Way of Fire arrow

[benjidatramp]

So after the thread on way skills being to restrictive I decided to try an elemental based archer to see how it would fare. I chose way of fire arrow because it has a % increase and because I have much better fire gear then cold or lightning. I chose alchemy as a second mastery because of high spirit and the defensive skills. having just reached level 55 and 1/2 way through act 1 it is a viable build IF you have the gear for it. (which is pretty specific gear.

Gear I am using
Hesions golden veil
2X hephastus rings
burning stygian bow of sulfur socketed with a +35% increase attack speed bowstring
Robes of sirios lodes (sp?)
Demonskin walkers
Eye of flame
Stonebinders cuffs with -20% requirements socketed with a +33 dex completion rune
Eye of Ra with +35% attack speed increase completion bonus

With this set up my listed dps with high spirit and way of fire is roughly 3k with enough dex to use items (367ish because of my lucky stonebinders) and the rest in int. While this may seem like alot, remember this is in my opinion the OPTIMAL build set up ie it wont get better, and given the specialised gear needed in reality it is likely to be 1/2 of this in crap gear if that. Given the survivability of the build I would say thats pretty weak.

Playstyle is pretty much flashbomb, multishot to get as many mobs burning as quickly as possible and if anything is close enough hope that illusions gets them. The +15% damage resistance from the heat shield granted by the hephastus rings helps alot with staying alive. Mobs that are fire immune/resistant are a pain as while this build has some piercing damage it is starting to be pretty weak on legendary (mobs like cinderbone). I have an astrapi in my 2nd weapon slot and some points in way of lightening for these mobs.

I did play around with way of freezing arrow which was the weaker of the 3 and way of lightning arrow, which was quite strong because of the stun, but the dps was not as high due to not being able to get the multipliers you can for % fire damage and my ikon of zues doesnt have a +35% attack speed completion bonus)

All in all it is a fairly fun challenging build, but pretty weak compared ot if I had have made a bombadier with way of sickening arrow and + pierce where I would have got prob 8-10k listed dps in optimal gear.

[ksolina]

If you are fire archer (bombardier).Get the prometheus' flame incarnation. if you are lucky maybe youll get along with burn dmg and % fire dmg, more % fire dmg.

[lm01]

I think his point is that Elemental DMG won't get your dmg as high as Physical DMG Focus :P
But if you see the archery tree you can notice this clearly.

1) You have different kinds of dmg. Physical+Pierce+Fire
While Physical and Pierce work the same way, STR and DEX based.
Fire (or other element) works with INT.
So if you devide your attributes you lose damage potential.


2) This, you might say, could be balanced by the dmg elemental adds, and in fact it is... for instance Way of Charged Arrow maxed deals 36-169 extra dmg.
Problem is the rest of the trees.
Unlike Hunt, you don't have % attack speed which would benefit anything that you attack regardless of dmg type.
If you pay attention they all go PIERCE!

Bowstring: +% Pierce +% DMG (main attack)
Sharp Eye: +% Pierce +% Bleed (passive)
Signal of Attack: +% Pierce (activated)
Mortal Shot: +% Pierce +% DMG (activated)
Spiky Bow: + DMG (passive)

The only you have with elemental its:
Explosive arrow: +Fire +DMG (activated)


3) Way of the Sickening arrow MAX -> 10% 216 Reduced resistence for 7sec
-216 Ressistence o.O
Do you wanna try to beat that?
And it has synergy with your passives % Enemy HP reduction.


Conclusion:
No matter how optimized your gear is, % Pierce will always surpass % Fire, % Lightning or % Cold


Sidenote:
If you're really into an alternative hybrid build to be different, you might want to consider to test
Incarnation of Rage of Ares on your Stonebinders (+15% Att Spd bonus)
Incarnation of Prometeus Flame on Bow (+25% Fire Dmg or +35% Att Spd bonus)