A fire arrow build that doesn't use Burning/Explosive arrow?

I was getting bored with my Static Strike based templar and decided to try something different. I began leveling a ranger with a bow and experimenting with some different skill gem combinations. Initially I was thinking of playing as a proliferating Burning Arrow build, but then I started to use Tornado Shot with Curse on Hit. Here's what I came up with:



So then I began to theory craft a little bit with the skill tree and other gear. I am using:



So the basic idea is to get as much fire damage as possible on gear/from auras, then use the dual Flammability/Elemental Weakness to have enemies take that much more damage from all of it. At character level 35, I'm clearing act 3 normal quite easily, but I have no idea how well the damage is going to scale as I progress. My plan is to pick up Mind over Matter and Eldritch Battery later on and grab as many %fire damage points in the tree as possible, eventually resulting in:

https://poebuilder.com/character/AAAAAgIAAdGv65XIJyH-CcSiYlrfmNN-JJ3uDu961op_K3fXVvqFMnTxGNsUdRGB3UZjp-pizZiNfrZBTipbr76ndcvV-G5p1CMFtTpCS3jdqDBx6NYaj_ba-wkZii2Dlwbljp1jXfJtbOd0y73mgRa_D6th4iaVVUuMNqSx2wuCHohCwcV_xhGWDkismBEPTC0UsF8qdFXsVSqNSRs22PFsLpSXhTT3IbCbtSLqr40dFI9Gm6H317FC8xFxhcAaZp760nF5FxwSaZ2upwhG11cpVcY6WC9v2RNwu-wYgKRV1mTnFy8ksEKjzeo=

Bandit rewards would be: kill - kill - kill

There are just a few things that I'm not certain of:

Is damage going to be appalling without crit? Does the cold damage converted to fire from the Pyre scale with the %fire damage points in the tree? Does the flat fire damage on gear scale with the %fire damage points from the skill tree? I was planning to use Fire Traps as my method of burning (since proliferation isn't really possible with a Pyre ring equipped), but will it's damage be substantial with only %fire and burn points from the tree? Should I skip Avatar of Fire since I am already using a Pyre? Thanks in advance.

quickie theory crafted crit variant:


https://poebuilder.com/character/AAAAAgIAAdGv65XIJyH-CWJa35jTfiSd1CMFtTpCS3jdqDBx6NYaj_ba-wkZil3ybWzndMu9Fr9h4iaV2wuCHohCwcV_xhGWDkismBEPTC0UsF8qdFWbtSLqHRSPRpuh99dxhcAaZp760lXGOlgvb9kTcLvsGFXWZOcXL5BVGjiApFb67g7vetaKfyt314UydPEY2xR1W693B4cTnKRvnspKwzrnVFFHMHwk_f_ejb9wUonTcNXz6rVIKguDCbFC8xEdquGIRnEfQQYjAx4nL8Ezhs4hdqCfb_I51GND8uHmgVAw216FfRZA

I think your approach to doomfletch is wrong. Doomfletch is built much like Facebreakers, you need as much flat physical damage on gear as possible because you get 110% of that on every hit as random elemental damage. That also means scaling elemental damage that you usually do on ele builds isn't an optimal approach, you get better results by scaling physical.

That said, if you want a 100% fire build without burning or explosive arrow I'd just use a strong physical bow with hatred and convert everything to fire with blackgleam, AoF and Pyre, no need to worry about scaling in lategame that way.

About your other questions:

- Yes, if damage was converted it can be scaled by either type of bonus. Here's an example: if you do 100 physical damage, have 50% physical converted to cold and 50% cold converted to fire you will do 50 physical, 25 cold and 25 fire. 50 physical can be scaled with physical damage bonuses, 25 cold can be scaled with either physical or cold and 25 fire can be scaled by physical, cold or fire.

- 'Increased fire damage' bonus is general so it increases any fire damage you do, damage type or origin doesn't matter.

- Yes, you won't be able to proliferate ignite from your attacks if oyu use Pyre but you can proliferate from Herald of ash if you're using it.

- Yes, Fire trap would do pathetic damage without dedicating your build to it.

- Needing avatar of fire is dependent on what do you want to accomplish with your build.

http://pathofexile.gamepedia.com/Avatar_of_Fire

Between those 3 you can make any skill a fire skill.

"

raics wrote:

I think your approach to doomfletch is wrong. Doomfletch is built much like Facebreakers, you need as much flat physical damage on gear as possible because you get 110% of that on every hit as random elemental damage. That also means scaling elemental damage that you usually do on ele builds isn't an optimal approach, you get better results by scaling physical.

That said, if you want a 100% fire build without burning or explosive arrow I'd just use a strong physical bow with hatred and convert everything to fire with blackgleam, AoF and Pyre, no need to worry about scaling in lategame that way.

About your other questions:

- Yes, if damage was converted it can be scaled by either type of bonus. Here's an example: if you do 100 physical damage, have 50% physical converted to cold and 50% cold converted to fire you will do 50 physical, 25 cold and 25 fire. 50 physical can be scaled with physical damage bonuses, 25 cold can be scaled with either physical or cold and 25 fire can be scaled by physical, cold or fire.

- 'Increased fire damage' bonus is general so it increases any fire damage you do, damage type or origin doesn't matter.

- Yes, you won't be able to proliferate ignite from your attacks if oyu use Pyre but you can proliferate from Herald of ash if you're using it.

- Yes, Fire trap would do pathetic damage without dedicating your build to it.

- Needing avatar of fire is dependent on what do you want to accomplish with your build.

Thanks, this really confirms quite a few of my notions, so while I think that I'm not completely off track, my build definitely needs quite a bit of tweaking. I guess my idea behind DoomFletch was that it would deal 1/3 elements randomly, therefore if cold is being converted to fire with Pyre, then it would have a 66% chance of dealing fire and the other 33.33% of the time it would deal lightning damage, which wouldn't be bad for some shocks (this is where my Avatar of Fire question comes into play). The mana regen and high attack speed are also useful, considering that most of my damage would be flat fire and the mana regen would be useful for running MoM and Arctic Armour. But the thought did cross my mind that I would be suffering from too great of a damage penalty without using flat physical damage to scale the damage of Doomfletch, so perhaps I should consider a different option. Maybe a Quill Rain would be better for more attack speed? Or perhaps I should drop the idea of attack speed and flat fire damage and focus more on a high physical damage based bow and then use Hatred with Pyre instead? So many questions. lol I hadn't thought about Herald of Fire proliferating Ignite, but I'm not sure about how well the burn damage will scale. If I'm not built specfically around increased burning damage, then perhaps it won't be very good?

"

GodlyMe wrote:

http://pathofexile.gamepedia.com/Avatar_of_Fire

Between those 3 you can make any skill a fire skill.

Thanks. I'm aware of the options, but choosing between them is a different story altogether.

"

JNF wrote:

Maybe a Quill Rain would be better for more attack speed? Or perhaps I should drop the idea of attack speed and flat fire damage and focus more on a high physical damage based bow and then use Hatred with Pyre instead?

Yes, I think converting physical is the right way to go if you want to do all fire damage with regular bow skills.

Quill Rain doesn't really work for much else besides sticking explosive arrow fuses and some other very specialized applications. That's because it halves all damage you do with your bow attacks, EA works because explosions aren't inflicted using a bow, they aren't 'attack' damage.

Herald can do nice damage even with just a token damage investment like those elemental and fire damage nodes on shadow start, you just need to pick the right skill. You need high overkills so concentrated Rain of ArrowS would work better for HoA than Tornado Shot with GMP. Of course, that's assuming you want to to the bulk of your damage by proliferating ignite, in which case you wouldn't really need to do all your damage as fire, HoA accounts for all damage types.

"

raics wrote:

"

JNF wrote:

Maybe a Quill Rain would be better for more attack speed? Or perhaps I should drop the idea of attack speed and flat fire damage and focus more on a high physical damage based bow and then use Hatred with Pyre instead?

Yes, I think converting physical is the right way to go if you want to do all fire damage with regular bow skills.

Quill Rain doesn't really work for much else besides sticking explosive arrow fuses and some other very specialized applications. That's because it halves all damage you do with your bow attacks, EA works because explosions aren't inflicted using a bow, they aren't 'attack' damage.

Herald can do nice damage even with just a token damage investment like those elemental and fire damage nodes on shadow start, you just need to pick the right skill. You need high overkills so concentrated Rain of ArrowS would work better for HoA than Tornado Shot with GMP. Of course, that's assuming you want to to the bulk of your damage by proliferating ignite, in which case you wouldn't really need to do all your damage as fire, HoA accounts for all damage types.

So in that case, I could drop the Pyre, still focus on getting as many damage auras as possible, and then perhaps use a Mokou's ring for the ignite chance, rather than the Pyre? I just gave Rain of Arrows a shot and it actually works pretty well, aside from the much higher mana cost anyways. Should I then also consider switching out the Doedre's damning ring and not bother with dual cursing? Maybe just use Herald of Thunder + curse on hit + vulnerability instead (for the increased damage over time)? My initial idea was to use Flammability and Elemental Weakness both, but after switching Elemental Weakness for Vulnerability (using Flammability and Vulnerability works really well for igniting/burning), now I'm wondering if I shouldn't drop the Doedre's and free up a gem slot by just using Fire Penetration rather than Flammability? However, the wiki does state that Fire Penetration does nothing for burning damage, so perhaps Flammability is more useful simply for the extra ignite chance if nothing else (but this also leads me back to switching to a Mokou's for ignite chance).

"

JNF wrote:

However, the wiki does state that Fire Penetration does nothing for burning damage, so perhaps Flammability is more useful simply for the extra ignite chance if nothing else (but this also leads me back to switching to a Mokou's for ignite chance).

That's correct, you need a hit for penetration to work and damage over time doesn't hit. Well, you mostly got the point and know what options you got, now you only need to decide what to do.

So here's an update:

Currently gear/gems:




Current tree:



Damage is mostly fire, with some physical. Running Arctic Armour and hoping to get enough of a mana pool to pick up MoM soon (only 3 skill points away, but I only have 140 mana left after reserve while running Clarity, Herald of Fire, Herald of Ice, and Hatred). Tool tip dps is only about 1.7k with the Infractem, but that's with fire penetration and curse on hit + flammability, so of course that isn't really accurate. Playing through act 2 right now and it's working pretty well as mobs that aren't killed in one shot are ignited by Herald of Fire and then die. I'd be interested in any advice.

So I could be mistaken, but doesn't the mod "increased damage against monsters on low life" mean that they'll take more damage from a burn during the burn? That being said, I think these boots might be really good for my build?




Also read on the wiki that "increased fire damage" also applies to burns, so wouldn't the fire damage from this helm also apply?



Seems to be working pretty well, but confirmation would be much appreciated.