Channeled Flurry/Multishot doesn’t really work anymore with the ridiculous cost they added to it. Exploding Arrow has always been lackluster unless you run it with Jelkor’s. I have zero interest in Ballista.
I was thinking of trying Poison Puncture, but I’m not sure the damage is really up to where it needs to be, even if stacking attack speed, especially compared to anything the Falconer decides to spec.
Define “good”. What metrics do you want to hit?
Have you try to use Multishot directly?
@TriKster has made a build guide for this.
https://www.lastepochtools.com/build-guides/multishot-marksman
Fire Acid Flask and/or Detonating Arrow proc by Explosive Trap(bow). Cap crit with a Dragonsong and generate mana/boost damage by Cinder strike. Smoke trap can cap Glancing blow with an Arrowguard and hits high dodge with the oil coating buff. Mourningfrost for big damage or Foot of the mountain for defense.
There’s also a poison version of this which I saw a post on and thought was a great idea but did not check it out fully.
Poison’s pretty bad for bow Puncture because lack of more multipliers (technically the charged version does have but it is a joke). I briefly tested a long time back and would not wish this torture on anyone.
Multishot
Shadow Hail of Arrows
Blast Rain
Dragonsong Explosive Trap proc
Shadow Dagger Puncture
Icicle (Flurry/Multishot, not DA anymore)
Mana stack Detonating Arrow
In general anything with explosive trap because its broken.
All endgame viable marksman builds.
Try charged bleed Puncture and Dark Quiver out on a bladedancer running the new void quiver called “Phase Point”. Phase point adds a bit of void damage on black arrow every time you dodge, as a bladedancer you have intrinsic passive increased dodge chance, if you stack dusk shroud you can basically have capped dodge chance and black arrows will be buffing puncture damage
Would the 15% increased dodge chance (multiplicative) outweigh 25% attack speed and 50% damage?
I’m like 99% sure you can make up the 15% dodge from Bladedancer pretty easily.
i guess i should try to make rogue bow build as i got a good starting bow. puncture works.
https://www.lastepochtools.com/planner/BO0ajJYo
This is what I threw together on the planner for Marksman. I’m pretty sure you could get a better passive setup. I’m always trying to use the signature skill of the class in my builds so I went with a fire Detonating Arrow with no mana cost, bonus triggers by a explosive trap minefield (I didn’t take blast rain because throwing all the traps and then having them all exploding in succession, throwing acid flasks and more traps, and shooting Arrows, sounds more fun than shooting traps into the sky.
Dark Quiver is set up to be a bit more passive, not even sure if the Detonating Arrow bonus is worth it with a 15% chance to explode. But it’ll help when they do explode I suppose.
Edit 2: tweaked the passives because I had some bad picks. But doing so removed Dusk Shroud from my possible buffs (even though I can generate it with Smoke Bomb)
Your suspicion is correct, you can indeed easily make up for the 15% more dodge, it just gives you a nicer base to work with during the levelling process, but it’s not the real reason you want to run as a BD. The real reason is actually shadows. Use Smoke Bomb as traversal, have it generate shadows, take the node in Dark Quiver that consumes shadows to grant more damage to the next bow attack. You get a +40% more damage multiplier from it, which is spicy because you’re relying mainly on bleed stacks to do the bulk of your damage and don’t have as much crit. Without the BD’s base dodge multiplier passive, you have to instead put the points you’d have spent on buffing damage via shadows into extra dusk shrouds in smoke bomb
EDIT: I forgot to mention that charged puncture attack speed if held down is limited to an attack rate of one attack per second without a black arrow and one attack per 0.5s with a black arrow, so stacking attack speed doesn’t do much for you
Why not both? You can easily get Shadows and Dusk Shroud generation from Smoke Bomb even without being a blade dancer. And unless you’re going full bore into Bladedancer that’s +1 shadow just for picking the class, and Dark Quiver only gives a bonus of “at least three shadows” meaning you don’t need the +1 to get the same bonus. So you’re getting 15% dodge and an extra shadow that adds nothing and I can get the same damage bonus from Dark Quiver consuming shadows, have my smoke bomb generate shadows and shrouds, and still get the 25% attack speed and 50% bow damage for being a Marksman.
Doesn’t seem like there’s any reason to go Blade Dancer?
Edit, I misread the shadow consumption. You get +25% per shadow and if you have at least 3 shadows it’s +100%. So with 3 shadows it’s either +100% or +175% (100+25+25+25) and with 4 it’s either +100% or +200% (100+25+25+25+25). I would assume it’s just +100% for having 3+ shadows. Since 3 would normally give you +75% and it would give you a bonus +25%. But it’s a typical EHG confusing description. I still wouldn’t value an extra +25% when consuming 4 shadows over the +50% bow damage all the time
Thanks everyone.
More damage is multiplicative and much stronger than %increased damage. Charged puncture is also more about 1 big hit rather than spamming attacks so the conditional more multiplier could be better.
Marksman passives also don’t have much synergy for charged puncture. Falconer has the most synergy IMO but even that can’t save it feeling really bad lategame.
I guess you’ll just have to test if having 4 shadows gives more damage than 3 shadows because otherwise you’re not really gaining anything. I don’t currently have the time to test it myself or I would. Between work, uni, my wife having had neck surgery, and wanting to play Kingdom Hearts when I do have time…