Tanky and affordable quill rain CoC! (Updated to 1.2.0)
 Since I started mapping with this char I got many people asking about the build, so I decided to post it here. Enjoy! (All estimated prices for standard league). Now, before you say "CoC? BOOORING!", give me a second to point out that this is more than your average glass cannon CoC build, I put a lot of emphasis in balancing survivability and dps. This way I can straight up facetank most of the things the game throws at me. Let's start off with a list of what this build is good at and what it has trouble with.
Pros
-Can do basically all map mods (see FAQ). -3k-4k life per second gained without the need to even deal damage! -Has Unwavering Stance for stun immunity. -24k armor up constantly (currently, more incoming). -Surgeon's flasks are always full. -Autoclears rooms thanks to chain. Not just the stuff in a cone in front of you.
Cons
-Lightning thorns kill you. Even before the visual appears on your screen, you just 100-0 in a single frame*. Basically the only reason this build isn't HC safe. -Of course, ele reflect can potentially kill you if you keep shooting into it. But unless someone vaal cyclones the entire pack in one spot (the person in question knows what i mean :P), I've not had trouble disengaging in time and handling the situation appropriately. -Heavy graphics/CPU load. We're not talking 10 discharges per second here, but you should only try this with a good PC. (Contrary to popular belief, you can still do party play with this. I regularly play in parties with at leas 3 CoC chars, but inevitably some people will still hate you if you party with random people for, say, master farming). -Dps is spiky. Sometimes it may take a moment to proc stuff. -You can't really level with CoC. That shouldn't be surprising, use an appropriate leveling build, they're cheap. -Ring slots are occupied. This means quite a bit less flexibility than other builds, but I don't have trouble with it. It does however mean that you have to put greater effort into getting resists on the remaining rares. *I'd like to emphasize this: When we met a pack of arcmages (that can cast thorns) in a map once (was increased variety so there was only 2 packs of them total), I waited until all mobs were down but two mages. Both didn't have thorns on them. I shot a single Barrage at them, it procced my CoC spells immediately. Both mages died in a heartbeat. And yet I lost 90% of my life. I don't think they have a cast animation on thorns, and there's no (real) cooldown on the thorn damage either. It literally kills you before you can do anything if you happen to shoot into them. Don't be fooled, since 1.2 they only cast thorns If you'd like to first get a visual impression of what awaits you, check out this video! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OXarHFhoRLQ (Pre-1.2.0 footage, the build has changed in some ways and those character sheets are sort of outdated). With that out of the way, let's get to the actual build! The base idea is to get as many attack hits as possible, for both procing lots of casts on crit, as well as gaining a lot of life. The latter is accomplished with ...which also solves all our mana problems. (Thief's Torment used to be moderately expensive, but it dropped to The first step in generating lots of hits per second is using a "Doesn't Quill Rain have a godawful low base crit chance for a CoC build?" -> See FAQ Now here's the essence of the build: A 6l including (You don't need to buy a 6l quill rain, a tabula will absolutely suffice and is "just" 1-2 ex). What makes this so good? The fact that this double dips from GMP and chain benefits, while only taking their penalties once! Barrage gets 8 projectiles that chain 3 times each. That's 24 hits every attack. Every one of those hits can potentially proc the linked spells, which also get GMP and chain! This allows for a potential 360 spell hits per attack (and spell gem). (Put in perspective, my AB tooltip currently shows 450 dmg per hit, but this build is still progressing. More to come :D). Dps-wise, this setup is likely somewhat inferior to replacing chain with another spell (e.g. arc or spark for shockstacks). However, recall that every attack produces up to 24 hits, which each means 20-30 life gained (i.e. not over time but instantly), that's over 500 life gained every single attack! This is just a tradeoff between dps and survivability, there's no way around it. However, "normal" coc builds tend to overkill entire packs by so much that this dps tradeoff is not that big. You still oneshot packs. In the current state, my build gets to 6 attacks per second, which results in the mentioned 3k life per second. The (very paper) maximum peak dps with my current build is therefore at around 1.45 million damage in one second. If people want to see this, I could do a more realistic dps estimation, but it just largely depends on mob positions (see FAQ below). Keep in mind that this build is still work in progress! Nevertheless, here's what my setup currently looks like in practice for a lvl 87 ranger after the recent 1.2.0 reset and tree changes:
Passives
Current Passive Tree (lvl 92) 1.3 skill tree suggestion: http://poeurl.com/y7FRtbO (You need tool to view that tree! The one on pathofexile.com is not yet updated! The tree is also still subject to possible changes, so please bear that in mind.) Life nodes wherever you can get them, Shadow area for crit, Ranger area for evasion and bow crit/attack speed, grabbing eva and armor while pathing through duelist area to unwavering. This tree can be extended in a variety of ways: -More life (and useless ES) above shadow start area, good life above iron reflexes (and one 5% life node right at duelist start). -Armor cluster near Unwavering Stance. -Spell/elemental damage right at shadow start (also leads to nice attack speed), but I'd rather invest into more survivability currently. -If you somehow acquire more leech from elemental damage, maybe Vaal Pact vs reflect. -Berserking cluster near Vaal pact. -Various three-node clusters with a mix of accuracy, ms, evasion and crit (well, I think I got all the crit ones). Allows for some customization. -Crit multi in various areas. Would undoubtedly be a nice dps boost, but again not in focus atm. Current Bandit choices: Normal: Oak (life) Cruel: None (passive point) Merciless: Alira (power charge) Now, those are the result from 1. respeccing the char when it was around lvl 50 (so I could only adapt the merciless bandit choice) and 2. first having experimented towards Cold Snap with Voll's Protector (which this build didn't end up using). I'm not currently using Power Charges all that much, but that will most likely change (see below). Consider taking attack speed and/or frenzy charge from Kraityn in Cruel/Merciless if you think it's better for you.
Gear
Rat's nest is just a great item for this build. The rares all have high resist (and are likely worth more together than the uniques), but I've been running on purity of elements for a long time while assembling those, it works just fine. I took out all the gems that I'm not using for this. You can see that there's a lot of space for leveling various gems (occasionally, like for the labyrinth boss, I use cwdt + immortal call in the helm, but the rest really is just feeding gems xp). Note that you can even use the disabled ring slot for gem leveling with an unset ring!
Gear-advice
If you're using a tabula (and Rat's Nest), 5 of your 10 item slots are reserved for uniques, of which only Thief's Torment gives you any resists. You need to get capped with the remaining 5 slots, which can be quite challenging (especially since your ring slots are reserved). That means you need roughly 70 or more resists per rare, plus you want decent life on them too. You can take off some weight if you run purity of elements, but that should not be a permanent solution: You want to be able to run grace later on. Maligaro's Virtuosity would be a really great item for the build, but at the moment I'm happy with what I have (boots and gloves are selffound). Loading off the over 120 res from my gloves to other items basically means a complete regear, and such an "upgrade" needs careful planning so you don't screw over your resists. Plus, it'll cost a lot, and I don't feel like I'm ready for that yet. If you have a 6l quill rain available in the right colors, you should be able to use a decent chestpiece instead of the tabula. Belly of the Beast is most likely a good choice (%life is now more valuable than before), but a good rare will definitely do the trick, too. Protip: 5l for the chest is relatively cheap (well, cheaper than vorici offers) if you just make it 20% ql before each fuse. You'll have to only spend ~60 fuses on average that way! So, what do I end up with? (Screenshots are currently pre-1.2.0, my life is quite a bit lower now :/)
Defence
Base defences without grace:
 With grace:  With grace and flask (i.e. during all fights):  24k armor plus the regen lets you facetank just about any physical hits. Unless you get like a +substantial phys +crit +dmg rare, nothing will be in your way. I'd like to point out that stun immunity comes a very long way for this build. It is crucial to not stop attacking, especially when taking damage. Rhoas basically become food running towards you instead of some dangerous mobs you have to play dodge games with. Plus desync suddenly becomes basically a non-issue (really, the difference is like night and day once you are stun immune). Eye of Chayula should not be your permanent solution, the -20% max life (and yet another occupied gear slot without good resists) hits you very hard. Currently I'm sitting on ~3k life. That's less than I'd like, but I've prioritized resist over life on my rares. After all, being 5% undercapped already means you take 20% more damage, and resists are even more important when facing reflect. The 1.2.0 life nerf hit pretty hard, I used to have around 4k life before it. I very much enjoy my high movespeed, which (together with the very fast attack intervals) allows for swift repositioning and higher clearspeeds. I'm not using any mobility spell (not having any mana regen out of combat means that I could only use it very few times before running oom anyway). Just to illustrate: With a properly rolled quicksilver flask (Surgeon's Quicksilver Flask of Adrenaline), I get 110% movespeed. Perfect for Dominus runs, Master farming or generally getting around. On the offensive side, I'm at "only" ~32.4% crit chance without power charges. Again though, I prioritized life and resists over crit chance (and multiplier) so far. This relatively low crit chance means a certain amount of unreliability, your dps is spiky and not on demand. It's part of the nature of this build, since you won't even get close to 100% crit chance with a Quill Rain. Assassin's Mark gives you another 10% flat crit chance on targets though, so I rarely have to wait 5 or more attacks for a proc (which means at least 1 salvo crits per second). The above 6l setup is what I go with 98% of the time. I occasionally swap out those spells for others depending on the situation, for example replacing FB with Ice Spear against highly fire resistant mobs or using spark in tight areas. Note that these spells also benefit fully from both GMP and chain. Arc is cool, but it doesn't get the GMP bonus and +2 chains on an arc that already hits 6 targets is not worth the damage reduction. EK has a similar issue. It's probably good to have an EK gem leveling with you for ele reflect though. For a more in-depth discussion of possible CoC spells, see this post. As curses I mainly use Assassin's Mark. Not only does it mean you crit (a lot) more often, but it also lets you deal more damage (spell crits are not to be overlooked). Elemental weakness is a tough call because against overcapped mobs it may do absolutely nothing (e.g. pack with implicit 97% resistance and resistance aura), but it can work nicely and is a lot more party friendly than crit weakness. 1.2.0 thankfully removed a lot of implicit resistances, so the -res curses got a lot more reliable. If you have a 5l Quill, you should definitely use a setup similar to Frenzy - GMP - Chain - Curse on Hit - Curse (As. Mark) You will automatically sustain frenzy charges by cursing every pack! Plus, killing the pack gives you power charges :) Since flasks are (naturally for any CoC build) an important part and need some elaboration, I put that discussion in the spoiler below.
Flasks
Every single CoC proc refills all my flasks (well, except the diamond one of course) to max. This means I can really spend them ruthlessly, for the most part.
Here are my current flasks again: Surgeon's Jade Flask of Iron Skin: Unless you are running both a granite and jade flask, you want exactly those affixes. The base evasion benefits from both +%armor and +%evasion (as opposed to granite flask base armor, which doesn't get increased by evasion), and +%armor includes all the armor you might have on gear or belts. It's not terrible if you get those rolls on a granite flasks or get a high +% eva roll as suffix (in fact the difference will likely be tiny) though. Yes, granite flasks have 2 charges before they're empty, but they don't get anything from your (substantial) +%evasion and the jade flask simply fills quickly enough to keep it up 100% of the time. 1.2.0 massively buffed life flasks, I think they flat out doubled all base life gains. Also, multiple life clusters now give bonuses to life flasks. Finally, they introduced two new flask types: Divine (2400 life over 7 seconds) and Eternal (2080 life over 4 seconds). They also have 3 sips instead of 2 before they're empty! This means Eternal life flasks are what you'd want to use, but they are quite rare (and require ilvl 70+). I managed to roll the one above nicely though. Why am I not using the longer duration flasks? Well, with ~3k life gained per second from attacks and over 600 life/second from the flask, you are bound to hit max life very quickly; the total duration is largely irrelevant: What matters is life/second, for which the eternal flask wins. "Well why don't you use instant flasks then?" The problem with that is that both "Seething" and "Surgeon's" are a suffix (of which you can only have one on flasks), and (especially for bossfights) you want to have your flasks recharge on crit. With the amount of life you gain per second from attacks, the cases where an instant flask would save me but 600 additional life/second wouldn't are just too uncommon. My first life flask has anti-freeze, which is very useful: If my life drops suddenly, I use the flask. Since chill/freeze stop me from attacking and thus mean I stop gaining life, this reaction will very quickly dispel freezes. The antibleed flask is extremely crucial in fighting corrupting blood rares. Engaging them is tricky, but doable. See the FAQ. I also have a diamond flask for on-demand dps boost. I like to use it in situations where I see myself getting cornered and running away would be more dangerous (since that means no more life gain from attacks). And of course for boss fights when you'll go to town afterwards anyway. Don't be mindless with it though, it's safer to only use it when you really need it. In 1.2.0 they made devourers appear almost everywhere, so you can't really predict when you'll run into a big, nasty pack of those guys. And of course a Quicksilver flask. Now that I have anti-freeze on a life flask, the bonus ms roll brings me to 110% increased move speed. And like all other flasks, it refills on crit, so very useful. Given my life gain, a forbidden taste flask sounds pretty good, but it has the same issue as other instant flasks: No recharge on crit while only rarely making a difference. Granted, with an instant divine flask giving you maybe 1k health (and multiple sips) and the overall lower health of everybody, forbidden taste becomes sort of obsolete. It has the quartz flask pathing going for it, but in my cases it's safer to stand still and attack anyway. Now, let's talk about the one thing most CoC chars are terrified of: Reflect. In our case, elemental reflect.
ER
Let's face it: ER is the main reason you'll have trouble getting this kind of char to high levels. Chances are you're enjoying blasting away pack after pack, facetanking basically everything and just clearing with massive speed. And then, all of a sudden, you see that feint purple glow at the feet of some mobs at the corner of the screen. And you watch with horror how your CoC proc rolls into the pack and you go wild on all your flasks while instinctively running away. Ok, whether or not a reflect pack kills you depends on a lot of things. Just to consider: With capped cold res and 14% ele reflect on the mobs, I lose 3.5% of the damage dealt as life. I'm currently using Doryani's Invitation, which gives me 1% cold damage leech. And, of course, tons of life per second from attacking. It should be quite clear that the timings here can make a huge difference, so let's look at some situations: If you shotgun into a reflect pack, it means you take all the damage almost instantly, and neither your high life gain on hit nor the 1% leech can make a difference. You absolutely need to avoid this, it's the most dangerous way of encountering reflect. Still, it can happen if burrowed mobs pop up in front of you (or those rock golems assemble) and they have an ER rare in the middle. This really only happens if you're going for massive clearspeed and get carried away. It's definitely avoidable but it may require you to slow down. Devourers deserve a special mention here: If a pack of devourers pops up in front of you, your best choice is generally to pop the jade flask and just mow them down. Running away is generally unadvisable. I'm not even sure if devourers can get ER, but this is a pretty nasty case and really depends on how quickly you can react to those purple spikes around them. If you instead offscreen a pack, it usually depends. I don't recall ever really dying to offscreen reflect by actual accident. There can be cases though where ER "arrives" abruptly: A leaping/charging rare gets aggro'd by a party member and moves into the pack you were shooting. Or a mate Vaal Cyclones many mobs in one spot and just happens to draw in an offscreen ER rare while you are shotgunning the clump of mobs. Also, depending on your PC, a high amount of procs (or mob density, or "interesting" builds on ally chars) can cause severe frame drops and consequently make you see things slower (and also the game react slower to your inputs), which can make disengaging in time for this kind of case hard. As you probably noticed, this is mainly an issue with party play. I'm not sure if I can give good advice here, other than to disengage and evaluate the situation. It's one more reason to keep up with your party and tank mobs at the "frontline" though: If you shoot from behind and suddenly ER appears, you're kinda screwed. Mobs in water are another kind of challenge: You can't see the auras on the ground. This means you need to manually mouseover every rare that you see standing in water. I've died to this multiple times already, and it's something you just need to learn. Water in map = you don't just shoot the pack. I mean, you can, but you'll happen to die from time to time. Especially if you proceed to shotgun the pack. Ouch! In a similar fashion, you shouldn't just shoot into packs that you can't see the auras of for other reasons (like when you can only see their heads peeking up behind your life globe). Go the extra distance and check. For your own good. And then there's the cases where you just absentmindedly shoot into reflect packs that you should see. It really depends on how quickly you notice, how the mobs are positioned and how much proc-luck (well, rather misfortune) you have. Sometimes two salvos can kill you, sometimes you only proc once in seven salvos and by then you noticed and disengage. Not much advice can be given here, since this is just 100% user error and very avoidable if you pay attention. Low level reflect packs don't actually even hurt me (I can freely shoot into merc ledge reflect packs from afar and my life won't even budge. You should still avoid shotgunning them though). That's something you'll have to try for yourself though. So, here are some ways to deal with ER packs once you have control of the situation: -Let party members handle it. Yes, it can be that easy. -Swap in EK, Spark or Raging Spirits instead of FB/AB. The damage is not the best, but it gets the job done (don't shotgun with spark though, you should use it as a means to diffuse the damage so you can take advantage of your life gain). -Pull the white mobs (or the rare) away from the pack and dispatch them individually. Once there's only the rare (and maybe 1-2 normal mobs) left, you should be able to safely kill him, your life gain will handle it. -Just ignore it and move on. Risking a death or taking 3 minutes to separate those wading zombies (or to down that regen pack with your puny low-damage alternatives) might just not be worth it. This especially applies if you encounter something like corrupting blood + reflect, or other nasty mod combinations (think +damage +crits devourer with ER). There's no shame in knowing your limits (feel free to try and practice if you have no XP to lose anyway though. And only softcore, obviously). So far I absolutely enjoy this build. It's been doing me very well, allows me to facetank and clear out entire rooms of mobs with ease and is just pleasing to look at every time you crit. The balance between survival and dps feels good, plus the ability to run almost any map makes for a very comfortable build. And ultimately, should you follow this build and find that it's just not your thing, you can still easily switch to a different (more flashy?) CoC build. Or crit bow ranger. It's not like you have to spend a ton on the build essentials. If you have any questions, check out the FAQ below or just ask away :)
FAQ
(Well, those aren't actually frequently asked yet, but I'll just go over some of the points I anticipate discussion about).
FAQ still under construction! Q: "Almost all map mods"? What do you mean? A: I'm serious about this. Let's take a look at some of the major build killers: -Life/mana/ES regen is irrelevant for this build, that's one of the biggest problems for many builds. -Curses have 50% reduced effect (!) thanks to Thief's Torment. I actually enjoy temp chains maps, since charges and flasks last a lot longer, while my dps is almost unchanged (the 10 ms CoC cooldown is unaffected afaik, and the 24 attack hits are so diffused via chain that you still get roughly the same amount of procs). -"-max res": Makes reflect a whole bunch more dangerous. Requires careful play but is otherwise not more dangerous than to other builds. There's still 3 mods where you should think twice before you enter a map with them: -Blood magic is a nasty mod for many builds, it basically disallows aura usage. This build doesn't excessively rely on auras, but having the choice between grace or ~50% less life is pretty bad. You can still run those maps, you just can't facetank as much as usual. -"Inhabited by Humanoids" means you are very likely to roll arcmages. Those that cast lightning thorns. It's not guaranteed, but be aware that you might have to just leave the map (or can only run half of it... or die). -Ele reflect: Well, yeah, you can't use the above standard setup. However, I've had no trouble (and actually a lot of fun) running with e.g. spark and summon raging spirit instead. Although EK is probably more reasonable. Q: Quill Rain has an awful base crit chance, how can you do a CoC build with that? A: I have to disagree: If you compare it with an average windripper, it has just about half the base crit chance but twice the base attacks per second. Increased attack speed or crit chance changes nothing about this: Any build with quill rain instead of windripper will always attack twice as fast and crit on only half as many attacks (unless you hit the crit cap with windripper, of course...). Windripper naturally has other advantages (actual attack damage, very nice MF), but this particular build benefits a lot from (and is designed around) the high APS that quill rain offers. And let's not forget that Windripper simply costs lots of exalts (25+, price keeps jumping around though)... Currently, I actually do use a windripper, since I manage to get to basically 100% crit chance with my attacks, so in addition to being naturally tanky, the build also has way more reliability. And MF. I'm not updating this guide a lot atm for that reason. Q: Did you take into consideration that CoC has a 10 ms cooldown? Q: How paper is that dps above? Q: Did you factor in accuracy/barrage cone of fire/chain misses/CoC proc chance etc.? A: I'm aware of all this stuff, yes. For the above "paper dps" calculation above I just assumed 100 procs in 1 second (that is, CoC procs immediately after the 10 ms cooldown is over), for a rough estimate on the absolute maximum. I can get over 100 attack hits per second, so this isn't too far-fetched, but it's also not very realistic. Ultimately, it depends on how the mobs are positioned. I know from my own experience that if you have a pack of 8 mobs standing close together, you will deal way less damage than having them spread out in a 90° cone in front of you (although FB and AB have aoe, so that can come into play, too). In the end this is one of the biggest factors and influences on my final dps output, so positioning is always key: Line up the mobs so that barrage shots that miss can hit targets further down the line, try to make all your spell projectiles find targets (i.e. don't shoot at the front of a line of mobs, shoot at an angle like this [mobs thick line, barrage shots thin line] | | |\ | \ and just experiment.) On another note, since this build can easily get more than 100 attack hits per second, the 1.2.0 CoC chance nerf (flat -20% chance at all levels) didn't actually have a substantial impact on my dps. Not to mention that the tree changes kind of make it up already in the first place. Q: If there's nothing to chain to, you don't get 3k life per second! Doesn't that sucks against bosses? A: You still gain 1k life per second against single targets. High armor, capped resists and mobility should be enough to deal with the vast majority of unique bosses. Also consider appropriate CWDT setups; a friend of mine with a similar build recently dumbfounded me how easily he could solo the maze map boss (you know, the dino that chunks you for 4k with ek...) with an immortal call on cwdt... And if need be, swap out your gems. Consider replacing chain with concentrated effect or even life leech (if you're using a tabula) if you have to. I don't usually find it worth the time (and danger) to fall back, swap out gems and reengage though (also see the dark forest map run video). For that matter, keep in mind that many bosses constantly summon ads. Not only will chain dispatch these automatically (very helpful in e.g. last phase of dominus fights), but you'll also gain more life from chaining to them. Relatedly, I've been doing a lot of dominus runs with this char. Naturally, you won't even get close to the dps of those low life coe buzzsaw builds, but you can still be an asset to your group by 1. running fast (not uncommon for me to be the first to arrive at dominus) and 2. automatically dispatching the minions during the second phase. Depending on luck, I also frequently kill one of the first prebosses in one salvo. Once again though, your dps (in a good party) will be mediocre to negligible in the grand scheme of things. (Also, if you shotgun dominus from melee range, you won't create even remotely as much lag for everyone as you normally do). Q: So what do you do against corrupting blood? Don't you die instantly from the degen? A: When I was testing out this build, I was expecting just that. But to my own surprise, corrupted blood can only stack 20 times. That sounds like a lot, but you also have tons of regen. So the basic idea is "hit hard and fast" when facing a CB rare. Get up your frenzy charges from nearby other mobs. Make sure your flasks are full, if possible also your diamond flask. Engage in melee range (to shotgun the rare) and pull both your armor and diamond flask. Keep shooting (and use the non-staunching life flask to mitigate a bit of bleed) until the dot drains you below ~20-30% health. Then, immediately drink the first anti bleed flask charge and your quicksilver and disengage. Now comes a very crucial part: Your spells might still be chaining to and from nearby mobs. This can and will give you CB stacks. Reserve the second sip of the staunching flask for when you are out of range, then drink it. Don't spam it while still engaged, you will bleed to death from the spells that hit the CB rare after you stop attacking. Rinse and repeat. (If you have an eternal life flask of staunching, you actually have three sips, so that's a nice safety buffer). Ultimately, this takes practice and experience (well, it literally takes experience... away from you, until you get it right :P). Sometimes you will have to skip a CB rare. Particularly regen/ES ones (or devourers) that you just cannot take out in a reasonable amount of time or with reasonable safety. It will quickly become a habit to use the antibleed flask whenever you see a heavy degen on your life. That will save you from dying to the CB rare you just offscreened. Same rule applies here as above: Don't waste the second antibleed charge! Drink one and stop attacking, drink another one once you are sure you have all the remaining stacks on you. Good thing you're not a ST char that has projectiles in the air for ages... :P
Changelog
2014.06.18: Created thread and OP. Also added some stuff later. 2014.08.06: Updated some item links. 2014.08.07: A bit of rewording and clarification. 2014.08.28: Updated and expanded. Also corrected some things. 2014.08.30: "Fending" knockback nodes experiment concluded, skill tree adjusted. 2014.09.02: Updated gear display to only have the gems I actually use (not the leveling ones). 2014.10.24: Added CoH paragraph. 2014.12.04: Updated skill tree with a suggestion for tree after upcoming patch. Feel free to leave comments or feedback about the build! Last edited by MauranKilom on Dec 4, 2014, 4:14:22 PM
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I clicked on this ready to type "lolquillrain" but that's actually a really cool build. Well done, dude.
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Thanks dude! That means a lot to me :)
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For some reason you take a meele damage node from the duelist tree (?). Then, you take a lot of str but you don't take Iron Grip...why? lol. (also, you get some str from doryani's) If you're criting so often, why don't you get "Critical Mass" (on the tree)? is there a reason not to? Finally, I don't understand the part with the gear: Where is the CoC? Is it suppose to be in the Tabula with all the other spells? What ability am I suppose to attack with to get the CoC out? Why is empower unlinked (in the quill's)? Can you explain a little the reasoning behind your linked gems in your bow (how they work together, what to use,etc)? Please reply, and thanks for sharing your build | |
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I'm currently working on this build because, quite frankly, cone of death CoC is stunning, I love finding high-level uses for low-level uniques, and I can't afford Windripper. I'm leveling with a nice rare bow I found, Doomfletch, et. al. and am in mid-Cruel. It's going smoothly. However I'm in the middle of the rush toward Unwavering Stance and have wondered if this build would not benefit tremendously from simply equpping Eye of Chayula for stun immunity, as it would save a large number of points to be invested elsewhere. I notice there was no neck piece specified in your gear section. Are resistances / stats too tight to afford using Chayula?
Last edited by ConsPark on Aug 4, 2014, 10:54:36 PM
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" the melee dmg node is just the best and shortest route to unwavering stance ( steel skin, life nodes) I see one dedicated strength node, granting access to lots more life. " a lot of str " ? no iron grip because he's not doing much physical damage. I agree with the critical mass, +50% crit for 1 point. barrage - coc - GMP - chain - dmg spells Use a 4L to generate power charges, but that's a hassle tbh Last edited by Kendo_PoE on Aug 5, 2014, 8:01:55 PM
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Oh, I totally forgot about this thread! :D
Let me answer some questions: "For some reason you take a meele damage node from the duelist tree (?)." Yes. It does nothing for me, but I'm just traveling through it. There's no other way to get the life at duelist start otherwise. "you don't take Iron Grip...why?" Iron Grip only affects projectile attacks. My damage comes from projectile spells. Iron Grip would only affect the physical damage from quill rain (which is about 6 dps. Not 6k, not 600. 6). "why don't you get 'Critical Mass'" "reasoning behind your linked gems in your bow?" Sustaining power charges is hard. I have no way of generating them aside them aside from Power Charge on Crit. There's absolutely no space in my 6l for that gem, so I'm using a 5l quill rain for it instead. I linked frenzy and pcoc to generate power and frenzy charges simultaneously. Sometimes I use cast on crit + ice spear in the other links, since the ice spear has a really high crit chance and will likely net me an additional power charge. Other times I'm using Increased Item Quantity and Culling Strike for some cull action. Now, the problem is that the power charge on crit is very unreliable. I get a power charge maybe every 5 attacks (a bit faster with coc ice spear). Instead of spending so much time getting and keeping up my power charges, I could just kill mobs. Sustaining maximum frenzy charges is a lot easier, and the occasional power charges I get while doing that are nice, but I'm only very rarely at maximum power charges. In short, it's very unreliable, another power charge definitely isn't a constant 50% crit chance increase. I do plan on taking it within the next few levels, but other things had priority (like survival: I invested my last few points into getting to unwavering stance and the aura nodes there). "Where is the CoC? Is it suppose to be in the Tabula with all the other spells?" I'm not sure how you missed it, but I posted all the 6 gems in the middle of the post without a spoiler around them (You must have skipped a lot of text and ignored half the post...). Yes, those gems should be in the tabula, but I've been swapping gear around between chars and trying other stuff, so the forum links broke. I'm gonna fix them for the moment. WRT Eye of Chayula: I did run Chayula for a while. However, if I take Iron Reflexes, Leather and Steel and all that stuff down by the duelist, I might as well go for the duelist life and armor nodes right next to that. From there, it's only 8 points for stun immunity. Chayula gives -20% max life and takes up your ammi slot. Assuming -20% max life is the equivalent of 3 passive points, then I just need an amulet that has the equivalent of 5 passive points as mods. If you get good life and crit chance, that's already worth it. There's also aura and armor nodes right next to Unwavering Stance that I can use. I don't know how I forgot linking my current amulet, I'll do that right now :) WRT resistances, I'm barely hitting capped resists without running purity atm, but I had to devote all my remaining rares (except the ammi) completely to life and resists. Most of them are pretty darn expensive for me, luckily I found half of them myself. Btw, if you feel like any of these answers should appear in the FAQ, do tell me. I have some "misc" explanations in there atm and I'd like not to flood it with things like the chayula discussion, but I can use spoilers if it will be needed. Thanks for the questions so far, also good luck and fun to ConsPark with trying this build :) Last edited by MauranKilom on Aug 6, 2014, 5:07:58 PM
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This build is actually amazing. This guy is a genius, any time I have a question about game mechanics or what abilities are effected in which way, he has an answer. He knows the passive tree better than the back of his hand and optimizes in what he sees is best fit according to raw numbers. If you're looking for a Cast on Crit build, this one is super affordable and in my honest opinion one of the best, if not the best.
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Had to drop by and thank you for this build.
Been playing necromancer, totem build and spectral scion, and this thing just blew my mind. Started yesterday and bought that ammy. Been blasting sh*t up since level 31 :D Fun build to play! | |
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Is this atziri viable? I'm guessing 1shot city?
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