[2.5] "The Kärcher" Lightning Strike Deadeye. Extreme Clear Speed. 75%/74% Dodge A/S

This guide is based on the Lightning Strike Deadeye build I will play during Breach League, initially played on Prophecy League. Check the following highlights to see if you're interested in:

- If you like a Ranger with a butcher knife on each hand.
- Extremely fast clear speed plus good & safe for soloing bosses.
- 75%/74% Dodge Attacks & Spells.
- Safe ranged gameplay based on Dodge Attacks/Spells, good Evasion and CWDT + Frost Wall combo that works perfect with Pierce & Whirling Blades: you can attack from behind the wall and move freely, while enemies can't.
- Low Budget build (around 2.5 Exalted). You just need two decent Crit/Physical Damage Daggers and a 6L Body Armour.

If you have any questions or improvements for this build, please feel free to leave a comment, I will really appreciate it.

What I was able to do in Prophecy League with this build?
Spoiler

My Level 90 Deadeye with the gear and passive tree linked in this post was able to do:
- Pale Council (deathless)
- Endgame Lab including Argus
- Twinned maps up to Tier 15 for completing challenge (last tiers were Courtyard, Palace, Abyss. All deathless)
- Complete 36 Challenges

My current gear cost me 3 exalted: 1.5 exalted for the Rat's Nest enchanted with +3 LS projectiles (obviously not mandatory at all) and 1.5 exalted for all the rest.

During league I used Hinekora's Sight unique amulet because was initially released and cheap.


What's new? (30/11/2016)
Spoiler

30/11/2016: Update after 2.5 patch notes.
01/09/2016: Update after 2.4 patch notes.
30/06/2016: minor update after completing 36 challenges in league.
29/06/2016: Complete revision and update: no more 100% elemental damage main skill, levelling tips added.
30/05/2016: First version of this guide.


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Build explanation:

General Concepts:

- This build is created exclusively based on Lightning Strike skill gem: Critical Strike Chance & Piercing are the main concerns when deciding everything else around this build.
- I focused only in the Projectile part of the skill, using LS as a truly ranged attack skill.
- For Critical Strike Chance, I choose the right side of the tree, focusing on Daggers (excellent Crit base plus lots of Crit nodes in tree).
- For Piercing, I rely on "Piercing Shots" from tree plus the massive 40% Chance to Pierce from Q20 Lightning Strike gem.
- About defences, we count with a 5K decent life pool for ranged game style. We rely on 75%/74% Dodge Attacks & Spells plus good Evasion (2x Vaal Grace with Increased Duration for a total of 21 seconds with +34%/34% Dodge Attacks/Spells).
- CWDT + Frost Wall gives the necessary time and space to avoid damage and synergies perfect with the build. 100% Pierce allow us to attack from behind the wall and Whirling Blades can moves through them.

Why Ascendancy DEADEYE is perfect for Lightning Strike?

- Powerful Precision: in combination with Q20 LS & "Piercing Shots" nodes, we obtain a constant 100% Chance to Pierce. This means 7 projectiles that covers a huge area and continues even off-screen. An most important, our Critical Strike Chance is increased equally by the amount of Pierce Chance we got.
- Far Shot: because we focus on Projectile damage, we hit everything as far as we can for safe gameplay. Allowing us an additional 30% MORE damage (take into account that "more" means a multiplicative effect over our DPS).
- Rupture: Because one of our daggers always Cause Bleeding on Hit, this means a constant +40% Crit Multiplier plus +80% Crit Chance.
- Fast & Deadly plus damage nodes: With the rest of the Ascendancy tree we got 70% inc. Projectile Damage, 15% inc. Attack Speed, 20% inc. Crit Chance & 30% inc. Projectile Speed.

Mandatory Gear:

- Dagger: We use two high Crit (>8.5) & high Physical Damage daggers. I choose Bino's Kitchen Knife only because it has great Crit & Physical Damage (plus Crit Multi), so, is not requiered and any better rare dagger could replace it. The other one, should be the same (high Crit / Physical Damage) but additionally we need one open prefix to craft "Causes Bleeding on Hit" from L7 Vagan bench.
Prefix "Causes Bleeding on Hit" will allow us to always has a +40% Crit Multiplier plus +80% Crit Chance from Rupture Ascendancy point.



- Helmet: "Rat's Nest" is awesome for a Crit build. Good Evasion plus +15% Attack Speed and up to +75% increased Critical Chance. And additionally gives us +10% Movement Speed and up to +25% inc. Rarity.



- Quartz Flask: when I made this build for Prophecy league I used Hinekora's Sight unique amulet for the additional +10% Dodge Attacks/Spells, but this was a Prophecy related unique. So, from 2.4 I decided to switch to Quartz Flask for the additional +10% Dodge Attacks/Spells needed. But, Hinekora's is still obtainable from divination cards, so, if you got the chance, I suggest you go for it.



- Body Armour: a 6L with RRRGGB is needed. Ideally a high Evasion plus high Life would be the best. Just consider that getting that colour combination in a only evasion chest could be quite hard. Any 6L chest will be the most expensive item in our gear, and if you try to keep your budget low, I suggest you look for corrupted ones, with already 6L colour combination RRRGGB, and then choose them between best Life you can get, plus good Evasion and some Resistances if needed. Doing this, you could get good ones for no more than 30-40c.



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Skill gems:

Main Attack:

LIGHTNING STRIKE, Physical Projectile Attack Damage, Multistrike, Weapon Elemental Damage, Increased Critical Damage, Added Fire Damage

For Physical Reflect map mod switch Increased Critical Damage for Physical to Lightning. Elemental Reflect map mod can't be done.

Why not Physical to Lightning support gem?
Spoiler

Initially, I decided to use a 100% elemental LS main skill and LS Curse on Hit setup (which was physical) for bleeding effect spread to take advantage of Rupture ascendancy point. Take into account that only attacks that deals physical damage could cause bleed (just more than zero physical damage). But then, after testing in league I realize that this have a huge drawback: because you dual wield, your LS setup for CoH will alternatively attack with one dagger or the other, but just one of them cause bleed. At the end, you cannot rely on this to be sure that you always cause bleed on enemies.
On the other hand, switching Physical to Lightning for Added Fire Damage cause only a minor decrease on our DPS (less than 5%) and helps a lot dealing with elemental reflect mobs that in the other scenario could mean a immediate death if you don't have Topaz Flask up.
Now, our main skill deals physical damage, so you can always count that enemies are affected by bleeding effect and Rupture bonus always apply.


Curse on Hit Attack:

LIGHTNING STRIKE, Faster Attacks, Curse on Hit, Assassin's Mark (for getting our 3 Power Charges)

Movement skill:

WHIRLING BLADES, Faster Attacks, Blood Magic

Auras:

- HATRED
- HERALD OF ASH

Others:

- SUMMON ICE GOLEM
- BLOOD RAGE
- CWDT (Level 1) + Frost Wall (Level 10) + Faster Casting.
- VAAL GRACE + VAAL GRACE + Faster Casting + Increased Duration.

Why Faster Casting?
Spoiler

Truth is that you will not always have Vaal Grace up. Is better to use it when you feel you will need it. In that case, in most scenarios you will be facing enemies just in front of you and Vaal Grace casting speed feels slow. For that, I remove Ancestral Protector (you really don't need it for bosses, damage is good enough) and with Faster Casting you get Vaal Grace up almost instantly. Of course this is personal preference, but imo, feels better and safer.
About Faster Casting with CWDT, my intention is that Frost Wall gets up as fast as possible. You don't need Increase Duration here (4 seconds is more than enough). I'm not entirely sure about this yet.


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Skill Tree & Ascendancy class:

Ascendancy Class:

Deadeye.

Ascendancy Points:

Far Shot (normal), Powerful Precision (cruel), Rupture (merciless), Fast & Deadly (endgame lab).

Level 90 Skill Tree:


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Gear:

Current Gear:





About Quartz Flask:
Spoiler

This flask is truly needed when dealing with Izaro in Labyrinth because you don't have Vaal Grace charged, which is bad. For that, you need at least some more Dodge from this Flask. Don't worry, because you always can hit Izaro when he is off-screen, you can deal with it with no problem at all.




Important stats:

- Cap elemental resistances.
- +25/30% Movement speed from boots.
- Life from gloves, boots, belt, rings and amulet.
- Attack Speed from gloves.
- Increased physical and elemental damage from belt.
- Flat Physical Damage from rings.
- Accuracy Rating from rings or amulet.
- Crit Chance/Multi from amulet.

Enchantments:

For helmet, there's really good enchantments available: 25%/40% increased Lightning Strike damage and 2/3 additional Lightning Strike projectiles. In my opinion, the best one is 3 additional projectiles, which means a huge boost from 7 LS projectiles to 10 (linked Rat's Nest cost me 1.5 exalted).



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Levelling Tips:

Spoiler

I will consider two stages while levelling: from level 1 to 55 (around normal and cruel difficulties) and then from 55 to 68 (merciless difficulty and start mapping). Then, after that you will be able to full equip your char.

From Level 1 to 55:

For me, this stage is just almost the same for any char, I really don't like this part of the levelling process, so I just give some general advices:
- Use good low level uniques for levelling like: The Princess Sabre, Meginord's Girdle Heavy Belt, Bismuth Flask (for capping resistances), Wanderlust Wool Shoes, Goldrim Leather Cap, Blackheart Iron Ring, Briskwrap of Foxshade Chests.
- Always try to improve your flasks, is really important. At Level 42 try to get your definitive Seething Hallowed flasks.
- I use Frost Blades while levelling until switching to Lightning Strike. I did it after being able to link Multistrike support gem.
- For avoiding mana issues, use Elreon jewellery with "-X to Mana Cost of Skills" affix.

Passive Tree at Level 55:


From Level 55 to 68:
At this moment you need to rethink your gear and cap resistances for merciless difficulty. You will also be able to use Rat's Nest and get decent daggers with good crit chance plus high physical damage. Dealing enough damage helps you with mana leech and you forget about using Elreon jewellery.
I used 5L Lightning Strike + Multistrike + Weapon Elemental Damage + Physical Projectile Attack Damage + Physical to Lightning.

Passive Tree at Level 68:


Gear at Level 55:
Spoiler




After Level 68:
You will start mapping and be able to full equip your char. I just exchange the 5L Chest for a 6L corrupted one with the colour combination needed RRRGGB and bought two Bino's daggers. Only exchange one Bino's for the rare crafted dagger when I got Vagan at level 7 and Rupture ascendancy point.



Bandits:

- Normal: Help Oak for +40 life.
- Cruel: Kill All.
- Merciless: Kraityn for +1 Max Frenzy Charges (at the cost of just 1 skill point).

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Other important stuff:

Videos:

I'm including some videos just for showing how this build works, but this section will not be improved beyond that.

https://youtu.be/yffCnTFQvQQ

Screenshots:

IMPORTANT: Lightning Strike tooltip just consider the Melee part of the skill. This build is focused in the Projectile part only, so, final DPS should be consider including the following changes:
+ 9% MORE damage from 2.4 buff
+ 176% increased Projectile Damage
- 25% Less Projectile Damage (from Lightning Strike)
+ 30% MORE Projectile Damage (from Far Shot Ascendancy point)
+ 49% MORE Projectile Damage (from Physical Projectile Attack Damage gem)
+ 40% Crit Multi + 80% Crit Chance (from Rupture)

Lightning Strike DPS Tooltip with Charges, Atziri's Promise:



Lightning Strike DPS Tooltip:



Defensive Stats with Vaal Grace & Flasks:



Normal Atziri tips:

I don't specially like this build for Atziri. It's completely doable but because LS has a huge spread area, reflect stage could be uncomfortable.

- For trio, go first for Q'ura, after that, A'alai and finally Y'ara'az. You have to avoid hitting Y'ara'az during his reflect fire-stage.
- For Atziri, use Ruby Flask for 81% fire resistance. You have to move a lot, avoiding damage and of course, not hit reflect image during split stage. If you can deal with that, your damage is really high and you can kill her pretty quickly.

Other builds:

My intention is to make a new build every league. In general, I wanted to make budget league starter builds that allows to play almost the entire content of the game and complete all the challenges in league. Here's the link to the other ones:

Unstoppable Gladiator 78% Max Block/Spells: https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/1647240

Freezing Pulse Inquisitor. Perma-Freeze Everything: https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/1715927


Please, send me your thoughts, questions, opinions and ideas and I will try to improve this guide based on that.

Thanks a lot for reading this and hope you find this build so rewarding as it was for me.

Odradek.
Last edited by mas_mariano on Nov 30, 2016, 6:23:04 AM
Last bumped on Mar 25, 2017, 8:40:43 PM
The first thing that struck me as a potential downside of the build is the lack of physical mitigation. Being relatively ranged you can, for the most part, avoid physical melee attacks, but what about phys spells? They wreck pure evasion builds. Does the spell dodge work effectively enough to deter the danger of physical spells in your experience?
whats about phys and ele reflect maps mods? its a problem?
ing: @seeether
"
wecaftw wrote:
whats about phys and ele reflect maps mods? its a problem?


Right now, LS setup is 100% elemental damage, so, physical reflect can be done and elemental reflect can't. But, this setup will change in 2.3 because we need physical damage for applying the bleeding effect. Surely, next setup will be a mix phy/ele damage. With that configuration and some additional changes (LGoH?), maybe both mods can be done.
"
LoganChuzz wrote:
The first thing that struck me as a potential downside of the build is the lack of physical mitigation. Being relatively ranged you can, for the most part, avoid physical melee attacks, but what about phys spells? They wreck pure evasion builds. Does the spell dodge work effectively enough to deter the danger of physical spells in your experience?


I made this build after respec a Level 90 Ranger. During testing and improving the character, I reach Level 93 without even trying to. So, initially, I can say that in my experience, you can rely on Dodge and the overall survivability of the build is pretty OK for a ranged build.

But, is true that Evasion is unreliable in general and particularly for physical spells (no doubt about it, they it hard). So, I made some changes in tree for taking Iron Reflexes. Is 4 points away, and removing Arcing Blows and Wisdom of the Glade (useless, my mistake) you switch to Armour losing around 5% DPS. With this, we got (from tooltip) 25% physical reduction up to 50% with flask (and it can be easily improved with better gear).

Another changes could be Arctic Armour instead of Herald of Ash and Lightning Coil if you got the currency. After some testing, if I decided to keep this changes I will update the guide with it.

Just one additional thing, you says that this build is relatively ranged. The only drawback from LS is that projectiles doesn't fly, so terrain obstacles cut the projectiles spread. But except from that, LS range is truly great. Angle spread makes that at the end of the screen, you cover a massive area. Plus, thanks to Far Shot, LS truly shines when mobs are at the edge of the screen or even off-screen. I just want to clarify this because you keep things far enough from you almost all the time with this build, and that helps a lot in overall survivability.
This looks fun as hell, and may be my build for tomorrow.

How do you think it will run as a league starter? How gear dependent is this build?
Great! Will be my build for tomorrow too.

This build is no gear dependent at all. The only thing I'm keeping in mind is that for crafting "Causes Bleeding on Hit" I will need Vagan Level 7, so I have to level him as soon as I can. I will need this after third/four lab.

Hope it works for you! Regards!
I guess my only other question is will it be worth modifying the tree a bit for grand spectrum jewels?
Hi there..

New here currently building this build..
So far so good lvl 30..

Will this build be updated on a regular basis..

I hope so
"
Crooks_23 wrote:
I guess my only other question is will it be worth modifying the tree a bit for grand spectrum jewels?


Initially I guess that three is the maximum jewels we can get on this tree (for 45% inc. Elemental Damage). Can't see what to exchange for that 6 points that could be worthy. If I got that 6 points available maybe I choose 3 additional FC for 12% MORE Damage.

If you do an alternative passive tree, please link it so I can check it out. Regards!

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