[Witchhunter]Explosive Shot/Grenade Grenadier, T15 Maps cleared

E: Upadeted the tree for lvl 92 with more of a defensive focus, dropped avatar of fire

Since there is currently a lack of discussion of what works in red maps and beyond I figured I'd share my experiences.

What has the build done so far



Pros/Cons



Gameplay Style:

Essentially 2 Button build, using Explosive Grenade for Damage and Explosive Shot to trigger the grenade. Currently experimenting with Avatar of Fire with heavy Fire Pen investment. Using Oil Grenade for Fire Exposure and Flammability for Curse for Map bosses.

Links:


Ascendancy Order:

Pitiless Killer - Judge, Jury and Executioner - Zealous Inquisition - Witchbane(Might be worth switching order around, explosions are really nice)

Tree: https://maxroll.gg/poe2/passive-tree/674rj0zk

Char Screen:



Gear:



Would love to hear if someone has figured out how to properly scale defenses on this side of the tree, my only idea right now is just to increase my raw defensive stats (life, es, evasion, armour) some, but that feels inefficient.

why do you use giants blood noteable passive?

you canot wear 2 x bows at once right?

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Rustomer#5949 wrote:

why do you use giants blood noteable passive?

you canot wear 2 x bows at once right?

Oh, thats why my tree is funky. Its supposed to be avatar of fire, i just pathed to the wrong keystone in the planner, will fix.

Respectfully you either got great deals on gear early as people had to sell low, or just got flat out lucky with what you were able to buy. Unless sniping sales that people don't know better, this would probably be ~350+ EX to get gear for currently. While you got lucky with that bow craft, people could realistically never hit a bow like that themselves, which is why they are ~100ex themself. Just wanted to point that out since you bring the cost up yourself. Otherwise fairly well optimized, and a good set to follow for people who may like an explosive shot detonation build.

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DarkSrife#0542 wrote:

Respectfully you either got great deals on gear early as people had to sell low, or just got flat out lucky with what you were able to buy. Unless sniping sales that people don't know better, this would probably be ~350+ EX to get gear for currently. While you got lucky with that bow craft, people could realistically never hit a bow like that themselves, which is why they are ~100ex themself. Just wanted to point that out since you bring the cost up yourself. Otherwise fairly well optimized, and a good set to follow for people who may like an explosive shot detonation build.

FWIW what i paid was:
12 ex for helmet
10 ex each for the rings
15 ex boots
20 ex chest
30 ex total for jewels
15 ex helmet
Gloves and Amulet were selfcrafted

But that was 2 days or so ago, so point taken, ill edit it to not accidentally mislead people.

First real thread in the topic, thanks for sharing!
I was playing around physical/projectile builds on WH+Crossbows, but all of them seems to be close to unplayable. Pure physical crit and bleed lacks of skills (or skill damage) to clear, glacial bolt/shotgun build lacks cold/ele nodes in the Merc part of the tree and the walls from the glacial bolt are so tricky in most of the terrain, feels like there are no other WH Xbow options except the grenades.

As for the defenses - concider taking ES/Dex nodes (Strong chin, battle-hardened) in your current tree over avatar of fire, they provide a huge buff to the defense numbers and stun/ailment resists with the proper gearing. Also, picking culling and barrier ascendancies over concentration feels more defensive options. This game does not feel like allow you to build offensive enough build to stop taking care about defense numbers. I've also found "cheap" health regen nodes (Hard to kill) pretty useful, at least at t1-t5 gear level setups.

I've seen some variants of this build where they try to optimise for the grenade fuse time to get it as low as possible, to avoid having to use explosive shot. Tbh I'm not sure why they went that way, but I'm curious what you're thoughts are on that: optimising for overall damage with explosive shot vs optimising for grenade fuse time.

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WallenJenkins#2512 wrote:

First real thread in the topic, thanks for sharing!
I was playing around physical/projectile builds on WH+Crossbows, but all of them seems to be close to unplayable. Pure physical crit and bleed lacks of skills (or skill damage) to clear, glacial bolt/shotgun build lacks cold/ele nodes in the Merc part of the tree and the walls from the glacial bolt are so tricky in most of the terrain, feels like there are no other WH Xbow options except the grenades.

As for the defenses - concider taking ES/Dex nodes (Strong chin, battle-hardened) in your current tree over avatar of fire, they provide a huge buff to the defense numbers and stun/ailment resists with the proper gearing. Also, picking culling and barrier ascendancies over concentration feels more defensive options. This game does not feel like allow you to build offensive enough build to stop taking care about defense numbers. I've also found "cheap" health regen nodes (Hard to kill) pretty useful, at least at t1-t5 gear level setups.

Yeah, I was a bit disapointed about the viability, I tried hard to make any kind of shooty merc work when I got my first good set of gear but in the end grenades were just so much better.

Thanks for the pointers with the def, you are right, I redid my tree, got some new gear and at 3k armour, 6k evasion and 2.7k combined HP I feel pretty tanky now even in lvl 80 maps. Eliminated another button by getting Xophs Blood which gives constant fire exposure. Might finally be able to get my fourth ascension, dunno if I‘m just terribad but trials feel harder than juiced T17s.

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terrrytibbs#0938 wrote:

I've seen some variants of this build where they try to optimise for the grenade fuse time to get it as low as possible, to avoid having to use explosive shot. Tbh I'm not sure why they went that way, but I'm curious what you're thoughts are on that: optimising for overall damage with explosive shot vs optimising for grenade fuse time.

I tried that version but dislike it a bit, not only does it lose us a gem link (and likely a projectile) but it also takes away some agency. Often when I run into a 6+ mod rare i pre-lay a grenade field and then kite the mob into it and detonate via shot, with low fuse time that doesnt work. We also still need some form of ignite if we want to use immolate and ele focus as dps links.

A big benefit to low fuse play is the ergonomics, without a comfy setup the 1-2 playstyle can get bad, for me that doesnt apply due to the peripherals i use but I can see someone choosing to make a decision based on tbat.

E:

Fleshing out some more thoughts:

During bossing the build allready runs into the sort-of hardcap of CDR, dropping explosive shot in a way functions as a pretty high attack speed increase (if the grenades detonate by themself we have more time to throw more grenades instead of firing), which goes to waste unless we manage to solve the CDR issue. So not only do we need to get duration down we also need to get CDR up, the points for that have to come from somewhere and without insane gear they cant come from offensive nodes, but cutting defensives or QoL is risky.

So TL:DR : Unless ergonomics is a major issue I dont see the strength of low-fuse.

Thanks for the reply, I've seen people combo gas grenade with explosive grenade, any reason why you didn't do that?