Crit SA+Puncture Shadow (Boss Kill Guide/Chart inside!)
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Hello.
--Video-- In this video, you will see hot chicks strip... Not really :,( It's Plateau clear!: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HZHzGetPBF0 Bonus Video - The Shadow decides to go melee!: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zNICrvKjEAE ---Quick info--- - lvl 91 - 15ex overall cost (12ex of which is a bow+Drillneck) - SA (Pierce): 44.8k dps; Puncture: 61.0k dps; 88.8% Crit Chance - 3.6k Life, 11.6k Evasion (17.8k with Grace), Ondar's, Acro+Phase Acro - 73% MS without a quicksilver (64% in Town) --Tree-- --Gear--
Godly Gearz
--Gem Setups-- 5L: SA+Proj Phys Dmg+Pierce+Inc Crit Dmg+Added Fire; 6L: +Faster Attacks/PCoC/WED/Rarity 5L: Puncture+Proj Phys Dmg+Faster Attacks+Inc Crit Dmg+Added Fire; 6L: +WED/Pierce 4L: 1. Reduced Mana+Haste+Grace+Hatred; 2.Herald of Ash+Haste+Grace+Hatred; 3. Reduced Mana+Herald of Ash+Hatred+Ele Prolif 4L: Cwdt+Enduring Cry+Immortal Call+? (Inc duration with RRRR piece of eva gear) 4L: 1. Barrage+Faster Attacks+PCoC+Ass Mark; 2. Reduced Mana+Herald of Ash+Ele prolif --Stats--
SA DPS
Puncture DPS
Defense
 --- Amazing, I know. ---Leveling+Bandits---
Leveling+Bandits
Leveling is fairly straightforward. You can use pretty much any skill you desire, Frenzy, Puncture or Barrage for single target and SA, TS or Ice Shot for groups. Pick or craft bows with high phys. Go evasion early and kite your way to victory! On the tree, go for life, evasion and phys dmg first, pick up some crit notes once you are lvl32 and can use Death's Harp. Get Mind Drinker until you are able to get some mana leech on gear. At lvl53 you will be able to get either a rare Decimation Bow... OR... use Infractem in combination with Thief's Torment (which is what I used, although it might not be the best way and you will probably pay for the free gem slot and the ability to run two 60% auras early by having severly uncapped resists). Either of these choices should get you to (and through) low lvl maps, after which you should be thinking about buying youself a nice Harbinger. Re-spec out of Mind Drinker if you haven't already and work on filling out the missing nodes. You might also have to get some +30 Int/Str nodes until you can get it on gear. Your final requirements for lvl20 gems are 108 int and 109 strenght.
As for Bandits: Normal: Kill All Cruel: Help Kraitlyn Merciless: Kill All/Help Alira If you decied to help Alira for the extra power charge, you can eschew the two life+ev nodes after Revenge of the Hunted and finish the build at lvl90. Otherwise this build finishes at lvl91. ---Enjoy&Take Care with--- What you will enjoy: -Very high mobility, 64% MS in town, 73% MS in maps, 130%+ with a Quicksilver of Adrenalin. Makes the whole game much less tedious and running through discovered portions of the maps or keeping up with your party members becomes a breeze (not to mention being able to efficiently farm Dominus). Spoils it for all your other chars, though :-). You will also be relying on your high mobility to avoid most of the damage, or prevent mobs from hitting you at all on dangerous maps like Vuln+Monster Dmg, which can be a great fun if you are into that sort of thing. -Thanks to high evasion and Ondar's, you will pretty much never be hit by projectiles -Excellent AoE damage. You will be able to easily one-shot rares with your AoE attack, not to mention whole groups of whites or even very tanky blues like golems. Even more to your liking, you will still be able to one-shot groups of whites even in 3-4 Man groups. -Excellent Single Target damage. Your puncture will literally melt the health even of extremely tanky bosses. The ones that are in the habit of running a lot will then become laughably easy (think Atziri trio). -All the damage is effortless and almost immediate, those white arrow lines seemingly so insignificant and quiet, only until they hit their target and, accompanied by the deafening bang of a critical strike being scored, with devastating force shatter it into million pieces of frozen meat. -All the PoE content becomes available to you, including end game bosses like Palace Dominus or Atziri. -You can run any map mod (see the end of the guide for phys reflect discussion). What you should take care with: -Your positioning. That is especially crucial in some maps where you could possibly be one-shotted, like Vuln+Monster Dmg. Similarly, shocking ground is deceptively dangerous to you. As someone relying mostly on your position and damage for survival, it also shouldn't surprise you that you might fairly easily die to desync, or lag that comes with opening strongboxes. -High damage spells might stun you. That is especially dangerous in case of continuous spells like Megaera's firestorm or Dominus's lightning hose. -You have crappy defense (only 30% dodge) against physical spells (think Evangelists, Exile with EK Totems) -Physical reflect. I have never once died to a reflect solo, but one hit with SA will usually bring me to about 50%. If I am not paying attention I might fire a second and third time and kill myself. Shooting a single target with Puncture will hurt you even more. -Playing in groups. All the things I listed you should take care with are made much worse when playing in a group since thanks to the multitude of spells/effects you don't have a very good idea of what you are fighting against, what the mods and auras of the mobs are, and generally what exactly is going on. That way, you might accidently step on shocking ground and fire into a group of mobs that have phys reflect aura on them that you can't clearly see and instantly kill yourself. Take also note that the people you are playing with might be from a different continent and therefore your ping to the server might be higher than usual, leading to a delayed response to everything you do in the game. And that comes on top of the possible fps drops playing in a group often brings. ---Closer Look--- --Skill Gems-- SA -Can easily be run with Chain instead of Pierce, although Pierce is my personal preference fun wise, and it does have the advantage of also being a damage gem thanks to the Drillneck -4L would be SA+PPAD+Pierce+Inc Crit Dmg -With a 6L I would probably run PCoC as the final gem, solely for the convenience, although depending on what my goal would be at the time I might run Item Rarity instead. Faster Attacks gem might be best for overall clear speed since your single attack damage would already be very high, while WED would give you by far the largest damage boost and might be the best when playing in a group Puncture -4L would be P+PPAD+Faster Attacks+Inc Crit Dmg -With a 6L I would probably be using WED since, again, it would give you the most dps Auras -For the moment I run Hatred+Haste 90% of the time while mapping. Herald of Ash gives slightly more dps compared to Haste and using it would probably result in faster clear speed, but I do enjoy the increase in movement and attack speed that Haste brings more. I am considering trying out HoA with ele prolif and even allocating it its own Reduced Mana, or transferring it with all the other auras and removing one from the 4L, but... we will see. Right now I have Hatred, Haste and Grace together just for convenience when swapping between them -I swap Grace for Haste against certain bosses (Double/Single with bad mods Piety, Second Form Dominus), and when doing phys reflect maps Assassin's Mark -Most of the time can't be bothered, but sometimes use it to get charges and for extra dmg when try-harding Barrage -The same, only use it to gain/maintain charges when try-harding Cwdt -Would like to use inc duration, but am not rich enough to get four red sockets on pure evasion piece of gear (might get it on Maligaro's if I tried probably, since their dex requirement is very low) -Mostly useful against phys reflect -Mostly useless in the current state :-) SA vs TS vs Ice Shot Tried all of them and all of them can easily be run on this spec. With no changes to the tree and swapping Pierce for GMP I get about 25k dps TS and 30k dps Ice Shot. Personally prefer SA, but all of them are good. Then again, with the damage lvls I have it's hard to tell. Ice Shot uses a bit too much mana for me to be able to run it without a hickup with 2x60 auras, though. What DOES speak for TS and Ice Shot is that you will be able to save 4 tree nodes I used to get Piercing Shots, and that there might be some cheaper alternatives to Drillneck. --Gear-- The only question here is whether the Drillneck is necessary or worth it, since it is the most expensive piece of the equipment you'll have. If you are not gonna be running SA+Pierce, but instead some of the many alternatives, then I am not certain; however, with my current setup, a rare quiver to match the Drillneck would have to be: A Broad-Head Quiver; and have: Perfect flat phys, Perfect AS, Life, and then it would be a question whether WED+Crit+Crit Multi rolls could together beat 100% inc phys dmg roll the Drillneck de-facto has. I have some doubts, but either way, that quiver would certainly cost more than the Drillneck. So yeah, if you know you are gonna play SA+Pierce, get the Drillneck no question. Or not! The Drillneck gives you about 10-12% damage boost compared to a very good Spike-Point or Broad-Head quiver, which might cost a bit less and have more life and other stats. Other stats like resists, thanks to which you might wear Aztiri's Step instead of my rare boots and get some extra ev and spell dodge. So decisions, decisions... Speaking of Atziri's Step, I would certainly like to wear them nevertheless, but will have to get my hands on some serious jewellery first. IRL, muhaha. Other than that, remember you need 108 int and 109 strength for all the necessary gems, so it is advisable to try to get them on gear instead of wasting tree nodes. Also remember than you need at least 2% mana leech somewhere on your gear, and that somewhere is gonna be either your rings or your amulet. In fact, pretty much everything will have to be on your amulet, rings and belt. Stats, leech, resists, flat phys, attack speed... I guess you can see now why I am not wearing Aztiri's boots, can't ya... --Physical Reflect-- Ok, so the deal is this. You will never die randomly shooting your SA into a crowd with phys reflect aura on them. Usually, it takes about 50% of your life, then the IC steps in. That is, shooting once. You will probably survive shooting into them twice, thanks to the life leech you have. But don't push it. Always flask up (Life+Jade), or wait for the life leech to catch up, then shoot again. That's all it should take anyway :-). A lot of the time you will take no damage because of Ondar's and your evasion, but take care. With Puncture you might take even more damage. Luckily, you won't be just spamming your single target randomly around and not notice you are shooting at a phys reflect mob.. hopefully. Take even more care when doing a Vulnerability map. When doing a map with shocking ground, never shoot out of line of sight when standing on it. I can't emphasize this strongly enough :-). I almost died several times before I learned my lesson and stopped being completely lazy. Now, you CAN do phys reflect maps, but some modifications are in order. First off, you take Pierce out and replace it with Chain. Then you take PPAD out and replace it with Faster Attacks. Then you take Inc Crit Dmg out and replace it with nothing. Finally, you take Added Fire Dmg out and replace it with LGoH. Then, as a final step, you switch from Haste to Grace. This way you will have about 11k dps SA and can happily spam it as much as you want. Surprisingly 11k dps SA with chain still clears very quickly, although your single target will be absolute rubbish and so you might want skip on some bosses. Oh yeah, no Puncture allowed. When I run a phys reflect map, I disable it completely so I wouldn't accidentally use it by the force of habit. To be completely fair, though, I ran a phys reflect map only a couple of times when I got a high quantity roll and didn't want to re-roll it. Otherwise it's just not worth the annoyance. --Elemental Reflect-- Because of Hatred and Added Fire, a large portion of your damage is actually elemental, and so Ele Reflect hurts a bit as well. Normally, it is of no real concern, but when running a -max, ele weakness or ele reflect map, or indeed ele reflect+ele weakness/-max map, it is advisable to run Grace instead of Hatred and in some cases replace Added Fire with LGoH. Don't forget, your deeps are real, man. Boss Kill Guide/Chart:
Boss Kill Guide/Chart
Note: Since you are relying on mobility to stay out of harm's way, Temp Chains is a bad mod for pretty much all the harder fights.
Note 2: For some reason I am currently not using Vaal Haste, which would almost certainly help in many of the fights. Note 3: This all applies to solo play ONLY. Most of the bosses will be HARDER for you in a party.
Atziri
Atziri
Difficulty: Medium/Hard Double Vaal: Medium -With any luck you should have enough damage to get the one of them to ~20% before he pops down and while he's spawning adds (you need to walk up to one of them first if you want them to spawn with a delay). Immediately start going on the second one, you should be able to get him to less than 50% before he pops down. When the first one pops up again, be ready to dodge lasers, rain and lightning balls. The second one should pop up soon after. Should be able to kill both of them right there. The only major threat comes from the lightning balls. Have a topaz ready if need be. Trio: Easy/Medium -Kill the rain bitch first, kite and puncture the rest until they are dead. Fairly easy fight, you should not die unless you get unlucky and get hit by the rain in the first few seconds of the fight. Never came close to dying in this fight. Atziri: Medium/Hard -You will die to any stormcall or flameblast without a flask and still get chunked for a lot even with a flask, so most of the fight depends on you dodging all her spells. You might trade the Drillneck for a rare quiver and use the Atziri step if you are not too confident in your abilities. Important rule is to dodge first, deal damage later. You will do enough dmg as it is, sometimes not giving her the chance to go into a healing phase - which also means no flask refills, though. All in all, depends a lot on your skill and on your luck as well. Easy to repeatedly do the runs deathless if you know what you are doing. Very possible to do without any res flasks, if you want to have some fun.
Palace Dominus
Palace Dominus
Difficulty: Medium Double boss: Medium/Hard Bad mods: M Damage, Boss Damage, Turbo (-max doesn't really matter, since you need to avoid all his first form spells anyway) First form - fairly easy if you know how Dominus fight works, dodge his lightning hose, touch of god, kill freezing totems and suicidal adds with SA Second form - you can facetank it with jade+atziri flask and running grace. His cleaves, once they hit you, DO a lot of damage though, so be ready with the life flasks. With extra dmg mods/turbo have a tp ready to go heal. Double Boss: Trade your FA for Pierce on your Puncture to be able to consistently hit both of them. Again, you should be running Grace and trying not to face-tank them when there is no rain. Might have to use tps to replentish your flasks, if you don't have top dps yet.
Courtyard Trio
Courtyard Trio
Difficutly: Medium Double boss: Medium/Hard Bad mods: Turbo, Chilled Ground The only threat in this fight is the Leap Slam guy, who can one shot you when he jumps on you. The Cycloner will never reach you and you can pretty much ignore the Caster. Just make sure the Leap Slamer can't surprise you and kill him first. The rest is a doddle. Double Boss: The same, but you need to not be surprised by 2 Leap Slamer guys, which, surprisingly, might sometimes not happen. Probably wouldn't run this if I was trying to lvl. A nightmare to do in a party.
Piety
Piety:
Difficulty: Easy/Medium Double Boss: Medium/Hard Bad mods: -max, Turbo Base form: Easy, just don't stand in the lightning storm for too long and don't get shocked by her lightning attacks. This is your window to deal damage. She does run around in this form a lot, so you might kill her with 1-2 puncture crits when lucky. Fire form: Can facetank her with Jade, but better to kite her for max puncture dmg. Ice form: The only real danger of the fight. You will evade most of it because of Ondar's, but still might get hit, possibly one shot with -max or boss dmg. Use grace just to be sure, and still hide behind pillars. The most important thing about this fight is to always know when she goes into Ice Form and hide in time. The rest is history, as they say. Double boss: Harder to keep the tabs up on both of them at the same time. If it happens you get caught with one/or both of them being in the Ice form, use a jade and hope for the best :-). You should be fine, but... Then again, you might not. The double boss here is fairly luck based. Either way, they shouldn't be able to go into the Ice form more than once before you kill them.
Megaera
Megaera
Difficulty: Medium Double Boss: Hard Bad mods: -max, Chilled Ground Same tactic as for any "rain" spell/attack, keep moving and only stop to fire one or two puncture shots. If you do get hit, the firestorm might stun you for a split second, but just pot up and keep moving. She should be dead after 2-3 shots if you crit. Of course, don't forget the storms still last and might appear AFTER you had killed her. Double Boss: The same, just a higher chance you get hit and die almost instantly. Ruby flasks don't help much. I don't run Crematorium double boss if I can avoid it.
Academy Boss
Academy Boss
Difficulty: Easy Double Boss: Easy Bad mods: None (maybe M Dmg+Boss Dmg+Turbo+Double Boss+Temp chains??) The easiest boss of the lot. His book attack is really easy to avoid and he dies in 2-3 shots as well, meaning basically no tornadoes. Double Boss: Might want to take some care, but still very easy.
Precint Boss
Precint Boss
Difficulty: Easy Double Boss: N/A, probably still Easy Bad Mods: None (-max+dmg or just -max would probably one shot you) Also very easy, does a lot of damage, but will never reach you. Dies after one puncture crit.
Necropolis
Necropolis Boss
Difficulty: Easy Double Boss: Medium/Hard Bad Mods: -max (some others possibly) First Form - Dodge the rain, ice spear spell, kill her Second Form - As soon as she appears, curse her, use Atziri's flask and you can kill her before she summons adds or geysers. If you get unlucky, just avoid the geyers, ignore the two mini-bosses and finish her. Double Boss: First Form - The same as before, still easy. Second Form - Pick one of them, again, curse her and try to kill her as quickly as possible with Atziri's flask. If you manage it, it should be easy and much like in the unlucky version of the single boss. If not, you might get killed by the geysers, which will become extremely hard to avoid + you won't be able to see what's going on + fps drops a lot. Either way, just try to finish the one you got low, then you should be able to survive. Very dependent on your dps. Can't be bothered to write anything about Shipyard, Bazaar or Plateau bosses (actually, the Bazaar Ribbons might one-shot you if they all charge at you at once and crit you, but, you should kill them with SA way before that ever happens).
Jungle Valley Boss
Jungle Valley Boss
Difficulty: Easy/Medium Double Boss: Medium/Hard Bad Mods: Enfeeble, Ele reflect (if it means you have to take out Hatred), M Damage, Boss Damage Kill the spawning spiders with SA, curse and Atziri flask the boss for a guaranteed kill before it rappels. You will be getting continually low by the flickering spiders so have your pots ready. Any mods that might lower your damage will make the fight increasingly harder as you won't be able to kill the spawns in time and they might, at some time, together with the damage of the boss, kill you. Watch out for any spawning rares with phys reflect. Double Boss: Impossible with any mods that lower your damage. Need to kill one of them quickly while using a jade to survive, all while drinking from your life flasks mightily, then survive the spawns, and finally quickly kill the other one before it again rappels. Very dependant on your dps and flask management. Lots of quick bursts of damage thanks to the flickers. If you don't kill the bosses on the first and second rappel, you might get over-run and have to portal out. All in all, a quite difficult double boss fight considering it's only a 72 map.
Death and Taxes Boss
Death and Taxes Boss
Difficulty: Easy/Medium The only danger here are his Ice and Final forms. In general the fights, again, rely on you dodging his spells, and that is fairly easy here since he doesn't move very much. The Ice form is the hardest because of the ice nova which you can't dodge and can only stay away from. It does not one-shot you even without a flask, though, so retreating any time he starts casting it is very possible. The Final form's only threat is of him chilling you and then killing you with a flameblast or a storm call - but if you have your eyes open the danger of that isn't terribly high. Nice thing about this fight is that you can basically kill him off screen every single time and not even get to see him. Overall pretty easy fight for a ranged build.
Olmec+Friends
Olmec+Friends
Difficulty: Easy/Medium Just don't stay in one place for too long and don't get close. The totems have almost no life, so you will make quick work of them. Never was in any danger, so I am not sure what you should take care with. Perhaps the Chaos Totem. In the final room, just kill Olmec, the rest of the totems won't even spawn if you do it quickly.
Whakawairua Tuahu Boss
Whakawairua Tuahu Boss
Difficulty: Easy/Medium The exile runs a lot and throws lots of traps, so classically stay at a distance and fire few puncture shots. With the squid, there is some chance involved, mostly stay afar and away from her frost novas/arctic breaths and wait until she teleports onto you, puncture and run away before she can cast anything. She should die in one or two punctures. There are no adds so if you get unlucky and take a lot of damage, you might need to use a tp to go replentish your flasks. So yeah, the only targets in the game that yet haven't suffered a humiliating defeat at the hands of this dashing young Shadow are Uber Atziri and the Temple Trio. Haven't yet had a chance to fight them either. Will depend on luck and cash :-). Alright, that is all. Cya around, young heroes. Last edited by Cabesi on Nov 28, 2014, 10:59:53 PM
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Bonus Video - The Shadow decides to go melee!:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zNICrvKjEAE EDIT: Added a Boss Kill Guide/Chart. Holy shit, I am productive today... Last edited by Cabesi on Oct 20, 2014, 8:15:03 PM
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Looks like a well put together guide. I was planning on doing a Split Arrow Puncture build the next league and planned out my own skill tree and wanted to search around the forums to find similar builds and see what their skill tree's were like. This seem's like it would be a good build for the beginning of the league since it seems so cheap.
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Added Olmec's and Whakawairua Tuahu Boss to the kill chart. Also, somewhere in the text of the guide is now hidden an easter egg. If you find it, message me in game and you will receive 5ex! Haha, just kidding, you won't.
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What auras do you run at once?
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