So for me it all started with this build when I saw some Diablo 4 rogue footage and there was a pretty cool skill where two mirages appear on the side and shoot arrows, I thought hey that’s a cool skill how come no ARPG has done that? PoE does have the volley gem that looked like it and mirage archer was also a similar concept and LE does have shadows and echoes but nothing for bow skills. Then I remembered an odd little node in the puncture tree… Its the same thing! two mirages shooting by your side. I thought I should def try something with it sometime and put it on the backburner.
Then there was this discussion on marksman here
which again made me think about hit/crit based marksman. I then dropped my first Ravenous Void - Unique Gluttonous Gloves - Gloves - Last Epoch Item Database and a Longshot - Unique Imperial Bow - Bow - Last Epoch Item Database which finally pushed me into theorycrafting a hit-based puncture marksman.
So at first glance the flat tri elemental damage doesn’t make sense, but I took it as a hint. The item is telling you to focus on flat damage and use the more multipliers from it and the puncture tree to scale that damage. Elemental arrows on the marksman tree give +24 flat fire and lightning damage to the next skill used but these have 3 max uses and then you need to move to generate back so they favor slow big shots. The puncture tree also has the quirky node Stay of execution that makes it a slow charged shot(synergy with ele arrows) and has tons of moar damage multipliers. Sadly its only QoL node is held hostage by Dark Quiver and I have to take it and get some flat phys and more damage out of it.
But still some issues here, we have all this damage, its great at lvl 67 echoes when levelling up the skills but this won’t do at lvl 100 where the mobs have fat hp and resistances. Since the damage is a random mix of phys, fire, lightning and cold the only ways to scale all at the same time is CRIT and to a lesser degree ARMOR SHRED. Since the puncture is now slow, the best way I found to apply shred, crit vuln and other ailments is a combination of shurikens and smoke bomb(I tried a bunch of others like acid flask and hail of arrows but these were just worse). But now how about crit, we can get all of the crit chance on passives, conditional stuff like jade arrows(they pretty bad), crit chance from dark quiver(more dependent on this awful skill) and gear but it’ll still be impossible with a shitty 5% base crit. But Smoke bomb has a 10% base crit while standing in it. Maybe if non-crit is enough for clear and keep a smoke bomb up for rares/bosses?
It was then that I realized this bow I was building around was a LIE, a SCAM, a BAD item. See its got around 24 base dmg, +40 if you meet the dex requirement and an average +21 elemental damage for a total of 85 base damage. But a high level base such as a dreadthorn has +48 base and can have +17 average on two prefixes for a total of 48+17+17=83 base damage (and it also gets the crit implicits and two suffixes). Meaning the only thing this bow has going for it is Puncture cannot be dodged which is fine QoL I guess and 40% more damage based on DISTANCE which is utterly useless. It sounds nice on paper right? I’m ranged can stay at the max distance all the time right? But pretty much every enemy has some kind of dash ability or ranged attacks and most bosses either punish you for staying at range or require you to stay close to avoid oneshots or DoT ground. This is why I truly believe the node Sniper’s Gambit in marksman tree is a trap (I mean its literally the same penalty as dual wielding but without the huge potential benefits and on a class that is already squishy af).
So I grabbed a decent Dreadthorn that was rotting in my stash since I got Reign of Winter and started testing various Charged Puncture setups. This was the final result: Marksman, Level 100 (LE Beta 0.9.0i) - Last Epoch Build Planner
And here’s a video of T4 Vaion Arena kill to kinda see the playstyle and bossing
Gear ain’t perfect but I had some decent pieces also the sweet double legendary bow aaaand damage was kinda okay… The three arrows is actually nice AoE, playstyle was supposed to be dark quiver, smoke bomb, charge, take a couple of hits(Ravenous void came in clutch for that) and release to clear everything in front of you. I had hoped the huge flat dmg and more multipliers would make up for not being crit capped at least while clearing mobs (~60% crit but 100% with smoke bomb up) but nah less than 90% crit chance just feels awful in empowered echoes, crit vuln and shred on shurikens helped a bit but enemies need to be in melee range for that. Being reliant on Dark Quiver and Smoke bomb makes build feel kinda bad for general clearing. Annoying when you charge an attack but the crow just moves out of your way or its not a crit, and the Diamond Matron gets to heal back to full, so you need to get another dark quiver, smoke bomb, charge again.
Also Dark Quiver has to be one of the most frustrating abilities I have ever encountered in a game. It feels more against me than a skill buffing me. Countless times the arrow I need is in an area covered by an enemy or boss’s AoE or trying to get an arrow puts me in a sticky situation. THIS SKILL DEFINITELY NEEDS A REWORK.
Anyhow, I saw a certain other new marksman build and got inspired to test some stuff. Swapped in the Flight of the First bow and Voila! 100+% crit chance in my setup. But what about the loss in flat damage? Swap in Mourningfrost for easy flat 50 damage. No point in focusing on phys damage anyway as you will have random other damage types added in from ele arrows. Lose some HP, lose some crit as its over 100% anyway, try to cap resist and: Marksman, Level 100 (LE Beta 0.9.0i) - Last Epoch Build Planner
Well this felt more fluid and consistent, not relying fully on smoke bomb felt better and still plenty of room for improvement such as switching the base crit nodes in smoke bomb to increased shred frequency, etc. But TBH this kinda made me disheartened… A double exalted bow with pretty much perfect mods instantly equaled and outdone by a couple of uniques.
Build is kind of a failure for me, the playstyle just does not hold up against many bosses. For example: the two other arena bosses, By the time you charge puncture, Rogue boss is either halfway across the arena or has hit you a dozen times, triggering and breaking through the Ravenous void, Avalanche spammer is basically a Fuck You to any build that has to stand still to deal damage. Is the build bad because it can’t do T4 arena bosses? Yeah I think so especially since it can’t even take a quarter of their HP. Timeline bosses are not much faster than Vaion and I don’t think I can take anymore Dark Quiver.
Anyway this is just a showcase of what I tried, a kinda unique playstyle(not a good one) as I have not seen anyone playing charged puncture. Charged puncture shows potential, maybe someone can take this and make a better build out of it. Or maybe this just serves as a disclaimer for people to not try and make such janky playstyles work.
FEEDBACK:
Yeah this is in feedback so to EHG
- Dark Quiver is awful, just awful.
- Bows are in a pretty bad state(atleast for hit based), there’s a reason most of the builds use unique bows, its because they actually have base crit! Previously bows were definitely balanced around the unlimited crit vuln, removing that without giving them base crit seems pretty wrong to me.
- I’m not sure if this is properly visible in my videos but there is a bit of clunkiness with charged puncture. Sometimes if you try to charge just after using smoke bomb or dark quiver, the character just stands still. This needs to be fixed
- On Charged puncture, it really needs the charge speed bonus baked into the node itself. I would recommend moving the 100% more bow damage/melee range as a dark quiver bonus and make the charge speed baseline.
- Marksman defenses are pretty bad, there’s one node Evasion for 25% less damage while moving. But no Marksman skill other than HoA does damage while moving. I would recommend to maybe reduce it and change to while moving or using a bow skill.
- Marksman and bow skills(since marksman is the only class using bows) doesn’t really incentivize focusing or specializing in a specific damage type. This clashes hard with the whole skills have an identity thing. Why does my Detonating arrow a lightning skill have so much phys/fire damage too when I spec it for lightning? Why does my Fire build with Cinder strike deal half phys damage? Why do most hit based Bow builds right now use Mourningfrost? (because Marksman builds usually have decent dex from tree and any flat damage is good)
Bow builds have always been one of my favourites in ARPGs. My first proper build that hit lvl 90 was Tornado Shot Shadow in PoE(around Forsaken masters). Grim Dawn didn’t exactly have bows but my Soullance Oppressor was one of my favourite builds(and fastest Crate killer). Bows are pretty much my most used weapons in games like Dragon’s Dogma and Hades (all 4 bow aspects are SO good). Even a mobile game like Undecember had so much variety for Bows. Maybe my expectations are a bit off, but Idk Bows just feel a bit lackluster to me in LE.