[3.7] [Updated] Cold Scourge Arrow CI Trickster - Very simple and tanky
 Welcome to my Scourge Arrow Trickster guide. After recent 3.6 changes to Trickster I wanted to try and push this new tanky concept of Trickster with ghost shrouds as far I reasonably could while still maintaining decent DPS. Scourge Arrow is mostly skill that is very easy to scale and has average clear speed and great bossing potential and heavily benefits from Trickster ascendancy, so it looked like great pick. For class itself I am scaling Energy Shield, ES Leech and Evasion what allows me to fully abuse Ghost Shrouds and Trickster's Dex to ES conversion. I scale Cold damage for my Scourge Arrow with some increased chill effect to boost our survivability even more. So far I am really enjoying this build and even with almost no investment it still feels great and I will be continuing to play and push this build further this league. I believe this build is very viable for HC players as well, because its focusing solely on survivability and with ghost shrouds and over 9k ES what is achievable with this build it is quite hard to die (of course you can always just get one shot if you are not careful :/). Changelog
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24th June 2019 - Replaced War Banner with Precision - Took Throatseeker, Infused and Fervour nodes on tree - Replaced Phase Run with Frostblink, and added Culling to both Frostblink and Blink Arrow - Cleaned up PoB - Removed link to my Betrayal (or Synthesis) character 17th June 2019 - Replaced Throatseeker with Master Fletcher - Took some extra ES nodes on tree (and removed some power charge nodes) 6th June 2019 - Cleaned up the build guide - Added Ascendancy section - Updated Patheon section - Removed Infused Channeling from alternative gem sections - Removed Main Gem section (it is in PoB already anyway) 5th June 2019 - Reworked tree after 3.7 update - Removed Arakaali interaction from build guide (no longer reliable without IC) - Took some extra damage nodes on tree instead of Witch start nodes - Removed Ethereal Feast cluster 23th April 2019 - Replaced Stibnite Flask with Dying Sun - Replaced of Order suffix on Diamond flask with of Heat because of flask change - Swapped from Fangs of the Viper back to ES node - Updated alternatives section with flasks 18th April 2019 - Updated action bar section - Replaced 1 ES node with Fangs of the Viper - Removed Vaal Grace - 5 linked Wave of Conviction CoH and Vaal Discipline in Body and moved rest of the gems around - Replaced Flame Dash with Blink Arrow in PoB 15th April 2019 - Added Faster Attacks to Alternative Skills section 13th April 2019 - Replaced 1 Frenzy and 1 Power charge node with more ES, eva and ele resist nodes 11th April 2019 - Replaced one Energy Shield and Evasion node with Reduced Mana Reservation node so SA channeling will be less frustrating 10th April 2019 - Replaced debuff CWDT setup with Wave of Conviction and Curse on Hit - Moved Blood Rage to self-cast - Added Action Bar section - Replaced Vaal Clarity with Clarity - Removed Bandits section and added note to PoB section 7th April 2019 - Added Bandits section 6th April 2019 - Dropped Hypothermia completely, now using only Mirage Archer 5th April 2019 - Optimized flasks (swapped freeze and curse protection on Silver and Stibnite flasks) - Swapped Faster Casting with lvl 3 Enhance for movement setup - Sacrificed 1 frenzy node for more energy shield nodes 29th March 2019 - Added Aspect of the Spider alternatives section 28th March 2019 - Removed notes section as my character progressed a bit - Added Aspect of the Spider to PoB - Replaced Frostbite with Projectile Weakness 27th March 2019 - Optimized tree (added 1 extra jewel slot, bumped ES and Evasion) - Added some QoL stuff to tree and sacrificed small portion of DPS and ES again - Replaced Infused Channeling with Added Cold Damage - Added alternative gems section - Cleaned up PoB and added Ghost Shroud simulation 26th March 2019 - Added Pantheon section - Updated Notes section - Added Gem links section 25th March 2019 - Created the build - Added leveling section Pro's & Con's + Very good single-target (Scourge Arrow is simply great single-target skill, currently 6.5M Shaper DPS in PoB (accounting also for 1.385 multiplier from Mirage Archer and for both thorn arrows and primary projectile) + Decent clear (5 charges of scourge arrow properly fired should clear whole screen, as long as it is open area) + Decent lab runner (because of our high movement speed, damage and self-regen from Ghost Shrouds) + 145% increased movement speed with flasks up, with double movement skill on top of this mapping is pretty smooth + Very fast Scourge Arrow stacking - We charge full 5 stacks in 0.6 seconds what makes playing with this build feel really smooth + 9.5k Energy Shield (8k on budget), this means dying to one-shots should be pretty rare + 1.9k Energy Leech rate - We do not rely on ES recharge, and its way easier to just scale ES Leech + Almost 42k Evasion with flasks up - This is 86% evade chance and our ghost shrouds heal for a lot + 87% melee avoid chance, 87% projectile avoid chance, 20% spell avoid chance + Ghost Shrouds provide us very easy way to recover from big chunks of damage as they instantly recover around 2000 ES with flasks up every second + Stun immune (because of ghost shrouds) + Chaos immune (because of Chaos Innoculation, very good for delving) + Freeze is based on Energy Shield thanks to our belt (big issue with CI builds) + Cannot be Blinded and Maimed and 30% reduced shock effect - Thanks to Pantheon gods we use + Perma chill, freeze and shatter on enemies because we stack really a lot of cold damage and also some extra chill effectiveness + Only 6 link required is bow (and it requires only 1 mod, rest is multi-crafted on bench) - To comfortably get more than 9k ES we use Clarity Watcher's Eye and Energy From Within, what can be quite expensive (depends on current meta), can be easily replaced with more ES abyss jewels - We use 6linked Shaper bow, what by itself can be quite expensive. But you can simply replace it with non-shaped base what costs almost nothing - It takes some practice to get comfortable with Scourge Arrow playstyle (you usually want to release at least at 4 stacks, after a while you should be able to time it pretty well without delays) - Scourge Arrow clear is quite poor in tight areas (doors are now fine, but walls are still issue :/) - Hyrri's Ire and Shaper's Touch are mostly mandatory for build (mainly Shaper's Touch) so it might be harder to get this build going on SSF (still possible) - It can be a bit annoying to maintain Frenzy and Power Charges at bosses (requires some forced channeling of SA) - Blood Rage degen can be sometimes dangerous on ES builds. I am always on full and moving between packs, but if its causing you trouble, not having Blood Rage is not big loss, so simply remove it (and switch to Major Pantheon god of your preference) - We are quite dependant on flasks for build to feel really good, but its more than fine even with flasks down - We can't run Ele Reflect maps Path of Building Path of Building is tool for PoE to plan gear, skill tree and calculate effective damage. It also contains Bandits choice. You can download it here. Then simply import below Pastebin URL. Pastebin Pantheon For major god Soul of Lunaris is good safety pick for mapping and some extra damage avoidance. Another great option is Soul of Solaris for extra safety on bosses. For minor god Soul of Ralakesh is great choice because it reduces the degen from Blood Rage. Another great option is Gruthkul for even more phys reduction (what we kind of lack in this build) and another slow. Ascendancy Get Swift Killer first. Then get Ghost Dance and Escape Artist for some survivability and finally get Weave the Arcane from Uber Lab. Alternatives
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This section contains some budget/non-budget alternatives to gear and skills used in this guide. Alternative Skills Projectile Weakness -> Enfeeble or Frostbite - Enfeeble is a bit more defensive option and Frostbite increases our cold effectiveness what is nice Blink Arrow -> Flame Dash - If you have trouble off-coloring your helmet (or you simply dont want to) you can easily switch to Flame Dash (or if you just prefer flame dash, it works really nicely with Enhance) Aspect of the Spider -> Arctic Armour or Aspect of the Crab - If you can't afford Spider beastcraft or gear, Arctic Armour and Aspect of Crab are very good and cheap defensive alternatives to make use of your unreserved mana. Alternative Flasks Dying Sun Ruby Flask -> Experimenter's Stibnite Flask of Heat - If you can't afford Dying Sun Stibnite Flask is very good alternative for massive defensive boost and blind. We use of Heat suffix and then change our Diamond Flask for slightly more offensive one (see below) Experimenter's Diamond Flask of Heat -> Experimenter's Diamond Flask of Order - If you replaced Dying Sun Ruby Flask with Stibnite Flask of Heat then you can drop of Heat suffix here and replace it with of Order crafted suffix that gives increased critical strike chance. Alternative Jewels Watcher's Eye (Clarity Mana->ES, Clarity -Cost) -> Searching Eye or Watcher's Eye (Discipline ES Regen, Clarity -Cost) - If you can't afford Watcher's Eye simply replace it with another Searching Eye with Added Cold Damage to Attacks, Energy Shield and Added Cold Damage to Bow Attacks or with Watcher's Eye with Discipline ES regen and Clarity - Cost mods. This combination of Watcher's Eye mods is super cheap and works really really well with this buid (the ES regen helps us to not die from Blood Rage when we are not leeching, and - mana cost helps us to just hold down SA when needed for full charges, we regen mana faster than we spent it with this). Searching Eye -> Unnatural Instinct - If you can afford it and you want to optimize your DPS a bit more and gain bunch of movement speed, you can replace 1 Searching Eye next to Harrier Notable node with Unnatural Instinct (and respec out of attack speed leading to it and switch it to cast speed to not de-allocate that attack speed with Instinct). Alternative Gear Thicket Bow (Shaped, Multimodded) -> Hopeshredder or Short Bow -> If you can't afford Shaped and Multimodded Thicket Bow but you still have some currency, Hopeshredder is second best bow you can run in this build, and it's really strong with a lot of QoL improvements like movement speed. We can easily handle the degen, so don't worry about that. Other alternative for more budget players is 6link Short Bow from divination cards with some flat ELE and attack speed. Leveling
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Start with Shrapnel Shot and Volley Support. If you can, get Silverbranch bow early and just socket those there. At lvl 4 add Mirage Archer, then your leveling should feel pretty smooth. Keep socketing supports that main build is using as soon as they are available. At lvl 12 migrate to Rain of Arrows and use that for leveling, its best to use it until maps and swap to Scourge Arrow only for bossees. You can swap to Scourge Arrow at lvl 28 if you want, but this requires at least some added cold damage either from jewels or gear (requirement is mostly to one shot packs with 5 charges, otherwise your leveling will feel really clunky and RoA would be simply better). If you are using Scourge Arrow make sure to get piercing quiver, as that makes your clear a lot better (our end-game quiver is piercing too). Focus on getting Point Blank very early as it boosts your damage by a lot. Also try to get some cold damage jewels early and get some jewel sockets on the tree, some base ones are very cheap and have low level requirement, and just 1 or 2 make Scourge Arrow a lot stronger. Always prioritize large ES notables above damage on tree (well, at start prioritize hybrid ones or pure life ones and then respec, and of course do this after rushing Point Blank). At start just play as Life/ES hybrid. When you will reach at least 3.5k ES you can start thinking about moving to CI (make sure you have Ghost Reaver and some leech at this point, e.g you are using Energy Leech Support, do not switch to CI before that). If your leech is not good enough, simply dont use Blood Rage. If you can't afford shaped Thicket Bow, simply use 6l Short Bow (you can get it from cards, so its never very expensive) or Doomfletch Prism unique bow, what is usually pretty cheap (well, 5 linked one, 6 linked can be worth a bit, and definitely do not waste money on 6l Doomfletch). Media Apex of Atzoatl Lvl 72 Graveyard Lvl 73 Sunken City Lvl 85 Yellow Elder Lvl 89 Forge of the Phoenix lvl 92 Caldera lvl 92 My builds: Scourge Arrow Poison Prolif Pathfinder - https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/2551841 My site: https://mapsofexile.com/ Last edited by thedeathbeam on Jun 24, 2019, 1:57:07 PM Last bumped on Sep 20, 2019, 1:35:34 PM
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Added Graveyard Lvl 73 preview video. I missed A LOT in that map mostly because I cba, but, it sort of shows how clearing with this build looks like (except that atm I dont have + movespeed boots what really really sucks :()
My builds:
Scourge Arrow Poison Prolif Pathfinder - https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/2551841 My site: https://mapsofexile.com/ |
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Added leveling section (well, basically just summary what worked for me while leveling this character).
My builds:
Scourge Arrow Poison Prolif Pathfinder - https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/2551841 My site: https://mapsofexile.com/ |
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To assist with clear, couldn't we 5/6L lightning arrow/tornado shot? Feel like both would fit fine?
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" Yeah definitely (actually imo Rain of Arrows can be very nice) but that would require dropping one of the CWDT setups, but both are kind of important. What I do on some maps is that I just socket Rain of Arrows to main setup instead of Scourge Arrow (I am leveling it in weapon swap anyway). EDIT: Also I personally do not really like running 2 skills as 5/6 links for different scenarios, as that mostly feels like I am not utilizing my main skill properly. My builds: Scourge Arrow Poison Prolif Pathfinder - https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/2551841 My site: https://mapsofexile.com/ Last edited by thedeathbeam on Mar 26, 2019, 3:05:54 AM
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Added gem links section with some explanation and alternatives that cant really be covered just with PoB (e.g alternative setups when mapping and bossing).
My builds:
Scourge Arrow Poison Prolif Pathfinder - https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/2551841 My site: https://mapsofexile.com/ |
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Cool, I'm currently playing with Scourge Arrow with a virtually similiar concept, with difference in items used and some differences in the tree:
https://www.reddit.com/r/PathOfExileBuilds/comments/b2lval/scourge_arrow_ci_trickster/ Coming home (I'm at work) I'm going to analyze my concept and see if I can take advantage of some concept of yours to increase my damage and, if it gives, greater survival. :) Guides made by me:
Unnamed's CoC CI Discharge Trickster, Tankster BV MoM Poison, Saboquisitor MoM Pure Cold damage with Hrimburn, Trickster Critical Flameblast |
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" Glad to hear that more people are trying out Scourge Arrow with Trickster, that just means it is good idea :d From your reddit thread and your PoB it looks like you are using Harness the Void for more DPS (and for your build it actually is more DPS). I do not scale AS that much, but I use Thicket Bow as base (tbh, the key to *good* DPS is rare multi-crafted bow) and so Weave Arcane is giving me a bit more DPS than Harness, what is very convenient because it also provides a bit of QoL and damage mitigation. My builds:
Scourge Arrow Poison Prolif Pathfinder - https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/2551841 My site: https://mapsofexile.com/ |
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Slightly optimized the tree (added 1 extra jewel slot and bumped up ES to 9500 and evasion to 33k with flasks up. This costed us around 50-60k DPS, but that is nothing, and also removed knockbacks from bow attacks, what was extremely annoying with Scourge Arrow and Point Blank anyway).
Here is updated PoB (updated main post as well): https://pastebin.com/PJGESwxC My builds:
Scourge Arrow Poison Prolif Pathfinder - https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/2551841 My site: https://mapsofexile.com/ |
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So I did another small batch of changes, these are just QoL related.
- Replaced some small ES nodes with Celerity 3-cluster - This provides quite a lot of movement speed and evasion - Replaced Wise Oak flask with Stibnite Flask of Warding - Now that we have free suffix for Quicksilver flask changed Quicksilver flast to inc effect + inc movemespeed (e.g best move speed flask) This with everything up gives us 201% movement speed bonus (up from previous 141%) what speeds up basically everything. Also now our evasion with everything up is 45k, that means 2250 ES healed per ghost shroud and we now have quite huge evade chance (with smoke cloud up, basically nothing can even touch us, well, spells can but meh). Here is updated PoB: https://pastebin.com/cirQGwUf My builds:
Scourge Arrow Poison Prolif Pathfinder - https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/2551841 My site: https://mapsofexile.com/ |
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