Shockwave Arrow Build

*Under construction*



Welcome,

I want to present you my Shockwave Arrow Build using Explosive Arrow.
This build is about maximizing Explosive Arrows potential by adding Critical Strike Chance and the ability to shock.


Core Items are:

Quill Rain
Maligaro's Virtuosity
Romira's Banquet
The Three Dragons


_____small input____

The reason why i make this build:

I was sick of the low damage output of my Explosive Arrow character. 50% or even more of the damage came from the burn-degeneration and in groups of 6 players you couldnt feel the damage. It felt like beeing a unnecessary group member who could not solo handle small mobs let alone bosses. So I changed this.

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Build mechanics, skills, passives and playstyle:


is your core skill. You shoot an enemy and the skill will stack up to 5 times and after 1 second the stacks will explode dealing their combined damage.
You cannot stack more than 5 arrows but it is not always necessary to stack it.
You always have to wait for 1 second to let the arrow explode except when using certain gems reducing or increasing the duration like:

The damage from Explosive Arrow can only be increased by fire damage, elemental damage, AoE damage and projectile damage passives.
So you want to stack them as much as possible:

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Skills and gems

I use 2 sets of Explosive Arrows

Explosive Arrow + Lesser Multiple Projectiles + Elemental Proliferation + Increased Area of Effect + Empower + Firepenetration
on my Quill Rain

and

Explosive Arrow + Empower + Firepenetration + Concentrated Effect + Faster Attacks + Increased Critical Strike Chance
on a +3 bow

Here you can see my skills, gems and links.
Be careful: My set is nearly maximized and mostly overcharged.

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My passive tree for lvl 87:



My gear:






_____The End and post scriptum____

Basically this build was based on a "normal" Explosive Arrow Build like:

or



except exchanging the chance to ignite, burn damage, some life for the ability to crit & shock and enabling the "carry"-role in smaller parties.


*Under construction*

Hope to see a video soon.

I really don't see how using a three dragons can be useful for EA. The explosion that triggers a shock stack won't benefit from it (you will do normal damage). After the explosion you stack another 5 EAs and than have to wait 1 additional second for the explosion. Imho the time between explosions will be too long for the shock stacks to last so your second explosion won't deal additional damage. The time may be shortened by a reduced duration gem like you said but that comes at the expense of sacrificing another support gem, thereby lowering your initial damage.
I'm also sceptical on the usefulness if a romira's banquet: The chances you won't crit when stacking 5 charges so you can keep the power charges for the explosion is small.

BTW i would never use LMP with EA as the LESS damage penalty applies to the explosion.

Shock lasts 7 seconds on Maze map Vaal boss,

lmp + overlapping AoE readius = more dmg,

with Shock and LMP you will shock a mob with 1 of the 3 arrows you shoot because of the flight time they will not explode simultaneously

romiras banquet increases the overall crit chance as long as their is a power charge
there is a high chance of a power charge when EA stacks explode and you still have 1 sec time to add charges

It's nice to see someone else trying a non-ignite Explosive Arrow build. The area of effect shotgunning potential is absolutely insane, for anyone doubting the idea. I actually plan on making a very similar build to this in the Beyond league but with a few different tricks (that I'll reveal in my own build guide).

I am not currently in maps yet with my test character so it's great to see that this is working well for you. I never thought of Romira's Banquet for gaining Power Charges, so I'd really like to see a video of how it works. Do you think it's really better than Power Charge on Critical?