[2.6] Snowstorm's a'coming - LookinatKnees' Tornado Shot Assassin/Deadeye

166 % increased Life
145 % increased Global Evasion Rating
+4 % increased Evasion Rating per Frenzy Charge [we run 7 Frenzy Charges]
1.6 % of Attack Damage Leeched as Life
50 % increased Life Leeched per second

60 % increased Attack Speed (8% from Bandit, feel free to swap to a Passive Point)
21 % increased Attack Speed with Bows
80 % increased Accuracy Rating
10 % increased Accuracy Rating with Bows
+200 to Accuracy Rating

157 % increased Physical Damage with Bows
20 % increased Physical Damage with Claws [with Bows using Lioneye's Fall Jewel]
68 % increased Physical Damage
154 % increased Projectile Damage
190 % increased Critical Strike Chance with Bows
140 % increased Critical Strike Chance
60 % increased Critical Strike Chance with Claws [with Bows using Lioneye's Fall Jewel]
+40 % to Critical Strike Multiplier with Bows
+85 % to Critical Strike Multiplier
+45 % to Critical Strike Multiplier with Claws [with Bows using Lioneye's Fall Jewel]

- Normal: Help Oak (+40 life)
- Cruel: Help Kraitlyn (+8 Attack Speed) or Kill all (+1 Passive Point)
- Merciless: Help Kraitlyn (+1 Frenzy Charge)

In the Passives Tree, I chose to help Kraitlyn in Cruel. You can choose to sacrifice 8% attack speed to access higher passives earlier if you kill all. It's not much of a difference. With a huge budget, the Passive Point would be more valuable.

- Normal: Fast and Deadly
- Cruel: Ricochet
- Merciless: Rupture/Far Shot fares about the same rate at this point (go Far Shot if you don't plan on respeccing after Uber)
- Uber: Respec Rupture into Far Shot and take Endless Munitions

- 7 Frenzy Charges, +1 with The Blood Dance corruption to focus damage output from Frenzy Charges
- 2 Spare Jewel Sockets
- 1 Jewel Socket reserved for Lioneye's Fall Jewel
- Vaal Pact - Life Leech applies instantly. Life Regeneration has no effect.
- Acrobatics - 30% Chance to Dodge Attacks. 50% less Armour and Energy Shield, 30% less Chance to Block Spells and Attacks
- Phase Acrobatics - 30% Chance to Dodge Spell Damage

- Skills Chain +1 times
- Skills fire an additional projectile [Tornado Shot gets +3 secondary projectiles]

The defensive function of this build prioritises % increased Life, % increased Global Evasion Rating, Life Leech and Dodge/Spell Dodge in that order.

Life allows you to survive single regular attacks from end-game bosses like Izaro, Atziri and some hits from high-damage swarms before you restore everything via Leech/Vaal Pact.

While we cannot survive special skills like Izaro's one-punch, Atziri's yellow flame blast, Atziri's yellow lightning, Phase Acrobatics along with "Atziri's Step" saves us 46% of the times we make these mistakes. We can even boost this up to 80% with a max leveled Vaal Grace.

The offensive function prioritises % increased Physical Damage, % increased Projectile Damage, % increased Global Critical Strike Chance and Multiplier and % increased Attack Speed to pad our damage output and allow for further damage increase via gaining elemental damage on Physical Damage and other conversion shenanigans.

It dawned on me to emphasise that my Deadeye functions by exploiting damage conversion from Physical Damage more so than Critical Strikes. These are a welcome addition simply because a large Critical Strike applies a huge chunk of elemental damage as well. By running PTL and WED on Tornado Shot, Herald of Ice and Hatred, our damage consists of about 75% elemental damage. We can achieve 100% physical to elemental conversion by arming The Signal Fire, allowing us to ignore the Physical Reflect mod on maps. As a side note, having heavier leech with Vaal Pact also offsets the damage we take from Reflect. Just be reminded that leech can come from any source (like in Warlord's Mark), attack sources (Lioneye's Fall cluster) or exclusively physical attack sources (Daresso's Defiance). If we do only Elemental damage, we do not leech from Daresso's Defiance.

There is increased flexibility in this skill tree in that we have access to two clusters of 30 Strength and Intelligence nodes right along the build to make up for armour/skill gem requirements.

Also, we can commit to a 100%-pierce "Drillneck" setup by reserving 4 Passive Points. The primary arrow has natural pierce and travel to the point of your cursor, but this allows secondary projectiles to no longer be consumed on hitting monsters. This is amazing considering our ascendancy passive Far Shot adds 30% more damage based on how far the secondary projectiles have traveled from their origin.

5L Ordinary Tornado Shot
TS-GMP-PPAD-PTL-WED (G-G-G-R-B)

6L Ordinary Tornado Shot
TS-GMP-PPAD-PTL-WED-FA (G-G-G-G-R-B)


5L Piercing Tornado Shot
TS-GMP-PPAD-Pierce-AFD (G-G-G-G-R)

6L Piercing Tornado Shot
TS-GMP-PPAD-Pierce-PTL-WED (G-G-G-G-R-B)


Tornado Shot is multi-functional in the sense that it can be used for both Single Target as well as pack-clearing. Holding down Tornado Shot simply results in the clearing of packs and does not leave behind annoying single mobs like Lightning Arrow does.

The Pierce variation serves the same function in that a single Tornado Shot volley sends 6 primary arrows to your cursor's location and 18 secondary arrows fly out, piercing everything until expiry or hitting a wall.

I recommend the Pierce variation for a Deadeye because it synergises very well with Far Shot and our pseudo-AOE reach is significantly greater than other bow builds. Add arrows with Unique Bows and Quivers corrupted for additional arrows and we can fire to 11 primaries and 33 secondaries with each shot.

There's also an Uber Lab enchantment for Helmets that give +2 Tornado Shot secondary projectiles. We're looking to peak at 11 primaries and 55 secondaries that make for a ridiculous lining of arrows around any indoor area.

5L Frenzy
Frenzy-PPAD-SP-PTL-WED (G-G-G-R-B)

6L Frenzy
Frenzy-PPAD-SP-PTL-WED-FA (G-G-G-G-R-B)


Frenzy Charge generation is a problem when we're fighting lone Bosses, especially if we take on maps with Enfeeble or Temporal Chains - or any boss fight that is prolonged. Reason being prolonged boss fights usually don't provide us with enough mobs to feed our main steroid - Blood Rage off of, and we really don't want to take Blood Rage degeneration when fighting Bosses.

Frenzy provides us unparalleled single target DPS and generates the Frenzy Charges we need to reach stupid amounts of Attack Speed. Not to mention "The Blood Dance" (that can be corrupted for +1 Frenzy Charge) provides us with a ridiculous damage boost (6% increased damage per frenzy charge) to enemies on low life at the insignificant cost of potential attack speed (3% reduced attack speed per frenzy charge).

5L Blast Rain
BR-PPAD-Conc-PTL-WED (G-G-B-B-R)

6L Blast Rain
BR-PPAD-Conc-PTL-WED-AFD (G-G-B-B-R-R)

6L Blast Rain (with "The Signal Fire")
BR-PPAD-FA-Conc-WED-AFD (G-G-G-B-R-R)


Blast Rain does not benefit from the Deadeye ascendancy passives for additional arrow or chain. Notably for that reason, this is the only attack you want to use against Atziri in her Mirror Phase.

By using Concentrated Effect, all the explosions from Blast Rain can be focused into a small AOE - effectively making it the strongest single-target skill in our arsenal. Carrying around a secondary equipped bow with Blast Rain and "The Signal Fire" to replace Tornado Shot is the ultimate in slaying bosses - and the safest option against the Mirror.

Sure, we're no longer Tornado Shot when we resort to this, but we're Dead-eyes if any secondary arrow chains onto the Mirror.

5L Barrage (from Ordinary Tornado Shot)
Barrage-GMP-PPAD-PTL-WED (G-G-G-B-R)

6L Barrage (from Ordinary Tornado Shot)
Barrage-GMP-PPAD-PTL-WED-FA (G-G-G-G-B-R)


5L Piercing Barrage (from Piercing Tornado Shot)
Barrage-GMP-PPAD-Pierce-AFD (G-G-G-G-R)

6L Piercing Barrage (from Piercing Tornado Shot)
Barrage-GMP-PPAD-Pierce-PTL-WED (G-G-G-G-B-R)


Barrage is a very easy option to switch to, considering how similar the links are to our primary attack. Simply carrying the Barrage Skill Gem in our inventory allows for 2-click switching to Barrage for a considerably safe option of dealing with Single Target and Mirror Atziri.

Barrage is able to synergise with Greater Multiple Projectiles Support and added arrows from our Unique Bows by directing all the additional arrows at your cursor with a small and negligible spread. This interaction is unique from the way GMP works with Tornado Shot - in that for Tornado Shot, the added arrows will spread out in a large cone with cursor as the centre. Note that "Volley Fire" will add arrows to the side of Barrage, causing them to interact with the skill similarly to how added arrows interact with Tornado Shot.

For Mirror Atziri, never shoot in the general direction of the mirror even if you aren't using the Piercing setup because Barrage has a small spread that could miss your actual target and hit the Mirror, smashing your life in the process. This is also dangerous if we have the internal +1 Chain from the ascendancy passive, as the missed arrows CAN chain to the Mirror. While this is a powerful option, it is not the safest specifically against Mirror Atziri.

3L Blink Arrow
Blink-FA-FP (G-G-G)


The above links are sufficient to achieve Blink under-1-second. The last socket can be used to add Culling Strike Support (if linked) to give the minion summoned Culling Strike, and the quality gem makes it slightly faster.


While Culling Strike is an option for this slot, running Hatred and Blood Rage in the last 2 spare sockets feels a lot smoother for me. I would only really recommend Culling Strike over Blood Rage if you're running an area that isn't focused on pack clearing like Labyrinth, Atziri, their Uber variants, Guardians and Shaper.

3L Herald of Ice (Power Charge generation)
HoI-CoH-AM (G-B-B)


Herald of Ice synergises well with Hatred, making Tornado Shot an eternal winter by adding insane amounts of cold damage.

Assassin's Mark is the offensive option that causes enemies to become (1) more likely to receive a critical strike, (2) take more damage from critical strikes and (3) grant life, mana and chance of Power Charges when killed. These are all welcome in any critical-focused build.

3L Herald of Ice (Endurance Charge generation)
HoI-CoH-WM (G-B-R)


Warlord's Mark is the defensive option that causes enemies to become (1) more likely to get stunned, (2) recover slower from stuns, (3) grant more life/mana leech and (4) chance of Endurance Charges when killed. While these aren't optimised for damage output, you'll come to realise the physical damage mitigation from Endurance Charges is very much welcome in a fragile build like ours.

I will only list options that make sense to our build in this section and justify with reasons I think my Curse choices are superior to the below-listed by comparing them against their offensive/defensive counterpart.

Projectile Weakness

This is an offensive option that causes enemies to take up to 56% more projectile damage and become more likely to get knocked back. However, compared with the Marks, this curse does not provide any form of Life Leech or restoration on kill. Only the damage increase will be calculated with our Passive Tree and equipment's Life Leech effects. While the curse also provides projectiles 50% chance of piercing cursed targets, the pierce chance is not included in the calculation of bonus damage from "Drillneck" as the pierce chance is external to the character and deserves no mention because of that.

Assassin's Mark provides life and mana restoration on kill, greatly increasing our sustain from clearing pack after pack. These Mana-restoring effects from Assassin's Mark and Soul Raker or Essence Sap allow us to free up a Flask slot that we would otherwise commit for a Mana Flask. We reserve 75% with Herald of Ice and Hatred that Mana Flasks also don't make sense if we're running around with 155 unreserved Mana to begin with.

Assassin's Mark also grants Power Charge generation, each providing 50% increased Critical Strike Chance. This is important because enemies cursed with Assassin's Mark are also more likely to receive Critical Strikes and take 20% increased damage from all Critical Strikes (essentially a "more" multiplier to our damage).

What is awesome about Assassin's Mark is that the curse functions externally to the character - meaning that even if your Critical Strike Chance is already capped at 95%, the cursed target can be forced to receive Critical Strikes 100% of the time. It removes RNG in this regard, because all your attacks essentially become Critical Strikes.

Temporal Chains, Enfeeble

Both of these are very defensive options. However, they provide nothing in the way of Life Leech and restoration on kill when compared with the Marks. These curses are far safer options than Warlord's Mark, because they significantly reduce a target's offensive ability immediately when cast. Remember that if we link this curse in the Herald setup, you will need to kill a FROZEN enemy to proc the shatter effect that casts the Curse.

Warlord's Mark provides the life leech from ALL SOURCES, including Herald, elemental hits, bleed and poison along with the usual physical hits that we do. The life leech synergises so well with Vaal Pact in the way that so long as you survive one very strong hit, you can restore your life back to full within a few volleys of Tornado Shot. Of course, the condition is you surviving that one very strong hit.

Also, Warlord's Mark provides Endurance Charge generation. These as mentioned above, provide physical damage mitigation - not Armour. Physical damage mitigation is oh-so important because physical damage is the most common form of damage in the game. Sources include physical hits, spells that do physical damage, physical degeneration effects like Blood Rage, physical hits that cause bleeding, bleeding damage and physical hits that cause poison etc..

Endurance Charges are also consumed to extend the duration of Immortal Call. For example, Immortal Call lasts for 0.40 seconds and a level 5 skill gem extends this by 112% per Endurance Charge consumed. This amounts to 1.74 seconds of invulnerability to all physical damage, including those listed above. This is very often more than enough time to recover with instant leech granted by Vaal Pact. To put this into perspective, we fire one Tornado Shot volley every 0.40 seconds or faster, meaning that so long as you're shooting at targets, you're always recovering life.

0.40 * 112% * 3 + 0.40 = 1.744

4L CWDT-IC*-Frost Wall*-Summon Ice Golem* (G-B-R-R)
(*ensure skill gem levels do not exceed the CWDT gem level)


As a fragile build, CWDT-IC is very often the lifesaver when we come across multiple high-damage packs like shrine defenders, Rogue Exiles, Invasion Bosses and other steroid-boosted Magic/Rare mobs. Upon taking any amount of damage up to the damage threshold stated on CWDT, the linked active skills get casted. This is the reason we want to keep CWDT as low a level, according to our life total, as possible to adjust the safety net. I typically keep my CWDT at Level 3 (skill gems capped at level 42).

1S Hatred (G)


Hatred grants us a percentage of our physical damage as extra cold damage. This synergises with our emphasis on physical damage in the Passives Tree. Also, the aura does not benefit from the supports even if the equipment piece is fully linked, so we only reserve 50% mana with Hatred even if we unintentionally link it to the Herald or Blink Setup.

1S Blood Rage, 1S Vaal Haste or 1S Vaal Grace (G)


Blood Rage is our go-to steroid, granting us increased attack speed, life leech and frenzy charge generation at the cost of physical damage degeneration that is very often negated by the life leech. This is ideal for pack clearing.

If you dislike the drawback of Blood Rage, another offensive option is Vaal Haste. This steroid does not give life leech or frenzy charge generation. However, it provides us with a ridiculous attack speed and movement speed boost for 4 seconds. This is ideal for quickly dispatching with bosses, especially against prolonged fights if the boss will summon additional mobs for us to replenish souls and recast Vaal Haste during the same fight.

The defensive option is Vaal Grace. This steroid provides us with flat dodge chance for both attacks and spells. With Phase Acrobatics and "Atziri's Step" we can reach up to 80% spell dodge.

141 % increased Life
83 % increased Global Evasion Rating
1.6 % of Attack Damage Leeched as Life
50 % increased Life Leeched per second

32 % increased Attack Speed
21 % increased Attack Speed with Bows
60 % increased Accuracy Rating
10 % increased Accuracy Rating with Bows

157 % increased Physical Damage with Bows
20 % increased Physical Damage with Claws [with Bows using Lioneye's Fall Jewel]
88 % increased Physical Damage
58 % increased Projectile Damage
76 % increased Chaos Damage
70 % increased Damage with Poison
77 % increased Damage over Time
20% of Physical Damage gained as Extra Chaos Damage against Bleeding Enemies
Bleeding you inflict on Maimed Enemies deals 100% more Damage
Poison you inflict with Critical Strikes deals 100% more Damage

202 % increased Critical Strike Chance with Bows
180 % increased Critical Strike Chance
60 % increased Critical Strike Chance with Claws [with Bows using Lioneye's Fall Jewel]
+64 % to Critical Strike Multiplier with Bows
+85 % to Critical Strike Multiplier
+45 % to Critical Strike Multiplier with Claws [with Bows using Lioneye's Fall Jewel]
+8 % to Critical Strike Multiplier per Power Charge [we run 5 Power Charges]
+0.5 % Critical Strike Chance per Power Charge [we run 5 Power Charges]

*Important: The Tree features the 8 passive points taken towards the Soul Raker claw nodes and Jewel nodes just under. The Jewel node is reserved for "Lioneye's Fall" that transforms all Melee Weapon modifiers into Bow modifiers. These nodes result in 60% Critical Chance, 45% Critical Multiplier, 20% increase Physical Damage, and life/mana leech from Attack Damage.

The leech from the Soul Raker node is compared to Vitality Void cluster at the bottom of the Tree.
To achieve the same life/mana leech, 4 points will have to be invested here, resulting in slightly more life leech. There needs to be emphasis that this Tree attempts to take every Critical Strike Chance/Multiplier node to exceed the maximum Critical Chance and subsequently using "Marylene's Fallacy" to receive a ridiculous Critical Strike Multiplier and Culling Strike on Critical Strikes.

If you do not intend to take the Soul Raker nodes, the 8 points can be redirected to the 4 nodes for Vitality Void to get the life/mana leech and

- Normal: Help Oak (+40 life)
- Cruel: Kill all (+1 Passive Point)
- Merciless: Help Alira (+1 Power Charge)

In Cruel, we choose the Passive Point over 8% attack speed because we need access to further passives earlier in our build. Our damage delivery depends far more on Critical Strikes and raw Physical Damage than Attack Speed, so a Passive Point is much more valuable for the Assassin as compared with the Deadeye.

Bleed/Poison Route

- Normal: Noxious Strike
- Cruel: Toxic Delivery
- Merciless: Unstable Infusion
- Uber: Deadly Infusion

Power Charge Route

- Normal: Unstable Infusion
- Cruel: Deadly Infusion
- Merciless: Noxious Strike
- Uber: Toxic Delivery

Really, whatever you choose at the start works wonders with this build. Our damage scales very well with Bleed and Poisons, just as it would with empowered Power Charges. Just remember to allocate Passive Points according to the ascendancy points allocation. If you're going Power Charges in Normal, spec your Passives Tree upwards to grab the +1 Power Charge node before speccing downwards.

I grabbed Noxious Strike and Toxic Delivery in Normal and Cruel respectively while speccing my Passives Tree downwards, grabbing Critical, Damage and Life nodes before Level 75. I was already able to clear Tier 11 Shaped Strands before completing Merciless Labyrinth with under ~46% Critical Strike Chance. Then with 4 unempowered Power Charges, my Critical Strike Chance only increased to ~60%. On hindsight, I feel that the Bleed/Poison route is extremely powerful because of the Physical double-dipping mechanics. Feel free to try out the Power Charge route.

- 5 Power Charges
- 4 Spare Jewel Sockets
- 1 Jewel Socket reserved for Lioneye's Fall Jewel
- Vaal Pact - Life Leech applies instantly. Life Regeneration has no effect.
- Acrobatics - 30% Chance to Dodge Attacks. 50% less Armour and Energy Shield, 30% less Chance to Block Spells and Attacks
- Phase Acrobatics - 30% Chance to Dodge Spell Damage

- Automatic Power Charge generation from Unstable Infusion
- Increased effectiveness of Power Charges from Deadly Infusion
- Bleed/Poison synergies with Noxious Strike
- Stupid amounts of Poison damage with Toxic Delivery

The defensive function of this build prioritises % increased Life, Life Leech and Dodge/Spell Dodge in that order. Compared with the Deadeye build that I'm most familiar with, this build does not focus as heavily into high amounts of evasion.

Life allows you to survive single regular attacks from end-game bosses like Izaro, Atziri and some hits from high-damage swarms before you restore everything via Leech/Vaal Pact.

While we cannot survive special skills like Izaro's one-punch, Atziri's yellow flame blast, Atziri's yellow lightning, Phase Acrobatics along with Atziri's Step saves us 46% of the times we make these mistakes.

The offensive function prioritises % increased Physical Damage, % increased Projectile Damage, % increased Global Critical Strike Chance and Multiplier and % increased Attack Speed to pad our damage output and allow for further damage increase via causing bleeds everywhere and ridiculous amounts of poisons on Critical Strikes.

The Assassin's offensive option capitalises on delivering stupid amounts of poison through insane numbers of Critical Strikes. Yes, we're exploiting dirty double-dipping mechanics, but until that changes, the bleed-poison critical Assassin is the way to go. The Assassin's Noxious Strike and Toxic Delivery ascendancy passives applies poison to Bleeding enemies. Both Bleed and Poison capitalise on increasing physical damage. "Atziri's Promise" grants extra chaos damage from both Physical and Elemental damage, justifying the use of Hatred and Herald of Ice to further increase the damage from Poison stacks.

Furthermore, the Assassin can use Puncture as a secondary attack to permanently bleed a lone Boss and follow up with Tornado Shots that gains Chaos Damage on bleeding targets, each primary and secondary projectile having 40% chance to apply Poison on Hit that also gains more damage when applied through Critical Strikes. (Hint: What about Poison Support?)

There is increased flexibility in this skill tree in that we have access to two clusters of 30 Strength and Intelligence nodes right along the build to make up for armour/skill gem requirements.

Also, we can commit to a 100%-pierce "Drillneck" setup by reserving 4 Passive Points. The primary arrow has natural pierce and travel to the point of your cursor, but this allows secondary projectiles to no longer be consumed on hitting monsters.

5L Ordinary Tornado Shot
TS-GMP-PPAD-PTL-WED (G-G-G-B-R)

5L Ordinary Tornado Shot (added fire)
TS-GMP-PPAD-FA-AFD (G-G-G-G-R)

6L Ordinary Tornado Shot
TS-GMP-PPAD-FA-PTL-WED (G-G-G-G-B-R)

5L Piercing Tornado Shot
TS-GMP-PPAD-Pierce-AFD (G-G-G-G-R)

6L Piercing Tornado Shot
TS-GMP-PPAD-Pierce-PTL-WED (G-G-G-G-B-R)


Our Assassin relies too heavily on increasing sources of Physical Damage and subsequently our damage from Bleeding and Poison, to use PTL/WED above PPAD. Do not sacrifice PPAD for the PTL/WED conversion.

Tornado Shot is multi-functional in the sense that it can be used for both Single Target as well as pack-clearing. Holding down Tornado Shot simply results in the clearing of packs and does not leave behind annoying single mobs like Lightning Arrow does.

The Pierce variation serves the same function in that a single Tornado Shot volley sends 5 primary arrows to your cursor's location and 15 secondary arrows fly out, piercing everything until expiry or hitting a wall.

There's also an Uber Lab enchantment for Helmets that give +2 Tornado Shot secondary projectiles. By using a Legacy "Reach of the Council" (+4 Arrows) and a corrupted "Drillneck" (+1 Arrow), we're looking to peak at 10 primaries and 50 secondaries that make for a ridiculous lining of arrows around any indoor area.

Make no mistake, PTL/WED is insanely powerful but in a 5L scenario removing PPAD to add damage conversion to lightning is not justifiable - lightning damage does not apply poisons without the use of "Atziri's Promise". The 5th slot should then be something that increases Physical Damage or increase DPS significantly. Optional candidates are FA or SP. I really like AFD though, because it grants extra fire damage based on our Physical Damage.

Since PTL/WED does not scale Bleeding or Poison damage, why do we use it in a 6L setup then?

In a 6L setup, we do not need to replace PPAD - this gem is very important because it confers up to 11.5% increased Physical Damage (23Q) and up to 52% more Physical Projectile Attack Damage (L23) to our attacks.

PTL confers the ability to shock enemies - Bosses in particular. In the Assassin setup, we're focused on dealing Critical Strikes which then allows us to inflict permanent shock on bosses with our absurd Critical Strike Chance. The "Shocked" status causes the affected target to take 50% increased damage from all sources. This means all our attacks, Bleed and Poisons gain even more damage thereafter.

Defensive Mechanics

- +72 to maximum Life
- 186 % increased Life
- 48 % increased Evasion Rating and Armour
- 62 % increased Evasion Rating
- 4 % increased Evasion Rating per Frenzy Charge (we run 7 Frenzy Charges)
- 2.4 % of Attack Damage Leeched as Life
- 5 % of maximum Life per second to maximum Life Leech rate
- 10 % of Overkill Damage is Leeched as Life
- 0.4% of Attack Damage Leeched as Mana

Offensive Mechanics

- 165 % increased Physical Damage with Bows
- 20 % increased Physical Damage
- 91 % increased Projectile Damage
- 25 % increased Damage while using a Flask

- 44 % increased Elemental Damage
- 52 % increased Elemental Damage with Weapons
- 20 % increased Elemental Damage while using a Flask

- 32 % increased Attack Speed
- 21 % increased Attack Speed with Bows

Notable Mechanics

- Culling Strike
- 30 % increased Damage against Rare and Unique Enemies
- 10 % reduced Reflected Elemental Damage taken
- Damage with Weapons Penetrates 5 % Elemental Resistance

- Normal: Help Oak (+40 life)
- Cruel: Kill all (+1 Passive Point)
- Merciless: Help Kraitlyn (+1 Frenzy Charge)

- Normal/Cruel: Dexterity, Passive Point (towards Ranger)
- Cruel: Ranger Ascendancy - Pathfinder, Strength and Dexterity (towards Duelist)
- Merciless: Passive Point (towards Duelist), Duelist Ascendancy - Slayer
- Uber: Passive Point (towards Ranger), Path of the Ranger

The Passive Tree facilitates ease of Ascendancy by allowing us to invest 2 points into the Strength and Dexterity nodes by the Avatar of the Hunt node in order to spec into Finesse early. This way, we are not limited by the usual Ascendant limitations of having a huge bulk of points waiting to be added just because we cannot solo Merciless Labyrinth with only ~50 points into the Tree. After taking Path of the Ranger, we can immediately refund the 2 mentioned stat nodes to boost our progress through the Tree.

- 7 Frenzy Charges
- 5 Spare Jewel Sockets

- Pathfinder Ascendant allows us to augment our damage using Utility Flasks with lasting effects.
- Slayer Ascendant gives us Culling Strike and boosted damage against Rare mobs and Bosses. Furthermore, overkilling mobs further increases our survivability with Vaal Pact's instant leech.

The defensive function of this build prioritises % increased Life much more heavily than other classes and Life Leech.

Life allows you to survive single regular attacks from end-game bosses like Izaro, Atziri and some hits from high-damage swarms before you restore everything via Leech/Vaal Pact.

While we cannot survive special skills like Izaro's one-punch, Atziri's yellow flame blast, Atziri's yellow lightning, this build is much more forgiving, allowing us access to the Scion Life nodes, making flat Life bonuses go much farther. The ability to fill all 5 Jewel nodes with 7% increased Life makes this build a much tankier class than our other Archer counterparts, while maintaining our damage potential.

The offensive function prioritises % increased Physical Damage, % increased Projectile Damage and % increased Attack Speed to pad our damage output and allow for further damage increase via extra Elemental Damage based on our Physical Damage and 100% Physical to Elemental conversion. This is an Elemental Damage build that makes use of increases to Physical Damage.

As a Pathfinder Ascendant, our focus is not limited to just our Items and Skill Gems. Basic Utility Flasks are very powerful, but our potential lies in augmenting our already-ridiculous Elemental Damage using Unique Flasks like "Atziri's Promise", "Taste of Hate" and "Vessel of Vinktar (add lightning to attacks)", as well as a special Unique Belt "The Retch" that abuses our ridiculous Life Leech and extends the duration of our flasks. Being a Pathfinder Ascendant also increases flask charges gained, effectively nullifying "The Retch"'s negative mod "reduced flask charges gained while using a flask".

Then we gain the Slayer Ascendancy that basically gives us Culling Strike. Tornado Shot has been renowned for its ridiculous clear-speed and moderate ability to kill Bosses. Being a pseudo-Slayer, we gain perhaps the most insane ability against Bosses - 30% increased damage (that also double-dips into ignites we inflict at least until 3.0 hits) and insta-kill when the Boss drops below 10% maximum life.

There is increased flexibility in this skill tree in that we have access to a clusters of 30 Strength and Intelligence nodes right along the build to make up for armour/skill gem requirements.

No Drillneck, only The Signal Fire