Level 93 Elemental Lightning Arrow [With Video!]

Have too many Alpha's Howls in your stash? Tired of Split Crit? Have no fear!

This is my Elemental Lightning Arrow build that I've been playing since the start of Rampage (including leveling with it!). It is currently sitting at level 93 with 4700 HP, 77 unreserved mana, capable of all endgame map mods other than Blood Magic, since I reserve 89% of my mana.


I don't grab Inner Force only because it is a bit too far out of the way. However, If you can fit in EB for some sort of mana-based variant...!

Fracturing Shrine Map (77)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ALa1u-g1KrM&

Setup:

The +1 Arrow Blackgleam is the important factor here as not only does it ensure (near) full elemental conversion, but we get a whole arrow, meaning at least 9 more targets in a group that will be hit.


All gems are 20/20 at least; a few are 21/20. Gems are ordered from Most Important -> Least Important (i.e, a 5L should stop before WED)

6L Lightning Arrow - LMP - Chain - Blood Magic - Life Gain on Hit - Weapon Elemental Damage

Unfortunately, due to the nature of LA, the tooltip number won't be spectacular compared to other builds. Calculated with a "perfect pack," LA can do ~4500*9 + 4500*0.7*27 = 125550 AoE DPS.
However! The real interesting point is when you do 'Two Unique Bosses' maps: when the bosses are close enough, two arrows will chain between the bosses, and the secondary hits will constantly hit one another, effectively making it stronger than the below single-target setup.
Furthermore, if you can corrupt your bow with +1 arrow as well, you can drop LMP for Faster Attacks. In fact, you could probably drop the whole Blood Magic shpeel and go FA - Chain - Added Lightning - LGoH - WED - LA with revelry & some Elreon rings.

5L Frenzy - Faster Attacks - Blood Magic - Life Leech - Weapon Elemental Damage

I use Frenzy mainly because the frenzy charges are very useful for LA, although a level 21 Burning Arrow is far better for DPS. If you don't like it, then you can throw in Burning Arrow and run a level 1 Frenzy for charges, or run Blood Rage (you will probably run The Blood Dance in order to make sure you don't kill yourself.)

4L Alpha's Howl: Wrath - Anger - Reduced Mana - Empower

4L Purity of Lightning - Herald of Ice - Reduced Mana - Elemental Weakness
PoL doesn't need to be in Alpha's Howl since the +4 will not give it another +1% max lightning resistance over the +2% already from aura effectiveness. (Unless I'm wrong)
If Herald of Thunder is what I would like it to be (+% damage to shocked enemies, +% chance to shock), then I would recommend replacing Elemental Weakness with Herald of Thunder, and grab some corrupted gloves with Curse on Hit Elemental Weakness

4L Enduring Cry - Immortal Call - CwDT - Increased Duration
I use a level 7 CwDT (9 EC, 8 IC) since I take about that much per medium-sized hit anyways after Lightning Coil.

Seems quite low dps for a 6L, you have video?

Its chain LMP DPS on top of Lightning Arrow's innate chain-like behavior. The tooltip might seem low but he can hit up to 27 times with one shot.

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Fearmonger wrote:

Its chain LMP DPS on top of Lightning Arrow's innate chain-like behavior. The tooltip might seem low but he can hit up to 27 times with one shot.

Yeap, in fact, with the +1 arrow on Blackgleam, I can hit 36 times with one shot.

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AppleEater wrote:

Seems quite low dps for a 6L, you have video?

I'll attempt to record a video tomorrow/Saturday (my time), but I'll need to figure out what are the best settings I need to run in OBS for record to file.

You spent 4 points to get 2 frenzy charges, but you can also move those points over to Quickstep and take two of shadow's 5% attack speed nodes for a passive 19% attack speed and 6% move speed. With 5 frenzy charges you'd have 25% attack speed and 20% evasion.

You could still maintain frenzy charges with just 3 afterwards I suppose, but if Burning Arrow is stronger like you said, I'd probably take the passive attack speed nodes.

just some minor input

Generally speaking its quite hard to get a big mana pool and a lot of regen with a bow spec since the right side of the tree, where all the bow nodes are, has very few mana and regen nodes. There is the revelry passive though (2 mana on hit) that completely trivializes mana usage with LA or ice shot. With a phys bow and 1% mana leech on any item frenzy will sustain itself just fine too.

I particularly don't like the lioneye + ondar's guile combo, the bow makes it impossible to evade your own reflected damage, one of the best parts of getting ondars in a proj attack build.

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Aggropop wrote:

Generally speaking its quite hard to get a big mana pool and a lot of regen with a bow spec since the right side of the tree, where all the bow nodes are, has very few mana and regen nodes. There is the revelry passive though (2 mana on hit) that completely trivializes mana usage with LA or ice shot. With a phys bow and 1% mana leech on any item frenzy will sustain itself just fine too.

I've found that at the high end, i.e. if I take off blood magic and use LA with it's 66 mana cost with 0 physical damage, even with revelry I end up having to spend a lot of time making sure I hit the maximum number of mobs in order to get enough mana to attack again. If several mobs die after the first hit (which is very likely) then the second hit won't gaint enough mana. TL;DR it slows you down quite a bit with the way I play this build.

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Aggropop wrote:

I particularly don't like the lioneye + ondar's guile combo, the bow makes it impossible to evade your own reflected damage, one of the best parts of getting ondars in a proj attack build.

Ondar's Guile is mainly for incoming projectiles rather than reflect, since the BM + LGoH combo is more than enough to combat reflect. The only time I've ever died to reflect is when I've had diamond shrines on me and hit a large double reflect pack (map mod + mob mod), and even in this case I usually take off Herald of Ice and I'll be more than fine.

A video is now up!

Ahh LA, used to play it a lot back in the early days of PoE. Might have to make another guy to play it again. Are you able to do normal and uber Atziri with it? How does it fare against ele reflect maps?