[1.2.0][WIP] Napalm Arrow (Burning Arrow w/ Pierce, Crit, & Prolif)

Overview:
The goal of this build is to stack single target burning arrow damage and then share it generously by using 100% Pierce and Elemental Proliferation. This is still a work in progress and the guide will be updated/tuned as I progress with the build. My crit isn't high enough to take full advantage of this yet but it's been pretty fun leveling so-far. Any thoughts and/or suggestions are certainly welcome!

Current Planned Tree (link)

I've been making adjustments as I level, so-far I've been focusing on the bottom portion of the tree (I just got MoM). I planned the top portion to help scale the damage at later levels.

Skills/Links:

Bow/Chest:

Burning Arrow - Pierce - Elemental Proliferation - Fire Penetration - Weapon Elemental Damage - Increased Burning Damage

This is the main attack, on a crit all enemies in the path will be ignited. I chose these support gems as none of them reduce the damage being done (as chain, lmp, gmp, etc. do).


Vaal Burning Arrow - Pierce - Concentrated Effect - Fire Penetration - Weapon Elemental Damage - Increased Burning Damage

The corrupt version of this skill has AoE built in, I plan on using it on bosses.

Helm/Gloves/Boots:

Lightning Arrow + Pierce + Curse on Hit + Flammability

The change to Curse on Hit makes this a viable option as a prep attack, on a crit enemies will be both shocked and cursed allowing for higher damage from burning arrow.

Empower + Purity of Fire + Anger + Reduced Mana

One of the my biggest concerns doing a lot of single target damage, Empower on Purity of fire combined with an item that has +1 to gems will push it to an additional 4% max fire resistance. Anger will stack additional fire damage.

Arctic Armor | Herald of Ash + Reduced Mana + Increased AoE

The main benefit of Herald of Ash is the additional 15% fire damage that it provides however with the new unique boots, Gang's Momentum enemies that are already ignited will take 15% more damage overall. Arctic Armor helps with defensive concerns when it comes to reflect.


Required Equipment:

Blackgleam - This Quiver effectively doubles the burn damage as it converts your remaining physical damage to fire. They are pretty cheap right now on Rampage and once I have the currency for it I'm planning on getting a few and corrupting them in an attempt to get the additional arrow modifier on one.

Optional Equipment:

Gang's Momentum - Ignites do not stack but the most powerful instance takes priority as Herald of Ash will be igniting most enemies in the area, this will boost damage as well.

Bandits:
Oak - Oak - Skill Point

I'm wondering if it will be more effective and easier to just scale the elemental damage even more, rather than trying to stack crit.


Edit: Scratch that, it looks like you didn't spec into any crit. Also, I'm curious why you didn't pick up Acro & Phase Acro if not IR?

Rather than relying on the burning arrow skill applying burn (which is calculated individually for each mob) a crit will apply to all of them. Right now I have a ring with Added Lightning Damage so when I crit the entire pack is shocked and ignited. So-far when that happens I 1-shot the whole pack. Looking on PoEBuilder it has 130% Increased Crit Chance and 190% Increased Bow Crit Chance listed. I only see 3 nodes that add weapon elemental damage remotely close to where I am on the tree, it seems more important to be able to crit reliably.

I haven't run an acrobatics build before but I'll give it a shot once I'm at that point. I didn't even see IR there, would that make Ondar's Guile useless?

I think that you can get better passive going this way : poebuilder link

I don't really get the need of the piercing. You only need to hit one target (with a crit) and then let ele prolif do the rest, no ? (I just don't remember if each hit of a piercing arrow have it's own crit chance, or if it's global). Same for all that aura nodes, just to run Anger ? Not sure that worse it.

For mitigation, getting pure eva + acro should be better than getting MoM, as you will have same (or better) mitigation without the mana cost (and then you don't need clarity any more). In my build, there is more life and more evasion, and the new life flask nodes that I find very efficient.

Getting AoF gives you the possibility to use an other quiver than Blackgleam and then get crit multiplier on it to boost your dps. But you loose the possibility to shock, with your curse on hit lightning arrow, which could also be a good idea. Perhaps it could be possible to remove AoF and get Whispers of Doom instead to put flammability and critical weakness on hit on the lightning arrow (perhaps with chain instead of pierce, but then need a 5L).

That seems like a lot of passive points used just to get across the tree, some stats are slightly higher but most are a lot lower, more than I feel I'd be able to make up with a different quiver.

The crit chance is 'all in one' with pierce (if one crits, they all do), I chose pierce to be able to cut through the pack as elemental prolif has as limited radius of effect and only applies while mobs are in range of the one that was hit.

The driving force behind getting the aura nodes was the increased effect rather than radius, I'm most concerned with Purity of Fire, Anger being effected by it too is just a bonus.

I'm going to start working towards evasion gear now, I was looking into it more last night and didn't realize that I would have the chance to evade reflect damage as well. When I have a chance I'll adjust my tree to see how to best fit those nodes in.

In other news I'm pumped about the Vaal Burning Arrow buff from 1.2.0c (130% damage changed to 160%)

I don't see wich stats are lower in my passive tree than in your, appart that I removed the aura nodes.

It gives more defense (via lot of eva + acro + life + flask life efficency), more crit and crit mutliplier. And as I said AoF is possible but not mandatory.

The ones I noticed looking quick were 31% to projectile damage and 45% to Damage over time, there's also a 40% increase to burn duration in mine which could be an extra couple ticks depending on other modifiers. I'd also be losing 40% Piercing, EB, Revelry, and the Aura nodes (which may mean losing Anger). It definitely still seems like another viable option, just would involve a lot of changes. I have another shadow at level 50 in standard with a passive reset I haven't used yet so I may give this version a shot with him when I have time to test the differences.

EDIT: Here is a tentative updated skill tree with Acrobatics added as well as exchanging the Weathered Hunter cluster for Herbalism.

I've been a big fan of this approach, and have leveled in Beyond with something similar to the revised version of the build. Valgraou's alternative is a really entertaining looking build but playing HC I wasn't excited about waiting until level 80+ to get Avatar of Fire. Blackgleam cost me 1 alch and it wasn't very hard to find someone willing to sell one. And since my physical damage on my Burning Arrow shots is, I think, 2-7 per shot it accomplishes pretty much the same thing.

I do have a couple notes having leveled up to mid-Cruel. I *still* haven't gotten Lightning Arrow to drop (admittedly I haven't tried very hard to trade for it) so I've been running with Split + Pierce + Flammability + Curse of Hit as my prep shot and it works great. I went the top way around with Pierce, so I'm at 80+% piercing and it sets up mobs very nicely. I spent a fair bit of time playing around with Fork, LMP and Chain instead, but for now I've ended up back with Pierce.

- Chain was the best at making sure everything was covered, but even with a mediocre bow, Split does pretty snappy AoE damage on its own (and occasionally Ignites mobs itself for decent damage thanks to Blackgleam) and Chain kicked that in the nuts.
- LMP was the worst because it covered the first row of mobs great, but gave me no penetration to later mobs.
- Fork actually did pretty well on all counts, but it hit a little softer than Pierce and the forking shots seem to sometimes go *way* off to the sides which isn't very helpful. Pierce was way better for mobs in long straight hallways, but Fork did alright against groups of mobs in a thin-ish line in front of me (like the archers in Act 2 sometimes do). Basically the deeper the group of mobs, the better Pierce did.

Another thing is that Mindrinker works *great*. I have no idea why this would be since I do virtually no physical damage, but it does. The description is worded a little strangely, so I wonder if the leech is based off the physical damage of the arrow as it comes out of your bow, and thus before Blackgleam converts it all into fire? Maybe its just a bug. Unless I'm just spamming attacks at a wall, I have serious trouble getting myself down below about 75% mana, even if I'm exclusively using Burning Arrow.

Mana was kinda dicey in the early going, and you don't get to Revelry for a *long* time, so I'd highly recommend specing into Mindrinker for the early game, and you can spec out of it later. Honestly I'm just about at the point where mana isn't an issue at all. Spec'ed out of Mindrinker I can indeed run myself out of mana, but it takes quite a bit of action for that to happen, and even then I can just use a flask and I'm fine again. As it stands now, Mindrinker is both more accessible and (I think) better than Revelry, and in time its possible you won't end up needing either anyway.

Finally, for my main attack, I'm using Burning Arrow + Pierce + Prolif + whatever and its just amazing. If I'm soloing, and there's a big pack, I pop Split to warm things up (maybe twice, depending on how the coverage is), then pop Burning, and if I get a crit or a couple Ignites in the middle of the pack, I can just head off to the next pack confident that virtually everything will be dead. I'm a big fan. And don't skip Pierce. Its amazing for coverage, even with Prolif. Especially with a big pack (or a group of packs), they just aren't grouped that tightly (especially if they're chasing after you) and Pierce makes a *huge* difference.