Path of Exile

Merciless Piety down, easy fight, I think Vaal was scarier actually. She has so little health when I started shooting 5charges EAs in her face she dropped in seconds, I was just wary of the adds and her going iceshot berzerk on me so I didn't kill her that fast, but basically 5x explosive arrow+flammability with my build drops her 25% per combo. I didn't actually get hit by her ice shot though so I don't know how much it does, but she meleed me in fire avatar form a few times when I didn't have granite or molten shell on(so like 250armor and my Cloak of Flames unique) and she hit me for like 800, it was pretty pathetic.

Well she will destroy your zombies in ice shot form I think, but I think just spamming skele totem and enfeeble should kill her fairly easy from minion instability, albeit slowly. If she goes fire form a couple of times in a row early in the fight though, your zombies might just rip her apart before she gets to kill them.

It's fine to have 2 abilities, one for single and one for aoe, a lot of builds do especially archer builds since LA is fucking shit at single target DPS. Some use Frenzy, some use Elemental Hit. What I wonder is where is your damage coming from? It seems you have an insane amount of health which is great but not a single DPS increase worth noting(the stuff in the duellist starting area is fairly poor). Iron Grip I guess but your strength isn't that high either. At this point I'd rush to grab Catalyse obviously since you're close. The second one you could pick but it's a bit far off, is Static Blows. Static Blows will give you a 20% chance(with the other minor behind it) to Shock even when you don't crit. That's what a lot of LA builds use actually, since the base damage is good enough that you should get a short shock at least, and then the chained LA will proc the aoe again on the same mob that was shocked and do more damage and possibly shock it again for another chain bounce to do even more dmg etc.

I would also respec the 3 points in the marauder exit area where you pick those fire resist nodes. Go from the top it's only one str, invest the 2 points you gained into 2x 6% all resists instead they're a better deal imo(unless your gear is already built around the fire resist then forget about it).

I think you'll probably want to add Chain eventually to LA too. Or fork at least. Life gain on hit is better than life leech too for large coverage aoes like LA. Keep leech on elemental hit as that's going to be better.

The build is a bit stretched out, to be honest I think you would have been better off starting as a marauder, could have skipped all the upper duellist area and focused on the golem's blood and berzerk nodes coming from the bottom after blood magic, but eh that's a bit too late for that ^^. Overall though it's a solid build and you shouldn't have an issue I don't think, LA is a very strong skill currently.

Well I linked it last page but gonna link it again since I got a PM about it too, here's the guide I wrote on my EA build:http://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/172483

To answer quickly, EA isn't a typical attack, you don't gear at all for attack damage, you don't gear anything really, all you need is a Quill Rain and the correct sockets/gems and that's about it. It's one of the cheapest strong build you can make, it requires an initial investment unlike say LA, but you never have to spend more later on, Quill Rain is your endgame weapons basically(you can find a better weapon but the chances are ridiculously low and it only starts dropping at like 74). The passives you want are the aoe and elemental/fire dmg stuff in the templar witch area, for damage. Don't need a whole lot of it though.

Have to understand however that there's multiple variations of the EA build, the main ones being Blood Magic builds(generally marauders but it can be done with other stuff at the expense of wasting at least 1point like witch or templar) and the EB builds like mine, or the hybrid build where you don't pick Blood Magic on the passive tree but link blood magic and life gain on hit+LMP to explosive arrow so you can use 3x 40% auras on your mana while doing Blood Magic, at the sacrifice of a support gem. Within these variations there's even more variations with the LMP/GMP/Proliferation choices. My build relies on a single explosive arrow shot that will then proliferate large burning dots and elemental equilibrium to increase that stuff, but the LMP and GMP builds don't use all the burning stuff and instead kill on the explosion. Now it seems better but for example my build is better at killing single target(without using another ability) as well as coverage due to proliferation aoe being way larger than explosions especially once you have the aoe passives and the coverage is also uniform and lasts for several seconds, while LMP/GMP can be irregular depending on obstacles or mobs positionning.

I'm in the process of uploading 2 more videos I shot just now to show how the build behaves now that I've finally leveled the AoE stuff and not just health, it's a ton more efficient(probably could have done it before finishing health tbh, it's only 7points so I wouldn't have still had like 3600health or so which is acceptable but eh safety first). It's pretty fun to play, a lot more "complex" than just spamming one key since you have to count the shots, wait for the explosion and now I've also added LA to my set to proc elemental equilibrium before and after explosions(before for explosion dmg and after for burn damage since the explosion gives the mobs added fire resist) so it's a lot of buttons to press especially with the high attack speed.

However and this is important, LA is still vastly better. LA is simply super strong right now, it was super strong before and was nerfed into the ground and it's still probably the strongest ability in the game. Well maybe dual totems I don't know, funny though cause both specs were OP and thoroughly nerfed, and yet here we are, still the best. EK and Freezing Pulse are pretty good contenders too but EK has a major flaw(reflecting physical damage) and Freezing Pulse has some severe downsides too(mostly doing shit damage at more than half a screen away).


Edit: 2nd map, don't really know where to go/what to do since I haven't really paid attention to streams during maps, works out fine though.

Krassus_sl said:

Thanks Pyros, makes more sense now, it's purely elemental and you're using QR for the crazy speed on it. The blood magic thing makes sense, it rapes your hps with auras so the gem negates it so you can still use auras without the HP hit.

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Yep the issues with the gem however is well the fact it's a gem so that's one link you can't use on something else, and the cost increase which makes EA costs like 180health per shot instead of like 75, so with a blood magic gem you're forced into using LMP or GMP and Life gain on hit too to sustain the cost, LMP/GMP is to have more arrows shooting, then each arrows heal you for the mob they land on, then again for the explosion per target hit by each explosion. But yeah otherwise EA is similar to a spell, even though it's not a spell, nor an attack(well the explosion, the initial hit is an attack). It does a solid amount of base damage because it doesn't scale with a lot of stuff which in return actually make it scale very well with the few things it scales with(concentrated effect for example).

Edit: Bandit quest, always take the hp. Unless you plan on going CI(but you won't with a duellist, it's a caster thing). Even for CI it's arguable since it helps getting you there a lot.