[1.0.0] [Concept] Avatar of Crit Proliferated Burning Arrow

The core idea of the build is to use the maximum possible damage Burning Arrow [BA] to ignite enemies, and spread the burning damage to everyone around using Elemental Proliferation.
The main source of damage will be burning caused by the crit BA.

This build is a glass cannon, so HC players may want to leave now.
It functions best in a party, especially with a summoner, since it is best to use others as meatshields and not subject yourself to unnecessary enemy attention.

The immediate benefits this build gives over most cookie-cutter archer builds:

1) Practically immune to Lightning Thorns - we only get hit once, while LA user gets hit 15+ times from a single shot with Chain + LMP
2) As the burning damage does not scale with speed at all, and BA is relatively cheap - zero mana issues
3) Does not have to facetank enemies to get the full damage like RA builds. Shoot several times, then dodge incoming projectiles while everything burns.

About reflect - I am not sure, need to test once I get a high enough damage bow.

To get the maximum possible burning damage, we need as high as possible single hit fire damage.
Mainly we get it the following ways:

1) Maximise crit chance and multiplier. Get crit chance of the skill to 30+ %, crit multiplier to 600+ % We also get a free ignite on crits.
2) Get all % increased fire dmg and % elemental dmg without sacrificing much. That means we don't get a cluster near the marauder tree.
3) Get all weapon ele damage, fire damage and burning damage increases that we can

// 1.0

So far all the changes in the release version of the game were positive.

First of all, we got an Avatar of Fire node. Combined with Blackgleam quiver, it gives us 100% physical damage conversion to fire. That in turn means that we no longer need to get 6% fire damage nodes, and should get much better 12% increased phys dmg nodes instead.

Now we can just get any pure physical bow, and the Burning Arrow will use all of its damage.

New "skillwheel" in ranger area is also quite useful, as it contains many damage-boosting nodes.

Also, the Elemental Proliferation gem is now a quest reward from Act III, so you don't he to buy it.

// Build:
Base class is Templar, every other class has many nodes at the start which are mostly useless for this build.

108pt (main goal):

It is always possible to get more life nodes instead of less efficient crit nodes, if your gear is already providing sufficient crit chance and multiplier.

// Skills, links:

Primary attack:
Burning Arrow + WED + Elemental Proliferation + Increased Critical Damage + (Added Fire Damage) + (Increased Burning Damage)

Additional/swap gems may include: -
1) LMP, if there are many fast moving enemies. Will result in severe reduction of burning damage however.
2) Increased Critical Chance

// Bandits
Normal: help Oak for 40hp
Cruel: help Oak for 18% increased phys dmg, or kill all for skillpoint
Merciless: help Oak for endurance charge

// Levelling
- If you have Limbsplitter, use it, and you will onehit every common enemy in acts 1 and 2 on normal.
- Level the burning arrow, alongside with all the supports needed, on the second set of weapons.
- Up to lvl 50-55 you should use a 2h weapon and Infernal Blow, as it also benefits from the nodes we take.
- After lvl 50-55, you should take 2 nodes of +30 dexterity, and this should be enough to equip a bow of your level. To start using BA, you should also have an item with B-B-R-G links, the easiest way to make it is to use an energy Hybrid item, either En+Arm or En+Eva
- You also need a decent enough bow, with BA damage (not dps) resulting in at least 500-1000. This will get you about 1.5k-3k damage crit, as by that time you should already have 300% crit multiplier.

// Progress
Right now at lvl 56.
The gear sucks big time, since all of it is self-found, probably going to start looking for a decent enough bow later when I accumulate enough currency.

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// Outdated section

// Weapon, gear:
For a weapon, we use the slowest bow with highest possible base phys damage, and highest phys and fire rolls.
To convert 50% of phys damage to fire, we use a Blackgleam quiver.

Blackgleam + Burning Arrow + Added Fire - this combination ensures that almost all our damage will be dealt as fire.

Windscream - ideally, lets us cast a 2nd curse. All other mods are also useful.
If we can't get the boots - use Doedre's Damning ring instead.

Maligaro's Virtuosity gloves - highly desirable, give both high crit damage and crit chance.

// Skills, links:

Totem
Ranged Spell Totem + Explosive Arrow + Faster Attacks + GMP

Auras
Anger - mandatory, should be kept on at all times
Grace - optional, but highly desirable. I don't run it right now, since I don't have +mana on gear to support it.

Secondary attack:
1) Split Arrow + LGoH + Blind + Chain - quick life regain, or replace Blind with Culling Strike and spam on the fast enemies
2) Bear Trap + Bear Trap + Increased Critical Damage + Increased Critical Strikes
6 bear traps should be enough to kill most rares, unless they have both high phys and high fire resists.

Explosive arrow is by far the best skill to use on a totem, completely outdamaging Rain of Arrows totem, or any other ranged skill. The core idea is that the totem starts to pack the enemies with explosive charges, we shoot the fire arrows which trigger the burn.
As soon as first enemy dies, it explodes dealing damage of 5 fuse charges to other nearby enemies, starting an explosion chain reaction. If enemies are packed closely enough, the whole pack dies almost instantly.

We also need 2 curses - flammability + crit weakness or ele weakness.
Ele weakness will be better overall, since burning damage benefits twice from lowered resists twice, but crit weakness helps with igniting, as it has an additive crit chance.

----

// Build:
Templar was chosen as a class that wastes the least amount of nodes on unnecessary things. At first I tried to map it as a shadow, but ended with around 4 completely useless nodes and a 120pt build.
Ranger is out of the question of course.
Duelist can probably be used, since he has good projectile damage nodes, but he requires so much points just to exit his tree that it won't be viable in my opinion. Also, % attack speed nodes are useless to us, and he has 2 at the beginning.

106pt (main goal):
[spoiler]http://www.pathofexile.com/passive-skill-tree/AAAAAgUABVuLjOFz7SBG113GtQTkIilPGmzsOIKbna4ZhVfiOtgaOKcIEmkkqnflMolN2KeE2CSPRhccNukEs4x2kFU2xdDQgUlxeeNqFE0CcR8CNtjPZbI4ogAEB5wt8WxVxmZPTLOHZexVFm8tH20ZwfOio3_GJ6kRllptDkgkPOOEpzSnXMBRSVHz6nDVFr9wUofb62Nh4pma53S29972ES_o1usUjb9RR2_yMHwzDDnUfyv-K6Cfd9cx-hnVdEF29__eVvoUdcqp3UYOrWOn_E4ppZ2j_Ks=
[/spoiler]

117pt (grabbing all life nodes we can get, as well as less efficient crit nodes):
[spoiler]http://www.pathofexile.com/passive-skill-tree/AAAAAgUABVuLjOFz7SBG113GtQTkIilPGmzsOIKbna4ZhVfiOtgaOKcIEmkkqnflMolN2KeE2CSPRhccNukEs4x2kFU2xdDQgUlxeeNqFE0CcR8CNtjPZbI4ogAEB5wt8WxVxmZPTLOHZexVFm8tH20ZwfOio3_GJ6kRllptnaMOSCQ8_KvQOeOEpzSnXF76F9jAUUlR8-pw1Ra_cFKH2-tjYeKZmud0tvfe9hEv6NbrFI2_UUdv8jB8qrgzDDnUfyuqf_4roJ931zH6hxkZ1XRBdvchdv_eVvoUdcqp3Ub8xQ6tY6f8TmegKaWHdkp9
[/spoiler]

I have a hard time imagining you'll be able to get burns as strong as a searing touch fireball ele proliferation build. It is basically the same concept, but searing touch gives a ton of extra burning damage (and 2 extra levels on fireball), and fireball does pure fire damage straight off.

With blackgleam, burning arrow, and added fire, you will be doing mostly fire damage, so maybe it will be able to stack up against searing touch fireball, I look forward to hearing if it does. Good luck.

Well I also happen to have the build you described)
Currently only in Merc act 2, but doing very well so far.

I will compare the damage output once I get at least to the same level.

The main difference is that this build scales of phys. damage as well as fire/ele damage.

I've levelled to 42 and switcheto using a bow.

Before that I played using Infernal Blow + WED + added fire + melee splash.
Using unique low-lvl 2-handers like Limbsplitter.
This combination oneshots entire packs of white monsters at any level, as long as you change weapons as you gain levels.

In normal Act II I had 600 dps Infernal Blow without melee splash, and around 400 with it.

I switched to bow on Act II Cruel, at that time Infernal blow dps was around 1100 with splash (1400 without), so I could still oneshot common enemies even in small groups (up to 3-4 people)

_________________

About Burning Arrow - right now I don't have a proper set of links, so I test it with Ele Proliferation and WED only.

My Buring Arrow tooltip dps is 933,
and the pure fire damage of it is 361-772,
so pretty much as I mentioned before almost all damage is fire.

Aside from being only 3L, the problem is that crit chance without taking much crit nodes is rather low (I have only 15% now) and unreliable at igniting, so you really need all those crit nodes to boost it at least to 30%.

I'll post an update once I get more crit nodes, especially the ones near the Iron Reflexes.

Why not try it ? Doesn't seem a bad build but
how are you going to get those crits without accuracy
and with only 164 dex on the tree ?
Or are you like everyone else around (except me damn it!)
that has a Lionseye waiting for him ?

Don't have it, it would certainly solve the accuracy problem, but the price is ridiculous.

However, the damage will probably be lower than on high phys bow (Decimation, Citadel, Harbinger) with added fire mod and crit chance.

________________________

Right now you will need several pieces of gear with accuracy.
I'll see which accuracy nodes will be required once I get into maps, probably drop some life to pick them.

GGG made a really bad decision of introducing Static Blows node, which has no equivaents in Fire / Ice form.

Static Blows and the next node is op as shit.
20% chance to shock ? I used Elemental Proliferation with me EleCleave
witch and manage to have every single pack shocked almost all the time.

Fire damage is the worst of the elemental damages right now.
It can have lots of damage but with a lot of effort gear and passives around it.

At the last post here http://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/22683/page/10
is a build by a HC user which may not be crit oriented
but seems to work well for him.

Interesting, but pretty much none of what they did (there were 2 builds posted there actually) will work for me.
Except for Point Blank, but that will require you to put yourself in danger in order to get bonus damage.
However, with Chin Sol or however that bow is called, the damage increase might be worth the risk.

Iron Grip is ridiculously far, it will take 10+ nodes just to get it. Not worth it.

Plus, just the fact that I can use Increased Crit Damage gem gives me tremendous damage increase, the last time I checked, almost without any crit mult nodes, just using the gem boosts crit damage multiplier to 300%.

Update - lvl 66, farming Fellshrine now.

So far I've died to reflect once - first time when I went to Fellshrine with 0 fire resist. Yeah...

I skipped pretty much all healt nodes, took only 3 I think, but finally managed to reach Iron Reflexes, swapped out chest armor and helm, which boosted my armor rating from laughable 1700 to relatively fine 3500.
I can probably get 4000-5000 base armor if I get a decent chest, right now I have the one with 750 eva i think. This is all without Grace.

Same problem with the bow - no one really sells the bows that I need, and the ones that are on sale cost ridiculous amounts of currency, and I can't afford them. Damage can be quite easily doubled-tripled with a decent bow.

Right now main stats for Burning Arrow look like this:
dps: 2257
combined dmg: 805-1671
fire dmg: 744-1492
chance to hit: 80%
aps: 1.4
crit chance: 23.6%
crit damage multiplier: 528%
burn damage increase: 80%
added chance to ignite: 25%
ignite duration: +60% (bonus from BA quality)

Approximate burn damage from crit burning arrow:
crit damage: 3928-7877
increased burn duration: 6.4s
increased burn damage / sec: 2356-4725
total burning damage per arrow: 15000-30240

This is all without factoring -90% resists from dual-curses.

In conclusion I got almost 30k maximum damage from a single arrow (if it crits that is), using a complete junk lvl 40 bow.

In terms of damage increases, I still need to take 2 nodes +10% burn damage each, 2 nodes +10% ele damage, and quite a few crit mult and chance nodes, which I also skipped in favour of IR.

I will be resurrecting this build, Avatar of Fire node seems to be very useful for it, further increasing the damage potential.

If anyone has any suggestions, please share them.

Starting as a Ranger is not as bad idea as it was before, however I still think that Templar is superior as it has less inefficient/useless nodes.
Don't think that Scion is a good starting choice - starting nodes are kinda bleak compared to other classes, plus it takes a ton of highway points to get to any of the useful parts of the skilltree.

Will probably drop the Resolute Tecnique entirely - it requies to take 7 highway nodes which don't lead anywhere except for some more life nodes. First I will see if it is possible to make a character which can survive using endurance charges.