Explosive Arrow single target help

Started playing EA again this season (made the toon about 2 days ago). The AOE clear speed is incredible. However, boss fights are like pulling teeth. Here is my single target gear setup, what do you suggest?


AOE setup




Passive Tree

I recognize Raider may not be ideal, but I wanted to give it a shot. May roll over to Pathfinder at some point.

Also, is Xoph's Blood much better than Ngamahu Tiki amulet?

Chance to ignite, quality on explosive arrow = ~75% chance to ignite. Ignite damage double dips on all elemental, fire, projectile damage. Raider is fine, frenzy charges also double dip on ignite damage (for example, getting the extra frenzy charge below duelist would be worth significantly more damage than the two projectile nodes at the start of ranger). Make sure you re-apply elemental equilibrium after igniting.

Edit: You are running WED which does not affect EA damage. That is probably the big one right there.

Switch WED for chance to ignite.

http://i.imgur.com/SEJm1GF.jpg (edit: new picture, realised in the process of doing this that my math was wrong! Slightly less burn damage, but still about the same).

It's possible I missed some damage somewhere, but this should show you just how important ignite is if you want to do big damage with EA.

With your current stats, assuming you got the kraitlyn frenzy charge (meaning 5 charge max), you do ~212k damage per 5 stack explosion. If it ignites, you do 3.08milion (15 times more) per SECOND. Now, you might get two or even three 5-stack explosions off per second, and if you have extra arrows some of those explosions will overlap, but it still wont come close to ignite damage. It also requires you to be able to stand still and fire for the whole time, while igniting requires you to get one off once and then leave it for 4 seconds.

Single target EA = ignite. In high tier maps, you probably want chance to ignite even for your aoe, if you arent killing stuff in one shot.

Edit edit: I guess you aren't using wed? In your post it shows life leech, in your profile it shows wed...

Do you really need life leech? Anyway, all other discussion aside, the first step to doing single target damage with EA is igniting stuff.

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Pathological wrote:

Single target EA = ignite. In high tier maps, you probably want chance to ignite even for your aoe, if you arent killing stuff in one shot.

Edit edit: I guess you aren't using wed? In your post it shows life leech, in your profile it shows wed...

Do you really need life leech? Anyway, all other discussion aside, the first step to doing single target damage with EA is igniting stuff.

I was switching things around to test. In my AOE I'm using LL and still basically 1 shotting everything. In my single target I had WED in there to test, but I will switch it to ignite and see how that goes.

So my take away is, get 1-2 more frenzy charges and use ignite?

I will test this today, thanks for the help!

Dragging bosses to walls can be a solution in some cases. Other than that, +3 gem levels bow with quality EA and Chance to Ignite, possibly Empower instead of Life Leech if you can manage.

Xoph's Blood will kill your EE therefore a really bad idea.

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Zed_ wrote:

Dragging bosses to walls can be a solution in some cases. Other than that, +3 gem levels bow with quality EA and Chance to Ignite, possibly Empower instead of Life Leech if you can manage.

Xoph's Blood will kill your EE therefore a really bad idea.

Will Atziri's flask also help?

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WayTooFrosty wrote:

Will Atziri's flask also help?

Sure, not much though, since most things have positive chaos res and you're probably making them have negative fire res, so the extra dmg won't even reach the advertised 15%. Dying Sun is the most meaningful damage flask - IF you can bring fat mobs close to walls or into packs.

Edit: one more thing could potentially help, that is Scorching Ray on a spell totem for the fire resistance reduction but I don't see how you could fit that into your gear.

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Zed_ wrote:

Edit: one more thing could potentially help, that is Scorching Ray on a spell totem for the fire resistance reduction but I don't see how you could fit that into your gear.

I could remove the inc duration either from blood rage or CWDT and the enlighten to add Spell totem + Scorching Ray

Update: 20% quality on EA + Ignite is working very well

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Zed_ wrote:

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WayTooFrosty wrote:

Will Atziri's flask also help?

Sure, not much though, since most things have positive chaos res and you're probably making them have negative fire res, so the extra dmg won't even reach the advertised 15%. Dying Sun is the most meaningful damage flask - IF you can bring fat mobs close to walls or into packs.

Edit: one more thing could potentially help, that is Scorching Ray on a spell totem for the fire resistance reduction but I don't see how you could fit that into your gear.

Chaos damage doesn't interact with elemental equilibrium at all, and the chaos damage doesn't increase the ignite at all (since it isn't counted toward the burn). It will increase the initial damage by 15% but as the math showed earlier, the VAST majority of your single target damage comes from big ignites.

Atziri's flask is a good way to get some free leech though, and certainly should let you drop life leech. You can also get a fire leech corruption on your quiver for your single target setup - many people run +1 arrow even on single target but it doesn't increase the damage at all unless the target is by a wall or with other mobs to land the other charges in, and again, the initial explosion isn't the core of the damage on single target generally speaking. +1 arrow corruption is great for your aoe bow, but not really amazing for single target.