The Infernal Poisoner Archer (Ranger or Witch)

Edit (August 10th) : Initially, the idea of the build was to use Poison Arrows but I realized that this skill wouldn't work as well as Burning Arrows (see reason in a post below). So I edited the original post to reflect that change.

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Yesterday, I was theorycrafting around the idea of getting the most use out of the Infernal Mantle, an item that is selling for very cheap (around 1 gcp), despites its good stats. Probably because of the heavy penalty : 100% more spell damage taken when on low mana.



Here's the thread about it, for those interested :

http://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/491515



So, after thinking about it for a while, I came out with a build that would, in theory, work very well with this item.

The character, a ranger or a witch, would use Burning Arrows (30% of physical added as fire dmg) as his main skill. Linked with Added Fire Damage (39% of physical added as fire dmg), Weapon Elemental Damage (80% More Elemental Damage), Fire Penetration (35% fire penetration) and Lesser multiple projectile, the amount of fire damage would be very high and 25% of that damage would be converted to poison. Because of the relatively Low mana cost of burning arrows, even with 4 support gems (45 mana), staying over the "low mana status" shouldn't be too hard with only mana leech from physical dmg.

The best quiver for this build would be the Blackgleam Quiver because of its 50% physical conversion to fire.



The character would use the Darkscorn bow (25% of physical converted to chaos dmg).



To benefit fully from the Darkscorn (25% of physical dmg taken as chaos dmg), the character would use CI and get + 25% physical resistance right there.

Another nice unique item to get would be the Alpha's Howl helmet :



The reduced mana cost of aura would help deal with the low mana issue. Cannot be frozen would deal with CI's problem with freeze. And the high amount of evasion from the helmet would be boosted by the +86% to evasion and Ondar's Guile keystone from the build.


According to my calculations, with a 50% fire conversion Blackgleam, the Added Fire Dmg + Weapon Elemental Dmg support gems and about +75% elemental dmg from gear, the character would deal 22.5% chaos dmg, 67.5% fire dmg and 10% physical dmg with burning arrows (from any physical dmg source). Physical reflect wouldn't be a problem. I don't think elemental reflect would be a problem either. If it is, then using Added chaos dmg instead of Fire Penetration could be an interesting solution.

Being CI, the character would use blood rage without any negatives and get 6 frenzy charges from it (with the merciless bandit reward)

So, with the increased attack speed from the passives, blackgleam + the frenzy charges +, the build would provide +87% increased attack speed. With a 1.38 attack speed bow, that means 2.58 attacks per second which should "feel" very good and complement elemental auras very well.

The auras would be Anger (25% of it converted to chaos dmg), Discipline, Grace and possibly Wrath/Hatred if the total amount of mana allows it.

The best offensive curse would probably be projectile weakness for increased piercing chance (100% if combined with the piercing shots passive), more projectile damage (from all sources, including chaos dmg), increased accuracy and knockback.

Assuming no crit chance% from gear other than the Infernal Mantle, the crit% chance of the character would be 29,5% (or 31% in the witch version) with a crit multiplier of 330%. With so much fire dmg, lesser multiple arrows and 100% pierce chance, we are looking at lots of burning dmg.

This build would benefit from all bonuses from the Infernal Mantle :

-Increased Fire dmg
-100% increased global critical chance
-High Energy shield (CI)
-25% of fire dmg converted to chaos damage
-+1 to fire skill (Burning Arrows, Added Fire dmg, Fire Penetration - if you manage to get the right sockets colors - won't be easy at all). Otherwise, +1 to Anger.

The high mana and mana regen of the build (+44% mana, +80% mana regen), the reduced aura cost from the Alpha's Howl as well as the mana leech support gem would hopefully deal with the unique penalty (100% more spell damage taken when low on mana)

Here's what the build could look like at level 82 :



Build summary :



Unfortunately, this is only theorycrafting. I haven't try the build myself. And it will take a little while before I have the opportunity to test it (my new toon is only lvl 64). So, if anyone want to give it a try, feel free to do it and post your results. I predict success !

Cool concept, I had wanted to make a bow user that could convert to chaos. But I didn't think about it as much as you. I'm curious about viability as well, and honestly I have a ranger with a respec sitting that I would be willing to give it a try if you want to loan items. I dunno, maybe I could afford some of the gear, but having not played an ES based character since closed beta I haven't held onto any of the proper gear. I could possibly afford it, but not sure I want put the money into it as I am playing on onslaught now. So if you want to loan or sell to give it a shot I can check out what other stuff I have available.
Just someone willing to help. Although I would like to explore things further because, i think the idea still has gaps in it. Just checked the ranger I was thinking of is lvl 63.
PM me if interested, and we can maybe talk about doing something soon.

I've got some sick time and a weekend ahead of me, plus like doing odd builds so I'll give this a go. Currently got myself a 560es chest 6soc 4L, a 160 top dmg bow and a decently rolled quiver.

Will let you know how it turns out :)

"

WirlWind wrote:

I've got some sick time and a weekend ahead of me, plus like doing odd builds so I'll give this a go. Currently got myself a 560es chest 6soc 4L, a 160 top dmg bow and a decently rolled quiver.

Will let you know how it turns out :)

If you start from scratch, I suggest you use the witch version of the build. It provides more int (+36), more +mana% (+32%), more mana regen (+20%), more projectile dmg (+4%) and more crit multiplier (+15%).

The downsides are less attack speed (-8%), less physical dmg (-12%), less str (-20), less dex (-26) and less +stun duration (-16%)

But I think the upsides of the witch build overcome the downsides.

At level 85 with decent gear (Perfect Darkscorn, Blackgleam and Infernal Mantle, +75% elemental dmg and +65% crit multi from gear and perfect quality LMP, WED and Added fire), I estimated the dps of this build at 16.4k dps for the witch and 16.7k dps for the ranger. So the dps difference is marginal. As it is, the dps won't be a problem with the build. What might be a little more problematic is the mana and ES and the witch build provides more of that.



SEOINAGE : If you want gear, you can have my darkscorn bow and the blackgleam. I don't have much else to spare though.

"

Velkor wrote:

If you start from scratch, I suggest you use the witch version of the build. It provides more int (+36), more +mana% (+32%), more mana regen (+20%), more projectile dmg (+4%) and more crit multiplier (+15%).

Aye, but I'm more comfortable with the ranger and have a whole bunch of ranger gear in my bank as I was saving up to roll a phys RoA anyway.

It'll end up being a faster start. Plus I'm thinking I'll get mana drinker because the build goes right past it already. Even though there's not an amazing amount of phys left to drink from, hopefully the attack speed will be enough to offset the mana.

Anything lacking, I'll try shore up with gear or make small modifications as I go.

Ok if I can get ahold of an infernal mantle and a few other pieces maybe i will take you up on the offer. I have 78 passive points right now, care to suggest what to do first? This character isn't even done with act3 of merciless so that's an extra 3 points.

This was a very unique version of ice shot, but i just couldn't get it to cut it so I stopped. Character just been sitting so I don't mind blowing his reset.

ign right now is usually seoripsaw

"

SEOINAGE wrote:

Ok if I can get ahold of an infernal mantle and a few other pieces maybe i will take you up on the offer. I have 78 passive points right now, care to suggest what to do first? This character isn't even done with act3 of merciless so that's an extra 3 points.

This was a very unique version of ice shot, but i just couldn't get it to cut it so I stopped. Character just been sitting so I don't mind blowing his reset.

ign right now is usually seoripsaw

With 78 points, I would probably do something like this :



Since you are going to go CI right at the beginning, your priority will be to get a decent amount of energy shield from gear : boots, gloves, helmet, belt, amulet, rings. If you can equip some evasion/energy shield gear, that's also fine. You'll also want to get some strenght from equipment to get it to at least 52 (and ideally more) so you can equip the reduced mana gem.

Resists are the 2nd most important thing to look for. The build only provide +16 and I don't think you'll have the mana to run purity, so you'll need lots of it. After that, + elemental dmg (or + fire dmg) and + mana are also good mods to look for.

The auras you'll want to use right at the beginning are Discipline, Grace. Those 2 are important. After that, if you have high enough mana, you can try to fit in Anger.

Btw, I don't think this build would work anymore. With Poison Arrows anyway.

I just tried poison arrows (and read the thread about it on the forum) and you can't actually fire arrows at mobs off the screen with poison arrows. With poison arrows, you click anywhere on the screen and your character will fire a poison arrows at that very spot. And a Cloud of Poison will spawn right there, even if there's no monster to take the hit. However, if there are no monster at that spot, the arrow will also there. Basically, if you want your arrows to travel any respectable distance, you need to target monsters with a certain degree of precision and hope for a pierce. In practice, I don't think it would work very well.

So, I think the build would work better with Burning Arrow. Basically, you keep the same build, except you use Burning Arrow instead of Poison Arrow and, as a 5th gem, you replace mana leech by Fire Penetration. Since mana cost of Burning Arrows is much lower (even with a 4th dmg support), you can probably rely on mana leech from physical dmg.

Here's the mana cost calculations (at gem lvl 20):

Poison Arrow + LMP + Added Fire Dmg + Weapon Elemental Dmg + Mana Leech =

36 x 1.5 x 1.3 * 1.7 * 1 = 119

Burning Arrow + LMP + Added Fire Dmg + Weapon Elemental Dmg + Mana Leech =

10 x 1.5 x 1.3 * 1.7 * 1.4 = 46.41

So, Burning Arrow is almost 3 times cheaper than Poison Arrows, even with a Fire Penetration.

The other advantage of Burning is + 30 added fire dmg (instead of +49 added chaos dmg) get multiplied by all the + elemental dmg % from gear, passives and gem and then multiplied another time by 1.8 by the Weapon elemental dmg gem. So in the end, its gonna be much more than the +49% added chaos dmg provide by Poison Arrow. You also get +57% to physical dmg. Not too shabby. Finally, at lvl 16+, you get 25% chance to ignite with fire dmg. Combine with the already high crit% of the build, that's more than 50% chance to ignite with fire dmg.

So in the end, I think you'll not only deal more fire dmg with Burning arrows (with 32% fire penetration instead of 0) but I'm almost certain you'll also deal more chaos dmg. Its simply that the % of chaos dmg on your total will be lower. With the Darkscorn, you'll deal about 25% of your total dmg as chaos dmg.

What is the advantage of the Infernal mantle's 25% chaos conversion dmg if your fire dmg benefits from 32% fire penetration, increased chance to ignite and increased burning duration (Burning Arrow's quality bonus). Well, even with the fire penetration, chaos will deal superior dmg vs fire resistant monsters. Against monsters that aren't resistant to fire, I'd think that chaos dmg will deal about the same dmg as fire. And, of course, the chaos dmg will pierce through energy shield.

So, that's it for now. I'll edit my main post with this new info

Hehe, this is one i will let someone else try out first.

I have tried this build out pre-ranger respec, and it is utter trash, dark scorns damage is to low compared to lion's eye to even make it remotely worth it. You do more chaos dmg with lion's eye than darkscorn even after conversion.