Hi, I’m currently trying to make my own poison marksman build, however my damage is severely lacking, and my survivability is awful. I’ve always really liked poison builds in PoE, so I thought that since I’ve played PoE for a few years now I could make my own build in LE. I was wrong.
I’ve never played LE before, but I feel like leveling shouldn’t be this much of a pain, and I was really hoping that I could get some suggestions on how to improve my build.
It’s probably a mess, because it’s been like an evil circle trying to fix all the issues I’m having. I specced into damage, but I couldn’t sustain the mana so I started trying to spec into mana gain from Flurry. And then I started to die, so I stopped that and tried to spec into dodge rating, but then I stopped being able to kill anything and now the end result is me having no damage, no survivability, severe mana issues, and a bunch of points scattered all around.
Making a build is hard, and I wouldn’t want anyone to feel like they need to make one for me, but if someone out there maybe at least has some pointers on where or what I should focus on first it’d help tremendously. I’m also okay with being told my build is absolute trash and I should scrap it, honestly I guess I’m just trying to get somewhat of a reality check on it.
Basically how it works: I throw Acid flask down for damage and blind, I shoot puncture to debuff enemies and stack poison damage, and I shoot Flurry when I run out of mana to regain some+health.
The issue that keeps occuring is that I run out of mana from puncture quickly, and I need to stand still to cast Flurry, so I get ran down by mobs and killed in 2 shots. I try to use Shift and Decoy defensively, but they cost a bunch of mana too so instead of really gaining any mana from using Flurry to keep casting Acid flask and Puncture, I just end up recouping the mana I just spend on Shift+Decoy, leaving me in the same manaless spot that I was in from the beginning.
Sorry for the long post, hopefully it can be fixed somehow. Scuffed Poison build
Okay, I’ll try that! I did put 1 point in it before, but seeing that it only gained 1 mana per point per hit I didn’t think it’d be worth it, so I respecced it. I’ll test it out tomorrow when I get on and update you on how it went!
You’re going through mana because of the Penumbral Ambush node, you could remove that which would solve the mana issues but then you’d loose the poison conversion & at that point I’d imagine that a poison spec’d Flurry would be more effective.
Yeah I’d spec out of Penumbral Ambush if I could, but because of the poison node being locked behind it I don’t feel like I can. I guess I can see if speccing into the mana node for puncture solves some of the issues, and if it doesn’t I could always try to add Multishot to Flurry and swap out puncture for another skill such as Hail of Arrows or Detonating Arrow.
I now have 3 out of 4 points in the mana node for puncture, and I wouldn’t say it’s made a major difference, however it is better. I’m considering trying to focus on getting some CC so I don’t get ran down so much, plus that could help me regain some mana with Flurry, but I’m not sure if it’s worth doing that or if I should instead just try to go for Multishot Flurry and swap out Puncture for something else. If anyone has an opinion on this please share it!
flurry multishot is okay I guess. I played it last patch where it was still bugged. not sure how strong it is now that it is fixed and the 10k free ward boots get nerfed XD
Hail of arrow is great. It has nice synergy with multiple skill and passive tree. I’d recommend hail of arrow tbh. There are multiple viable build for it.
Shadow hail of arrow. Bleed hail of arrow. Fire hail of arrow. More option to play around compare to flurry+multishot.
I personally use the Hail of arrows build too. It is really good in most things. Survivabiltiy can be a bit of an issue some times, but as long as you also focus on the defenses you shoud be good to go.
I’m not familiar with your build or anything related to it, since i’m a new LE and relatively new to ARPGS in general (only played some D4 before).
I am fairly sure you will need some form of defensive skill like shift, decoy or smoke bomb (preferably all of them) to increase your survivability in the long run. This is also the case for a HoA build.
Thank you for the post! I’ve currently gotten stuck at what I assume to be the last boss of the desert area where you unlock the trading guilds, that big snake lady, so I think I do have to swap things in my build.
I’ll try to swap out Puncture for Hail of Arrows, it seems to be able to become a poison skill as well which is nice. I’m just a bit worried that the mobs will end up running out of the damage area too much, but maybe if I try to invest in some CC points and gear it’ll be fine. Do you think I should swap out Flurry for something else as well if I do remove Puncture for Hail of Arrows?
I swapped Puncture for Hail of Arrows, and have upgraded my gear for more damage and resistances. I am currently not struggling anymore, however bosses could take a bit more damage in my opinion, BUT I am used to the damage in PoE so I might actually be doing good damage to bosses without realizing it.
I want to thank you all for the feedback that I got, and here’s a link to my build now if anyone’s curious: Updated Build
Good to hear, you’ve resolved your main issues. I’m not sure what level you are right now or what corruption you are at? But I think you’re going to struggle real soon, with the skills you are now using. Smoke bomb is pretty important for survivability later, as it increases your dodge with high numbers. But i’m nearly level 100 running 250 corruption right now. I feel that right now i’m starting to struggle a bit more, since i get one shot pretty frequently. Interested to hear how it’s going for you!
Yeah you’re probably right about the defenses, as I’m only level 70 running 0 corruption since I haven’t gotten to play that much. I felt like Smoke bomb was a bit clunky when I tried it earlier which is why I’m using Decoy instead, but I’ll most likely have to switch to it just like you said when I reach the higher levels/corruption.
I’ve seen some Marksmen use Dark Quiver with Hail of arrows, but I don’t think I’ll ever solve my mana issues enough to swap Flurry out for it sadly. Do you also struggle with mana, or have you managed to solve it somehow?
Yes, I also use dark quiver. It boosts your damage from HOA with alot! I personally have no mana issues, while i have around 200 mana with low-mid mana regen. Having the extra dmg from dark quiver, makes it that you dnt have to cast as often. I think you should give it a try. Also de dark shroud, creates shadows (if you have it unlocked in the skill tree) which makes the HOA deal extra dmg. For me personally, if i do the full rotation, I deal about 15k dmg a second.
Well at lvl 70 you really still have no idea about the difficulty curve of the game. I would say in terms of numbers, leveling is 2/10 difficulty, regular monoliths are 4/10 and empowered monoliths with 100+ corruption are 9/10. Everything else is 11/10 and more. So you can imagine how fast difficulty grows as you progress through the endgame. The game designed in a such way, that you will feel yourself comfortable in lvl 100 content with meta builds only. For example necromancer - you can play “fun” skeleton build and have ok damage numbers like 6-7k per hit, but then you spec into meta wraithlord and you see him crushing the whole screen with like 150k hits on level 60. Its the difference between your fun build and meta build like lightning explosive trap for marksman.
@axl666 Damn, that doesn’t sound very ideal for my build then lol. I guess it’s good trying a non-meta build though to experience the difficulty and progression of the game so I know what I’ll be up against and don’t underestimate the game.
It’s a good thing it’s relatively easy to swap your skill and passive trees around in Last Epoch, so hopefully if I hit a brick wall and can’t progress I can swap out my build for a meta one.
I see, I could try to fill my empty Affix slots with some mana and see if I can use Dark Quiver instead of Flurry. With the passive tree points that I have in mana gained when using a 0 cost skill refunded I should be able to put them into dark shroud, although I’ll have to read a bit about them first. I’d be interested to take a look at your build if that’s okay with you, I could probably learn a thing or two from looking at it!
Its so cool that you try to create your own build, but it would be much easier if you take something strong and easy for your first character. Fissure warlock, falconer, wraithlord necro, hammer paladin, etc - classes that will allow you to understand how things work and what to expect. For example you would know that even 1000% dodge never gonna save you from getting 1shotted like every minute, dodge is just a bad defensive layer.
The only problem with this build is that you’ll need to learn which mobs are tanky, which ones are strong and on top of that you’ll need to learn the required movements to not get caught in groups. Other than that it’s pretty strong!
