Hi I play a bowmage (level 89) and it feels really clumsy in empowered monoliths. I think I lack both damage (especially single target) and survivability. Especially the first is annoying as hell. When there are many enemies, icicle procs are fine for fast clearing but solo enemies feel mostly like hell.
I can handle empowered monoliths with 100 corruption in the beginning but with modifiers I’m really getting destroyed. I used the guide Reign of Winter Bowmage Marksman Build Gear, Blessings & Idols in the beginning where it tells me to farm empowered blessings. Nice joke… I get killed in corruption echoes and normal echoes after a while due to the modifers. I’m not even able to make it to the boss fights.
I switched then to build Icicle Marksman Season 0.9 Starter Build | Last Epoch Multiplayer Update - YouTube It feels a bit better, but I still lack single target damage and get destroyed by modifiers. My resistances are mostly at least 75 % (fire and cold are not capped) but when I try to swap one item for another I start to lack more resistance in most cases. But I’m also not able to farm empowered blessings for resistance… since it’s an online char I can’t upload his stats here if I got it right.
My current items are already “crafted” so I have no forging potential. New better items hardly drop and if they do I get problems with resistances as said. I already got Reign of winter, Mourningfrost, Peak of the mountain and Arrowguard, so half of the slots are taken for the required uniques.
Since dps calculation doesn’t seem to work I don’t even know which other items to swap to get more dmg.
Can anybody help me out what to do? Do normal monoliths with 50 corruption maybe?
Hey there Oknar.
Couple things.
BowMage did get hit with a pretty big nerfbat in 0.9 with the changes to Crit Vulnerability. That being said, Resistances at 75% is only the first step. Here’s how you can be more survivable:
– Make sure you have 100% Crit Avoidance
– Build Health using Vigorous (something) Idol of Life which has both +Health and +%Health
– Build even MORE health with Hybrid Health on armour pieces
– Swap out ArrowGuard for the Sanguine Hoard (which has 20% bow attack speed and is a huge DPS boost)
– Swap Peak of the Mountain out for an exalted Marksman hat – While yes, this has a huge boost to Crit Strike Chance, that boost to base arrow and multishot dps is inconsequential compared to the damage from Icicle, so boosting Cold Spell damage is a better buff for a Reign of Winter build.
This is my As-Built Bowmage right now. I haven’t bothered to put in the exact pieces I’m using, just the skills, passives, and main items that make this build work.
first of all thank you very much for your detailed response.
I swapped out Arrowguard for Sanguine Hoard and my dps significantly went higher. It really helped me. I also had some luck with drops finally and swapped my body armour and my helmet. Everything feels WAY better now.
I swapped also Puncture for Flurry and skilled it like you. Sadly I get mana problems after making Flurry a channeled spell (speccing Boundless Blows). I got some mana reg affixes on my gear but apparently not enough. Before that I used Puncture mostly to get some mana back. Any idea how to resolve this?
Your goal with Flurry is to maximize bow attack speed. Flurry should be launching a stream of arrows so fast it should look like your BowMage drank 2 pots of coffee and used it to take 20 pills of Hydroxycut Max. I’ve had no problem maintaining mana. Is there something else in your build that is causing the channel cost of Flurry to increase?
But make Flurry channel to proc Multishot and Icicles is the way to go. I invested in some T6 Mana regen affixes on my rings or even Sapphire ring (the mana regen ones). But u will run out of mana sooner or later, you can just slow it down
My playstyle was a bit off. I used Multishot and when I was low on mana I used Puncture to regain mana fast. I tried the same just swapping out Puncture for Flurry but that didn’t work. So I try to use Flurry now mostly and Multishot only for a bunch of mobs or hard enemies.
Btw did anyone try Troaka’s teeth instead of Arrowguard/Sanguine hoard? I just tried it and with Flurry it seems to feel good against bosses.
Troaka’s Teeth increases the Icicle damage and can be good for bossing. I found Sanguine was better overall because of attack speed – But then again I have a Sanguine with LP and + even more attack speed and a Reign of Winter with LP and + even more attack speed…
