Explosive Arrow Marauder (Updated for Release)

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gilrad wrote:

I was thinking the ring might be useful because you don't need to waste a link with blood magic, since your secondary skill could probably put you to Max mana pretty quickly. Also it would double (or more, since you are no longer paying life) the effectiveness of life on hit for the secondary skill. The only time you might have mana trouble is with single target bosses when there aren't many other enemies around, and a potion could probably work there since these situations are scarce enough in my experience.

In return you could get three or four auras that can boost various defensive stats.

You would need more than just a bit of mana to be able to use auras + EA effectively. A 5l EA costs 113 mana (EA+EP+conc effect+chance to ignite+fire pen) and with Quill Rain you have roughly 4 APS with a bit of attack speed on gear. You would spent 5*113=565 mana in the first 1,25 seconds to be able to stack it to it's full potential. You would either need a bit of mana reg together with the ring or alternate between your AoE and EA to get mana... Quill Rain is just useless with the combination you mention.

Well, it would cost a little under 500 mana to 5-stack EA considering the 15 mana on hit benefit, but now that you lay the math out I see that without blood magic it would still be a bit difficult.

What about using EA with a blood magic support gem, and using the ring to get super-charged life-on-hit with the secondary skill? The extra cost from the support gem wouldn't be as distinct with a free 28 life per hit, so the only real downside I can think of would be the extra socket the gem would take up (which is a heavy cost, but still worthwhile if you want to really focus on survivability).

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Pastromy wrote:

The only other auras I would gain survivability from would be purity (max resists) and determination.

I go blood magic because it halves the cost of Explosive Arrow (which costs over 100 mana) and saves me a socket. By liking EA to Blood Magic, I sacrifice a ton of life.

If you run vitality + koams then it would be worth it. Explosive arrow would cost around 900 life/s but regen will be enough to counter that. Purity adds 30% more max resistance and your armour would be more than doubled. Before koams it probably would not be worth it. Afterwards it would make this spec tankier than EK and more dps.

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DeltruS wrote:

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Pastromy wrote:

The only other auras I would gain survivability from would be purity (max resists) and determination.

I go blood magic because it halves the cost of Explosive Arrow (which costs over 100 mana) and saves me a socket. By liking EA to Blood Magic, I sacrifice a ton of life.

If you run vitality + koams then it would be worth it. Explosive arrow would cost around 900 life/s but regen will be enough to counter that. Purity adds 30% more max resistance and your armour would be more than doubled. Before koams it probably would not be worth it. Afterwards it would make this spec tankier than EK and more dps.

First, you loose the potential to have an armor with more than just ~600 when wearing kaoms so your armor won't be doubled at all (probably about the same if you don't compare it to a carcass jack). Second, you'll only be able to use a 4L AoE with a BM gem, which means you wouldn't be able to use LA/IS and would have to use Split Arrow.

I guess this is where the ring comes in: with 15 mana on hit, you could easily fuel IS/LA + xMP chain + LoH (if you feel like it) off two enemies. Off one enemy you probably would be losing mana, but only a little (and there's not much benefit to spamming the secondary skill against one enemy anyway).

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gilrad wrote:

I guess this is where the ring comes in: with 15 mana on hit, you could easily fuel IS/LA + xMP chain + LoH (if you feel like it) off two enemies. Off one enemy you probably would be losing mana, but only a little (and there's not much benefit to spamming the secondary skill against one enemy anyway).

That's true if you want to loose 1 ring slot and the ~140 flat life which the rings could have had (and many other affixes).

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R4yn0r wrote:

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DeltruS wrote:

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Pastromy wrote:

The only other auras I would gain survivability from would be purity (max resists) and determination.

I go blood magic because it halves the cost of Explosive Arrow (which costs over 100 mana) and saves me a socket. By liking EA to Blood Magic, I sacrifice a ton of life.

If you run vitality + koams then it would be worth it. Explosive arrow would cost around 900 life/s but regen will be enough to counter that. Purity adds 30% more max resistance and your armour would be more than doubled. Before koams it probably would not be worth it. Afterwards it would make this spec tankier than EK and more dps.

First, you loose the potential to have an armor with more than just ~600 when wearing kaoms so your armor won't be doubled at all (probably about the same if you don't compare it to a carcass jack). Second, you'll only be able to use a 4L AoE with a BM gem, which means you wouldn't be able to use LA/IS and would have to use Split Arrow.

With a level 20 reduced mana gem you would have 14.8% of your mana left over if you use 3 40% auras. My chain + split arrow + blind totem costs 80 mana with split arrow at level 14. So I would need 80/.148 = 540 mana total. Each class has 40 mana at level 1 and gains 4 mana per level, and gets 1 mana per 2 int. So at level 90, with the build I posted earlier, I would have 453 mana without items. If I get just 100 more mana from items then I can cast the totem every 8 seconds with just base mana regen.

Now, let me calculate the armor I would have if I drop blood magic, use the points to get inner force, and use koam's. I do not have a sample set of gear so I will have to use estimates.

Helm - 500 armor
Kaom's - 600 armor / 2k armor without koam's
Boots - 500 armor
Gloves - 400 armor
Belt - 300 armor

Grace = 1344 armor / 1747 armor with inner force.

= 4047 with kaom's + grace + inner force
= 5044 armor without kaom's, without inner force and with grace

Then determination is a 1.52 multiplier with inner force, which puts the kaom's + blood magic gem build at a total of 6151 armor.

So in regards to armor, you are right. I would only get ~22% more armor.

But honestly, both builds should use kaom's. So, running the numbers with both having kaom's, I would get 68.7% more armor, which is a lot closer to my original estimate. Coupling that with the 33.3% more reduced damage from reflect and elemental, I think going blood magic gem and dropping blood magic in favor of inner force will be the best choice when trying to make your character the best it can be.

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R4yn0r wrote:

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gilrad wrote:

I guess this is where the ring comes in: with 15 mana on hit, you could easily fuel IS/LA + xMP chain + LoH (if you feel like it) off two enemies. Off one enemy you probably would be losing mana, but only a little (and there's not much benefit to spamming the secondary skill against one enemy anyway).

That's true if you want to loose 1 ring slot and the ~140 flat life which the rings could have had (and many other affixes).

Yeah, it's not exactly a no-brainer (in that using the new unique ring has some definite downsides), but I think if your gear is good enough and you use Kaom's, you could probably compensate for what you lose.

As for me, I'm still stuck trying to get more than 4 links on my cloak of flame, so none of this really applies to me :)

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DeltruS wrote:

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I completely agree to your post :). If you are at the highest possible stage where you can afford nearly everything then the combination you mentioned is the best. On the other hand you could use a Life Leech gem instead of BM gem which could situationally be way better than the auras (probably most of the time against single target since your aoe only degenerates your life if you don't have atleast 2 targets and no reg/half reg maps).

would anyone interest with this？

just made it today