Meta's quill rain explosive arrow build.

pros: housing groups of mobs before the rest of the party catches up to you. Relatively Cheap.
cons: Resource cost, single target dmg, elemental reflect mobs.

the build: Life, fire dmg, inc aoe, BM,
Explosive arrow does a lot of dmg, in a sneaky backdoor sort of way that the tooltip might not indicatle.

http://www.pathofexile.com/passive-skill-tree/AAAAAgEAAnEDxgQHBLMGDgn2DjwUTRRxFLAZLhmFGjgabB8CJKolrSftKU8qjTbFNtg26TlSOjA6UjwFPV9G10kbTm1QUFJTVElXDVgHWGNZ818_Y_1mnnKpeuZ82X1TgpuDOIdli4yMz49GkFWXhZeVl_SboZwtnYCdrp7Nn9-iAKcIpzCnhKyYrKqvt7ndvDfAGsbY0NDSIdR81I_YJNlh3QXfv-Fz42rnUudq7DjsVe0g7w7vfPAf8WzyL_ZI99f60g==

the gems:

PRIMARY: Explosive arrow, LMP, Life Leech, Concentrated effect, Increased area of effect, and depending on preference, fire penetration/faster attacks/reduced mana....for 5L cut out fire penetration/faster attacks/reduced mana

SECONDARY:Flame totem, Increased area of effect, faster casting, fire penetration


Q: Fire trap, fire penetration, Increased area of effect, faster casting
W:Decoy totem, Increased area of effect, Increased duration
E: Elemental weakness, increased area of effect, faster casting
R:Flammability, increased area of effect, faster casting
T: Haste

Equipment: Quill Rain Short Bow., LIFE, RESIST, ES, +FIRE DMG. I Use a double Dex roll Quiver to handle high dex requirements of Explosive arrow.

Strategy: Run in range of group, spread 5 shots for 5 stack fuse, throw flammability, elemental weakness, and then fire trap. As long as mobs stay clustered together more/less, anything that is not an elite, or fire resistant champ pack is dead in 6 man. Throw fire trap and flame totem whenever there is spare moment. If you have a tough mob group, use decoy totem to draw mobs next to wall, then fire explosive arrow at the wall, after the initial fuse delay it bypasses future fuse timer and all mobs melt.

Make sure you can identify elemental resist mobs....as they are instant death.

Get some 30% run boots.

Build looks fun.

Here is a friendly critique of the passive tree.

Explosive Arrow:

"

Non-weapon Elemental Damage: The damage of the applied charges is increased by elemental damage and fire damage passives, but not by elemental weapon damage or spell damage passives.

I would switch the nodes in the Catalyse cluster to: Modified Marauder EA Tree

Gains:
+12% more Fire Damage
-10% Explosive Arrow Cost

Loses:
+20% Weapon Elemental Damage (Which is not calculated in EA anyway.)

Would love to see more of a breakdown of the gear involved in perfecting this build. Also, for single target you can beef up Bear Traps and use Frenzy or Elemental Hit ... Just saying :-/

This build demands Elemental Equilibrium. Just make sure your equipment adds only lightning or only cold, and when you attack to give charges, you'll also debuff your enemies against fire damage.

If you're concerned about single-target damage, how about maintaining a second Explosive Arrow link:
20% quality explosive arrow - concentrated effect - chance to ignite - ?????

Getting a consistent burn will more than double your DPS and is especially useful against bosses or really tough enemies where you need to do a lot of kiting.

I made a some edits to my passive tree, see orignal post. I went up and grabbed the dual curse passive. Now I can stack flammability and elemental weakness for around -90% combinded fire resist. I also like the 18% increased cast passive on the curses, because I tend to spam arrows first, then curse right before fuses explode.

"

gilrad wrote:

This build demands Elemental Equilibrium. Just make sure your equipment adds only lightning or only cold, and when you attack to give charges, you'll also debuff your enemies against fire damage.

Interesting, I have been wanting to incorporate EE into this build, as -140% fire resist when combined with dual curses would be great. Thx for the advice.

"

gilrad wrote:

If you're concerned about single-target damage, how about maintaining a second Explosive Arrow link:
20% quality explosive arrow - concentrated effect - chance to ignite - ?????

I only play with groups, so single target dps has not been all that important for me. But yes, a second Q explosive arrow with said gems works nicely, especially if you grab some burn passives. I would also throw in fire penetration.

@ skii,

Thanks for that advice, the reduced cost of explosive arrow is nice.

I will show you my build on level 70, and my equip. I think it can help, i cant explain all the changes couse my ingles is bad. So you have to figure it from my passive and equip.

Skill tree



Equipment and gems (i use 2 quill rain)



Hope that help. And i would like advise 2. ty

why does nobody use increased burn damage passive gem with EA?



makes no sense to me, as the burn is the main part of the damage, and the gem alone provides ~50% more burn damage!

It provides increased burn damage, not more burn damage. Even so, I would still use it.

In fact, I do use it in my Explosive Arrow build.

Also, this build appears to have been posted before said support existed (and not updated since its creation).

"

DJSRP wrote:

why does nobody use increased burn damage passive gem with EA?

makes no sense to me, as the burn is the main part of the damage, and the gem alone provides ~50% more burn damage!

I built mine like that. It's so much better.



Give it a try if you haven't