Path of Exile

Unleash static timer is a bit disapointing, would be better if it scaled with cast speed or something. Still looks nice on fights that require a lot of moving, or for builds that want to cast a few times every now and then(blade vortex and SRS mostly, I guess animate weapon if you play a self cast version). Intensify looks like increased aoe+conc effect rolled into one gem, so you don't have to swap for bosses, but it's not that great compared to pure conc for bossing if you have to move a bunch so you might still swap. It might be better than increased aoe for general clearing though, cause you'll get decent aoe most of the time and if you run into a random tough mob, you can still melt it faster by focuing your casts a bit.

Bane looks strong but math on reddit showed that it's not THAT strong with full curses and that standard supports are actually stronger in most cases, not counting the curses utility. Even counting the curse mana reservation from removing blasphemy, you're still looking at standard supports for the rest, so probably 2-3curses setup with new auras and rest normal chaos supports is going to be the best bet for Bane, rather than 5curses Doedre's Skin setup.


Also SRS is apparently getting buffs after the automatic mana cost nerfs sparked some discussions. Mana cost is going back down AND they're giving SRS some base accuracy bonuses.

zombiewizardhawk said:

Yeah but a warlords mark ring is a 'must have' for almost any build. It's just way too good to not use unless your build can't make use of leech.

Edit: Soulrend looks like ass. Barely more damage than ED but you lose all the mobility ED lets you have in exchange for a tiny bit of ES leech unless the "spell damage leeched as energy shield" also applies to damage over time from spell damage in which case some interesting possibilities might become viable.

ES leech gem looks busted as hell but it was already obvious they have been quickly working their way back to ES being 100 times better than life so not surprising.

Why do you guys find that quiver to be good? Trigger a 3link bow skill 1 time per second and give up all the amazing stats you can get on quivers, plus corrupts (cause if you corrupt it then it's a 2link bow skill)? Seems like trash.

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Soul rend: 560 hit damage plus 1944dot
Essence Drain: 541 hit damage plus 1503dot

These are pretty fucking different. The advantage ED has is the dot duration is much longer so you can fire it once then forget about it while it ticks down, and use contagion to spread it also, but if you want to do a boss fight for example, you'd be better off spamming Soul Rend, since Soul Rend does much higher damage per second as long as you keep casting. On top of that, for aoeing, Soul Rend pierces mobs so it applies the hit damage repeatedly to them, while doing the dot to everything and the shorter duration in this case won't matter as much since trash mobs will die in less than a second anyway, that said you'll probably have to run GMP on it so that should even out, besides the fact ED also requires Contagion, while Soul Rend works on its own(but again you'd probably be well served having a 4L ED to dump on bosses too).

Overall slightly different niches and playstyle. Can use both though and drop Contagion. 6L Soul Rend and 4L ED is probably going to be a fuckton better than 6L ED and 4L Contagion for both clear speed and bossing, as well as general QoL. ED Contagion will only be better on maps with really really high density where you kinda cast the spells once each and then just run as your contagion keeps spreading and killing stuff with ED's dot, but that doesn't happen that often(Breach areas for example are like that).

As for the quiver, triggering a full 3link has a bunch of uses. You can for example apply bleed so you can use bloodlust on your main skill(also get some free bleed damage out of it), use frost arrow for some free chilled ground everywhere kind of shit. Another nice utility setup would be Frenzy+Power Charge on Crit+Onslaught, which basically gives you all that shit for free while only using your main skill. It might not be the best damage option, but will be pretty neat for general mapping.

zombiewizardhawk said:

How often is the frenzy + pcoc going to be hitting mobs that aren't bosses/syndicates/super beefy rares? I haven't played a bow build in a while other than the ele-hit scion I did couple leagues ago but don't most of the skills 1shot full screens already?

You give up +1 arrow or any other corrupt you might want as well as the stats on whatever quiver you choose whether it be a rare with crit/dmg/whatever or one of the other uniques.

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You don't give up +1 arrow corrupt. You can corrupt this and replace one of the sockets with a +1 arrow, and you'd still have 2 sockets trigger. And frenzy should proc fine just hitting random shit your other skilll missed or offscreen shit or whatever. Power charge might not be procing enough however, but would still add that randomly for free sometimes/all the time on bosses.