Elemental Bow Ranger Build

Elemental Bow Build by Feels

Feels is a character that was originally created to test a build (inspired by MrPetrov) with the intention of making an extremely powerful farmer to give me a good start in Open Beta.

However as I leveled and geared up my character, I found a few weaknesses that seemed to gimp me. I was killing myself on reflect mobs almost instantly and my single target damage was abysmal, this build aims to fix these two problems.


Pros:

- Extremely Good Damage and clearing speed
- Fun to play (icesplosions)
- No Laggy Abilities
- Engaging gameplay (Fighting is not brainless, as you have to manage your flask charges. Turns out to be quite fun)
- Elemental Reflect mobs are no problem at all

Cons:

- Can only regain life by dealing damage
- Easy map mods suddenly become a problem (burning ground, chaos per second, enfeeble)
- Certain area types (tilesets) become a significant problem due to enemies being spread out and hard to see
- Can get stuck is sticky situations due to simple mistakes
- Gear and level dependent

Gameplay Summary and Explanation

Single Target --> Elemental Hit
Area Of Effect --> Split Arrow (endgame)

This build utilizes 5 diamond flasks, make sure you get each of these flasks increased charge recovery (as close to 40% as possible) and also get a belt that helps you sustain flask charges

Use your flasks on larger packs and try to kill as many mobs within that time-frame, if managed correctly you can keep 100% crit uptime(this is where you get your damage and your CC due to all enemies being frozen, burnt and shocked).

This build is able to use 5 Diamond flasks because of the passive node "Vaal Pact" which gets rid of all passive regeneration and healing from flasks but allows you to instantly leech health, this synergizes well with your increased damage from diamond flasks and renders elemental reflect unable to instantly kill you.

The math of elemental reflect (simple stuff)

Spoiler

20% of your damage is reflected, if you assume all of your damage is elemental, and you have maximized resistances, you only take 20% of that reflected damage.

So the total % of reflected damage is 0.2*0.2=0.04=4% meaning that you only require 4% leech to completely negate reflected damage (ignoring life cast cost)

At end game this build has 5% leech of all damage, which turns out to be able to heal back all reflected damage, all life lost due to casting (blood magic) and still heal after that

If you did not have Vaal pact, the damage due to the critical strike will kill you before the 20% maximum life/s heal rate even kicks in

Strengths and weaknesses in maps

Spoiler

Strengths:

-Large clumped up packs
-Bosses with mobs around them
-Open Areas
-Linear areas (dungeons and canyons)
-Larger Packs/Blood magic/reduced regeneration/no regeneration ect.
-Crabs(they explode without a second phase),Skeleton Mobs, Sea Witches, Dogs, Undead, Spiders, Flicker Mobs, Bandits, Bears

Weaknesses:

-Elemental reflect (I do not recommend you do these maps! The risk is not worth the reward, but elemental reflect packs in non elemental reflect maps are no problem at all)
-Snakes
-Enfeeble/Chaos per second/Burning Ground
-Areas like spider lair, where you cannot easily see enemies and they are spread out

Skills

Do Everything you can to get quality gems!


End Game

6L Single Target --- Leveled Elemental hit, Life Leech, Weapon Elemental Damage, Faster Attacks, Culling Strike, Increased Critical Damage.

5L Single Target --- leveled Elemental hit, Life Leech, Weapon Elemental Damage, Increased Critical damage, Faster Attacks

6L AOE --- Leveled Split Arrow, Life Leech, Weapon Elemental Damage, Chain, Faster Attacks, Increased Critical Damage

5L AOE --- Leveled Split Arrow, Life Leech, Weapon Elemental Damage, Chain, Increased Critical Damage

Auras --- Wrath, Grace, Anger

Other Useful Skills --- Critical weakness curse, Elemental Weakness Curse

Take note:
-There are certain attack speed breakpoints that render attack speed useless (keep on lookout for when you kill packs with one hit and more attack speed does not help)

-Explore available skills! test for yourself and find the skills that most suit your play-style, the skills shown are simply recommendations, Path Of Exile is the type of game where you create your own unique character.

Leveling and Gear compensations

If you do not have a 5 Linked or greater, I recommend:

4L Single Target --- Elemental Hit, Life Leech, Faster Attacks, Weapon Elemental Damage

4L AOE --- Lightning Arrow, Lesser Multiple Projectiles, Chain, Life Leech

Leveling Tips:

-Level up utilizing frenzy (if you do not have elemental hit) and Lightning arrow
-Do not Get vaal pact until you are completely ready (endgame)
-Try to get auras up and running as soon as possible, and focus majorly on survivability while leveling.

Passive Tree

This build focuses on getting increased elemental damage, life nodes, critical damage and resistances(inspired mainly by petrov).

Complete Build: http://tinyurl.com/FeelsBuild1-1

My recommendation for a level 60 build: http://tinyurl.com/FeelsBuild601-1

Gear and Stats

Goals for effective clearing:

Life - 2800 or above
DPS - Sheet DPS of 1200 or above on default attack without auras
Resistances - Capped at 73% - 80% - 80% (need to fix fire resistance badly)
Critical Multiplier - 400% on each of your respective skills (more is preferable)

Unique Items:

My Gear

My Stats (with Crit Flasks, due to constant critting, and without wakes)

Recommendations:

-Getting a 5 link item is essential!
-Belt should have increased elemental damage and a relevant flask effect (suffixes only!)
-Rings and Amulets should have elemental damage, life, resistances, accuracy and magic find as you see fit.
-Bow must obviously have good elemental damage and fast attacks per second
-Elemental damage and attack speed is a must have on gloves and quiver
-Remove Wakes Of Destruction for movement speed boots for faster clears if you do not need the damage
-Life and resistances on everything else

Thanks for reading and I would Love your feedback!