[1.0.1]theWombo's Crit Lightning Arrow with Pierce; FROST WALL ABUSE(semi noob-friendly)

Normal: OAK (definitely if HP build)
Cruel: Oak(My suggestion, 18% IPD to help deal more phys to leech, attack speed(Kraityn) comes naturally and doesn't help mana sustain but its your decision. Keep in mind you will gain attack speed from frenzy). Or you can get a skillpoint if you find neither worthwhile.
Merciless: Kraityn(Frenzy) I use frenzy as my single target damage. Charges add substantial damage to frenzy when its 20/20. Your choice between frenzy or skillpoint. I don't recommend power charges because they won't be up all the time as frenzy will be, but if you are making a different build that can take advantage of this its up to you.

Feel Free to spec into other nodes earlier based on needs(attributes,elemental resistances) as well as nearby +30 Attribute nodes.

This is a general guideline. Priorities Top being most important, bottom being least important
1)HP first
2)Influence(Aura)/Ondars Guile
3)Acrobatics(When you have none or insignifiant AR/ES gear)
4)Phase Acrobatics
5)Crit Nodes(LAST, make sure you have min 48% evade to dodge your own physical reflect, max out your elemental resistances so you don't die to ele reflect)
6)Elemental resistances nodes(optional) When needed, respec out once resists are met by gear.
7)Point Blank(Optional) Has its pros and its cons.
Pros: Will not die to offscreen relect(probably), free increased damage on mobs that you can see, 50% increased damage to single targets if you stand up right next to them and attack.
Cons: No damage offscreen, are in closer range as a non melee

36 Skill Points

62 Skill Points

98 Skill Points


Here is a link to my Current skill tree

First off we are using primarily DEX based gear so it may be very hard to roll ideal colors.
Lightning Arrow
4L: Lightning Arrow, LMP, Pierce, Faster Attacks
5L: Lightning Arrow, LMP, Pierce, Faster Attacks, Weapon Elemental Damage
6L: Lightning Arrow, LMP, Pierce, Faster Attacks, Weapon Elemental Damage, Increased Critical Damage.

Frenzy
4L: Frenzy, Faster Attacks, Added Fire, Weapon Elemental Damage
5L: Frenzy, Faster Attacks, Added Fire, Weapon Elemental Damage, Increased Critical Damage
6L: Frenzy, Faster Attacks, Added Fire, Weapon Elemental Damage, Increased Critical Damage, Unsure(Increased Critical Strikes sounds good though.)

Auras
3-4L, Preferably on an alpha's howl. Reduced Mana-Grace-Wrath-?

On my helm I also have crit weakness attached. I don't like microing curses so I don't use this often other than in PvP. You can put whatever single gem you like that you might want mana reduced on! haha :P

Support These are hard to come up with given RNG nature of our DEX gear.
TIP: You can use Armour based gloves to roll colors easier.

Enduring Cry+Frost Wall
RRRB(I got this luckily on my Blood Dance and decided to keep it)
CWDT-Enduring Cry-Increased Duration-Frost Wall.

OR

Frost Wall-Enfeeble
GBBR(Feasible on Blood Dance)
CWDT-Frost Wall-Enfeeble-Increased Duration.

OR

Power Charge Generation(Requires high Quality PCoC only do this endgame)
GBBR
CWDT-Ice Spear-Power Charge on Critical-GMP

Something along those lines, try to fit enfeeble somewhere, its VERY GOOD.

Early links:

SKELEBRO TOTEM This is good early-mid for defense/distraction
RBBG: Spell Totem-Summon Skeletons-Faster Casting-Blind

BOSSNUKE For fun, knockback, and lols
RRBB: Spell Totem-Frost Wall-Faster Casting-Increased Duration

Item Mod Priorities
This is a general guideline. Priorities Top being most important, bottom being least important
1)Health and Resists
2)Leech(2% mana leech minimum is what I found, may be different for you, %health leech is good too. LEECH is for LATEGAME. If you have problems pots are you friend early-mid game as leech doesn't help much there)
3)Accuracy
4)Flat ELE rolls
5)Crit Multiplier
6)Crit Chance and % Ele Rolls

Bow Mod Priorities
This is a general guideline. Priorities Top being most important, bottom being least
1)High Physical DPS. If you are endgame crafting your own bow, look for rolling a tyrannical first. This is the hardest mod to roll and thus should be rolled first.
2)Critical Strike Chance. At the moment I originally switched from a 5L Lionseye's Glare with 300DPS to a 5L thicket bow with 240 dps with a higher crit chance, I had the same tooltip dps on my LA. This doesn't take into account increased chance to shock as well as not dieing to physical reflect. Physical reflect was the reason I switched. I never went back.
3)High Elemental Damage. Lightning>Cold>Fire. Lightning With a cold roll you can freeze mobs with your high crit chance and multiplier.
4)Attack Speed.(This may be more important on innately slower bows? Unsure as I have not tried this out.
5)Crit Multiplier.

Note that you will most likely not get all of these. If you do you have a godly bow.



OLD ITEMS

Note that DPS is not reflected in tooltip since Point Blank can further increase(or decrease if far away) damage.

Lightning Arrow with 6 frenzy

Lightning Arrow with 3 Power

Frenzy Base DPS

Frenzy with 6 Frenzy charges

Frenzy with 6 frenzy charges+ 3 powercharges


I also forgot to include Lightning arrow with 3 Power+6 Frenzy, but its >10k

Since this gear does not use Chain, LA with pierce's 110% mana multiplier becomes reasonably practical to sustain on mana leech using a physical damage based bow.(Unsure if Voltaxic is able to sustain mana costs). I also use two mana pots and two hybrid pots to sustain my mana costs.

Total Attributes
Strength 104
Dexterity 213
Intelligence 93

Elemental Damage
Weapon Lightning Damage +% 30

Physical Damage
Physical Bow Damage +% 98

Accuracy
Accuracy Rating 426
Accuracy Rating +% 20
Bow Accuracy Rating +% 30

Defense
Maximum Energy Shield +% 34.6
Energy Shield Delay -% 10
Base Evasion Rating 53
Evasion Rating +% 60.6
Evasion Rating +% Per Frenzy Charge 4

Life
Base Maximum Life 134
Maximum Life +% 240

Mana
Base Maximum Mana 62.5
Mana Leech From Physical Damage % 2
Mana Regeneration Rate +% 20

Movement
Base Movement Velocity +% 7

Speed
Attack Speed +% 18
Bow Attack Speed +% 6

Offense
Base Critical Strike Multiplier +% 50
Base Arrow Pierce % 35
Projectile Damage +% 24
Critical Strike Chance +% 235
Bow Critical Strike Chance +% 220
Bow Critical Strike Multiplier +% 70

Resistance
Base Resist All Elements % 8

Buff
Aura Effect +% 26
Base Mana Reservation +% -5

Charges
Max Endurance Charges 3
Max Frenzy Charges 5
Max Power Charges 3

Keystone
Keystone Acrobatics 1
Keystone Point Blank 1
Acrobatics Additional Chance To Dodge % 10
Keystone Phase Acrobatics 1
Keystone Projectile Evasion 1

"

FireAtWill wrote:

What was your reasoning for taking Point Blank? Do you often fight in melee range?

I found myself extremely tanky after [1.0.0] release with an extra 1.5k health and a buffed acrobatics on top of it. With cast on damage taken +20 Quality Enfeeble + frost wall, I also became very hard to hit by melees since they would be instantly pushed back upon damage taken, and many spells would be blocked by the frost wall as well. Thus I can run in and take advantage of point blank whenever I want to; if I do not run in I seem to do around the same amount of damage anyways; the effect of point blank was immediately apparent to me.

By shooting through the frost wall at close range it just adds to the shotgun effect of my build with point blank's multiplier*3 procs of LA onto one mob.

This can add up really quickly if you are taking a lot of damage.. earlier I was doing a 6 party piety run and she had done a lot of damage to me so ~7 frost walls were up in front of her and I dps'ed half her health in half a second(so fast my party was wondering what happened).

"

namad wrote:

What also doesn't make sense is.... if frost wall somehow vastly raises DPS, wouldn't you want to manually cast it on anything you wanted increased dps for?

Manually casting it means not attacking; by not attacking and casting frost wall I believe this may decrease my dps, not mentioning the microing involved that would make this slightly impractical. I do not like microing since I simplify everything for my underperforming laptop :(. You may try this out yourself and see if you like it. You can also use a spell totem+Frostwall+faster casting+increased duration for bosses. I usually play with a party so the spell totem is slightly distracting in a party so I use my last 4L to build power charges instead.

Elemental Reflect
Elemental Reflect is something I do not worry much about either. I can point blank a pack of elemental reflect mobs and most of the time be okay. I am not sure how to explain this other than elemental reflect being nerfed at the start of 1.0.0 and having max resists. However, there are some rare instances where elemental reflect may be a problem. To counter these rare instances I use a Life Gained on Hit gem to have no problems with reflect maps, even in high level maps. Note that the Life Gained on Hit gem adds a insane amount of survivability almost anywhere.

Physical Reflect
I believe I spoke about reflect multiple times in the guide. After some patch during open beta, reflect is based on your own accuracy and evasion. That means if you have 100% accuracy due to use of Lionseye's Glare, you are highly prone to one shotting yourself if you are not careful. Thankfully, you can apply the opposite of this idea as well. If you have 95% evasion, you can evade nearly all of the physically reflected damage. This is achieved in my build by using the grace gem along with the ondar's guile keystone(doubles evasion for projectiles. What this means is that if you are at 48% evasion or higher, you have a 95% chance to evade physical reflect and it is no problem. I believe acrobatic's 40% chance to dodge helps this too.

"

Kirielis wrote:

So what's with that bow, why not use Chin Sol since you're getting up close and personal?

I have not tried this build out with Chin Sol yet, But I may try it out one day because it seems interesting, however I do not think it would out DPS my bow.

My Imperial Bow is great with Crit which was one of the reasons why going EV/acrobatics was important to counter the physical reflect from my DPS(the reason why I switched out of using Lioneye's Glare, and cannot use it now. High Base Crit Chance is REALLY good considering ~450% increased crit chance + 150% from powercharges (planning to get another 50% from next door power charge node.. also I have room to potentially get crit chance on rings+amulet(with multiplier)) With powercharges up I think I reach around 50% crit chance, which is really good.

"

Kirielis wrote:

Just pointing out that for a 5L, the first link I would remove is actually the Faster Attacks. Keep the Pierce, it's brilliant.

If you do not have a 6L BOW, the decision of Faster Attacks vs Pierce is up to you. If you have high crit chance/damage I prefer Faster Attacks more a more consistent and thus reliable damage output. However, Pierce would enable you to abuse frost wall earlier which may help a lot at earlier levels.

Power charges aren't anything that I necessarily go after. I use it as the last part of my build when I am looking to maximize damage. I simply understand the potential behind them. With a free 4 sockets in my build, I used to link frenzy-PCoC-GMP-Increased critical strikes. However I did not like microing for charges. If you find that you like this you can try it for yourself. Thus I decided to link CWDT to ice spear for its 600% increased crit chance and PCoC to build my power charges every once in a while when you tank damage. This is not 100% sustained. However I do like the extra 200% crit chance for extra damage and extra shock stacks when the power charges are there. This happens a lot more often for me when I solo maps myself rather than having damage distributed to my team. Note that when power charges are built its easier to proc consecutive power charges.