quite a profit by selling these bows (made around 15 exalts this way).
Also don't get your hopes up TOO much. Sometimes you get lucky and hit a lucky regal on the first try and get some insane bow. However, if you PLAN on creating a 350+ DPS harbinger with crit chance, expect spending 5000+ or more alteration orbs. This is a long and painful process.
There are also some advanced crafting techniques you can use with other level 8 masters. Be smart and don't be afraid to experiment, within reason of course.
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LIONSEYE'S GLARE
Lioneye's glare is an excellent "endgame-start" weapon and became even better with the release of 3.0 - now it also has the farshot mod, which increases damage by a 30% MORE multipler. Sexy. On top of it's fantastic damage, you also will always hit, which allows you to save on accuracy and somewhat compensates for the lack of crit on the weapon. Lioneye's glare also works very well with the increased critical strike chance gem, the assassin and scion-assassin ascendancy and is a great weapon in general.
It does have another downside however: your hits can't miss. How is that a downside? Well... if you reflect hits, you can (somehow) evade those reflected arrows. Not with that bow. Always run a CWDT setup, when using this bow, if you're running the raider build.
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DEATH'S OPUS
Death's Opus "only" has a top DPS of 207, but it fires 2 additional arrow - this works great with tornado shot and barrage both. It alos has an amazing multiplier of 100% and a decent crit cahnce. Overall I'd say it's strength is more or less equal to Lioneye's glare. It's a very formidable weapon. It was stronger in the "age of double dipping" pre 3.0, but I can still recommend using it, until you can afford a good harby.
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REACH OF THE COUNCIL
ROTC - The twice nerfed bow. This is the ugly Baby of Death's Opus and Lioneye's glare. Heavy damage, fairly fast attack speed, but has no crit and tries to compensate by firing 2 additional projectiles. Ironically I don't have a "Modern" ROTC to show, only a pre-nerf one. Overall, they're about the strength of a 280-340DPS harbinger bow. They were much more powerful during the double-dipping era, because you could avoid the less multipliers from GMP and stack poison damage. Nowadays ROTC is decent, but not exactly amazing.
Still: quite a good endgame weapon. That being said, I prefere Lioneye's glare over it in 3.0.
Other Bows
OTHER BOWS
Please note that build 3 is currently using the Doomfletch Prism Bow
There are several other very respectable unique bows - slithertongue, xoph's nurture, doomprism, voltaxic rift, windripper. Sadly there's not enough time to describe all the combinations. You can use these bows with this build, but they require somewhat finetuned builds. I'll try adding skilltrees and builds for them over time.
UNIQUE BOWS FOR LEVELING
You can use these unique bows until you get a good rare bow! Lionseye's Glare can be used in endgame mapping and be very effective!
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ARMOR PIECES:
FANCY HAT
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TEMPEST'S BINDING
I've been using this helmet with my doomprism avatar build in 3.0 and it performed wonderfully. This helmet allows you to get a pseudo-6link in your helm and another 6-link in your bow. This means you can have 2 6-links, without using your body armor and replace your body armour with Kaom's Heart - this is great for our defenses.
On top of that Tempest's Binding provides us with decent charge generation and a lot of boss damage from the harbinger of storms (20% shock, 10% chill). Note that the helmet is expensive, so other options are good alternatives
RAT'S NEST (recommended for build 1)(recommended for beginners)
In the 3 years since I wrote the guide a lot of things changed - not rat's nest and my feelings for it though. The movement speed, the crit, the attack speed, the extra rarity. It's still a very glass cannony choice, but it just feels so satisfying to use. Highly recommended.
STARKONJA'S (recommended for HC)
Starkonja's is rat's nest lame brother. Don't get the wrong impression though: it's stats are amazing, super defensive and it's also very cheap. It's a very good choice on HC. The extra dexterity, attack speed and crit chance still boost your DPS quite a bit. Highly recommended
ALPHA'S HOWL
Alpha's is a neat helmet, that works best if combined with anger/wrath/grace and enlighten level 4 and maybe windripper (one day you might see a guide about it here) - auras that benefit a lot from levels. The anti-freeze is also amazing an frees up a flask or an ascendancy. Personally I prefere Rat's Nest, but you'd do nothing wrong by going for the Howl. Works really great in combination with Queen of the Forest btw.
Other helmets worth consideration: "The Gull", "Devoto's", "Obscurantis"
You can also use a rare in this slot. Personally, I prefere the unique helmets, but there's nothing wrong about it.
Priority stats on Rares:
Life
Resistances
Accuracy
Evasion
CHEST ARMOR
KAOM'S HEART (recommended for hardcore)(recommended for build1)
This is the best armor for tornado shot, if you wanna get tanky. Yep. Kaom's Heart is what makes you tanky and tornado shot doesn't need a second attack.
THE PERFECT FORM
This thing is amazing. Life, dexterity, phase acrobatics, free defenses from arctic armor. Highly recommended.
BELLY OF THE BEAST
Great allrounder armor. Provides good defenses, lots of life. It's just great, you won't do anything wrong by using it.
YRIEL'S FOSTERING
This new 3.0 armor is a wonderful addition. It has high defenses (less than belly/kaom though), some nice crit chance, great accuracy (we'll need less of it on our rings with it) and a ton of damage. I really recommend the maim version by the way.
QUEEN OF THE FOREST (recommended for grace-aura)
Works best with grace + alpha's howl. Provides a ton of evasion and makes you very, very fast if you build around it correctly. Quite recommended.
You can also use a rare in this slot. Personally, I prefer the unique armours, but there's nothing wrong about it.
Priority stats on Rares:
Life
Resistances
Evasion
Attributes
Chance to Dodge
BOOTS
I recommend using a rare in this slot. You can get a lot of resistances, life and movement speed and also get the attributes you need here.
Priority stats on Rares:
Movement speed
Life
Resistances
Attributes
ATZIRI'S STEP
I love these boots. They have a lot of evasion, help with spell dodge (ALWAYS get phase acrobatics if you go for these boots) and also offer a lot of life. They also have 30% movement speed. Something we really desire. So... what's the downside? No resistances. Each unique you equip will require you to invest more into resists, which might become a massive problem at some point.
DEATH'S DOOR
These boots will save you 1 flask, which is quite a big deal. On top they also have a nice set of stats. Sadly they barely provide any life and no evasion. They're definitely worth considering though.
GLOVES
MALIGARO'S VIRTUOSITY / SHADOW AND DUST
These 3 pairs are very similar. Both provide strong boosts to your damage, but don't provide any life/defenses. Personally I recommend shadow and dust for the free rampage. Ultimately it's up to you though.
ATZIRI'S ACUITY (expensive top option)
The best gloves if you can sustain a high crit chance. Life, crit, good stats, colors are optimal for a CWDT setup. The only disadvantage is their price and can save you some nodes + you don't lose life from vaal pact
Good rare gloves can be an amazing alternative, but can be quite expensive
Priority stats on Rares:
Attack Speed
Life
Accuracy
Physical Damage
Stats and Resistances
LINKNEEDED
BELT
There are several good options here.
1) We can use a good rare belt. Stats to look out for are life, physical damage, strength, resists. Weapon elemental damage is no priority, but can also help. Armor is getting cut in half by acrobatics, so don't prioritize it either. Ultimately it's the best option, but it's hard to find a REALLY good belt. Weapon elemental damage also helps.
2) Meginord's. It's still a good option that provides a lot of life, strength, damage and cold resist
3) Doryani's. This option gives a lot of damage and some resistances. Sadly it barely provides health (except for the +strength)
4) The Retch. This is a new one and I'm in love with it. You create this belt by vendoring the 2 new (2.1) uniques Faminebind+Feastbind to the vendor. Not only does it provide some decent damage, life, leech and a bit of cold resistance, it also comes with 3 strong unique mods.
The 60% increased flask duration is great. This causes quality quicksilver/jade flasks to last up to 10 seconds. This is insane and highly useful. Especially if combined with...
The 15% movementspeed during flask effects basically gives you a permanent 15% movement speed out of town. You'll be constantly running around at high speed, which helps this build in a lot of ways (at the very least it's awesome)
I'm not 100% sure yet how the lifeleech->damage bonus works. It's either dealing damage around you in AOE or increasing your attack damage. I'm honestly not sure. I'll update it, once I'm confident enough about it.
The disadvantage is the 30% slower flask recharge rate. This is actually quite fine and barely noticable.
Overall I highly recommend giving it a try... unless you got:
5) Headhunter. The only belt I would use above any of the other options above. This is your ultimate endgame upgrade. The holy grail of belts. It has very solid stats and the insane ability to steal mods. Considering how fast this build can move and kill, you'll constantly have several rare mods up, that will give you auras, damage, crit, speed, nemesis mods and a lot of insane stuff. At times it will increase your total DPS by multiple time, double your movementspeed, give you 95% critchance or provide proximity shields. If this might not be the strongest belt for some situations (uber-atziri), it's definitely one of the most fun and awesome items in the game. This belt is pretty much the only reason, why I sometimes play standard - because it's so fun to play with.
Priority stats on Rares:
Crit Multiplier
Life
Crit Chance
Elemental Weapon Damage
Physical Damage
THE UNENDING QUIVER
I believe right now Signal Fire is the best quiver ingame, if you're going for full elemental conversion (which we do).
You can also go for a drillneck. I believe drillneck is a much better choice for build 3 and a very solid choice in general.
A rare quivers is a decent choice until then.
Priority stats on Quivers:
Crit Multiplier
Life
Crit Chance
Elemental damage with weapons, flat physical damage, attack speed
Accuracy, Resistances
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JEWELRY:
RINGS&AMULETS
You basically want to fill in whatever is missing here. But here are the priorities:
1) Missing Resists
2) Life (60+)
3) Increased Critical Multiplier (25+), Flat Physical Damage (if high)
4) Int, Strength (can help you regret stat points in tree)
5) Accuracy (200+), Critical Strike Chance (25+), Weapon Elemental Damage (20+), Leech, Rarity
6) Rest
You can also use ventor's and bisco's if you want to boost your magic find.
JEWELS
Now before we talk about jewels I'd like to tell something I call the "golden jewel rule". It goes like this:
If you can take a jewel node and need to invest 2 or less points to get it (including the socket itself), always get it! If you need to invest 3+ nodes only get it if you're super rich and 95+.
UNIQUE JEWELS:
There's 2 noteworthy unique jewels:
Lioneye's fall can be socketed in the slot above acrobatics. That's convert a lot of bow crit and leech into bow crit and leech and is absolutely worth it
Poacher's aim is great if you're using a corrupted drillneck and want to get that +1 pierce for the 50% bonus damage.
RARE JEWELS:
Jewels can provide insane benefits. For just a few passive skill points you can get more value stats than you'd get from most node combinations in the tree. Another huge upside is the fact that you can get the stats in any part of the tree. So if you're playing a character that has hard access to life nodes you can compensate it with jewels.
The best jewels you can use are rare. There are several stats we're looking for in jewels:
Tier0: (~worth 1.2 nodes): Attack Speed with Bows (6-8%), Increased Maximum Life (5-7%)
Tier1: (~worth 1 nodes):PhysDamage (14-16%), PhysDamage with Bows (14-16%), Hybrid Crit/Accuracy (6-10% each), Life Leech
Tier2: (~worth 0.7 nodes) AttackSpeed (3-5%), Evasion (14-18%), Crit Chance (8-12%), Crit Multiplier (6-8%), Mana on Hit, Projectile Damage (10-12%)
Tier3: (~worth 0.5 nodes) Resistances, Attributes, Accuracy, Attack/Cast Speed, Mana Leech, %Damage (8-10%), %Lightning Damage
Tier4: Rest
Note that the node cost of attributes is highly dependent on what you need. If 10% cold resistance allows you to cap your resistances, it's worth significantly more. Yet, you can more or less evaluate how good your jewel is this way.
Here are some examples:
This is a typical "goodbuild" jewel. It offers 2 T0 stats, 1 T3 stat and 1 T4 stat. The rolls are rather high. It's worth ~3.5 nodes and is absolutly worth the investment.
I'm also using this jewel. It gives me the exact amount of str/int I need to run my gems, while boosting my PTL/LA damage and giving health. Nice. I got this one for 2 chaos
I personally like "inspired learning". In order to run it you need to pick up acuity or survivalist though. This is a big investment. However, having a mini-headhunter is fun and adds flavor to the gameplay. I can't 100% recommend it, but I want to encourage you to experiment with your equip
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BANDIT REWARDS:
Kill all - that was dark.
Please don't PM me ingame with filter/guide questions, post them on the forum, after reading the FAQ.
Last edited by NeverSink on Nov 20, 2017, 7:25:48 PM
Leveling efficiently and speedleveling is a "sport" in path of exile. There's even races and racing seasons. This section is not intended to teach you speedleveling, but I hope these hints will make the progression smoother for you
SKILLS - Very early on: Use burning arrow as your single target early on and sharpnel shot for multitarget. You can run ballista and firetraps early on to help damage. Just drop those and keep running, when it comes to small packs. Switch to lightning arrow with LMP later on.
SKILLS - Later (level 30+) blast rain will be your best single target ability for a long, long time. Barrage will only become stronger with sufficient +additional arrows. Link your blast rain to elemental focus, conc effect, weapon elemental damage (fast attacks/physical projectile damage work too, if you don't have the colors) for a strong single target skill.
SKILLS - Tornado Shot. You can pick up TS, once you'll kill captrain Gravicius in Act 3. Once you get GMP in act 4, this'll become a truly fiercesome ability, capable of killing single and multitarget both.
MANA - Get the "Essence Sap" node early on ASAP. This will make mana management very easy and you'll be able to drop mana flasks. Later on (endgame) you can rely on mana leech from the duelist cluster and once you pick up your Lioneye's Fall jewel, the converted claw nodes will keep your mana sustain covered.
LEVELING UNIQUES - You don't need any uniques to level. In fact you can play completely selffound. However, giving your bow-girl (or guy) some uniques will speed up the process. You'll find some good leveling uniques in the spoiler below
BOWS - While leveling rare bows with a lot of phys damage are your best friends. Prioritize them over elemental bows.
LIFE AND RESISTS - Try to get +maximum life on all armor pieces and jewellery. This will frequently make the difference between you breezing through all content and getting destroyed. Starting with act 3-4 resists become quite important. Try to keep your resitances (not chaos) over 50% - better 75%. Resistances are an integral part of path of exile.
FLASKS - Upgrade your flasks frequently! Just drop some transmutation orb on your flasks. Try to always have an anti-bleed and an anti-freeze flask. Bismuth, Granite and Stibnite flasks will help you a lot while leveling by the way.
ALTERATIONS - Save your alteration orbs. You'll need them to craft a decent bow and to adjust your flasks at some point.
DECENT HUMAN BEING - Help other players, you were also a new player at some point. Don't be a dick. Thank you.
FILTERS - Use a lootfilter (shameful self-promotion right there)
Optional Leveling Uniques
-Weapon: Stormcloud -> Roth's Recurve -> Death Harp -> Infractem+Thief's Torment -> Lionseye Glare
-Amulet: Night's Hold (if available in league)
-Armor: Tabula Rasa
-Belt: Wurm's, Meginord's
-Gloves: Slitherpinch
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FLASK OPTIMIZATION:
Flasks are an integral part of Path of Exile. Generally speaking your flasks are designed to provide you with 3 things: defenses, offense and utility. As it stands the current meta is best played, by having 1 movementspeed/utility flask, cover all you weakpoints (freeze and bleed for us) and use unique damage flasks in all other slots. That being said, offensive flasks are often quite expensive and life flasks are quite good for a long time, so don't feel bad about using 1-3 life flasks.
So here's some pointers, before we list our favorite unique flasks:
QUALITY - later on (endgame). You want all your flasks to have 20% quality. This is very important. Don't neglect this aspect.
WEAKNESSES - Bleed, freeze and shock (if you're using vinktar's) can be quite dangerous to the life of your archer. Unless your ascendancy/items provides you with defences against those, you want your flasks to cover them.
PRICE - Some unique flasks are always fairly cheap. You don't need to invest into Vinktar, Tastge of Hate and Dying Sun ASAP.A diamond flask, atziri's promise, a quicksilver flask and 1-2 healing potions will carry you quite far
Example setup (budget/leveling):
Example setup (early endgame):
Example setup (optimized build 3):
Example setup (expensive for pathfinder):
Other strong flasks:
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ENCHANTMENTS AND CORRUPTIONS:
Enchantments and corruptions are 2 ways to provide your build with rather large upgrades. The cost however is usually quite high - these items are on low supply and high demand. A good helmet with the perfect enchantment can be extremely costly. Think of these as of ultimate upgrades.
Corruptions:
- Don't EVER corrupt your gear, without having a replacement. Vaal Orbs may DESTROY your items
- Never corrupt harbinger bows
- You can try to corrupt quivers for +1 arrows
- You can try to corrupt amules for +1 max frenzy charg or +1 curse
- You can try corrupt amulets for +1 curse on hit or +1 max frenzy charge.
Enchantments:
- If you run Tornado shot, try to get the increased secondary projectile enchant
- If you run barrage try to run the +2 barrage projectile enchantment
- On boots the top enchantment vs bosses is elemental penetration
- If bosses are not your focus the leech, attack speed and movement speed enchants works great too
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DEALING WITH REFLECT:
Reflect can be quite dangerous as a ranger. Scions have a lot of protection from reflect with their elementalist ascendancy, rangers on the other hand need to be very careful. The following advise will help you take precautions to mitigate reflect damage (NOTE: rangers should still not run reflect maps, scions can do it though)
1) Have a pool of 5000+ HP to soak through the damage
2) Vaal Pact. You absolutly need vaal pact.
3) Use atziri's promise to take mobs down faster and leech yourself back
4) Consider grabbing the Anti-Reflect (Yugul) Pantheon
5) Have a instant-flask ready
6) Have a 1-2 CWDT cluster with Immortal call/Increased duration.
7) Have at least 45% evasion, acrobatics and arrow dodging
8) Don't use lionseye with reflect maps
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BOSS FIGHTS
Uber Izaro
Two things about Izaro make him somewhat troublesome. His ability to do over 6000 damage bursts and traps. We’re relying on vaal pact, so we can’t regen through traps.
You can take some precautions however to make the fight easier:
- Use the -25% phys damage over time Pantheon while running to mitigate trap damage.
- Bring a stibnite and potentially basalt flask to avoid and mitigate izaro’s damage.
- Avoid his attacks. Treat him similar to atziri. You don’t want to get touched by his attacks at all.
Overall, once your gear is fine, it’s a fairly easy fight. Traps are still dangerous
Fight difficulty: 4/10
Phoenix
Mediocre fight. Keep medium distance to him. Bait his whirlwind and shoot into his back. You can facetank his normal hits, but don’t get too greedy. Never try tanking his charged explosion. Don’t let too many phoenixes spawn. Kill them with 1-2 LA/TS/IS shots
Avoid the following enchantments:
- Temp chains
- Increased area of effect
- Minus max resistances
- Monster speed
Hydra
I find this fight very easy. This is one of those pattern dodging games. I’ve never been any good at them, but hydra’s pattern is very avoidable. Dodge those balls and run around her (but always stay close) to avoid her attacks. Don’t get scared by the “Doomshot”. You can dodge it just like any other attack, run around her, but stay in close proximity. Avoid any enchantments that’ll speed her up or slow you down however. This can prove lethal very fast.
Fight difficulty: 4/10
Avoid the following enchantments:
- Temp chains
- Increased area of effect
- Minus max resistances
- Monster speed
Minotaur
Once you hit the HP threshold of ~6000 life, you can facetank him most of the time and outleech his damage, decent gear provided. However once he does his “burrow attack”, instantly blink arrow away. The burrow “sunder” can deal several ticks of damage, which can destroy us instantly. Don’t overenchant the map and switch positions if there’s way too many stacked falling rocks AoEs.
Avoid the following enchantments:
- Vulnerability
- Crit Chance/Damage
- Avoid several damage stacking enchantments at once.
- We don’t have the mitigation to prevent one-shots otherwise.
Fight difficulty: 6/10
Chimera
I find this guardian to be fairly dangerous. Throughout the fight, several attacks can be very dangerous/lethal. His normal hits are not dangerous at all. You can facetank and outleech those. Avoid his bladeflurry, by blink arrowing out. However, his minion and “hide and seek phases” are very dangerous. “Flame Hounds” and “Chaos Snakes” both have a unique boss that can dispense CRAZY boss damage. Be careful and save your atziri flask/dying sun (if you use one) for them. Make sure to have a portal open during his hide&seek phase. The chimera tends to deal a lot of damage and can drain through your life fast, since you can’t leech during that phase. Avoid damage enchantments.
Hard, challenging, but manageable fight. Similar to Uber-Atziri, you have to know the fight well. You can facetank his attacks and outleech his beam. Be careful not to tank his yellow orbs though - they can stun you long enough to take you out. Alterantively use Kaom’s Boots to prevent this. Watch some videos, learn the fight, once you have decent gear, you’ll be able to farm shaper effortlessly (however, similar to uber-atziri, you will still likely die here and there, unless you play flawlessly. The shaper punishes your mistakes. )
Fight difficulty: 8/10
Atziri
The fight difficulty becomes significantly lower, if you have some practice and knowledge. It also rewards dodging and positioning. Overall, once you know the basics and have some gear, you can destroy all bosses, before they can do any harm.
Several things should get noted:
Unless you can kill the second vaal near instantly, try to kill both vaal oversouls at once
During the trio, kill the chick first. Her ranged spine attacks deal unholy amounts of damage
Use stibnites and anti-bleed during the trio fight
Never ever shoot at the Atziri clone. It’s possible to survive it, with scion+yugul pantheon, still it’s very dangerous.
Avoid all flameblasts and stormcalls during the atziri fight
Fight dificulty: 3/10
Uber Atziri
I think this is the hardest bossfight in the game. Unlike normal Atziri, It’s very hard to reach a level of gear, where you can trivialize fights, by destroying the bosses outright. The best strategy becomes learning to react to their attack patterns. All I can advise you: practice normal atziri several times, learn to dodge normal atziri’s attacks for several minutes (note: Uber is faster!). Learn to avoid the vaal oversoul ball lightnings and have a decent level of gear to survive the trio fight.
This fight is absolutely manageable AND farmable, but you’ll have to learn it the hard way.
Good luck.
Fight difficulty: 9/10
Hall of the Grandmasters
Don’t do it. It’s full of PVP characters, some of them are designed to outregen any damage and it’s not worth the time swapping Block Chance gems and running scorching ray to slay those guys.
Fight difficulty: Don’t do it/10
Beachhead
Don’t tank volatiles and don’t fall asleep.
Fight difficulty: 2/10
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UPGRADING, TRICKS, ITEMIZATION
I might move this into the equipment section a bit later, but the first post reached it's maximum size, so let's just keep it here for now... (also I need more fancy pictures
I often hear the question "look at all my equipment and passives and tell me what to upgrade". Now here's the answer: I can't tell you that. You need to drive a car to get a feeling for.
But, there are some good news too. There are some rules and guidelines that might help you with that
1) Prioritize defense. You want at least 3500++ HP and capped resistances by level 70-80. Upgrades to get to that point are cheap. Use Poe.Xyz and get there.
2) Don't be afraid to use a +30 str/+30 int stat points from the skilltree. It's better than trying to get a perfect piece of jewelry
3) General rule: more unique = better rares. Maligaros/S&D + RatsNest + AtziriStep + Drillneck + your bow provide 0 resists. So don't attempt to get there until your rares are good enough to allow you to do it. You likely want to upgrade 2-3 items at a time. "I'm going to replace my belt and left ring, to switch my boots to atziri's step".
4) The only reason to use drillneck before having a 6 (or at least 5-link) is Infractem+Thiefs torment. Drillneck can provide a huge DPS boost, but it takes a pierce gem link to do so otherwise and there are equally good options for the first 4-5 links.
5) Lionseye and Infractem/Thiefs/Drillneck trio are good options but not "final" upgrades. I can't tell you what's better.
6) Never, never, never forget about upgrading your flasks. By level 80-85 you want each single flask handcrafted with the perfect suffix/affix. By 90 you want all of them (including atziri's promise!) with 20% quality. These upgrades are much cheaper than anything else and provide insane boosts.
7) When picking between two "luxury" upgrades, try picking the more permanent one. If you can pick between a insane ring, that would easily help you cap all your resists and allow you to use a drillneck later and a bow with 15% more DPS, go for the ring. You'll want to replace the bow again anyway later for something even better.
8) Get a 5-Link armor and a 4-link bow first. That's more links than enough until you can afford a 6link AND a drillneck at once, while keeping all your resists capped.
9) Level gems in your offslot!
10) If picking between 2 bows with the same DPS, prioritize the slower one (lionseye is a bit of a special case)
11) If picking between crit chance and attackspeed with a otherwise equal bow. Go for crit chance.
12) You can regret some mana leech nodes if you get some mana leech on your gear.
13) Focus on "weakest links upgrades". A wise strategy is to always upgrade your worst item to the best item you can find. You don't want too many "small upgrades".
14) It takes 534 chromatics to create a 4-red maligaros ( on average! ). If you get a 3-red stop until you can afford safely proceeding with this madness.
15) Don't vaal things for no good reason! Don't vaal your equipment! Never vaal harbingers! Only vaal boots/gloves/helmets you're going to use if you got replacements! Get a item to 20% quality+right links and colors before vaaling!
16) Think of crafting as of vaaling (I mean complete white->rare crafting, with mass alterations). Unless you are ready to take the risk of losing mass currency, don't do it. I've spent over 7500 alterations + mass regals, without getting a upgrade.
17) Create yourself a fancy hideout and level your masters.
18) Weapon elemental damage and Physical to Lightning is a deadly combination!
19) Try to get 300-500 accuracy from gear.
20) When searching for upgrades, consider what your masters can do for you and craft the missing stat.
21) If you're new to crafting and you're asking yourself "should I buy or craft gear". Usually you're better of buying the gear.
22) You can attempt crafting your own chest piece if you find a 6-socketed high level evasion armor. It might be much more cheaper than buying one.
23) Acuity are hands down the best gloves for this build. Also the most expensive item. Don't try saving for one until you have everything else. (I can't believe I need to say this)
24) 6-Linking yourself is a very very frustrating process. One can sometimes be lucky, but most of the time you will be really disappointed. Unless you know what you're getting into, I highly suggest buying or mastercrafting a 6-link.
25) Added fire damage is pretty much always a worse choice than pierce+drillneck on tornado shot. As for puncture: just don't do it.
26) You can also use split arrow or ice arrow instead of tornado shot with this build (with some chances). You can also replace puncture with a utility shot (split arrow/frenzy+cast on crit+assassins mark... lot's of options here).
27) If you're playing on standard there are some extra gearing options, such as "The Taming" ring or insane mirrorable equip, such as the Glyph Mark bow.
28) An end-game option is to switch to a 6-link windripper. The elemental version of this build is a bit tricky, but provides an equal or higher clear speed, while adding more magic find (one day I'll write a extra section!)
29) Atziri's step are hands down the best boots for the build
30) Rat's nest is hands down the best helmet. Alpha's howl is another decent option
31) Daresso's is a decent chest if you can get your resists elsewhere
32) With enough DPS you can replace your heralds with haste for even more and faster farming. However, we're talking of 20000+ tornado tooltip shot DPS
33) Vaal haste is amazing. So is assassins mark and portal. Optimizing those and your flask usage results in a huge clear speed increase.
34) Optimize your flasks for atziri/uber-atziri! Check the flask section if you intend to do those runs
35) Not a ingame item, but get a SSD. Your load times will be super fast, you'll save a lot of time and have more fun in general (much more satisfying and cheaper upgrade than better GPU/CPU)
36) Don't use queen of the forest, without alphas howl. Don't use alphas howl without grace. I don't recommend using grace. Don't use all 3, unless you're playing on hardcore. And even then, think twice, before doing so.
37) If you get a blue harbinger with a single "tyrannical" mod you can regal it (don't augment) and ask a player with Elreon+Tora level 8 to multimod the bow. Usually the result will be a 300+ DPS bow and very sellable. With a lot of luck it can reach up to 480+ DPS (we're talking 1:200 luck though)
38) Vaal level 20 hatred and reduced mana. Don't vaal any other non leveled/qualitied gems or you'll have 20/20 hindsight
39) You can level the increased duration in the CWDT cluster. CWDT only limits the level of active gems
40) Meginords is a very strong choice during the beginning of the league and should only be replaced once you have a very strong bow and decent equipment. Ideally only replace it for a really good rare belt or doryanis (in order to use one more unique, usually atziri/drillneck)
41) +Mana is a pretty strong attribute that especially helps if you have low accuracy/crit chance or run 50% mana regen maps a lot
THANKS TO:
GGG - for this awesomesauce game
C4pture (ingame: ShrubSquad) - he was the one who came up with the original tree (but ended up playing something else)
Panini_aux_olives - Useful thoughts, also answering the questions of other players, which helps a lot
PePewPewPewPewPewPewPewPew - for providing some enlightening thoughts
obsidiandawn - for providing the arcane circles brush pack, that I used to create the images.
Corrections and useful thoughts:
MortalKombat3
Ultima66
takeme
Umbral_Sky
Phil82
Please don't PM me ingame with filter/guide questions, post them on the forum, after reading the FAQ.
Last edited by NeverSink on Nov 21, 2017, 4:48:53 PM
i will be trying this build. i really hope it works well and if i need help i may ask you things, specially cuz im rather new and i barely understand what some of the abbreviations stand for. thank you for the guide=)
I've changed and improved the intermediate leveling trees a bit. Nothing huge or major, just changed the order a little bit and added a few "in between steps" to optimize the process.
Please don't PM me ingame with filter/guide questions, post them on the forum, after reading the FAQ.
Last edited by NeverSink on Sep 7, 2014, 6:04:14 AM
I've been looking for a Atziri viable ranger build that can 'alch and go' maps, spent a day cycling through all the different puncture + Ice Shot / Tornado Shot / 4L HoA IceShot builds since I main casters and ranger is a new area for me, but you had me at
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Path of Exile has one rule - prioritize defense. If the defensive mechanics of a build fail, the build is bad and you should feel bad.
Excellent written guide. I'll give it a fresh start in like 30 minutes.