2.5 Concept - CI Burning Arrow Pathfinder

The idea came to me while looking at the new bow, Xoph's Nurture, which has ~300 to ~350 pDPS, 50% phys to fire, and burn prolif (only burns).

Basically the idea is that you'd run a passives tree similar to an ES-based blade vortex pathfinder, except you'd pick up some different damage nodes:

level 92 passives tree:


Bandits would be kill, kill, Alira.

The ES might seem kinda low but at the end of the day you'd have like 8.5k which is fine.

Pathfinder provides huge benefits for this build:

Stacking Veteran Bowyer with Fire penetration grants 47% fire pen. This, along with the Vitality Void cluster providing leech from all Attack damage, whether elemental or physical, allows us to sustain even in reflect maps. It also gives us double flask charges on kill, since all targets will be ignited.

Master Alchemist is still OP, providing immunity to elemental status effects and 40% increased elemental damage while flasks are up (which they will be at all times).

Nature's Adrenaline gives us a nice movement speed boost, as well as some attack speed to make up for the attack speed we will miss out on with our passives tree.



As far as flasks go, you'd use dying sun, basalt, silver, diamond and vinktar (though you'd switch vinktar for jade for reflect maps). You'd get the benefits from these all the time during clear since you're pathfinder and have infinite flasks; you don't need Master Surgeon for flask sustain during boss fights since you just 1 shot the bosses with vaal buring arrow.

Dying sun would provide 3 extra projectiles, 45% AoE boost for increased clear speed, and 12% max fire res that allows us to sustain in reflect maps.

Vinktar lets us double dip the damage bonus from shock to kill rares and bosses quickly with vaal burning arrow (more on that later).

Diamond puts us at like 80%-85% crit chance from our normal 59%-62%.

Basalt and Silver round out the flask lineup with some mitigation and speed.


Gem links would be:


For single target:



The damage of the build would from the double dipping ignite damage with elemental damage, projectile damage, area damage, fire resist penetration, pierce, as well as scaling crit damage with 83ish % crit chance and 400% crit multi. On single target you get even more insane double dipping cause you can use conc effect with vaal burning arrow, and you also shotgun with vaal burning arrow (one of the few skills that still can shotgun).


As far as auras go, probably discipline, herald of ash, blasphemy+assassin's mark. With our reduced mana reservation value this brings us to about 80% reserved which should be fine.


The gear:



Honestly the only really expensive thing is gonna be the dying sun which is like 8 exalts in sc breach right now. The base item of the bow isn't very expensive, but 6 linking it probably will be. You'll also have to get a 6L 800 es chestpiece, and crit/wed/es jewelry can be quite pricey as well. The build will come down to a more reasonable pricetag later in the league though as more people farm shaper and get dying sun flasks.

In terms of bosses like atziri, guardians and shaper I'm pretty sure the build could do most of it, you'd just have to theorycraft it and change things around a bit, probably take point blank to one-shot them with vaal burning arrow; I can't be bothered to theorycraft such things any further right now though.

I'll try to build this character later on SC breach (cant be bothered trying to live past 90 on HC lol) later after I'm finished with my exams.

Just a little node from what I'm playing at the moment,(life based as regen from Xoph's bow only applies to life) you could swap the bow to Chin Sol for bosses.

Chin Sol 100% more bonus + 50% from point blank + Vaal Burning arrow (Trap + GMP + 1 from quiver + 2 from flask - yes, it adds up to insane levels of shotgunning ...) is somewhere close to ~2.5mil.
There is dead eye for +1 as well.

You can get fire pen from trap cluster, saboteur cluster, bottom of the tree there is wed pen, closer to blood magic there is fire pen and the new amulet gives 10% on top of the cake.

Hey man, I'm just dicking around on HC for a bit thought about making this build. Starting off life based as it's my first char of the league.

Have you tried it yourself already? Also wondering if GMP isn't a good link for Vaal Burning Arrow as you can kinda shotgun the shots if u do it point blank, which I suppose you are anyways with Vinktar's for shock. Doing it that way also allows point blank gem/node.

Only level 45 now not even sure I'll keep playing but lmk how it's going for you.