[2.3] Burning Arrow Elementalist || Insane Clear Speed, Solid Defenses and Budget (Atziri Viable)




INTRODUCTION


Hey guys, this is my build guide for my Burning Arrow Elementalist in the Perandus League, I made this account only 6 days ago, so all the gear in this thread is relatively budget (my main account is here).

My original intent was to create a budget build that could rival the clear speed of Voltaxic LA, which this build accomplishes and much more.

The build is based around completely scaling burning damage as much as possible and then proliferating that burn to surrounding monsters. To scale this burning damage exponentially, we double-dip on fire, elemental and projectile damage as much as possible.

This build destroys map content and possesses pretty insane clear speed (reaching 268 million exp per hour at dried lake). Defensively, we use the Acrobatics and Phase Acrobatics keystones, combined with a large life pool from Kaom's Heart and some defensive CWDT setups.


VIDEO



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WVS_CkyXOnA




OVERVIEW


Pros:

+ Insane clear speed
+ Defensive
+ Budget
+ Very Fun
+ Offscreen clear

Cons:

- Needs Fast Gameplay to maintain Elemental Conflux
- Can't Run Elemental Reflect maps.


SKILL TREE


Witch

Passive Tree (For level 90)

Ascendancy Points: Shaper of Desolation, Beacon of Ruin, Liege of the Primordial, Pendulum of Destruction.

Bandits: +Life, +Attack Speed, +Frenzy


LEVELING TREES


Spoiler
Passive Tree (19 Passives)

Passive Tree (45 Passives)

Passive Tree (61 Passives)

Passive Tree (78 Passives*)

* Please note here that we spec out of the spell damage nodes and also spec out of the mana regeneration nodes. We switch from Firestorm to Infractem and take Avatar of Fire here as well.

Passive Tree (95 Passives)

Passive Tree (110 Passives)



SKILL TREE EXPLANATION


Generally on our skill tree, we take as many efficient fire, elemental and projectile damage nodes as possible. We also take a moderate amount of life. We also get some increased area of effect from the tree and this provides a nice AoE boost to the radius of 'Beacon of Ruin' to enhance our clear speed.

For our Keystones we use Avatar of Fire to convert all our damage to Fire damage. This allows us to get the maximum benefit from scaling fire and elemental damage. We also grab Acrobatics and Phase Acrobatics for a great defensive boost.


JEWELS


Jewels are a very important component of our build. Getting high life on our jewels is a huge priority, afterwards we search for damage mods such as increased fire damage, projectile damage, damage, burning damage, attack speed, attack speed with bows. Life jewels are generally quite expensive, but they are definitely worth the investment.



Another jewel I recommend using is Mantra of Flames, which provides a huge DPS boost for our build, since we run up to 5 buffs with elemental conflux up.



SCREENSHOTS


Burning Arrow DPS (Charges Only)




Single-Target Burning Arrow DPS (Charges Only)



Note that these stats are with Fire Penetration and a 5L Lioneye's Glare.


DEFENSE




GEAR






GEAR EXPLANATION


Spoiler
Weapon

For our weapons, we want a Lioneye's Glare bow (preferably 5 or 6 linked. Thankfully, these bows are quite cheap and 5 link Lioneye's tend to go for 30-35 chaos. Going Lioneye's is advantageous for our build since we can save 4 passive points travelling to resolute technique, and it also provides a lot of DPS (350 max). If you are in the Prophecy league, I would instead recommend a Reach of the Council bow and also path to resolute technique.



I also use another 5 link Lioneye's on weapon switch for my single target Burning Arrow because I am lazy. This single target is basically just the same links, except GMP is replaced with slower projectiles. But you can alternatively just carry a slower projectiles gem with you for bosses.





Quiver

For our quiver we use a Drillneck as it provides a huge amount of projectile damage, which double-dips into our burning damage. Drillneck also gives us some nice life and other damage bonuses, thus making it BIS for a non-crit bow build like ours.





Helm

For our helm, we ideally want a helm with the enchanted mod "20% increased burning arrow ignite chance". This is very nice for our build since it gives us a high ignite chance even with elemental conflux is not up. Helms with these enchantments are usually quite cheap since no one really cares about burning arrow ignite chance.



You can also just use a normal rare helm without the enchanted mod, if you can't find any.





Chest

For our chest we want a Kaom's Heart. It provides a nice boost to DPS through fire damage, as well as a massive amount of life that helps our defense. You can also use a 5-link lightning coil if you can cap resistances so you won't have to weapon swap for your single-target. Belly, Daresso's and Hyrri's are also nice chests but generally inferior to Kaom's or Coil.





Gloves

For Gloves, we want high attack speed, life and resistances. Fire damage is also nice on our gloves.





Boots

For Boots, we generally want Blood dance for its Frenzy charge generation. It also gives us a nice amount of life regeneration for survivability at the cost of some attack speed. We use blood dance instead of Blood rage since we get no life regeneration from the tree. It also provides a nice amount of dexterity for equipping our bow.





Amulet

For the Amulet, we want an amulet with high fire damage, life and resistances. We also need high strength and dexterity, since Lioneye's Glare has a 212 dexterity requirement and Kaom's Heart has a 191 strength requirement.





Rings

For our rings, we want high life, resistances and fire damage. Elemental damage with weapons is also a nice bonus to have. Try to get dexterity/strength too if you can. You can also use a Pyre ring for maps with porcupines as Pyre destroys corpses so that porcupines can't explode. You can also use Sibyl's Lament, if you want to be extra safe vs reflect. Sibyl's also gives us a lot of bonus damage too.





Belt

For the Belt, we want a Dyadian Dawn. Dyadian Dawn synergises extremely well with this build. It provides us with a large amount of life leech (since we always chill with Elemental Conflux) as well as the valuable "enemies burn 20% faster", which is basically a 20% more multiplier to our burning damage. It's drawback "deal no physical damage" is irrelevant since all our damage is fire.



LINKS AND GEMS



Burning Arrow AoE Setup



For Burning Arrow, the links are shown above. I use GMP for the large area coverage, WED and Fire Penetration for its large damage boost, and pierce because it synergises really well with Drillneck. I also recommend getting quality on Burning Arrow if possible as the increased ignite duration boosts our DPS by a lot.

For the 6th link there are a variety of choices, I would recommend Slower Projectiles or Life Leech.

Burning Arrow Single-Target Setup



This is for your weapon swap if you decide to use one. The only difference to the setup shown above is Slower projectiles is used instead of GMP. I tested out Blast Rain, but Burning Arrow worked out the best.

CWDT Setup



I like using Temporal Chains for its great defensive bonus, and it also increases ignite duration on enemies. I also use Immortal Call and Increased duration because it allows me to deal with porcupines better (they are quite annoying).

Mobility Setup



This is the main mobility setup which involves using Blink arrow linked with faster projectiles. This allows us to path through cliffs and is also good for lock-boxes or when you get blocked in by monsters. Generally though, we will be running around for this build.

Aura Setup



This is our Aura setup and we use Herald of Ash, Anger and Clarity. We use a level 5-10 clarity for sustaining our mana, and it is generally enough for our build (since burning arrow has a very low mana cost compared to other bow builds). Anger provides a massive DPS boost for our build and Herald of Ash also gives us some nice bonus damage and overkill ignite.

Golem



We use an Flame Golem for the bonus to damage. With liege of the primordial from our Ascendancy, our Flame golem provides us with a whopping 80% increased fire damage which is huge. Try linking it with minion life so that the golem stays alive longer.

With 2.3, we are allowed to also have another golem, so I would recommend also running a stone golem.


LEVELING


Generally, just use Firestorm to level, using cheap leveling uniques to do so. You can also use some skill points on spell damage at the start of the witch area. Path into the Templar area first and then path into the Ranger area afterwards.



When you get to level 53, try to get 'Shaper of Desolation' and 'Beacon of Ruin'. Then get an Infractem and a 5-link armour, and that should carry you to level 66 when you can equip your lioneye's glare. Then get a Kaom's Heart for a massive boost to life at level 68.



NOTES



Thanks for reading guys. There are a few variations you can explore of this build. Some involve traps, some involve Hybrid instead of Life. One of my readers, MinstrelShadrak has also come up with an Armour + high life version, and has provided a nice written description of his experiences with it.

Spoiler

Summary

6L gem setup damge: 4.6k-13k hideout aura/golem tooltip (21k dps)
It has a wide damage range, but when multiple proliferates affect a target,
it will take the one created by the highest dmg roll.

A weapon swap is handy for single target boss killing, but comes at a price, you cannot level up gems on the side. Most of the times I didnt swap or take out GMP and just trained a pack of monsters on a boss and kept spamming GMP-BA with vaal haste.

Also important is: it penetrates 49% fire resistance with an attack. That's a blessing for
EE & Fire resist map mods. I noticed clear speed going up with bigger packsize. So bring on the enfeeble & EE maps.

LIFE: 7.2k-7.7k, varies by finetuning last 4-5 skill points. Can even go up to 8.5k easily, but it will be at the cost of too much damage, creating new problems.

13k armor. flask 90% armour goes up to 19k and with a 3000 armor granite goes up to 28k. That's solid defense, can be augmented further with 20% basalt & endurance charges. With 28k+basalt you can take big physical punches in the highest tier of maps.

2% lifeleech & 0.8% manaleech. This comes at the price of 6 skill points or 4 if you need dex: so that's costing you 400-600 life. High price, but quality of life improves by alot. Easy mode ON.

the tree is very flexible. Was respeccing roughly 15 points, that can take:
- mid section templar & Indomitable
- mid section marauder
- jewel slots & Indomitable

Video of lvl 88 fatso BA elementalist
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DRqxxCx86qk




Gear

Was unable to aqcuire a helm with 20% ignite chance. After some practice with the build and with the help of 2x Vaal haste, I was able to keep up the conflux.
Hence everything got ignited anyway, so the extra ignite chance was not needed.

Temporal chains curse gloves are sweet. Have not tried elemental weakness gloves.

Rumi's flask is needed for a second layer of defense for the hardest content of the game. Like the original build has with acrobatics.

Gear got rather expensive in the end, but worth the fun.
For labyrinth runs I suggest socketing CWDT-IC setup for the traps.
For low level farming can use Anger instead of Grace.
For party play, can replace Herald of Ash with Purity of fire.








THE END


Check out my other Ascendancy builds if you are interested:

Explosive Cleave
https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/1609862

Poison Spectral Throw
https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/1590929
Last edited by MoarPizza on Jun 21, 2016, 7:40:03 PM
Last bumped on Apr 8, 2017, 5:51:36 PM
reserved
Looks interesting and i also like the formatting nice to read, informative.
I wish all build posts would be like this.
[IGN] "Zealotchen"
Last edited by Zealot_ on Apr 17, 2016, 11:06:39 AM
For leveling. Do you go into templar of shadow area first? Or a mix of both?

EDIT:nvm you answered it in your guide
Last edited by ij0rthegreat on Apr 17, 2016, 3:15:47 PM
@Zealotlol

Thanks! I try to make my guides neat and easy to read.


@ij0rthegreat

First path to the Templar area and then move towards the shadow area afterwards.
Before Ascendancy release, I was thinking so much of whether this build is viable or not, and finally someone put this on test! Thanks OP, that looks really great, I might try this one in future!

Got a quick question - have you considered going crit rather than non crit?
@AwakeningTheChaos

Hey, that's a good question. Yeah I thought about going crit, but I eventually decided to go non-crit.

By going non-crit, we can take more elemental, fire and projectile damage nodes which double-dip for our burning damage. So our overall burning damage would be a lot higher.

Also, non-crit builds offer more consistency. Since we are one-shotting most packs, if we are a crit build and we miss or don't land a crit, we have to shoot again which reduces our clear speed.
Last edited by MoarPizza on Apr 17, 2016, 3:55:07 PM
No elemental overload?
So my question is... how's reflect? Do you think this build could go HC? Ofcourse you would need more health and all, but... reflect is what i am worried about, maybe you can even drop herald of ash and run purity of fire? or is it not worth it?
I've played some burning arrow in the passed, how do you
see the radius of herald of ash vs beacon of ruin?
It must be overlapping most of the time?

edit:
* Single player reflect, you can get away with a ruby flask, but in full parties (upping monster life), especially when you convert their aura's with avatar to more fire dmg it's a problem for sure.

* Since you start out with so much ES around as witch, might as well go hybrid/CI?

Goodluck with the build! it's looking nice.
@Minstrelshadrak
Last edited by MinstrelShadrak on Apr 17, 2016, 5:37:43 PM

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