☆ [Outdated] Sarang's TS/LA/Barrage Archer | Pathfinder | Crit Bow | Videos | Budget Version ☆

Some updates this weekend.

Added Path of Building load-out with the gear that is shown in the opening post. If you don't have this tool, I highly recommend it. Everything from checking whether items are upgrades, gem reconfigurations without re-Chroming, true damage output, it has it all. In the loadout there are other bows you can try out, like Chin Sol, Lioneye's Glare, and a 370 pDPS, 8.70% Crit Harbinger if you want to play around with things.

As requested, added a short leveling section, 29 Points, 47 Points, 69 Points, 92 Points.

As requested, added some conditions for the trees I've posted.

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@Larenak: I had actually checked this earlier in the week and I saw you had Le Heups (:D) so I'm glad you got rid of those. I looked at your gear, Resists are matching for Lightning and Cold unbuffed, but you have Dying Sun and Vinktar so actually you're only going to Penetrating Fire damage when your flasks are up. You can actually cheat a little if you look for a belt with WED, Life, and t6 Cold Resistance (you're looking for +20% Cold Resist), and no Fire Resist on it at all. If you do that and Master Craft 24% Lightning Resistance, then with Flasks active you'll have matching Fire/Lightning. Let me know if you see another outlet for that, that was just what I thought would be the easiest to replace. Ideal belt is like WED/Life/20 Cold Resistance/Reduced Flask Charges/Open Suffix OR 24 Lightning.

One thing to say, with Wise Oak and Flask Effect, we're looking at +49 All Resistances if you use the flask, so as long as you are at 120 all at the very least, you'll be Elemental Weakness capped permanently. Bismuth Flask lasts so long and basically will have 3 uses on it always.

For Crit Chance just check your character screen in the Offensive Tab and you'll see the chance to crit. I've added a small Diamond Flask table in the opening post. When your Crit Chance is Lucky it'll roll twice. At 77.61% Crit Chance, a Diamond Flask activation will make this 95%.

For Gem Setup without Herald of Ice and COH, it's really up to you. Right now this is what I'm using (my character has Blue Dream):

CWDT-IC-ID-Blood Rage
Faster Casting - Vaal Grace - Vaal Haste - ID
Hatred - HOA - Blink Arrow - Ice Golem


The Faster Casting + Vaal skill setup is really nice, and would likely benefit you especially if you're playing with a friend. Let me know how that works for you. Other options that are nice but situational are things like Flesh Offering that help with Necrovigil and/or DD boxes & Spell Totem + Elemental Weakness for bosses, which can be quite insane.


@4ride: I've tried to make it a little clearer in the Tree section, by adding some conditions such as "Has Acuity, does not have Acuity, wants to farm bosses more, etc." Hopefully this clears things up a little bit. If you're low on currency imo Dying Sun is more important than Acuity unless it's early in the league. You just get so much value out of it right now due to the price. Early league Acuity can be fairly cheap, now it's gotten more pricy.

And yes, Wise Oak is insanely op. Here's to hoping for no nerfs/adjustment to the mechanics.


@limchu: Personally for me Diamond Flask is completely worth it. On POB right now, with this character upload, effective Crit goes from ~70% to ~85% which for a Death's Opus setup is almost a 17% increase in damage. Most importantly though, if you have Atziri's Acuity, then since leech only applies instantly on Critical Strikes it's much safer to have this option. If you use Vaal Pact then I don't think it's a huge issue, since all Life Leech is instant.


@Yuu07: Sadly that is the case nowadays, 6K Life on Archer and we feel pretty comfortable, look to our left and there's a CI guy facetanking with 10K+ on a 1 ex budget. I will say though with certainty this is the result of poor balance team decisions, especially since the last time I heard people like Rory and half the team thought Life was better than ES, which is a joke. In this tree we work hard to get a high life total... but it's what we have to work with. Short of going Blood Magic/Mortal Conviction (I have a goofy looking tree for this too), not much else we can do.

I will say though if Life gets some help in 3.0, then this Passive Tree shell would probably be pretty beneficial.


@AntSunrise: Herald of Ice:



"If you shatter an enemy, they explode and deal AOE damage cold damage to enemies near them."

Build mechanics: If you land a Crit, since a good portion of our damage is Cold Damage with Hatred, then we shatter our enemies, causing Herald of Ice to go off. The AOE explosion can apply Assassin's Mark, and since mobs kind of die in a "wave manner" rather than all at once, the first monster in a pack will explode, applying the curse onto the monsters around him, you kill them, get Power Charges, and the chain continues. It's a nice feature and one way we can generate Charges during mapping.

I get Frenzy Charges from Blood Rage. If you do the budget version, Raider is actually pretty nice because you get Frenzy Charges from the Ascendancy naturally. The actual skill Frenzy is trash.

Awesome. Yeah I kept blood rage and working well. Thanks

Sadly, I did deadeye but the budget doesn't matter and will fix soon when I return home.

General question, when does barrage stop to suck? Does it need to have 8-10 projectiles (+1 quiver, 2 helmet, 2 dying sun) to be as good as people claim it is?

I've always hated the spread it has, anything not directly in the face of a monster, you'll probably miss half the shots, half a screen away you might hit once if you're lucky. Anything in the face of monsters, if I don't crit, it literally tickles them. I honestly have better results using LA from range instead of Barrage for the tough rares/bosses. 4 essence tormented rare, had to kite half the zone with LA as anytime I got close with Barrage I got whooped.

I'm low level, terrible gear, 5L only for barrage, you name it and I suck at it. But holy crap I don't understand why people claim barrage is so strong when I literally have better single target damage with LA right now.

Hi Namcap,

I'm fairly new to rangers. I actually started following Neversink's guide though. However I have recently started transitioning to Sarang's build instead. With the exception that I will probably stick as raider as I just like a more relaxed playstyle with less flask management.

Barrage is pretty much an in your face skill. Ideally you pop your vinktar's and facetank the boss. With all the arrows hitting you should be doing quite a bit more damage than LA. You are missing slower proj by not having a 6-link which will help things a little.

Have you tried using Path of Building? It is pretty good at giving you a pretty accurate account of your DPS. My ingame tooltip DPS for Barrage is about 5k lower than my LA. But looking on Path of Building if ***ALL**** arrows hit my barrage DPS is 5 times higher than my LA dps. And certainly bosses do just melt when you stand there and hit them in the face with it. With the knockback from King of the Hill often they never get too close.

For quite a while I was using frenzy over barrage. I quite liked the easy frenzy generation charges on boss fights and it can hit them from a long distance too. I was also a little perplexed with everyone saying that Barrage is better. I do know that once I had both frenzy and barrage in a 6-link at lvl 20 then barrage did start to feel quite a bit faster for bosses. I certainly don't have anything like a dying sun or +2 helmet either.

It is a little different for me as I have automatic frenzy generation.

One thing that does make everything feel better is having instant leech. That just keeps you topped off when using barrage so unless you are one-shot with vinktar's up you are close to un-killable assuming you aren't stunned. Maybe look into getting Vaal Pact. You may find that improves the feel of the build.

If you regret out of the 4 points around vitality void you can put 2 points into the soul raker cluster to get your life / mana leech and put you 2 more points closer to Vaal pact (or anything else you choose to go for). Maybe consider swapping out of the sniper cluster for the extra 2 points so you can hit vaal pact. See if you like the gameplay or not.

Honestly, I will be surprised if you don't start finding barrage pretty good. But if you really don't consider frenzy or blast rain till you can get a 6-link and then maybe try it again.

Hey Dr,
thanks for your input. I'm actually trying to finish putting points into the claw/bow cluster to get leech, then respec out of Duelist area leech to path differently through the area (going for Scion life wheel next). I just need 2-3 more levels to be able to respec it all for it to make sense.

I actually got lucky last night and found a reliquary key which I sold and it allowed me to buy the Vinktars (I was so poor before that). Also allowed me to buy a rat's nest and gloves so I'm finally res capped without pots. Overall it was a pretty solid night for progression.

I must say with Vinktars it certainly feels more powerful but then again my dps goes up like 50% just from that flask so it certainly helps. I'm thinking of speccing into Point Blank but I always heard it was a boss farming point and not for general map clearing (still in yellow maps at this point so lots of map farming to do).

What's the penalty on range damage with Point Blank? Does it become too huge to compensate, since LA pretty much clears a screen and a half away right now I wouldn't want to lose out too much on that since it makes the build pretty safe and clears quickly.

Hi Namcap,

Congrats on the reliquary key drop and the ensuing upgrades! I thought your gear looked pretty good when I checked it earlier and did think you shouldn't be having quite so many issues. Hopefully the build is better for you now.

I think point blank goes to -50% damage towards the edge of the screen so it can limit offscreen potential. On the plus side it also means you take a lot less reflect damage from LA as well so you are less likely to one-shot yourself to an ele reflect mob you don't even see! If you were to 6-link your barrage you could choose to add the point-blank support gem to get the benefits of it for your barrage without the (possible) drawback for your LA.

Good luck with your build :)

So is Enlightment gem needed anymore? I can't figure out where to put it really. Also if anyone can help me out with gems check my profile thanks

quick question,

using ts-wed-gmp-ics-pierce-ptl atm and was wondering which gem i should be dropping for a iiq gem

75% crit chance without power charges

Can this be good anyhow? With the large radius it's a little confusing

can i use legacy reach for this build? or is it worth it?

Also i would like to ask some recommendations for my current build and gears.

my current hp pool is around 5200k