1.1 Update
I picked this back up for 1.1, if/when I get time I will make updates to the guide here.
Here is the planner I have for scaling it: https://www.lastepochtools.com/planner/BEMvm0eB
Greetings Travelers, I’m Gav! Welcome to my very 1st build “guide” which is really more of a showcase 
A quick disclaimer about this build and any build I plan to create. These are not meta. You won’t be pushing 1k corruption with my builds (some may reach those heights). The way I’m approaching Last Epoch is to find the weird and the wacky!
Much like my coverage of the lore of this game and my hunts for secrets and Easter Eggs, I want to wander the roads less traveled with my build creation as well. I want to explore under-utilized masteries, skills, uniques and otherwise. With this particular build I’m attempting a hat-trick. Poison ailment, Acid flask and Bow marksman 
My successes including this one will have reached 300+ corruption smoothly, tackled T4 dungeons and I’ve farmed enough and played enough to fully understand the handling of it.
This build was the process of several iterations. I wanted to be a true bow Marksman (wearing a bow and using a bow skill qualifies at this point LOL) and also make Acid Flask work to some degree. But Acid Flask isn’t enough on its own. In comes Explosive Trap to trigger both Acid Flask and Marksman’s Detonating Arrow for me all in one button!
Similar to the successful Jelkhor’s build concept doing basically the same. However, I’m adding in Acid Flask to the equation and using a bow rather than dual Jelkhor’s.
The issues I therefore faced were mana sustain for Acid Flask and a now very expensive Explosive Trap as well as figuring out how to make Marksman tanky. Shurikens alone shored up both of those aspects and really brought the build online.
Acid Flask is our primary damage and poison source, but everything else included in this build works so well and in tandem that I was very happy with how it all turned out.
It contains some very interesting (and unique as far as I know) techniques and interactions to achieve proper survivability and mana sustain for all the triggered skills that Explosive Trap is providing.
Forewarning: This build requires a highly mobile and active playstyle to achieve the best results and survive, we are still a Marksman afterall, we can’t stand in big slams but this is overall the tankiest, most reliable BOW Marksman character I’ve put together yet.
This is a work in progress and I will make additions, updates and respond to any and all questions etc as time allows and as I fully gear it out/scale corruption, thank you!
Poison Bomber Marksman 
Current Level: 99
Current Corruption: 353
Table of Contents
Introduction
Intro
My Socials
Build Overview
Build Planner Links
Videos
How it Works & Playstyle
Passives
Skills
Gearing/Scaling/Defense
Closing Thoughts
Final Remarks
Introduction
Intro
33 year old dad gamer possibly enduring a mid-life crisis decides to make a YouTube channel lol. I’ve played MMOs (name a semi-popular MMO and I’ve likely played or tried it) for the majority of my life, mostly WoW in which I participated at a Mythic level in raiding, playing multiple different classes and specs. After 15+ years playing the game I better be good at it right? Here’s my raider.io from one of my better characters during the time I spent in Dragonflight, I burnt out before pushing 3k score and I found Last Epoch!
My Socials
Build Overview
Build Planner Links
WIP Planner v1.0 - Poison Variant
Videos
Build Diary #1
Build Diary #2
Final Showcase & Wrap-Up
How it Works & Playstyle
The general idea is large poisons and as many as we can stack/apply to the enemy. I wanted it to be a high quality of life build and also use a bow for detonating arrow rather than Jelkhor’s like most Detonating Arrow Marksman currently.
This is what I pieced together. An Explosive Trap Marksman that triggers huge Acid Flasks and the bow version of Detonating Arrow using the Explosive Trap tree. This allows us to simply right click and watch as our screen is filled with flasks, arrows and explosions everywhere (hence the name Poison Bomber). The clear is fantastic and the single target is there as well due to shotgunning and overlap on larger boss models with plenty of room for scaling the damage further.
Shurikens are used to both apply additional poisons as well as give us massive amounts of armor through stacking Shuriken projectiles and using Blade Shield. Not only that but Shurikens is also the fastest way that I found to regain mana in a hurry thanks to reducing its cost to 0 and taking 5/5 in Mana Warp in the Marksman passive tree.
All of this makes for a very comfortable, tanky and nearly 1 button Marksman build. You simply right click at the feet of enemies, cast Shurikens and run or Shift through them to regain mana. Cast Shurikens as many times as is necessary to refill your mana bar and maintain 100% uptime for the armor buff.
Explosive Trap does all of the heavy lifting and work of auto-aiming our Detonating Arrows and Acid Flasks that are exploding on top of the enemy, creating a beautiful a radioactive wasteland for them to exist in.
Passives
The tree is a bit tight on points, but there’s some flexibility, feel free to play around with it!
Here are the notable passives:
- Guile (Rogue) - This passive boosts our Poison Resistance which is scaling our Poison Penetration for Acid Flask in the end game.
- Sapping Strikes (Rogue) - Additional mana gain back every time we cast Shurikens and hit an enemy (any hit counts as long as it occurs after casting Shurikens), this pairs up nicely with the mana gain from the Marksman tree.
- Prolonged Demise (Marksman) - We benefit largely from the damage over time damage reduction as this is what we’ll die to outside of one shots most often, degen. We are also in fact wielding a bow and so we benefit from the DoT% as well, this is a must have node.
- Meditation (Marksman) - Huge dodge and Concentration is only removed when we’re hit in melee range and it’s back up within 2-3 seconds to re-apply that massive amount of flat dodge, this was noticeable tankiness.
- Reflection (Marksman) - For the same reason as Meditation, this is worth taking as we maintain Concentration at least 50% of the time during combat. The movement speed is huge and the dodge% amplifies the flat dodge we received from Meditation and our gear etc. While dodge is a tertiary defense for us at best (for this build), it’s still a layer worth investing in IMO.
- Mana Warp (Marksman) - This node is single-handedly what makes the attack frequency and triggers of this build possible. Without this node we would constantly be out of mana and unable to throw additional traps, Shift, etc. What this allows us to do is to throw our traps down and cast Shurikens on the enemy as the traps arm and detonate, triggering Acid Flasks and Detonating Arrows in all directions and draining our mana. We’re brought right back up everytime we cast Shurikens. The mana gain potential with this technique for Marksman is amazing and I’ll likely explore it in other bow based builds!
- Master Archer (Marksman) - I like AOE, you like AOE, we all like more AOE for our Detonating Arrows.
- Cloak of Shadows (Bladedancer) - 16% Glancing Blow chance combined with Dusk Shrouds and our Arrowguard quiver, we’re easily able to maintain 75-100% Glancing Blow chance (35% damage reduction).
- Pursuit (Bladedancer) - I value movespeed quite highly but these 5 points can be spent elsewhere if you wish!
- Outlander’s Tenacity (Falconer) - We cap endurance at 60% once our gear is in a better spot in the end game, this layer of defense takes our endurance threshold to new heights just by stacking health.
Skills
The skill trees are a bit less flexible, I’ll try to explain in this section how the skill works, how we use it and the why behind some of the skill tree decisions that I made.
⁕Explosive Trap - This is the primary ability for the build. We throw traps at the enemy, they arm within 0.4s and detonate when touched. Upon detonation, this skill auto-aims Acid Flasks at enemies for us as well as Detonating Arrows on every detonation!
Not only that but the Smoke Traps node in the skill tree allows us to reliably stack Dusk Shrouds even in single target simply by performing our rotation and watching as Explosive Trap does the driving for Acid Flask and Detonating Arrow, this skill rules.
⁕Acid Flask - Our heavy hitter and applicator of poison. We’re scaling Acid Flask in the end game. The best part is we don’t have to throw this clunky skill ourselves! Poison Chance, Poison Pools, Amatoxic Pools and Hydrochloric Acid are all must haves for this skill and relatively self explanatory. I will note that Poison Pools is fantastic as that 100% global poison chance applies to our Shurikens, Explosive Traps, Detonating Arrows and of course the additional Acid Flasks themselves being thrown. Stand in your Poison Pools as much as possible. Shift helps trivialize this thanks to Parting Gift and Arrival Gift (see Shift).
Knowledge of Immunity allows us to scale our poison penetration (more multiplier) by simply stacking poison resistance (making Vitality a huge stat for us for HP and poison res). To calculate how much penetration you’re getting from this node use these formulas:
Total Poison Resistance - 75 (Base Cap) = Uncapped Poison Resistance
Uncapped Poison Resistance ÷ 5 x 3 (Knowledge of Immunity) = Poison Penetration w/ Acid Flask
i.e:
350% Total Poison Resistance - 75% Base Cap = 275% Uncapped Poison Resistance
275% Uncapped Poison Resistance ÷ 5 = 55 x 3 = 165% Poison Penetration with Acid Flask
⁕Detonating Arrow - Lots of cool stuff happening in this tree! Similarly to Acid Flask, this is also triggered by Explosive Traps for us. Scorpion Arrow converts it over to poison for us. Mana Arrow makes it zero cost. This is helpful as the build is already very mana starved. Deadly Ailments is an obvious multiplier to the poisons we’re applying with Detonating Arrow.
The other beneficial part of Mana Arrow is the lower chance for explosion to occur. We aren’t too concerned with this due to Rapid Detonation triggering the explosion anyway if the enemy is shot by a 2nd Detonating Arrow with one already attached. The amount and frequency of Detonating Arrows being shot by Explosive Trap takes care of the downside(s) here.
We further benefit from this interaction via Suckerpunch Arrow stating that if an enemy has an arrow sticking in them, the explosion area is amplified. Seeing as how we’re almost always triggering this node, we’ll take all the explosion overlap that we can get! Thundersteel Arrow is another cool one, we get around the downside (the cooldown) due to Detonating Arrow being triggered not directly cast so this is just free damage, area and stun chance.
⁕Shift - Shift is our mobility, our cleanse, DPS through Parting Gift and Arrival Gift (more flasks), mana regeneration and small heal. This ability is amazing! Shadowslip is a must have and has saved my butt more times than I can count. I’m also getting quite good at straight up cheesing mechanics or staying in and maximizing my DPS on a boss before a big slam (Danger is my middle name).
Lasting Presence is a free shadow that also throws 5 Explosive Traps so as often as we shift, this is just a little extra oomph and fun bonus.
⁕Shurikens - Shurikens through Blade Shield and Bladed Armor provide 30% armor per Shuriken. We increase the amount of Shurikens we can achieve through Fan of Blades (+2), Flip of a Coin (50% chance for +4) and Li’raka’s Claw gloves (+2). This provides us with a huge armor gain with Shurikens up and they will always be up as they are also our mana renegeration.
With everything that Explosive Trap is doing and triggering, our mana is spent…literally! To gain it back, we’re using Shurikens and a new mana tech I found for Marksman utilizing Sapping Strikes (Rogue Passive) and Mana Warp (Marksman Passive). It’s something that Rogues and Marksman have been using and doing for awhile now I would imagine, I’m not claiming to have found the mana gained when using a zero cost skill for the first time.
However, I’ve never heard of or seen this interaction talked about and maybe that’s because Marksman doesn’t normally spend this absurd amount of mana. We’re getting 20-30 mana back per cast of Shurikens which is very cool. The coolest part though is that if you read Sapping Strikes and Mana Warp carefully it doesn’t specify that in order to gain the mana back from casting that zero cost skill you need to hit the enemy WITH that skill, just that you need to hit the enemy.
What this allows us to do then is let Explosive Trap (and its triggers) do the hitting of the enemy and we can cast Shurikens off in La-La-Land away from particularly scary enemies. By casting Shurikens (the zero cost skill enabler) AFTER using our Explosive Traps, we regain all of the mana back that we would have if we were in melee hitting them with Shuriken but completely safe from the enemy because Explosive Trap and everything its doing is fulfilling the 2nd requirement of hitting an enemy. This interaction is due to the 0.4s arming time of Explosive Trap. By casting Explosive Trap on the enemy and immediately casting Shurikens within that 0.4s arming time, it doesn’t matter where you are or if you’re hitting the enemy with those Shurikens because you’ve checked both conditionals: 1) Cast a zero mana cost skill and 2) hit an enemy.
This essentially enabled kiting for me and upped my survivability tremendously. Once I realized this worked, I no longer needed to be up close and personal or in a dangerous pack of monsters to allow my Shuriken Blade Shield to hit them and regain the mana. All I needed to do was throw Explosive Traps down, let them trigger and be spamming Shurikens to get as much mana back as possible while all of my hits are occurring (via Explosive Trap, Acid Flasks and Detonating Arrow explosions). I’ll show off this interaction in the build guide video.
Gearing/Scaling/Defense
Gear/Planner
Baseline Defenses Screenshot (No Shurikens & Out of Combat)
In-Combat Defenses Screenshot (11 Dusk Shrouds + Shurikens)
TunkLab EHP Calculator
Scaling defenses further would entail HP slams on any and all uniques and squeezing in as much HP as we can on our exalted gear while still capping Endurance, resistances and getting as much poison resistance (suffixes are tight) as we can for the penetration scaling it provides Acid Flask.
Closing Thoughts
Final Remarks
All in all, I’m very happy with my first successful homebrew build. I could scale it further but at this point that’s just a best in slot chase. I truly think that this build is capable of further corruption levels with proper gearing and dedication.
I want to continue to look at under-utilized skills, masteries and uniques to find these diamonds in the rough and potentially undiscovered interactions, that’s the fun for me and so it’s onto the next!
I hope this was enjoyable! Any and all questions can be posted here or on the YouTube build guide video (coming soon™ on my channel). I’ll respond to every single comment as time allows IRL!
Have fun and stay safe Travelers, do not succumb to the Void!
I’ll play with it a bit.
