1:49 dude. Build Diary is such an awesome term. I can’t believe I havnt heard it before. I feel like 90% of all build “guides” would receive less negative feedback if framed in this way.
Enjoyed it as always, love your attitude towards the game and towards your videos. Hope you had a good new years. The herald stacking stuff seems really interesting, I'll have to try it sometime.
I admire the approach to the build and really enjoyed the video. 100% agree with your gripes about xbow, specifically the reload mechanic. I kind of wish we had a “Bolt Pouch” or something akin to that. But I imagine an entirely different item type is a pipe dream at this stage of development. I’ve been running with triple herald/x bow for two weeks. I’ve landed on Shockburst Rounds for my single target with this setup, I highly suggest it if it’s something you haven’t tried yet. Thanks for the content 👍
@@jaharis I have invested a lot into Shock Chance/Duration/Magnitude via my passive tree and jewels. I'm using The Three Dragons helmet and use Explosive Shot to proc shock in against single target, any significant source of up front Fire Damage with that helmet is likely to proc shock in one or two hits with the gear I have currently. If you're not running that helmet however there are still a number of ways to bolster your chance to shock. The aforementioned passive tree/jewels. The Voltaic Mark skill is pretty much a free 50% increased chance and 30% increased effect of shock. You could run a weapon swap bow with the skill Stormcaller Arrow which has an inherent 800% increased chance to shock. Plasma Blast is another option although I'd only suggest that as an opener when facing bosses not rares since the Attack Time is lengthy. Shockburst Rounds deal an immense amount of damage to shocked enemies. The projectiles don't do much but the Pulse damage is what you're looking for which only comes into play against enemies that are shocked.
@ thank you so much for the advice, I’ve been running Voltaic for the increase. I also run three dragons so I’ve really just been debating my fire ability options to proc shock. I will definitely give explosive shot a try. I must ask, what support gems do you use on your explosive shot?
Galvanic shards into shock burst rounds is really good single target. Same if you do the triple shot plasma blast. I agree though on reloading, even switching ammo has some jank and you just don't shoot for a few seconds which is MADDENING
shock burst round is amazing- and the wepon swap is bearable imo- but plasma shot is super situational... it has to be timed so perfectly and is close to unusable in maps (fpr 99% of the time)
I'm only at around T7, but running Galvanic Shards for clearing and Shockburst Rounds for bossing, but using triple shot on High Velocity Rounds instead of plasma (just can't get the feel of that one). using the weapon swap to bow for Stormcaller Arrow to setup shock - its been working very well for rares and bossing so far.
The issue I’ve found is defenses for pinnacle bossing (or simulacrum), you can scale damage a lot with the shockburst rounds to melt bosses but trying either 1. 4K Sorc ward with like 70+ evasion still 2. No sorc ward with acrobatics evasion around 70 Both routes still leave you getting 1 tapped by high phys damage hits
Love the video. I have an extremely similar build to you, but yeah i feel you with the single target. For bossing i open with Plasma burst and then shockburst round for INSANE single target damage. I weapon swap bow to combine the voltaic mark with stormcaller for bosses that survive the plasma burst + shockburst. (Inspired by Ds lily deadeye build) I always go Reload Speed on Gems, have all the passive nodes for it, and attack speed also affects reload speed.
Recommend you try shockburst rounds for single target, the pulse DPS vs shocked is even higher than the beam DPS you get from galvanic shards. The way I use it is galvanic shards + voltaic mark to apply shock almost instantly, then switch to shockburst rounds and melt them down. At max quality you can get +7 rounds to shockburst so you can machine gun longer before reloading, also the support that makes it so you got a chance it won't consume a bolt can stretch the clip out even more. Biggest downside is that it's a channeled skill that can be interrupted if you have to dodge roll, also the hassle of having to reapply shock again.
For single target, have you tried weapon swapping to a bow for stormcaller arrow shock, then use shockburst rounds with concentrated effect? Melts tf out of juiced T15-T16 bosses. I haven't tried higher than that yet though.
Is stormcaller arrow just to set shock? Because if you have an extra skill slot you can just guarantee the shock with ball lightning + lightning warp to set shocked ground, and save on a bow
T15-T16 boss is a joke lol I can melt them easily with my gas grenade build and the other meta builds can do even better. If you want to test your build you should try it on pinnacle bosses
@@ObliviousBear its an almost 100% shock that you can use weapon swap skill points to spec for as well as a cast on shock setup on weapon set 2 only (so herolds on 1 and conductivity and stuff on the cast on shock). the apply does take only a second and the boss cannot move out of shocked ground that way. It depends if you have better stuff to do with your weapon swap and the skill points but stormcaller is REALLY good for shocking the boss on the merc
Love the content. I will agree ranger is basically just better than merc, merc definitely needs a bit of love. However there isn’t a ton of diversity with bow builds for single target specifically. For hard content almost every bow build uses lightning rod + orb of storms + cast on shock ball lightning. There is also the cast on crit variant, using… lightning rods + orb of storms + cast on crit eye of winter and ball lightning. The other niche options are broken widowhail poison concoction shit on pathfinder specifically, that will probably get nerfed, and frenzy charge stacking barrage snipe shit with widowhail bonestorm weapon swapping. which is pretty satisfying when it works but also annoying because you can’t just chill and dodge attacks on bosses you have to lock in and hit perfect timings but oh you forgot to hit barrage first and then shit now you hit it but your frenzy stacks had run out so gotta snipers mark the boss and build up more charges and then do some weapon swap bonestorm shit and then try to hit the perfect timing again meanwhile ball lightning spam build killed the boss 30 seconds ago
I felt in the same boat about WH thinking, "oh, this was a huge mistake." It just looked cool and fun. Now that I'm working on this kind of build, it's way better, but I still can't consistently proc Innervate and Biting Cold on the heralds. But that's gonna be a gear solution. Great videos, though. They help a lot.
Thank god I wasn't going crazy about the reload, i stg sometimes my merc jams his stupid crossbow mid breach and I'm sweating buckets. Love this class tho
Crossbow question: Is there some sort of mechanic that does something like 'interrupts crossbow reload when cursor changes location'? I don't know how to describe it or whether it is a bug, but I'm hopeful someone will understand what I'm referring to. I'm playing on ps5, so using controller inputs.
theres definitely something wrong with reload animation or action. When I switch between skills or change elevation due to that map or rotate my character when reloading theres always a time in between where the character doesnt reload or gets stuck in the animation. Also you have to take into account if you dont dodge correctly or a monster hits you, it could disrupt the animation as well. And lastly stun is a thing.
tghere is definitly something fishy going on. sometimes i have the feeling my character is stuck looking in one direction so it blocks attacking in a different direction - i also noticed sometimes the reload not working. Always assumed it was lag or some small server hickup, but it happens too often kinda. So maybe there are some bugs
For my witch hunter, I use the lightning bolt arrow (I forget the name off the top of my head) on a bow then swap back to my crossbow for shockburst rounds. Has yet to not melt any boss I come across You can also do ball lightning into lightning warp. The shock on lightning warp’s shocked ground is guaranteed as long as the enemy is standing in it, so you can just get the lowest gem tier needed and not have to worry too much about stacking int
I'm currently running a dual herald (ice and thunder) monk and it actually feels so freaking good, heralds are the best. I like that you are calling these "Build Diaries". I'm new to PoE, and am trying to learn how to make builds myself but have always just run into a wall at some point, and need to look up a guide. But at that point it doesn't feel like I'm learning anything. This feels more educational about how to approach building vs "here's what is op"
@klovehitch do you think you could link a maxroll for your crossbow build? i know you dont want to make a full build showcase/guide yet, but trying to mess around with it to tweak it and having to skip around the video to try a gleam what gems you have on which gems and stuff lol. love the content man. glad your channel is popping off!
so far (in the campaign) ive found that you can use the wake of destruction boot to get consistant shock on enemies and use Shockburst rounds to do pretty massive damage to rares and bosses
you can do use explosive shot for clear as ignite converted into shock and use explosive shot to shock bosses and combo it with shockburst rounds for burst it will suit your current merc, this way you wont need weapon swap or bow etc 2 skill will be enough for bossing and 1 skill for clear
So I have this built, and I've been trying to solve the bossing problem. I've found that incendiary shot with duration and magnitude to proc shock with shockburst rounds can partially solve this problem. With chance to shock on the tree, this can probably become pretty consistent - let me know if you try and it works for you.
There’s a unique glove that converts all elemental damage into 33% chunks, painters gloves. Would that help optimize your damage spread and still stack with the heralds? I’m cooking on a build with the gloves myself but don’t have the ability to test them.
i agree with the single target problem. im running deadeye with shockburst and i always have a hard time dealing with bosses. its either im dead 90% of the time or the boss is slow and i can land a few hits of plasma blast to give it shock. any tips or should i just weapon swap to bow in bosses?
currently playing a WH with galvanic shards and shockburst and i can say that shockburst in the campaign was like putting hte game on easy mode and i think it will scale very well in the endgame - pretty much the only real boss melting skill on Xbow if you actually want to shoot something. Wh himself is a kinda weird ascendency - in theory the skills would let you use single target skills without damage and still let you whipe maps because you decimate, then cull then trigger the aoe. In reality you still need damage and AOE clear is usually not the problem in this game.... so you get the decimate and cull on bosses and maybe the shield and thats kinda it.... compared to other acendencies (tons of move spead and second arrow or being able to use support gems twice) it often feels lackluster for the endgame but kinda good during campaign - but what use is that if you cannot respecc.
I've been playing my LA Ranger more recently and been farming the last Sekema boss so easily. I swapped back to my Witch Hunter that was my first toon that I played Gas Grenade with the Ignite unique helm. I got to the last boss in Sekema on him as well and holy shit I did zero damage to him and just rotted down eventually. I don't really want to invest all the divs required to support a boss kill build on it. I even tried minmaxing my current setup with weapon swapping to a bow to apply a 35% damage increase from shock but still negative boss dam on real bosses.
There is a ring for culling strike that increases the threshold of it by 100% ive yet to use it since its base stats are ass and i cant sacrifice any of my rings for that, but it could be something that makes culling strike be a bit stronger and consistent
Just as a heads up, the testing I've seen shows that going past 100 magic find doesn't do much. So you don't have to go too crazy with it (though it still needs to be addressed).
Viperesque (GGG dev who posted in the PoE 2 section of the Discord a lot in the months leading up to launch) said that bleed was discovered in testing to be absolutely nut-bustingly broken and would shred bosses. So I'm assuming they gutted it leading into EA as a measure to avoid that knowing they could tune it up later down the line as needed. So not surprised to hear that you couldn't squeeze much damage out of it.
i have seen snipe builds with bleed that pretty much oneshot bosses if you hit the snipe sweetspot - it also uses spiral shot to pretty much clear 3 screens of trash mobs, so i think its still good. Havent played it myself though
I think this is a universal issue for mercenary with crossbows. I'm on gemling and the only somewhat okay ability is shockburst round abuse. I'm pairing it with explosive rounds and three dragons helm to proc shock on bosses and using voltaic mark also
spec'd hard into shock on my witch hunter and i'm having a blast. i think the main problem with the ascendancy is that it just straight up sucks dog meat into bosses, like the tree just provides nothing of value into bosses. cull and decimating suck, concentration is who cares but you have to take it anyway, inquisition does nothing into bosses, and sorcery ward is whatever because who cares about mitigating anything that isn't phys damage, and weapon master doesn't exist it isnt real. i legit think the ascendancy is just hard specced to help with mobbing and nothing else. i ended up slamming as much shock mag as possible and a bow on my weapon swap. galvanic with damage clears the whole screen pretty easily by itself and you just mark>shockburst any tanky rare and it dies instantly. for bosses a stormcaller arrow with exposure, shock mag, and shock duration support turns shockburst into a fat nuke. lightning rod is an easy way to shock rares to enable shockburst without waiting on stormcaller to pop because galvanic chains to it. Tested a ton of different uniques like the electrocution gloves(they suck because everything dies instantly anyway or has an impossibly high electro threshold) and the only real stand outs were doryani's prototype+rondel of fragility and cull strike boost. doryani's prototype sucks though because armor is ***ks and you die instantly the second lightning touches you anyway BUT it turns literally everything you come into contact with into nacho cheese when combined with rondel of fragility to get a base lightning res of -70% and stacking a low level conductivity onto it for -105% enemy lightning res. The defensive utility on witch hunter is just whack and i've accepted it at this point. evasion+flamecloak is cranked at least until you die instantly to a death explosion you didn't see but i've gaslit myself into being okay with it because decimator+boosted cull+zealous inquisition(the last two ascendancy points arent even worth allocating imo) makes it so anything thats not a rare/boss doesnt exist anymore
Witch hunter is very poorly designed with its ascendancy points. Both Decimating Strike and Culling Strike are available as Uniques for any character to put on, so it ends up being a band-aid for some mediocre perks you could have picked up anyways. Culling Strike on the ascendancy should absolutely be replaced. Maybe something along the lines of the "less health an enemy has the more damage you do to them" which would improve the synergy with Decimating Strike, making you get that damage ramp up faster.
1:49 dude. Build Diary is such an awesome term. I can’t believe I havnt heard it before. I feel like 90% of all build “guides” would receive less negative feedback if framed in this way.
biggest problem of witchhunter is that deadeye is so much better with 4 points than wh with 8 ascendancy points
Enjoyed it as always, love your attitude towards the game and towards your videos. Hope you had a good new years. The herald stacking stuff seems really interesting, I'll have to try it sometime.
I admire the approach to the build and really enjoyed the video.
100% agree with your gripes about xbow, specifically the reload mechanic. I kind of wish we had a “Bolt Pouch” or something akin to that. But I imagine an entirely different item type is a pipe dream at this stage of development.
I’ve been running with triple herald/x bow for two weeks. I’ve landed on Shockburst Rounds for my single target with this setup, I highly suggest it if it’s something you haven’t tried yet.
Thanks for the content 👍
How are you applying shock to make Shockburst Rounds hit for enough damage to be worth it?
@@jaharis I have invested a lot into Shock Chance/Duration/Magnitude via my passive tree and jewels. I'm using The Three Dragons helmet and use Explosive Shot to proc shock in against single target, any significant source of up front Fire Damage with that helmet is likely to proc shock in one or two hits with the gear I have currently.
If you're not running that helmet however there are still a number of ways to bolster your chance to shock. The aforementioned passive tree/jewels. The Voltaic Mark skill is pretty much a free 50% increased chance and 30% increased effect of shock. You could run a weapon swap bow with the skill Stormcaller Arrow which has an inherent 800% increased chance to shock. Plasma Blast is another option although I'd only suggest that as an opener when facing bosses not rares since the Attack Time is lengthy.
Shockburst Rounds deal an immense amount of damage to shocked enemies. The projectiles don't do much but the Pulse damage is what you're looking for which only comes into play against enemies that are shocked.
@ thank you so much for the advice, I’ve been running Voltaic for the increase. I also run three dragons so I’ve really just been debating my fire ability options to proc shock. I will definitely give explosive shot a try. I must ask, what support gems do you use on your explosive shot?
Galvanic shards into shock burst rounds is really good single target. Same if you do the triple shot plasma blast. I agree though on reloading, even switching ammo has some jank and you just don't shoot for a few seconds which is MADDENING
shock burst round is amazing- and the wepon swap is bearable imo- but plasma shot is super situational... it has to be timed so perfectly and is close to unusable in maps (fpr 99% of the time)
I'm only at around T7, but running Galvanic Shards for clearing and Shockburst Rounds for bossing, but using triple shot on High Velocity Rounds instead of plasma (just can't get the feel of that one). using the weapon swap to bow for Stormcaller Arrow to setup shock - its been working very well for rares and bossing so far.
@@NitePhlight i swapped to wasd control as well - it feels more like playing a shooter now but im far more succesfuil at not dying this way ^^
Another day, another banger
Too busy playing the game to watch this, but your videos are fire bro.
The issue I’ve found is defenses for pinnacle bossing (or simulacrum), you can scale damage a lot with the shockburst rounds to melt bosses but trying either
1. 4K Sorc ward with like 70+ evasion still
2. No sorc ward with acrobatics evasion around 70
Both routes still leave you getting 1 tapped by high phys damage hits
Love the video.
I have an extremely similar build to you, but yeah i feel you with the single target.
For bossing i open with Plasma burst and then shockburst round for INSANE single target damage.
I weapon swap bow to combine the voltaic mark with stormcaller for bosses that survive the plasma burst + shockburst.
(Inspired by Ds lily deadeye build)
I always go Reload Speed on Gems, have all the passive nodes for it, and attack speed also affects reload speed.
You are the GOAT
Oh my god the thing I’ve been waiting for!
Recommend you try shockburst rounds for single target, the pulse DPS vs shocked is even higher than the beam DPS you get from galvanic shards. The way I use it is galvanic shards + voltaic mark to apply shock almost instantly, then switch to shockburst rounds and melt them down. At max quality you can get +7 rounds to shockburst so you can machine gun longer before reloading, also the support that makes it so you got a chance it won't consume a bolt can stretch the clip out even more. Biggest downside is that it's a channeled skill that can be interrupted if you have to dodge roll, also the hassle of having to reapply shock again.
cant wait for the warrior diary
For single target, have you tried weapon swapping to a bow for stormcaller arrow shock, then use shockburst rounds with concentrated effect? Melts tf out of juiced T15-T16 bosses. I haven't tried higher than that yet though.
Is stormcaller arrow just to set shock? Because if you have an extra skill slot you can just guarantee the shock with ball lightning + lightning warp to set shocked ground, and save on a bow
@@ObliviousBear yeah... or you can apply shock with galvanic, or the plasma cannon thing.
This is exactly what I'm doing, it falls off a bit against Uber bosses though (which is to be expected)
T15-T16 boss is a joke lol I can melt them easily with my gas grenade build and the other meta builds can do even better. If you want to test your build you should try it on pinnacle bosses
@@ObliviousBear its an almost 100% shock that you can use weapon swap skill points to spec for as well as a cast on shock setup on weapon set 2 only (so herolds on 1 and conductivity and stuff on the cast on shock). the apply does take only a second and the boss cannot move out of shocked ground that way. It depends if you have better stuff to do with your weapon swap and the skill points but stormcaller is REALLY good for shocking the boss on the merc
Love the content. I will agree ranger is basically just better than merc, merc definitely needs a bit of love. However there isn’t a ton of diversity with bow builds for single target specifically. For hard content almost every bow build uses lightning rod + orb of storms + cast on shock ball lightning. There is also the cast on crit variant, using… lightning rods + orb of storms + cast on crit eye of winter and ball lightning.
The other niche options are broken widowhail poison concoction shit on pathfinder specifically, that will probably get nerfed, and frenzy charge stacking barrage snipe shit with widowhail bonestorm weapon swapping. which is pretty satisfying when it works but also annoying because you can’t just chill and dodge attacks on bosses you have to lock in and hit perfect timings but oh you forgot to hit barrage first and then shit now you hit it but your frenzy stacks had run out so gotta snipers mark the boss and build up more charges and then do some weapon swap bonestorm shit and then try to hit the perfect timing again meanwhile ball lightning spam build killed the boss 30 seconds ago
I love your videos keep up the good work pal 😁
I felt in the same boat about WH thinking, "oh, this was a huge mistake." It just looked cool and fun. Now that I'm working on this kind of build, it's way better, but I still can't consistently proc Innervate and Biting Cold on the heralds. But that's gonna be a gear solution. Great videos, though. They help a lot.
Thank god I wasn't going crazy about the reload, i stg sometimes my merc jams his stupid crossbow mid breach and I'm sweating buckets. Love this class tho
Crossbow question:
Is there some sort of mechanic that does something like 'interrupts crossbow reload when cursor changes location'? I don't know how to describe it or whether it is a bug, but I'm hopeful someone will understand what I'm referring to. I'm playing on ps5, so using controller inputs.
theres definitely something wrong with reload animation or action. When I switch between skills or change elevation due to that map or rotate my character when reloading theres always a time in between where the character doesnt reload or gets stuck in the animation. Also you have to take into account if you dont dodge correctly or a monster hits you, it could disrupt the animation as well. And lastly stun is a thing.
tghere is definitly something fishy going on. sometimes i have the feeling my character is stuck looking in one direction so it blocks attacking in a different direction - i also noticed sometimes the reload not working. Always assumed it was lag or some small server hickup, but it happens too often kinda. So maybe there are some bugs
Nice man. Keep it up. I'm 95 with a Warrior but I've been getting ass blasted and frustrated, so I've been thinking of rerolling a ranged character.
Don’t do merc unless you like pain 😂
You gotta keep at it, we can't lose another soldier. Things will get better... surely :)
@@Manylimes If they made it to 95 as a Warrior they are no stranger to pain
A lot of people are complaining warrior is too weak I think GGG will buff you soon
I’d love to hear your thoughts on raxx’s lightning archer build guide. Where would you recommend adjustments etc?
For my witch hunter, I use the lightning bolt arrow (I forget the name off the top of my head) on a bow then swap back to my crossbow for shockburst rounds. Has yet to not melt any boss I come across
You can also do ball lightning into lightning warp. The shock on lightning warp’s shocked ground is guaranteed as long as the enemy is standing in it, so you can just get the lowest gem tier needed and not have to worry too much about stacking int
I'm currently running a dual herald (ice and thunder) monk and it actually feels so freaking good, heralds are the best.
I like that you are calling these "Build Diaries". I'm new to PoE, and am trying to learn how to make builds myself but have always just run into a wall at some point, and need to look up a guide. But at that point it doesn't feel like I'm learning anything. This feels more educational about how to approach building vs "here's what is op"
@klovehitch do you think you could link a maxroll for your crossbow build? i know you dont want to make a full build showcase/guide yet, but trying to mess around with it to tweak it and having to skip around the video to try a gleam what gems you have on which gems and stuff lol. love the content man. glad your channel is popping off!
so far (in the campaign) ive found that you can use the wake of destruction boot to get consistant shock on enemies and use Shockburst rounds to do pretty massive damage to rares and bosses
you can do use explosive shot for clear as ignite converted into shock and use explosive shot to shock bosses and combo it with shockburst rounds for burst it will suit your current merc, this way you wont need weapon swap or bow etc 2 skill will be enough for bossing and 1 skill for clear
So I have this built, and I've been trying to solve the bossing problem. I've found that incendiary shot with duration and magnitude to proc shock with shockburst rounds can partially solve this problem. With chance to shock on the tree, this can probably become pretty consistent - let me know if you try and it works for you.
There’s a unique glove that converts all elemental damage into 33% chunks, painters gloves. Would that help optimize your damage spread and still stack with the heralds? I’m cooking on a build with the gloves myself but don’t have the ability to test them.
i agree with the single target problem. im running deadeye with shockburst and i always have a hard time dealing with bosses. its either im dead 90% of the time or the boss is slow and i can land a few hits of plasma blast to give it shock. any tips or should i just weapon swap to bow in bosses?
Im on a bomb build and my biggest problem is pinnacle bossing, every other boss kinda just falls over.
currently playing a WH with galvanic shards and shockburst and i can say that shockburst in the campaign was like putting hte game on easy mode and i think it will scale very well in the endgame - pretty much the only real boss melting skill on Xbow if you actually want to shoot something.
Wh himself is a kinda weird ascendency - in theory the skills would let you use single target skills without damage and still let you whipe maps because you decimate, then cull then trigger the aoe. In reality you still need damage and AOE clear is usually not the problem in this game.... so you get the decimate and cull on bosses and maybe the shield and thats kinda it....
compared to other acendencies (tons of move spead and second arrow or being able to use support gems twice) it often feels lackluster for the endgame but kinda good during campaign - but what use is that if you cannot respecc.
I've been playing my LA Ranger more recently and been farming the last Sekema boss so easily. I swapped back to my Witch Hunter that was my first toon that I played Gas Grenade with the Ignite unique helm. I got to the last boss in Sekema on him as well and holy shit I did zero damage to him and just rotted down eventually. I don't really want to invest all the divs required to support a boss kill build on it. I even tried minmaxing my current setup with weapon swapping to a bow to apply a 35% damage increase from shock but still negative boss dam on real bosses.
There is a ring for culling strike that increases the threshold of it by 100% ive yet to use it since its base stats are ass and i cant sacrifice any of my rings for that, but it could be something that makes culling strike be a bit stronger and consistent
It's a head piece
Hey Brah, why are you not using Shockburst rounds for single target? >>> Apply shock with galvanic, swap to shockburst and lay waste.
I never see anyone take two handed dmg nodes... Maybe i should drop them? Playing galvanic/shockburst gemling
Just as a heads up, the testing I've seen shows that going past 100 magic find doesn't do much. So you don't have to go too crazy with it (though it still needs to be addressed).
Viperesque (GGG dev who posted in the PoE 2 section of the Discord a lot in the months leading up to launch) said that bleed was discovered in testing to be absolutely nut-bustingly broken and would shred bosses. So I'm assuming they gutted it leading into EA as a measure to avoid that knowing they could tune it up later down the line as needed. So not surprised to hear that you couldn't squeeze much damage out of it.
i have seen snipe builds with bleed that pretty much oneshot bosses if you hit the snipe sweetspot - it also uses spiral shot to pretty much clear 3 screens of trash mobs, so i think its still good. Havent played it myself though
I think this is a universal issue for mercenary with crossbows. I'm on gemling and the only somewhat okay ability is shockburst round abuse. I'm pairing it with explosive rounds and three dragons helm to proc shock on bosses and using voltaic mark also
spec'd hard into shock on my witch hunter and i'm having a blast. i think the main problem with the ascendancy is that it just straight up sucks dog meat into bosses, like the tree just provides nothing of value into bosses. cull and decimating suck, concentration is who cares but you have to take it anyway, inquisition does nothing into bosses, and sorcery ward is whatever because who cares about mitigating anything that isn't phys damage, and weapon master doesn't exist it isnt real. i legit think the ascendancy is just hard specced to help with mobbing and nothing else.
i ended up slamming as much shock mag as possible and a bow on my weapon swap. galvanic with damage clears the whole screen pretty easily by itself and you just mark>shockburst any tanky rare and it dies instantly. for bosses a stormcaller arrow with exposure, shock mag, and shock duration support turns shockburst into a fat nuke. lightning rod is an easy way to shock rares to enable shockburst without waiting on stormcaller to pop because galvanic chains to it.
Tested a ton of different uniques like the electrocution gloves(they suck because everything dies instantly anyway or has an impossibly high electro threshold) and the only real stand outs were doryani's prototype+rondel of fragility and cull strike boost. doryani's prototype sucks though because armor is ***ks and you die instantly the second lightning touches you anyway BUT it turns literally everything you come into contact with into nacho cheese when combined with rondel of fragility to get a base lightning res of -70% and stacking a low level conductivity onto it for -105% enemy lightning res.
The defensive utility on witch hunter is just whack and i've accepted it at this point. evasion+flamecloak is cranked at least until you die instantly to a death explosion you didn't see but i've gaslit myself into being okay with it because decimator+boosted cull+zealous inquisition(the last two ascendancy points arent even worth allocating imo) makes it so anything thats not a rare/boss doesnt exist anymore
we went from team to friends
I will watch eveything this guy makes. He could make an hour long video just bullying the POE 2 community as a whole and I would eat up every second.
after investing a lot in witchhunter (10-15 divines and lots of exalts) and minmaxing its so sad that its nowhere near my cheap witch build
Witch hunter is very poorly designed with its ascendancy points. Both Decimating Strike and Culling Strike are available as Uniques for any character to put on, so it ends up being a band-aid for some mediocre perks you could have picked up anyways. Culling Strike on the ascendancy should absolutely be replaced. Maybe something along the lines of the "less health an enemy has the more damage you do to them" which would improve the synergy with Decimating Strike, making you get that damage ramp up faster.
Built bad ig I melt only issue I have is if it's 2 dence reloding will get me
my little trade league champion
Just bow and snipe for single target
You are not using the class correctly regarding single target damage.
th-cam.com/video/jUF02B24Yx8/w-d-xo.htmlsi=tsrBkLWb1tvsKI8P
So he creates a build tgat sucks and posts it when most players still have not seen even 1 divine.
I’ll help since you can’t read, the title says “Build Diary” and not “Build Guide”.