[3.6] Scourge Arrow / Rain of Arrows Ascendant (All Content)



Looking for a great bosskiller that is also rather tanky and a good mapper? Considering how expensive this build gets you'd certainly hope this is that.

This build is a Scion (Slayer / Juggernaut) that uses the new skill Scourge Arrow in order to deal with every boss in the game as well as to map with, though you can use different skills (Rain of Arrows is a good choice for mapping) should you desire. Through the Slayer and Juggernaut ascendancies it gains overleech, endurance charges, immunity to stuns and chills as well as a few offensive bonuses. Through the power of Abyssal Jewels we completely ignore what Scourge Arrow was actually meant for and stack as much flat elemental damage as possible.

This build is very similar to Octavian0’s Scourge Arrow character (his PoB link).

Changes for 3.6:
Spoiler

Nerfs to Slayer Scion leech will reduce this build's survivability. Might be a good idea to carry a life flask in cases where you cannot attack to leech.


Gear:
Spoiler
I am going to go over every single piece of gear and also give you a trade link for each so that you can find the best items for you. The higher the sum of the mods the better that item is going to be (make sure to verify how much damage you’ll be getting with Path of Building though). This is even more innacurate with bows. Adjust the Weighed Sum to fit your criteria. Disable any mods you’re not interested in.

It’s worth mentioning that the bow does not need to be 6-linked since we’re not socketing our attack ability into it, but instead into the Shroud of the Lightless.

Bow:

Spoiler
You’ll be looking for a bow that gives you the following stats.

- Chance (20%) to deal double damage.
- Flat elemental damage.
- Increased elemental (attack) damage.
- Increased critical strike chance.
- Increased critical strike multiplier.
- Increased attack speed.

Feel free to use a Tempest for a very cheap alternative.
Trade link


Quiver:

Spoiler

A quiver with an additional arrow, life, crit chance / multiplier and pierce is preferred. You’ll want your bow to fire an additional arrow since it changes the pattern of the spore pods making it easier to make your spore pods "shotgun" the same enemy (and also helps with clear). Pierce is also important as it helps with the clear speed.

Get a Drillneck if you’re poor.

Trade link


Helmet:
Spoiler

The best possible helmet would be a Hale Negator with 2 Abyssal Sockets with the ‘Scourge Arrow creates an additional pod at Maximum Stages’ enchantment. A Lightpoacher also works but it's not nearly as good with its useless projectiles.

If you can’t buy / find one feel free to craft a helmet with the additional spore pod enchantment using Hollow fossils. Pray for good rolls.

Trade link


Body Amour:
Spoiler

A Shroud of the Lightless is the best choice for us. It's a pseudo-6L, giving us an extra link in the form of Elemental Penetration. It also gives us an Abyss jewel socket together with bonuses for having many of those equipped throughout the build. Since it only needs to be a 5L it makes it one of the cheapest parts of the build.

Trade link


Belt:
Spoiler


The best option would be a Darkness Enthroned with the two best jewels you have socketed into it. Otherwise, look for a Stygian Vise with Life, Elemental Damage (With Attacks) and Resistances if you need them. Don't get resistances here if you want to be able to swap to a Headhunter.

Trade link


Gloves:
Spoiler

We’ll be using two-socket Tombfists as they give us the Abyssal Sockets we need along with some life and attack speed. Make sure to socket a Murderous and Searching jewel into these.
Trade link


Boots:
Spoiler
Like with our helmet, you’ll want to buy the best boots with an Abyssal socket you can find. Otherwise, use Hollow Fossils in order to craft them. Try to get Life, Resistances and Movement Speed. If you do not have problems with resistances you can instead use Bubonic Trails with two sockets.

Trade link


Rings:
Spoiler
One of your rings should be a Shaper item with ‘Curse Enemies on Hit with Level (8-12) Assassin’s Mark’. The ring should have a decent amount of life along with the resistances you need. Your other ring will be a Mark of the Elder, which gives you a massive attack damage bonus if your other ring is a Shaper item, which it is. It also gives a nice amount of life (up to 10% maximum life). A good way of getting cheaper Mark of the Elder rings is to search for corrupted ones as they can have implicits that make up for some of its lower rolls. If you have a really high budget you can instead purchase an Opal Ring with really good mods. Otherwise, a Mark of the Elder is your best option.

Trade link (Assassin's Mark)
Trade link (Mark of the Elder)


Amulet
Spoiler

While not obligatory, you should try to get an amulet with ‘#% of maximum Life per second to maximum Life Leech rate’. This mod greatly boosts the speed at which you leech and allows you to recover from big hits much more easily. Make sure to get one with a decent life roll. Aside from that you will want offensive stats such as crit multiplier and chance, flat damage and such. Again, if you need resistances try to get a few here.

Trade link


Rare Abyssal Jewels:
Spoiler

There are a lot of mods that can go into these. You will want to stack as much elemental damage as possible, no matter the element. Critical strike multiplier and chance are also good mods (though not as good as flat ele). Look for jewels with 36 life and up since jewels with that amount of life have T2 life rolls and as such can be divined to up to 45 life. You might also want to look for jewels with three mods as you can later slam them (with Exalted Orbs) and possibly hit much more valuable jewels. If needed, get a few resistances on these.

You will want to get a jewel that gives you Onslaught on kill for faster mapping if you don’t already have that mod from another source.

Trade link


Unique Jewels:
Spoiler

These are quite expensive (but at least you won’t have to worry about rolls). You will need two Might of the Meek jewels and one Unnatural Instinct. The Might of the Meek jewels give a huge amount of life when socketed into the top left and bottom corners of the Scion starting area, as well as resistances that will you help you cap yours even with all of the uniques we use. And Unnatural Instinct is just ridiculous.

Trade link (Unnatural Instinct)
Trade link (Might of the Meek)


Flasks
Spoiler

We'll be using a Wise Oak for the elemental penetration as well as the reduced elemental damage taken during its effect. We deal damage with all of our elements, so balancing all of our resistances is highly recommended. It can be very hard to do yet it's definitely worth it.

We use an Atziri's Promise flask for even more damage. You don't need the "Gain #% of Physical Damage as Extra Chaos[...]" roll since it adds next to no damage. Instead, get the best best "Gain #% of Elemental Damage as Extra Chaos[...]" roll you can.

Get a Diamond Flask for its huge damage bonus.

For utility we use a Basalt and Quicksilver flasks.

Get "of Heat", "of Staunching" and "of Warding" as suffixes on your magic flasks.




Aspects:
Spoiler

This build was made in 3.4, where Aspects were next-to-impossible to get on good gear. Now that Bestiary is core, every Aspect can easily be crafted onto gear. I'd recommend going with Aspect of the Spider as it's both a great offensive and defensive choice. Other aspects (aside from Crab, which I think is underpowered) may also be viable. You can replace Arctic Armour or Herald of Thunder with an Aspect.


Crafting gear
Spoiler

Work in progress...

Bow:
Spoiler

With the advent of 3.5's crafting changes, you can make some incredible bows with multimodding. Use Shaper bases as they have very powerful mods.

There's a few bases you can use:

Short / Grove / Thicket Bow (1.5 APS)
Royal / Highborn / Imperial Bow (1.45 APS & (20-24)% WED)
Maraketh Bow (1.4 APS and 6% MS)

Maraketh bow is going to lag behind slightly in terms of DPS, but offers a small MS boost which, with all of the damage we have already, might be preferable.

With alteration orbs (cheaper way):
Spoiler

Spam alteration orbs until you get Shaper's
"
#% increased Attack Speed
#% chance to deal Double Damage
mod. If you get a crappy prefix along with the mod we want consider imprinting before attempting to annul it. Imprint again so you don't ruin your bow after regalling and annuling the bad regalled mod. Next, craft 'Can have multiple Crafted Modifiers' and look for the best possible mods you can put on it. You now have a weapon that is better than most of the bows you see sold for exalts in the double digits.







My gear (sample gear):
Spoiler

Please look at the recommendations I give instead of copying what I have here. I did not have an infinite budget or anything of the sort, therefore this does not represent the best possible itemization.





Skill tree:
Spoiler

These trees require two Might of the Meek and one Unnatural Instinct. If you don't have them don't copy these trees blindly.

Don't take the +30 Int node if you don't need it.

You can choose to go for Phase Acrobatics if you want.

Ascendancy order:
Juggernaut > Slayer > Path of the Duelist

Level 90
Level 95
Level 100

Alternative trees (if you lack jewels / want something different):



Gem links:
Spoiler

Main Skill:
Spoiler

Scourge ArrowDamage on Full LifeIncreased Critical StrikesElemental Damage with AttacksMirage Archer

Feel free to replace Scourge Arrow with a skill like Rain of Arrows for mapping if you prefer it. You can replace Scourge Arrow with any skill since this build scales damage that most bow skills can benefit from.


Heralds, Auras and Buffs:
Spoiler

Herald of ThunderArctic Armour (feel free to not use one of these and use an Aspect instead if you prefer)

Herald of Thunder and Arctic Armour do not need to be linked.

Herald of IceOnslaught

Herald of Ice linked with Onslaught helps to gain the Onslaught buff, though it is not reliable enough to be your only source of it.


Blood RageEnhanceVaal GraceIncreased Duration


Blood Rage with Enhance increases your attack speed by improving the quality of Blood Rage. Try to get the highest level Enhance you can (3 is fine, 4 would be optimal). It is also supported by Increased Duration, making it a bit more comfortable for boss fights. Vaal Grace is used to allow us to dodge most damage when the situation gets dire. You might not want to link it to Increased Duration as that increases the souls needed to use it. This is just preference.

Cast when Damage TakenImmortal Call

A simple CWDT IC setup. Due to sockets it’ll be hard to get Increased Duration on it. You could experiment with gem links and find a more optimal setup. Link your golem to this CWDT setup if you want.

Summon Lightning Golem

Can be linked with CWDT for a more hassle-free experience.


Movement ability:
Spoiler

Blink Arrow

Due to our lack of sockets we won’t be able to link our movement ability with anything else. There’s not much we would benefit from anyway.



Bandit:
Spoiler

Alira

It's a crit build. It also uses lots of uniques which can make it hard to cap our resistances. Therefore, Alira is the best choice most of the time.

You can always go for the 2 extra points if you do not need the resistances and can get more damage through those two points. Or perhaps more life.


Pantheons:
Spoiler

Major God: Soul of Arakaali (with Queen of the Great Tangle)

This power allows us to recover our life 50% faster for four seconds after we stop being damaged by DoT. This comes into play when Immortal Call is triggered while you have Blood Rage. Blood Rage deals physical DoT to yourself, which is negated whenever Immortal Call is triggered since IC makes you immune to all physical damage for a short duration.

Minor God: Personal choice. I personally used Soul of Shakari (with Terror of the Infinite Drifts) so that I didn't have to worry about Poison.


Some stats:
Spoiler

With my gear:

DPS: 1.6M Thorn Arrows (without including the extra DPS from Mirage Archer)
Life: 7187 by level 93 / 8335 by level 100


Videos:
T16 Elder Guardians
T16 Chimera with double boss life
T16 Phoenix
T16 Minotaur
T16 Hydra with Headhunter
Uber Elder
Shaper
Brutus

Any deaths are due to my own lack of skill and not the build itself. I still die to Uber Elder with a Vortex Occultist. Yes I'm that bad.
Last edited by b5001 on Mar 30, 2019, 7:22:07 PM
Last bumped on May 21, 2019, 1:22:17 PM
How do you feel about league starting this build? Maybe go Slayer/Pathfinder to compensate via flasks and switch to jugg later?
I don't think you'd need to compensate with flasks. Jugg is the best offensive choice on top of providing great defensive bonuses. Overleech is insane and you'd get by with it alone, even without an amulet with maximum leech rate (which I never had, all of the recorded fights were done without one).

For league start, instead of using a bow like the one I have I'd use a Tempest and focus on stacking lightning damage instead. Shroud is still the best option.
Last edited by b5001 on Nov 22, 2018, 8:53:47 AM
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For league start, instead of using a bow like the one I have I'd use a Tempest and focus on stacking lightning damage instead. At that point I wouldn't be sure if using a Shroud is the best option.



What would you think would be the best body armor option with Tempest and stack lightning damage? Inpulsas? or something else?
"

What would you think would be the best body armor option with Tempest and stack lightning damage? Inpulsas? or something else?


Now that I've done some testing I'd say the Shroud is still the best option because of the huge amount of Abyss jewels we have. A Loreweave gives 80% max res and a tiny bit more DPS but it's more expensive and gives way less life. Inpulsa's could be nice for clear speed but overall it's not good.
Thank you very much for your answer I was thinking the same thing for shroud because it's cheap in comparison with loreweave and the life is way more than that.
The best thing about this whole guide is the Brutus Video.
This got me. Solid Build. 11/10.
Will maybe use this in Betrayal. Maybe.

Anyway, thank you for sharing your build! :)


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eviL_Bison wrote:
The best thing about this whole guide is the Brutus Video.
This got me. Solid Build. 11/10.
Will maybe use this in Betrayal. Maybe.

Anyway, thank you for sharing your build! :)




Thanks. Took me over ten tries to do that Brutus.
What is your opinion on the Hopeshredder version of this build?
"
crispyexcal wrote:
What is your opinion on the Hopeshredder version of this build?


Seems pretty good to me, especially the PoB DPS. Looking at the guy's videos (I assume you're talking about https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/2228779) I'd expect faster kills with the 5M+ DPS he has. Maybe his gear wasn't that good when he made those. Making a separate setup for Rain of Arrows with Mirage Archer is also clever.
By the way, Hyrri's Ire got a huge buff in terms of flat damage. Might be worth looking into.
Last edited by b5001 on Dec 6, 2018, 5:42:24 AM

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