I F*ing love Quill Rain!

got a little nostalgic, and decided to try out something a friend used in Open Beta:

Explosive Arrow. Quill Rain.

got a good ilevel Quill (thanks, Pichapie) and 4-linked it.
EA + GMP + Mana Leech + Reduced Mana => endless spam. screens blow up with low level gems.

then I remembered Elemental Reflect can be a problem, so went for the other side of the huge-DPS spectrum: Barrage + Cast On Crit + EK + Blood Magic.

both options, to alternate and deal with both kinds of reflect.
one Quill Rain.
endless fun :)

so yeah this thread is a tribute to a great build dating back to early Open Beta (maybe even CB? not sure), and a bow that makes it happen.

you are welcome to share your fun item + skills combinations here.

I've also found a decent Quill Rain a while back and your post makes me want to try out this build :) I'm thinking of making an archer in the next league anyway, so i'll probably try it out becouse it sounds like fun, thx for the heads-up.

you can substain ea with atziri foible and perandus signet also

but yes its one of the most powerful build for clearing stuff and only 4L needed until 70 and you can easily run 66-69 map at level 60 with ease.


dont forget to add the split arrow(barrage asslo work) chain lgoh + blind == overpower heal + increased defense !

:)

I have 2 characters waiting for that free passive reset and the other one will go for QR and the other probably for Wings of Entrapy or Oro's sacrifice...

And to make matters worse, this just dropped this morning

Please do not use Arctic breath cast on crit, it makes people leave the party =(. Other skills should be ok, but I honestly think Arctic breath needs a rework because it drops the fps way too much when spammed.

I wish you could do something so you dont get 1shot to reflect... after seeing G1 getting 1s with 9k es I dont even want to try the build even though the playstyle looks nice

"

Metronomy wrote:

Please do not use Arctic breath cast on crit, it makes people leave the party =(. Other skills should be ok, but I honestly think Arctic breath needs a rework because it drops the fps way too much when spammed.

Sadly this is something that might become more common due to imminent nerf to daggers thanks to ST disrupting the balance of melee/ranged.


I know im in a minority here, but this what I use for CoC (cyclone with fireball and artic breath gmp, shotguns so its the most party friendly most of the time you dont even see the projectiles). My best cost-efficiency build (max block good crit with all nodes taken, huge regen, HC viable as long as you avoid light thorns like the plague, handles non-30+ reflect groups well) but I know it will become worthless due to dagger nerfs and Ill have to resort to quill rain and well Artic breath because its powerful and doubles as defensive

Quite sad, though I love the unique. Had a BM explosive arrow Marauder with it, funsies until I RIPd to my own studity and having poor gear (rather, wearing MF gear cause I thought myself invincible then screwing up).

Which reminds me, I might try a Barrage added chaos damage build with Quill rain in 4month, you guys think that's worth it? (with chaos damage nodes taken ofc)

One day Ill get a thief's torment and spam spam spam, one day...

"

Disrupted wrote:

I know im in a minority here, but this what I use for CoC (cyclone with fireball and artic breath gmp, shotguns so its the most party friendly most of the time you dont even see the projectiles)

Could you use ANYTHING other than arctic breath?

If you require shotgun / cold damage, you could use freezing pulse.
If you want to mitigate reflect damage you could use EK
If you want to shock you could use Arc

Im not sure if this actually applies to cyclone, but it definately applies to ranged CoC builds, will have to test it out but I suspect fps will stop drop quite a bit

Literally anything is better than arctic breath in practical terms since your fps isnt suffering, you will find that a lot of people leave your party / wont let you into the party because the fps drop makes playing with you harder.

"

Metronomy wrote:

"

Disrupted wrote:

I know im in a minority here, but this what I use for CoC (cyclone with fireball and artic breath gmp, shotguns so its the most party friendly most of the time you dont even see the projectiles)

Could you use ANYTHING other than arctic breath?

If you require shotgun / cold damage, you could use freezing pulse.
If you want to mitigate reflect damage you could use EK
If you want to shock you could use Arc

Im not sure if this actually applies to cyclone, but it definately applies to ranged CoC builds, will have to test it out but I suspect fps will stop drop quite a bit

Literally anything is better than arctic breath in practical terms since your fps isnt suffering, you will find that a lot of people leave your party / wont let you into the party because the fps drop makes playing with you harder.

I've found that using any piercing projectiles would cause lag, I also wanted to control the projectiles, since this is HC build the fact that projectiles dont pierce is part of staying alive, I could replace AB with a new gem that shotguns and doesnt pierce I guess, if one comes.
If I had the means I would do a video so you would see, you only see a bit of flame sparks and frozen ground on spot, its really really very party friendly save some rare ocasions where a projectile flies out.
I've actually passed incognito as a CoC user before, joined a few docks parties more than once at some points in the game to test damage and gem swap and there were always a few that didnt even know I was CoC until I swapped some other gem in to test.

EDIT: sorry for off-topic. Praise be the Quill Rain!!

2ND EDIT: I actually didnt get to try arc and FP due to not having them at the time, but they seem like a good idea, Ill keep them in mind, either way build will be RIP after 1.2.0 so, meh. I should also had that EB is pretty powerful with no nodes, and easily beats other options.
3RD EDIT: another advantage of shotgunning non-pierce, besides the damage, was being able to see things I really hated other skills for this, made a huge mess.

Also, QUILL RAIN: Besides the chaos barrage, think its possible to do the same thing but build added light shock? or would the damage be too low to mantain the shocks? I hope there are other builds for da quill out there, love that unique and would like to pick it up again for something different

"

Disrupted wrote:

Also, QUILL RAIN: Besides the chaos barrage, think its possible to do the same thing but build added light shock? or would the damage be too low to mantain the shocks? I hope there are other builds for da quill out there, love that unique and would like to pick it up again for something different

I think of it as Path Of Exile's tribute to The Needler: a fast bow with very low damage.
too low for anything higher than Act 1 Normal on its own, probably.

but because of the speed, it's great for delivering lots of projectiles which have no dependency on the damage of the actual bow.
before CoC, this mostly meant Explosive Arrow which I'm demonstrating here.
after CoC, this means anything you can put on it really, until your FPS drops below zero.
after 1.2? probably back to EA I guess. unless there will be a new gem similar to it.