Essence Interrupter builds

[Clerith]

It's the first dlc, and we get a unique hunting bow with lightning damage and some interesting abilities... reminds you of anything, gents?

 

Anyways, this bow. How good do you think it is? I think it's pretty good. Good enough to make a build for it? Probably. I'm sure loads of people already have. It has elemental damage, lash that scales with Metaphysics, and a crit effect. Seems good enough, right?

 

So, hunting bow builds. Some crit synergy would be great, too. There are a lot of builds that can sort of just slap a bow and go - Frostseeker had a lot of builds from any combination of the Ranger/Monk/Fighter/Rogue pool, with some Barbarian and Paladin even mixed in.

 

Hunting bows, for me, bring into mind Ranger/Devoted. Extra pen is very welcome, extra crit dmg works great with Ranger's accuracy boni, Fighter's hit to crit buffs work great with crit synergy. Modal activated, of course. That's one of the biggest advantages of the hunting bow. Wounding Shot is so cheap that you can easily set the AI to spam it, and use Penetrating Strike against high armor enemies. Seems pretty solid to me.

 

Nothing wrong with Ranger/Rogue, of course. Even more cheap abilities to spam. Sneak attack damage. I wonder how you'd go about it, though. Streetfighter seems annoying to weapon swap into Blunderbuss to activate your subclass, Assassin can definitely work if you use your Guile for invis and Bond for damage, but constant stealthing isn't good for your dps and wouldn't it work better with an arquebus?

 

Something of a 'flavorful' build could be a summoner Chanter. Just to have more minions on the board. 

 

So, thoughts, people? How would you make this bow shine? 

 

[1TTFFSSE]

I think fully upgraded the other old unique hunting bow in this game deals somewhat more damage. I'd run Berserker/Cipher or Berserker/Ranger or Berserker/Chanter with it though. Frenzy provides bonus attack speed and penetration all in one and each of cipher ranger or chanter provide various perks around this. 

If I mix in rogue it is too tempting to dual wield pistols or pistol+blunderbuss for full attacks. 

Edited August 5, 2018 by 1TTFFSSE

[Boeroer]

The bow is very strong because it lets you get summons on the fly while doing damage.

 

You don't need to kill with the bow, just apply the status effect with a crit to an enemy and let others do the killing.

 

With Driving Flight you can affect two enemies with one shot. And scoring crits is rel. easy for a ranger or ranger multiclass.

 

I didn't test yet what happens if you crit your own beckoner-skeletons with the bow and then kill them with Grave Calling. Maybe you get an imp AND another creature?

[Dorftek]

Lol that would be cool but a lot of micro

[Boeroer]

Well you don't have to do it all by yourself.

 

One guy with Essence Interruptor, another with Grave Calling.

 

If you can get two summons out of one (or one vessel enemy) that would indeed be hilarious. Six skellies turn into twelve creatures. With Brittle Bones it could even be you spawn 1 skeleton, 1 imp and one creature after skelli-death?

[Dorftek]

Well you don't have to do it all by yourself.

 

One guy with Essence Interruptor, another with Grave Calling.

 

If you can get two summons out of one (or one vessel enemy) that would indeed be hilarious. Six skellies turn into twelve creatures. With Brittle Bones it could even be you spawn 1 skeleton, 1 imp and one creature after skelli-death?

Yeah true I didn't consider companions /facepalm

Yeah brittlebones always summon a new more sturdy skeleton (no matter what the description says, on a beckoner atleast) even if u use them to summon imps.

[Boeroer]

Oh my - I sense true awesomeness crawling up.

[Boeroer]

I just checked:

 

"marking" a vessel with Essence Interruptor and then killing it with Grave Calling will spawn one Grave Imp AND one other creature. If you manage to mark a skeleton of Ancient Brittle Bones and kill it with Grave Calling you will spawn two big skeletons, one Grave Imp and one other creature. Hilarious

 

However, the Beckoner skeletons are so squishy that a shot with the bow usually kills them. So I'd advice to take a troubadour with the skelli-chant and Ancient Brittle Bones which gioves you a skeleton every 3 sec, three ones after summoning which you can turn into 12 (!) creatures. It gets quite crowdy... Maybe add an animal companion.  

[arkane83]

When this thing summons a hostile ogre pirate in potd at level 4 with only upward scaling it makes wild mind misfires look like buffs

 

That said, I'm having a blast with it on an adventurer I made just for testing it. I will post a build soon.

 

A few observations:

 

Enemies are not always your level. Triple red skull hostile is fun.

 

High intellect without upgrading the weapon is madness. You dont want triple red skull hostiles on potd...

 

The hunting bow modal is almost a toggle switch to turn down crit rate, and hostile ogre pirates.

 

More penetration is also a must for PotD: zerker, devoted, or to a lesser extent cipher are needed.

Edited August 6, 2018 by arkane83

[Vaneglorious]

Imagine if Zerker's carnage would work with ranged weapons.

 

I used this bow on my Ascendant/Devoted.

[Xsanf]

Why not Geomancer or other appropriate Wizard multi? +1 Penetration from Heart of the Storm and various sweet self-buffs (Fleet Feet first, Deleterious Alacrity later). Problem with hostile summons is solved by running in circles, since we are under Fleet Feet we can outpace them.

[Boeroer]

Problem with hostile summons ist best solved with Soul Diplomacy I'd say.

[thundercleese]

Problem with hostile summons ist best solved with Soul Diplomacy I'd say.

Problem is it costs adra ban (2 IIRC), which many players may not have/want to use early in the game, especially given how rare it is. Granted there is a guaranteed 2 in the Ruins on Port Maje, but that's still one less legendary upgrade, or at least a delayed one.

[Boeroer]

Well - better than running away from enemies that are 3+ levels above you.

 

If you want to build around that bow it's totally worth it.

 

Also atm you can enchant stuff for free:

 

Load an old savegame, open console, type iroll20s, open console, type freerecipestoggle, quit the savegame, load your real one: voila - you can enchant everything for free while not officially cheating.

 

I already reported it - but as usual with my bug reports: nobody gives a flying flatterfart.

[house2fly]

Speaking of savegames, is there really no way to get this thing on a current character without iroll20sing it?

[Boeroer]

I already reported it - but as usual with my bug reports: nobody gives a flying flatterfart.

Now comes the best part: I got an answer on my bug report and they say it's intended... Yeah, ROFL with me!

[AndreaColombo]

Does Heart of the Storm work with this bow?

 

Tangentially, does it work with the soulbound Voulge (and Secrets of the Rime with Frostfall)?

[Clerith]

 

I already reported it - but as usual with my bug reports: nobody gives a flying flatterfart.

Now comes the best part: I got an answer on my bug report and they say it's intended... Yeah, ROFL with me!

 

Enabling cheats (free enchanting) without disabling achievements by playing around with save data files a little is... intended? Are you ****ing kidding me?

[Boeroer]

No. I'm not. Who said anything about playing around with save data files? Maybe read again? Because nobody did.

Edited August 8, 2018 by Boeroer

[Boeroer]

So BMac answered me in the bug section forum and said this FreeRecipesToggle bug will be fixed in patch 2.1.

[thundercleese]

Does Heart of the Storm work with this bow?

Tangentially, does it work with the soulbound Voulge (and Secrets of the Rime with Frostfall)?

My understanding of those passives is they only work on abilities/attacks/procs with the applicable keywords. Haven't tested myself but if it does then I'll add the info to my thread.

 

@Boeroer you could also DW frostfall with Grave Calling and get infinite duration afflictions on all enemies in range and the occasional free paralyze, along with all your minions. The trick is ensuring Grave Calling gets the killing blow. Actually, come to think of it I never tested whether it does need to get the killing blow. The description doesn't seem to specify... May do a quick test when I get home unless someone already has the answer.

Edited August 8, 2018 by thundercleese

[Boeroer]

I guess so. It doesn't put an effect on the enemies like Esssence Interruptor does, does it?

[thundercleese]

Yeah, no effect is applied. I did get some procs off spells, was inconsistent though. First nuke on my skeletons gave me 1 Imp, then I nuked the ones that summoned and got none. Enemies killed by my spell DoTs were spawning them though. Could be that the first imp was also a foe that died. I also got some hilariously long DoTs on one guy in particular.

 

 

 

@AndreaColombo I just checked and it does add penetration, even shows up on character sheet. As does Lord Darryn's Voulge, however Frostfall doesn't.

Edited August 9, 2018 by thundercleese

[Boeroer]

Ha! That's a rather long "Touch".

[AndreaColombo]

Guess we’ll need a bug report for Frostfall’s not getting the extra penetration point from the talent.