Kamikaze Clones : LL Mirror Arrow Instability- Kill Everything (Updated) [2.6]

- Ridiculously high damage : About in the same ballpark as a well geared crit flameblast pre-nerf. Not only is the damage output excellent, it's also completely independent from gear, making it very easy to achieve. You only need the right gems and links, and the gems don't even need to be level 20, quality, or 6-linked to perform well ! (even just a 4L is already pretty damn good).

- Completely reflect immune, which is nice when you do that much deeps.

- Easy gearing : because damage is all from gems and passives, all you need on gear is defensive stats. Running triple purities with high aura effectiveness makes capping resists trivial, so you can focus on getting stuff like high ES, chaos resist, etc.

- Works well on the cheap : we also do not need any expensive unique or a 6L (not even a 5L, if you want/need to be real cheap). The build can be made to work on a shoestring budget, and goes right into OP territory with less than 5ex worth of gear.

- quite tanky : the build can easily get 6k ES with bad gear, and 8k+ with good stuff at high level.

- flexible mapper : lots of map mods do absolutely nothing to the build, and almost none of them ever need to be rerolled. See mapping section below for details (section non existent at the moment).

- Chaos damage is sneaky : chaos damage isn't actually much of a problem (see dedicated section below), but one needs to be paying attention, or risk to die simply from not noticing your health is going down. For this reason I wouldn't recommend the build in HC unless you are using a Shavs or Lorica.

- not practical to level with : there are ways to level as low life from as early as normal difficulty, but those are not practical without Ghost Reaver or a shield, and this build can't use either. I strongly advise against using this spec before at least Merciless. Levelling as a low life caster would work fine though!

- MA cooldown puts a hard cap on clear speed : first world problem, but you will not be able to clear easy maps as fast as some top tier builds simply because you need to wait for the cooldown to finish before taking on another screen's worth of mobs. However the Mirror Arrow Cooldown enchant does help with this.

AoE clear - Quill Rain - Links in order of priority. A 4 link is the bare minimum for this.
Mirror Arrow - Chance to Ignite - Elemental Proliferation - Increased AoE - Minion Damage - Empower

Mirror Arrow, Chance to Ignite, Elemental Proliferation and Increased AoE are core to the pack clearing set up, otherwise you wouldn't have any clear speed at all.

The 6th Link is a luxury, level 3 Empower is the best boost to both the AoE and Single Target clear due to Mirror arrow gaining life and also damage per gem level. Level 2 empower is on par with a 20/20 Minion life support.

Single target /Boss killer - +3 bow set up
Mirror Arrow - Chance to ignite/Elemental Focus - Minion Damage - Conc Effect - Minion and Totem Resistance - Empower

Elemental focus is for Atziri and Phoenix which are ignite immune and also Minion resistance provides a bigger increase in damage than minion life.

4L: Rain of Arrows - CoH - Flammability - Elemental Weakness
5L: Split Arrow - Chain - CoH - Flammability - Elemental Weakness
6L: Ice Shot - GMP - CoH - Flammability - Elemental Weakness - Temporal Chains

"

As usual with burn builds, reducing mob fire resistance is a major way of scaling damage. This is even more the case here than on a regular burn build, because we have access to very few other means of scaling : spell/elemental/fire/burning damage passives or gear affixes do nothing for us. So we definitely want to be using that to its fullest. We have clicking time to spare while MA is on cooldown anyway, so let's take advantage of that.

First stop is Elemental Equilibrium. The keystone is right on a path we would have taken anyway , so that's nice. All we need to apply it is some cold or lightning damage (but no fire). It can actually be applied by mirror arrow itself, as it hits a mob on the head for some damage when you aim at it. This is however insufficient, as MA will not apply to other targets in range of the explosion, or further away in Proliferation range. To use it effectively, we need to use a wide hitting attack. Might as well use that as a vector for cursing, as it is faster and more efficient (also easier on the mana) than self casting.

"

- Rain of Arrows is our choice for when only one socket is available (we need at least three others for coh + 2 curses). It can be aimed freely and will hit every target in it's respectable AoE. It is however less than ideal because of it's delay which will make you miss fast moving targets, although that can be alleviated somewhat with Projectile Speed on the bow (it's nice to have anyway for Mirror Arrow which also has a similar delay). The radius is also limited, and will not be enough to curse large or scattered packs in one go.
- Split Arrow + Chain is the better option chosen with 2 sockets available (5L with 2 curses or 6L with 3 curses). Split arrow is almost instant and has built in AoE, but only hits the "front line" of a pack ; chain takes care of that and more. You get in total up to 21 hits with this combo, which is enough to curse most stuff on screen (and often some stuff off screen too). 2 clicks is almost guaranteed to cover the most dense concentrations of mobs. Chain also has the nice property of letting you hit stuff around corners, which is very handy in indoor maps like Academy.
- Ice Shot + GMP has coverage almost on par with split arrow chain (actually better on dense packs) and it leaves chilled ground, which goes insanely well with temp chains. Those two combined make most enemies pretty much static as soon as they get hit, which is excellent for survivability. Thanks to Frolamiz for the brilliant suggestion.

"

We get two natively from passives. A third can be obtained through either a corrupted amulet (a Sidhebreath would be the more obtainable option) or a Doedre's Damning ring. I advise against using Windscreams which have terrible movespeed and no ES, chaos res, or life. I'd rather lose a ring slot.
I would just not bother with a third curse unless I had a 6L to curse with, since tricurse with a 5L means using the inferior RoA for delivery. Quad curse is not practical and not worth pursuing, unless maybe if you have a pair of gloves corrupted with Elemental Weakness or Vulnerability on hit (in which case you will have to wear both a corrupted amulet and a D's Damning, and that could be taxing on the rest of your gear).
-Flammability is the most important. Ignite chance is very precious, and so is fire resistance reduction. This one is non-negotiable. Quality is unnecessary, borderline useless.
-Elemental Weakness is the second curse of choice for DPS. It gives a tremendous total of reduced fire resist. Quality is excellent, get some if possible (or flip it when it hits 20). You can replace this with a defensive curse if you feel more need for survivability than for damage (which would probably be the case with weak gear).
-Temporal Chains is my favorite defensive curse, and it happens to synergize well with multiple aspects of this build. It makes your burns last longer which is good for hard targets and the get that annoying lone survivor. It also makes your other curses last longer. It makes it easier to get away from melee mobs and gap closers with your high movement speed. It also gives better chance to get the two second no-hit period we need for ES recharge to start. As a bonus, it's a green gem, which is easy on the chromes if your CoH setup is in the bow.
-other options : Vulnerability for even more damage (seems unnecessary), Enfeeble for more defense (instead of either TC or EW).

Windscreams are now a good option as they now have movement speed but still do not provide any other defence. There is also a better option which is explained later in the gearing section.

"

Ideally, you want the MA setup in the bow, because you can get a 6L bow for cheap (while a 6L decent ES chest is quite expensive) and also because you can roll +lvl to bow gems there, which dramatically improves the life (and therefore damage) of the clones.
There's a big problem though : needed colors are GBBBR(5L) or GBBBR[BorR](6L), which are 4/5 and 5/6 off colors. Ouch. That's about a truckload of chromes to get, on average... So realistically, you will probably put that setup in your chest piece (2 or 3 off-colors depending on your choice of 6th) and put the GGG BBB "priming" setup in the bow, as that's a more manageable 3 off.
It's not a terrible problem : MA does plenty enough damage in a 5L without additional levels (and I mean for end-end game, like hard 78s solo).
There are a few tricks you can use to mitigate the chroming problem. By crafting reduced attributes on an item such as a high dex bow you can increase your chances of getting off colours.

The main aura's will be Purity of Fire/Ice/Lightning, Discipline and Clarity.

In the original guide Peppermint used Reduced Mana to fit in an additional 50% aura into this build. Due to the change to Reduced Mana we can no longer do this. With the 34% mana reservation this build takes we can run Purity of Fire/Ice/Lightning on mana and then a Discipline with clarity to trigger Mirror Arrow trick with Minion Instability.

You will find that you will not need a high level Blood Magic and Clarity to trigger this trick. This will depend on your total life as to how much you level your set up. My character uses a level 14 Blood Magic and a level 13 Clarity.


- We can also use Vaal Discipline as a safety net as we have most of our defence in ES.

- CWDT + Immortal Call. This is our protection from physical damage and pretty much a staple in most builds.

- Stone Golem. This helps negate any chaos DoT that we may encounter. While chaos resistance does help us the extra regen is nice.

- Animate Guardian. At the shaper and guardians stages an Animate Guardian with a leer cast and dying breath greatly increase the damage by the mirror arrow due to the aura effects giving generic damage. This damage will double dip on the burn applied by Minion Instability.

We Choose Necromancer for its ability to give us a ton of minion life, minion damage and also to abuse Commander of Darkness. In order of priority. Commander of Darkness - Spirit Eater - Beacon of Corruption - mini nodes between Mistress of Sacrifice and Flesh Binder. Commander of Darkness is providing the biggest boost to our Mirror Arrow due to the 5 auras we running and the Aura effect boosting Commander of Darkness, our tree is boosting Commander of darkness's 50% generic damage by 42% increased aura buff! This boost double dips on Mirror Arrow's Explosion and ignite.

The level 92 skill tree can be found here: www.poeurl.com/bbmb

Bandits are Kill - Kill - Kill. As we are more ES based the flat life does not give us a big increase compared to getting a 6% ES node. In cruel the only node that we can take is attack speed but due to using a quill rain (explained in gearing) this isn't needed. As we are a summoner we cannot make use of any the charges.

I found the easiest way to level was to start off using Summon Raging Spirits, take Minion damage when needed, level as hybrid taking early life nodes and ES nodes. Path towards mana reservation nodes as the more auras we can run the more damage we can do with Commander of Darkness.

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Here's a simple thought experiment : Imagine you have a life based build with 5k life and -60% chaos resist. Would you feel like you should die to chaos damage all the time? With 75% chaos resist, you only take 25/160=15.6% of the damage, meaning that with only 780 life you get exactly as much effective HP against chaos than in the above scenario.
There are two important difference though :
- in our case, that pseudo-5k life tool cannot take any damage from non chaos sources. And how often have you seen or heard of a pure chaos one-shot? As far as I know, there actually are no pure chaos damage hits in the game. None. They're almost all chaos/phys Hybrids: Weaver, constructs, snakes... the only pure chaos damage I know of comes in the form of degens.

Helm - Broken Crown/Vertex/Hubris/Bone Helm - Broken Crown and vertex are the early items for this build due to the high chaos resistance they provide and they also come with ES which is a plus! Hubris is great if you can get one enchanted with the Mirror Arrow Cooldown enchant. Bone Helm is great when doing Shaper and Guardians as they provide up to 40% increase to double dipping damage!


Chest - A 700ES chest with Chaos res attached is around 30-40C in Legacy league (at time of writing) you can also get another resist with that making it much better than a shavs in terms of top end ES.

Amulet - Sidhebreath/Eye of Chayula/Presence of Chayula - Sidhebreath provides the best double dipping source from unique items on this build as it provides an increase to our base damage (minion life) and also double dips the initial and burn (minion damage). The Chayula items give you a boost to defence from the cannot be stunned mod, Presence helps with giving you a higher ES total. However I would only suggest these items if you are using a Shav's or a Lorica as you need the high unreserved life pool for chaos damage. While a +1 Curse amulet is somewhat hard to get on the correct amulet so we can use 3 curses, you can also use a minion damage corruption in place of it as well.

Rings - If you are using Sidhebreath I would suggest using a Valyrium ring to make your stun threshold much higher and the second ring to be a resistance ring with a high flat ES and %ES. If you have gone with the Chayula items I would suggest 2 rings with ES and resistances. While levelling you can replace the ES/Resist ring with a Lori's Lantern to provide addition defence.

Gloves - Any ES base gloves with Life/ES/Resistances are best here. In the end game crafting Minion damage via Catarina gives you a big damage increase.

Belt - Here a Crystal belt with Life/ES/Resistances/Chaos res if needed.

Boots - Steppan Eard or Windscream. Steppan Eards allow you to negate desecrated ground effects which would constantly degen your life pool and provide a good amount of ES and 30% movement speed. Windscream will allow you to run a 3rd curse and are much easier to obtain earlier into a league. If you are using a Shav's or Lorica I would suggest a higher ES boots with Movement speed.

Quiver - As we are a bow build and using ES as our defence the only quiver applicable is the Soul Strike quiver as it grants ES and also faster ES recharge.

Bows - We can use 2 types of bow in this build. A quill rain can be used as a general mapping bow and used in the end game up until T15 as a boss killing bow due to its instant summoning of Mirror Arrow and the damage penalty does not apply to Mirror Arrow's explosion. The Other type of Bow we can use is a +3 bow. A +3 bow can give us a level 28 Mirror Arrow (with a Level 4 Empower) which allows us to start one shotting Guardians (other than Minotaur and Phoenix).

We use a Life flask with instant recovery when on Low life to deal with any burst chaos damage we might take or if we forget to check for chaos ground effects and degens. Basalt helps provide additional physical defence, stibnite helps when dealing with lots of melee mobs or melee bosses and finally the mana flask is needed when dealing with no mana regen maps.