I just wanted to take the time to highlight one of my personal favorite additions to patch 0.8.5.
Also by reading through alot of comments from reddit/discord/twitch, i only experienced positive feedback towards the new bow so far.
Let me tell you some personal experience i had with this unique and why i think that its so great.
As a marksman/bow main, of course i immediately developed alot of hype as soon as i saw it.
I’m also a big fan of Grim Dawn’s Devotion system, where you can basically add a certain proc (new skill) to your build.
When i first saw the unique, i thought its just the ‘‘little brother’’/fire version of Reign of Winter and BowMage.
But let me tell you this, i have never tested so many different builds with one unique and this is probably my number one reason why its so good from a design perspective:
Build Variety & Build Freedom
If we compare Reign of Winter to Dragonsong, the big difference between both is that Dragonsongs proc is not limited to bow attacks, it procs from crits. So basically it already offers you more skills to choose from if you wanna scale into the proc itself. Another unique that i really like by design is Aurelis which works quite similar to Dragonsong, but Aurelis limits you more towards the 2 skills that are mentioned within the affixes. Dragonsong offers more freedom since its only limited to the fire tag and not a specific skill. Yes, rogue does not have alot of skills yet, but i can imagine that we will see more skills in the future even with fire themes, so this unique will always be interesting to any skill addition that comes with Rogue.
Fire related stats made unpopular skills more interesting
I know that Decoy Bomber is a popular Marksman build that is played with Cinder Strike, but we never saw a huge variety to Cinder Strike being in a good spot when we are talking about endgame builds.
The Fire version of Detonating Arrow is also a very unpopular build, since lightning DA together with Suckerpunch Arrow+Rapid Detonation completely outshines the fire version by dmg numbers.
Fire Acid Flask…have you ever seen a good Fire Acid Flask build? Me neither. With this bow you can start building around it making it a powerful build.
Even without the proc, it’s still a solid bow (And can become good with some LP for additional Base Dmg/Crit/Attack Speed etc.)
It already offers a T5 Bow Fire Dmg prefix, almost T6 Bow Attack Speed, +4-7% Base crit strike chance which is the highest implicit you can get on any bow (its easy to reach 100% crit with rogue, but 7% to base crit is very strong and makes trash clearing faster) and +2 to skill, which is always great for any build. (Of course those numbers are only related to fire skills, but i think its important to know how good those numbers are.)
Longbow is also considered to be a endgame bow with the highest base flat dmg (best for Hail of Arrows for example).
You can choose your favorite playstyle and how you feel more comfortable
The procs’ cone is not very big and you are forced as a marksman player to go a little bit more into close range, which always sucks for a dodge based class.
But if we look again at point 3, the bow still offers great stats without the proc. So you can stay in range to kill alot of trash mobs coming at you, and once the area is save or only inhabitated by a boss/big hp monster you can go close range for more ST dmg together with the proc.
The proc itself is very strong/ Nice VFX / Sadly some performance issues
900% effectivness…i think there is not more to say, especially when building around the Mourningfrost boots.
The visuals are absolutely great for the proc.
I only experienced some performance issues with the bow, so i hope that in general vfx and performance issues will get fixed soon.
Side note: I just personally think that the level 36 requirement for this bow is too low, it’s simply too powerful for that level. Longbows are available at lvl 50, so i dont get why a unique longbow is 36.
Builds i have played and tested so far with this Bow:
Hybrid Fire Detonating Arrow / Dragon Fire to stick with the Dragon theme (Fire version of DA is called Dragon Arrow). I mixed the playstyle abit, staying in range for trash mobs with DA, close combat with proc for bosses.
Dex stacking Cinder Strike/Burning Daggers proccer with Mourningfrost boots. Probably the most common version in the community.
Flurry/Multishot proccer. Similar to BowMage since Flurry/Multishot is know for alot of icicle procs on RoW.
Fire Acid Flask. I mean, it got buffed, so why not.
An addition to Decoy Bomber. Already a great build by Amarathy
Dex stacking ignite Cinder Strike (basically another free proc together with burning daggers to add more ignite stacks) without Mourningfrost.
And the one that im currently testing: Cold Umbral Blades/Explosive Blades Bladedancer (Yes, a bladedancer with a bow - it feels amazing to play, the proc rate is really high )
What experiences did you guys have with the bow so far?
To the person who designed this unique, i only want to say: Good Job!
I hope we will see more uniques like this in the future!
The bow is kinda just ok if you look at it from bow skills but it has insane throwing bonus (since typically throwing doesn’t get that much from weapon slot).
I don’t see how Detonating arrow would be even remotely as good compared to cinder strike/throwing skills (tho I like the dragon theme). Got a build planner/ some trick to make it work ?
I played it like this. (I put a t7 into body armour because the planner doesnt realize the +2 to fire skills on DA, so its basically a t5 body armour which is easy to achieve. Only want to show you imo the best nodes in DA tree).
But you have to spend into mana/mana regen if you only wanna play DA. I combined it with more crits from shurikens/UB shadow procs for even more boss dmg.
Otherwise leave out UB and put in regular CS with oil coating & elusive+sapping strikes/coated blades combo. Then you can bring oil coatings up for increased elemental dmg and do some good burst dmg with DA.
DA deals hit and explosion at the same time so when your crit vuln is up, the dmg feels actually really good with 2hits DA+2hits Dragon fire with one shot.
Pretty much all the passives buff DA/DragonFire at the same time.
Is this really the case ? when I was testing for some ignite stuff, I found that DA cone happens behind the target so you only hit with the arrow and not explosion for single targets which made it pretty feelsbad for single target. Though this was sometime back so I’m not sure.
Yep since we have the new ailment debuff icons on enemies its easy to test.
Use a naked char, only a white bow with no ailment chance implicit equipped, spec into Dragon Arrow in DA and 2 points in Jolting Charge for 100% shock chance (converted to ignite).
One attack with DA applies 2 ignite stacks-> 2hits->2 possible crits->2 dragonfire procs (also if i remember correctly, Trasochi said that the proc has no internal cooldown).
So i think DA should not be underestimated too much compared to CS. DA can do decent dmg, so you can go hybrid (Crit DA+DragonFire).
This sounds kind of fun, any recommendations for how to spec a tanky marksman? I really hate dodge especially with some of these bosses like Julra and I know you’re big on rogue.
Besides health, resists and glancing blow should I just stack armor where I can or not worth it?
Marksman will always be a squishy mastery, and even though dodge is a risky mechanic as a main defensive layer, its the one you should still focus on the most next to stacking health. Rogue passives just support more Dodge than Armour.
Especially with Dragonsong Marksman you could get a decent amount of Armour (Armour Shurikens setup procced with Shift + Arrowguard + Thrones of Ambition idol).
Glancing Blow and Dodge harmonizes very well for Rogue because of the Dusk Shroud mechanic.
But at the end you rely on good positioning, reaction time and your silver shrouds on high content to survive.
I always go as much health/dodge as possible on gear/passives, GB as high as possible (both passive points on BD and Rogue base + Dusk Shrouds from Smoke Bomb or Dark Quiver + Arrowguard), 60% endurance, capped resistances, 2x Silver Shrouds, flat dodge on hit + dodge after Shift and the extra armour from Shuriken if you have another open skillslot.
Thank you. Is it unreasonable to want a rogue that doesn’t use dodge at all?
Would stacking health, gb, endurance, resistance be enough to be comfortable in endgame?
I just dislike the fact that facing things like Julra, dodge feels useless. I have gotten good with the positioning but not perfect so grazing something on t4 is basically instant kill with the rogues I played with.
But then there’s also the issue in which I feel I spread myself thin by wanting all this, especially if I wanted to add armor in or something, I become a jack of all defenses.
Possibly not unreasonable but that’s not how they’ve designed the Rogue. There are ways to not use dodge, but I’d be surprised if the weren’t “off the beaten track” like doing a 2h melee Rogue. You could probably do a dodge Sentinel oe a ward-on-block Pally, but it’d likely be less effective than the “normal” defensive route.
I think corsair set is one option that is kinda like that. It converts glancing blow → block chance and Apostacy converts Dodge chance into glancing blow (this doesn’t become block because there is no double conversion in LE).
Though dodge is just an ez defensive layer for Rogue and most builds just end up building into it anyway with dusk shrouds, shift, dexterity, passives, etc.
I’ve just started using this bow, associated with Kelthan Blasting Agent, Cinder Strike and Decoy.
This feels awesomely good. Really. That’s one fun use for the bow!
I’ve played with her a bit more now. She’s in the monoliths and she’s just defeated Lagon.
The build is very fun to play. Basically, you run while shooting, and if something survives you throw the decoy that explodes immediately.
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