CI - Soul Strike Viability Testing

Well...Barrage sucks at leeching and even with a different offensive skill Ghost Reaver is 4 nodes. I think I'd just have to play it by re-rolling Vuln's and not really doing much group mapping, unless they're my rolled maps.

I have 6500 ES after Divining my crappy Rainbowstrides, and still would have 2 levels of Discipline to go. Granted, Shavs won't help much here, but someone decently geared would exceed 7k ES for sure. Sooo nice with that super fast recharge - nothing really will take it as long as you are always leaving yourself an escape. Like a ninja - walk into a room and always know where your exits are. And completely agreed on it's fun-ness. I am looking forward to the new league to play then twink it. I stopped at 83 just to keep myself excited and not feel like I am doing it all again.

If you are using Puncture, what are you using for AOE?

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Asidra wrote:

Well...Barrage sucks at leeching and even with a different offensive skill Ghost Reaver is 4 nodes. I think I'd just have to play it by re-rolling Vuln's and not really doing much group mapping, unless they're my rolled maps.

I have 6500 ES after Divining my crappy Rainbowstrides, and still would have 2 levels of Discipline to go. Granted, Shavs won't help much here, but someone decently geared would exceed 7k ES for sure. Sooo nice with that super fast recharge - nothing really will take it as long as you are always leaving yourself an escape. Like a ninja - walk into a room and always know where your exits are. And completely agreed on it's fun-ness. I am looking forward to the new league to play then twink it. I stopped at 83 just to keep myself excited and not feel like I am doing it all again.

If you are using Puncture, what are you using for AOE?

Right now I am using Puncture on LMP for AOE, because I still need to recolor my Shav. I switch LMP for Culling Strike for bosses or just keep in LMP. I feel this is the best for me for AOE because any other skill would require some investment in attack speed through attack speed nodes or Faster Attacks. Once I recolor my Shav I will have the below:

AOE Puncture (bow):
- Puncture
- PPAD
- LMP
- Pierce / Faster Projectiles / Additional Accuracy
- PCOC
- Inc. Crit Damage

Single Target Puncture (Shav):
- Puncture
- PPAD
- Culling Strike
- Inc. Crit Damage
- Inc. Duration - this gets me up to about 10s bleed which is great for hit and run. Or Added Fire Damage instead.
- Additional Accuracy / Inc. Crit Chance

However I've noticed 1 big weakness which is I struggle with bosses like Dominus 2nd phase where they do not move and I have to fight close - no movement gives me low damage on Puncture and fighting close with no leech is just too dangerous and messes up my recharge when I take damage. I can't run either because the blood rain can easily kill me =(. I guess it is hard to find a build that can do everything well.

So this is what I tested for Puncture + this Quiver:
- Palace: 1st form OK, 2nd form nearly impossible
- Courtyard - OK
- Crematorium - hard, burning ground messes recharge, and Mageara does not move that much = low damage on Puncture

I noticed the burning ground being annoying as well. I stopped before Maps before 76's - but started rerolling burning ground off of blue maps.

2 things:

-On the tree, there is 45% more damage over time in 3 nodes an ES build would be attached to anyway. If I was doing puncture - I'd definitely get them - since most likely the build would't have any additional mods affecting the damage over time portion, it would literally be 45% more.

It won't help for Dom - but for something like Megaera - I think I'd look into increased Duration. Combined with the Q bonus on Puncture - you probably could land a few hits, get the hell out of dodge, count to 15, and come back to a dead boss. If you weren't swapping gems sets with your AOE - I'd leave a red just for that.

You read my mind - this is my tree. I took those entropy nodes and all the ES recharge nodes I could get:



Maybe Dom 2nd form is an outlier, because every other boss I can think of for 76+ maps has at least some open space and/or moves a lot.

I think the other issue is mana with CI and running 2x 60% auras. It may make sense for me to toggle off Grace and use Disc and Clarity with this style of play I would not really need Grace unless I try Atziri or end up having too much trouble with physical reflect.

Thanks for the tips. I rushed too much with Mageara, I should take my time. I will redo some tests and see how I can make this build stronger. I also tested:

Shrine: easy
Shipyard: easy
Precinct: easy

Will try and test Academy, Torture Chamber, and then later Atziri.

Somewhat ironically, Atziri should be relatively easy - the build is almost tailor made for her.

Cool build I really like the use of Soul Strike. How important are the movement speed nodes? Was thinking you could drop Celerity and go towards Charisma or get Aura nodes by Harrier.

Here's hoping the changes to the tree don't mess this build up too much. Want to try it out with respec to passive tree.

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Hunt8722 wrote:

Cool build I really like the use of Soul Strike. How important are the movement speed nodes? Was thinking you could drop Celerity and go towards Charisma or get Aura nodes by Harrier.

Here's hoping the changes to the tree don't mess this build up too much. Want to try it out with respec to passive tree.

I tried to think of ways to make Precaso's Puncture build stronger and I ended up with this quiver to make an ES build. Movement speed is important for me because of positioning and getting out of fights, and with Puncture focused on DOT damage I use a "hit-and-run" style of play. Since you can't really stand and leech, Soul Strike is the perfect solution for this since you can regen with short delay using energy recharge. So for me movement speed was super important in terms of letting me quickly get out of danger so I can recharge.

This quiver works extremely well, but you have to build around it in terms of skills used and playing style, and Puncture is a perfect skill to use with this quiver.

I find that in PoE it is hard to stay still and DPS because you can take so much damage. One good solution is to have high mobility to avoid damage, and be able to deal damage WHILE moving. Spectral throw is a good example of this, and Puncture is another example of this.

My playing style is now with a 20/20 Increased Duration for single target. I move into position -> curse with Crit Weakness -> hit with Puncture once or twice -> then override curse with Vulnerabilty and GTFO. If I take damage during this I just run around while my ES begins to recharge almost immediately. Usually for me 1 hit with Puncture is enough for the 76 bosses if I crit - especially with Vulnerability on for the DOT. With 77/78 bosses I may need 2-3 hits. I have CWDT linked to a Frost Wall with Enhance - this gives me a buffer in case I get rushed by fast mobs so their hits are interrupted by the Frost Wall as soon as they deal damage.

As Asidra demonstrated you don't even need leech with this quiver. But I use Blood Rage with CI to get free frenzy charges for attack speed and it gives me some leech. Because CI I can't really stack a lot of auras, so getting those extra aura nodes for me would not be worth it. Also - this build doesn't really need offensive auras - since I focus on Puncture DOT there is no aura that can help with this - so I am happy to throw away Hatred or Haste or Anger or Wrath. That way you can stack defense auras: Discipline, Grace, or Purities

Weaknesses we have found are:
- Maps with Vulnerabilty mod - reduces ES cooldown AND ES recharge
- Maps with burning ground
- Highly dependent on having HIGH ES - you recharge a fixed % of your ES per second so the more ES you have the better it is. With about 6K ES you begin recharge ~1,200 ES per second after 1.6s of no damage

For me - I am not really used to a bow build, especially coming from a melee "tank" build, so this build is taking some time to get used to and I still make dumb mistakes and get too close because I have played melee for soo long. But I am confident this can be made to be one of the strongest builds if enough time and dedication is put into it in learning the style of play.

LOW-LIFE
- You can make this build even stronger if you go the low-life - PA route to increase. You CANNOT use Blood Rage though because without CI you will take constant Blood Rage damage and will not be able to recharge ES
- This is not a BIG deal because this build really does not focus on attack speed since you are doing 1 or 2 hits and then running around while enemies bleed.
- Shav's also gives some ES recovery cooldown increase -> it is small, but it does help
- You can then also run more auras with the low-life -> again this is the same method where you do not need any offensive auras - so feel free to stack Disc., Grace, Haste, and as many Purities as you like
- Downside is you will have less ES than with CI

CURSES: and weapon swap
- This build relies on good curses. One solution I have tried is to have a separate 6L (bow or 2H) on weapon swap with links that buff auras:
Vulnerability - Crit Weakness - Increased Duration - Faster Casting - Enhance - and then Empower/Reduce Mana
- When you swap back the curses remain
- So my idea is to clear trash first with AOE, then for boss: weapon swap -> Crit Weakness -> weapon swap -> 1 or 2 hit with Puncture -> weapon swap -> cast Vulnerabilty -> then weapon swap back so you can recharge ES with quiver -> with 20/20 ID and 20/20 Puncture it lasts about 10s so you can spend time hiding, then come back and repeat
- It takes some micromanagement but you can get some insanely buffed curses this way as you are effectively using a 5L/6L curse on weapon swap
- Temporal Chains is also an excellent curse because it gives you defense and also increases duration of the bleed

Never noticed before until I was just going through my Unique stashes to clear stuff out, but check out:



Although damn it will be hard to keep resists capped with the other necessary uniques.

You've sold me on Puncture it seems the most sensical by far based on the way the build will have to play - I am hoping Tornado shot is viable as an AOE, just for something different. If not I may try Ice Shot with the less mana cost - the CC is nice for this build - and the Rime Gaze adds a tad extra cold.

Re: Mana I have actually found with all of the INT needed, and Dream Fragments it works smoothly. Granted I was using Barrage which is really cheap. But especially with mana costs coming down, it might end up being a situation where Dream Fragments is better than Auxium, whereas usually it's not viewed that way.

Another Option - Vaal Clarity only takes 32 souls, linked with Increased Duration - I have been able to keep close to 100% up time on it on other builds.

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Asidra wrote:

Never noticed before until I was just going through my Unique stashes to clear stuff out, but check out:

Although damn it will be hard to keep resists capped with the other necessary uniques.

You've sold me on Puncture it seems the most sensical by far based on the way the build will have to play - I am hoping Tornado shot is viable as an AOE, just for something different. If not I may try Ice Shot with the less mana cost - the CC is nice for this build - and the Rime Gaze adds a tad extra cold.

Re: Mana I have actually found with all of the INT needed, and Dream Fragments it works smoothly. Granted I was using Barrage which is really cheap. But especially with mana costs coming down, it might end up being a situation where Dream Fragments is better than Auxium, whereas usually it's not viewed that way.

Another Option - Vaal Clarity only takes 32 souls, linked with Increased Duration - I have been able to keep close to 100% up time on it on other builds.

Ah - that helm is actually reduced energy shield cooldown recovery, not increased like the quiver and Shav. The wording is confusing - it will make the recovery slower not faster xD.

Oh hell I'm an idiot. I should get a mulligan for that!

Never happened.