Lightning Arrow Deadeye is a popular and powerful build for Path of Exile Trial of the Ancestors 3.22, the latest expansion of the game. This build focuses on using Lightning Arrow, a skill that fires a piercing arrow that also releases bolts of lightning in a cone behind the enemy. The build takes advantage of the Deadeye ascendancy, which grants bonuses to projectile damage, speed, and chaining. The build also uses Artillery Ballista, a totem that fires arrows with high damage and area of effect. The build is fast, fun, and effective at clearing maps and bosses.
In this article, I will provide a detailed guide on how to play Lightning Arrow Deadeye in PoE 3.22, including the skill tree, gems, gear, flasks, jewels, and pantheon choices. I will also explain the main mechanics and playstyle of the build, as well as some tips and tricks to optimize your performance.
Skill Tree
The skill tree for Lightning Arrow Deadeye is focused on maximizing projectile damage, critical strike chance and multiplier, attack speed, and life. The build also takes some nodes for elemental damage, penetration, and ailment avoidance. The build uses a Spine Bow as the weapon of choice, as it has a high critical strike chance and projectile speed.
The build starts as a Ranger and progresses through the following keystones and notables:
• Acrobatics and Phase Acrobatics: These nodes grant dodge chance for attacks and spells, which is a great defensive layer for evasion-based builds.
• Arrow Dancing: This node increases your chance to evade projectile attacks while decreasing your chance to evade melee attacks. This is useful for ranged builds that can kite melee enemies easily.
• Bow Mastery: This node grants increased damage with bows and converts all increases to projectile damage into increases to damage. This is a huge damage boost for the build, as it scales both Lightning Arrow and Artillery Ballista.
• Gathering Winds: This is the first ascendancy node for Deadeye, which grants Tailwind, a buff that increases your action speed by 20%. This means you move and attack faster, which is great for clear speed and survivability.
• Far Shot: This is the second ascendancy node for Deadeye, which grants more projectile damage the further you are from the enemy. This means you can deal massive damage from a safe distance.
• Endless Munitions: This is the third ascendancy node for Deadeye, which grants two additional projectiles for your skills. This means you can hit more enemies with Lightning Arrow and Artillery Ballista.
• Focal Point: This is the fourth ascendancy node for Deadeye, which grants increased damage against marked enemies and reduces their resistance to elemental damage. This means you can deal more damage to bosses and tough enemies.
Gems
The main skill gems for Lightning Arrow Deadeye are:
• Lightning Arrow: This is your main skill for clearing maps. It fires a piercing arrow that also releases bolts of lightning in a cone behind the enemy. It has high base damage and area of effect, and can chain multiple times with Deadeye's ascendancy.
• Artillery Ballista: This is your secondary skill for bossing and single target damage. It summons a totem that fires arrows with high damage and area of effect. It has a long range and can hit enemies off-screen.
• Blink Arrow: This is your main movement skill. It fires an arrow that teleports you to its location and leaves behind a clone that can distract enemies.
• Flame Dash: This is your secondary movement skill. It dashes you forward a short distance and leaves behind a trail of fire that can ignite enemies.
• Precision: This is an aura that grants increased accuracy rating and critical strike chance. It helps you hit enemies more reliably and deal more damage with critical strikes.
• Vaal Grace: This is a vaal aura that grants increased chance to dodge attacks and spells for a short duration. It can be used as an emergency defensive tool when you are surrounded by enemies or facing dangerous projectiles.
The support gems for Lightning Arrow are:
• Trinity Support: This support gem grants increased elemental damage based on how many different elements have hit an enemy recently. Since this build uses all three elements (lightning, cold, and fire), it can easily activate this gem's bonus.
• Chain Support: This support gem makes your projectiles chain to additional enemies when they hit an enemy. This increases your clear speed and area of effect.
• Inspiration Support: This support gem grants increased elemental damage and critical strike chance based on how many Inspiration Charges you have. You gain Inspiration Charges when you spend mana for supported skills.
• Increased Critical Damage Support: This support gem grants increased critical strike multiplier, which increases your damage when you crit.
• Awakened Added Lightning Damage Support: This support gem adds lightning damage to your skills. It also grants more lightning damage and penetration if you have at least 40 Intelligence in the radius of the gem socket.
The support gems for Artillery Ballista are:
• Elemental Damage with Attacks Support: This support gem grants increased elemental damage with attack skills.
• Vicious Projectiles Support: This support gem grants increased projectile damage and physical damage over time but reduces projectile speed. It also grants more projectile damage and physical damage over time multiplier.
• Awakened Added Cold Damage Support: This support gem adds cold damage to your skills. It also grants more cold damage and penetration if you have at least 40 Dexterity in the radius of the gem socket.
• Awakened Added Fire Damage Support: This support gem adds fire damage to your skills. It also grants more fire damage and penetration if you have at least 40 Strength in the radius of the gem socket.
The other skill gems for Lightning Arrow Deadeye are:
• Frenzy + Manaforged Arrows Support + Mark On Hit Support + Sniper's Mark: This is a utility setup that grants Frenzy Charges, Mana Regeneration, and Marked enemies. Frenzy Charges increase your attack speed and damage, Mana Regeneration helps you sustain your skills, and Marked enemies take more damage from your projectiles and have reduced elemental resistance. You can use this setup on bosses or tough enemies to boost your damage output.
• Cast when Damage Taken Support + Immortal Call + Increased Duration Support + Summon Stone Golem: This is a defensive setup that triggers Immortal Call when you take a certain amount of damage. Immortal Call grants you immunity to physical damage for a short duration, which can save you from lethal hits. Increased Duration Support extends the duration of Immortal Call and Summon Stone Golem, which grants you life regeneration and taunts enemies.
Gear
The gear for Lightning Arrow Deadeye is focused on increasing your projectile damage, critical strike chance and multiplier, attack speed, and life. You also want some elemental resistance, evasion rating, and ailment avoidance. The build uses a Spine Bow as the weapon of choice, as it has high critical strike chance and projectile speed.
The recommended gear for Lightning Arrow Deadeye are:
• Weapon: A rare Spine Bow with high physical damage, critical strike chance, critical strike multiplier, attack speed, and elemental damage. You can craft it with the Essence of Wrath or the Essence of Anger for guaranteed elemental damage.
• Quiver: A rare Spike-Point Arrow Quiver with high life, critical strike chance, critical strike multiplier, elemental damage with attacks, and elemental resistance. You can craft it with the Prismatic Fossil for guaranteed elemental resistance.
• Helmet: A rare Lion Pelt with high life, evasion rating, elemental resistance, and nearby enemies have -9% to lightning resistance. You can craft it with the Jagged Fossil and the Metallic Fossil for guaranteed lightning resistance reduction.
• Body Armour: A rare Astral Plate with high life, evasion rating, elemental resistance, and attacks have +1 to maximum number of projectiles. You can craft it with the Shuddering Fossil and the Corroded Fossil for guaranteed projectile modifier.
• Gloves: A rare Gripped Gloves with high life, evasion rating, attack speed, elemental damage with attacks, and elemental resistance. You can craft it with the Prismatic Fossil for guaranteed elemental resistance.
• Boots: Rare Two-Toned Boots with high life, evasion rating, movement speed, elemental resistance, and ailment avoidance. You can craft it with the Prismatic Fossil for guaranteed elemental resistance.
• Belt: A rare Stygian Vise with high life, elemental damage with attacks, elemental resistance, flask duration, and flask effect. You can craft it with the Prismatic Fossil for guaranteed elemental resistance.
• Amulet: A rare Turquoise Amulet with high life, critical strike chance, critical strike multiplier, elemental damage with attacks, and elemental resistance. You can craft it with the Prismatic Fossil for guaranteed elemental resistance.
• Rings: Two rare Steel Rings with high life, accuracy rating, critical strike chance, critical strike multiplier, elemental damage with attacks, and elemental resistance. You can craft them with the Prismatic Fossil for guaranteed elemental resistance.
Flasks
The flasks for Lightning Arrow Deadeye are:
• Diamond Flask: This flask grants increased critical strike chance during the flask effect. It helps you deal more damage with critical strikes. You can roll it with the Chemist's prefix for reduced charges used and the Experimenter's suffix for increased duration.
• Quicksilver Flask: This flask grants increased movement speed during the flask effect. It helps you move faster and dodge enemies.
• Silver Flask: This flask grants increased attack speed during the flask effect. It helps you fire more projectiles and deal more damage.
• Atziri's Promise: This flask grants additional chaos damage and chaos resistance during the flask effect. It also leeches a portion of your elemental damage as life. It helps you deal more damage and sustain your life.
• Dying Sun: This flask grants additional projectiles and area of effect during flask effect. It also reduces fire damage taken. It helps you clear faster and survive better.
You can roll your flasks with the Alchemist's prefix for increased effect and the of Heat, of Warding, of Staunching, or of Grounding suffixes for immunity to freeze, curses, bleeding, or shock respectively. You can also use the Beastcrafting recipe to add the Adrenaline suffix to your Quicksilver Flask for more movement speed.
Jewels
The jewels for Lightning Arrow Deadeye are:
• Watcher's Eye: This is a unique jewel that grants powerful bonuses based on the auras you are using. For this build, you want to look for the following mods: increased critical strike chance while affected by Precision, increased lightning damage while affected by Wrath, or increased attack and cast speed while affected by Grace.
• Thread of Hope: This is a unique jewel that grants a large passive skill tree ring with reduced attribute requirements and reduced effect. You can use it to allocate some useful nodes that are otherwise out of reach, such as Heartseeker, Primeval Force, or Forces of Nature.
• Rare Jewels: You can use rare jewels with high life, critical strike chance, critical strike multiplier, projectile damage, and elemental damage with attacks. You can craft them with the Prismatic Fossil for guaranteed elemental damage.
Pantheon
The pantheon choices for Lightning Arrow Deadeye are:
• Major God: Soul of Lunaris. This god grants increased movement speed, physical damage reduction, and dodge chance based on the number of nearby enemies. It also grants immunity to chained projectiles and additional projectiles from nearby enemies. It helps you avoid and mitigate damage from multiple enemies.
• Minor God: Soul of Garukhan. This god grants increased evasion rating, movement speed, and chance to avoid projectiles if you have not been hit recently. It helps you evade and dodge more attacks and move faster.
Playstyle
The playstyle of Lightning Arrow Deadeye is simple and straightforward. You use Lightning Arrow to clear maps and Artillery Ballista to deal with bosses and single targets. You use Blink Arrow and Flame Dash to move around and dodge enemies. You use Precision and Vaal Grace as your auras to boost your accuracy, critical strike chance, and dodge chance. You use Frenzy + Manaforged Arrows + Mark On Hit + Sniper's Mark to generate Frenzy Charges, Mana Regeneration, and Marked enemies. You use Cast when Damage Taken + Immortal Call + Increased Duration + Summon Stone Golem to trigger Immortal Call when you take damage and summon a Stone Golem for life regeneration and taunting.
You want to keep your distance from enemies and take advantage of Far Shot and Bow Mastery for more damage. You want to aim your Lightning Arrow at the center of packs or behind enemies for maximum area of effect and chaining. You want to place your Artillery Ballista near bosses or tough enemies and let it do its work while you kite them. You want to use your flasks wisely and keep them up as much as possible for more damage and survivability.
Tips and Tricks
Here are some tips and tricks to optimize your performance with Lightning Arrow Deadeye:
• You can use an Orb of Storms + Power Charge On Critical Support + Increased Critical Strikes Support setup to generate Power Charges, which increase your critical strike chance and damage.
• You can use a Portal Gem in your weapon swap to create portals without using Portal Scrolls.
• You can use a Quill Rain in your weapon swap to trigger Elemental Equilibrium with a low level Lightning Arrow + Greater Multiple Projectiles Support + Chain Support setup. This will lower the enemies' lightning resistance by 50%, which will boost your main Lightning Arrow's damage.
• You can use an Anomalous Quality Lightning Arrow for more area of effect or a Divergent Quality Lightning Arrow for more projectile speed.
• You can use an Anomalous Quality Artillery Ballista for more attack speed or a Divergent Quality Artillery Ballista for more placement speed.
• You can use an Anomalous Quality Blink Arrow for more clone duration or a Divergent Quality Blink Arrow for more clone life.
• You can use an Anomalous Quality Flame Dash for more cooldown recovery speed or a Divergent Quality Flame Dash for more distance travelled.
• You can use an Anomalous Quality Precision for more accuracy rating or a Divergent Quality Precision for more critical strike multiplier.
• You can use an Anomalous Quality Vaal Grace for more area of effect or a Divergent Quality Vaal Grace for more dodge chance.
Conclusion
I hope this guide has helped you understand how to play Lightning Arrow Deadeye with less PoE currency. Have fun and good luck!
Related Build:
