Explosive Arrow is Back! And it's melting everything!HARDCORE viable

OP, thanks for introducing me to this skill. It's pretty cheap to get set up and has some pretty nice clear speeds.

I used your skill tree as a base and did some things different.

Here's my tree at level 89:


I took flask nodes as most of my defenses and health recovery come from flasks. Some of my pathing is different.

As for gear, I use an additional arrow Hyrri's Bite (took 9-10 vaals to get one) and I use a belt with flask charges gained and master crafted increased flask life recovery rate.

Very interesting build. I have a fireball proliferator who also works well in low level maps but is limited due to how monster resistance works (curse immunity + fire resist = gg)
Also the stacking of fuses is very beneficial to the ignite.

AOE burn damage is really nice, because it scales twofold. Having +40% firedamage on kaoms is worth more than 80% increased damage, but the problem with burn builds is the resistance.
If a monster has 75% resist and is curse immune, your burn will do only 15% damage. (75%-35% -> the initial hit does 60%, but the burn will do only 25% from those 60%)

Therefore fire penetration from curses is extremly strong.

I remember a long time ago someone posting an ea build that had theoretical burn prolif of like 1.5 million dps if i remember right.

Main problem with this skill aside from reflect that makes it not popular is the amount of micro you need to do to get optimal dps.

Cast multiple curses, proc ee, set fuses, proc ee again all for every time you attack.

OK, I started an explosive arrow build and I am positive that it will be ridiculous strong. As I said I have a decent fireball proliferation build, but this build should be better in every aspect.

I dont plan to copy this build 1:1 and I want to give you some additional ideas for an explosive arrow proliferation build:

1, I would take only one curse. It saves skillpoints and you do enough damage. Its true, that ignite scales extremly well with reduced resistances but actually there are only those 2 cases:
-enemy is not curse immune: one curse will improve damage enough (1 curse + firepen and you already multiplied your damage)
-enemy is curse immune: using 2 or more curses is useless anyway

Also Id prefer to take elemental weakness for more firepen and get a little more burn chance from the tree

2, "increased firedamage" (or elemental damage) is king as it scales your ignite by x^2. As I said: Kaom with 40% firedamage is better than 80% spelldamage for ignite (assuming you would use fireball. Just an example to explain the scaling)
40% firedamage is like: 40% spelldamage + 40% burndamage (for a fireball)

3, I wouldnt go too crazy about attackspeed. The more fuses you stack, the less effective additional fuses become(+100%->+50%->33% etc) and the more gimpy the build plays(because you are reliant to stacking) In the long term its probably the best to have a 1,55AS +3 bow, using haste and +8% from bandits. With this you will be perfectly fine attaching 2-3 fuses.

4, elemental equilibrium sounds great on paper and maybe it is, but personally I dont like the idea of giving enemies resistances accidently. If the explosion triggers EE, it actually is counterproductive against groups of enemies? On the other hand its probably supoer strong vs single enemies, which is great, because single enemies often pose a bigger thread or tankyness.(so you gain power where you need it and you lose power where you dont need it)

5, using bloodmagic is probably the best way to go and mandatory, but if there is a slight chance of running this build on mana I will try it. There are actually very strong mana nodes easily accessible. Also if you dont rely on spamming EA like crazy it could work.(2-3 arrows per pack)


6, I think I will not take increased skill duration as I prefer to play a build as responsive as possible. Yes, against certain enemies you will do more effective DPS, but thats probably a very small minority. Also the build can become supertanky so I doubt you will have to kite 24/7

7, for power Kaoms is certainly a BiS item for this build, but I think I rather go with high armor +6 sockets so I can level gems

8, enduring cry: Hmm, I never liked skills you constantly have to keep up. Endurance charges have very good synergy with armor, but if its possible to play safely enough I wont get endurance charges(also saves Skillpoints, thus potentially making you tankier) Also you can use decoy totem.

If someone is interested: For me the perfect build would look like this:


PS.:

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As for gear, I use an additional arrow Hyrri's Bite (took 9-10 vaals to get one) and I use a belt with flask charges gained and master crafted increased flask life recovery rate.

Very nice idea! I also had this unique in mind because of the +10%, but it also has some other very useful stats. Espacially the dex will be very important. Not sure how important 2 arrows for this build are, but at least you can clear 2 packs instead of one. lol