[3.7 updated] Voidfletcher Deadeye (all core content cleared, budget options available, 600+ depth)

A bit's changed this time around, but nothing major.

To start with, immortal call has changed, and tbh i probably won't be bothering with the new version with or without cwdt, think i'm gonna swap in some new setups. I may use a manual steelskin, if i can get enough strength to max it (unlikely) and if i feel the need, but i doubt it's necessary, even the cwdt-ic wasn't a big deal.

Next up there's the passive tree. There's been a few relevant changes there; king of the hill is now in the bow wheel and the claw wheel that lioneye's fall reaches has a few more nodes... this stuff will cost a few extra points, but it gives some more crit chance and mult so that's cool. Some of their damage nodes are no longer phys-only too, so even better.

Then there's ascendancy notables... I'm kinda considering dropping fast and deadly in favor of rupture. The accuracy in the former might not matter as much (and I may try to add precision into my setup with the extra space opened up from dropping IC), i may swap out blink arrow for dash, and the crit mult and chance on rupture should overall be better dps if my accuracy is fine. Plus i'd get some nice life gain on hit and wouldn't have to worry about regular bleed.

Think that's mostly it. Abyss jewel nerfs will be minor, lately the build hasn't leaned on those *too* heavily.

I've added my initial take on the new passive tree plan below. Other stuff will be updated more in depth when i make the build.

Well, as I said, this build is largely about using sources of additional arrows to support Void Shot, while also having solid dps on your own active skills. As such I use a Tornado Shot for single-target and a Mirage Archer Ice Shot for clearing and supporting dps. All while triggering Void Shots constantly, of course.


For the damage, I went for cold damage and crit. Death's Opus is naturally aligned with crit, having both an implicit boosting it's local crit chance as well as that nice +100% crit multiplier roll. While Death's Opus is a physical-aligned bow, it's own dps isn't particularly amazing, so it needs lots of other base damage to help it along. Rather than focusing on phys to cold conversion, I elected to mostly use flat cold damage sources, while taking advantage of ice shot's and void shot's natural conversions and the 40% conversion from Winter Spirit to put Opus's own physical damage to use too... you don't really have to go outta the way to get those conversions anyway, it's all just there for you. I also use Hatred, partially for a little extra cold damage derived from physical, but also to get an extra ~80 flat cold damage with a relatively cheap Watcher's Eye roll. Cold damage is relatively easy to scale in the ranger area of the tree, and aligning with one element makes penetrating resistances much easier. In addition to that, I love The Pandemonius all-around, which just makes cold damage even better.

As for the gameplay... well, it's pretty simple. Tshot for single-target, Ice shot to clear, and the mirage archer on ice shot helps pick off stragglers or clear other packs automatically. Firing off one ice shot against a boss will get the mirage archer procced to auto-fire for a few seconds while you switch to using tshot, effectively allowing you to attack with your single-target setup while mirage archer adds a little bit more by attacking with about ~35% of your ice shot's dps.

Void shots will keep firing off as you go, every time you use ice shot or tshot... they don't trigger by using blink arrow, so don't worry about wasting any from that. Although honestly, you really don't need to worry about wasting them anyway. It has a .5 second cd on triggering, and 1 second recharge time per charge... even with constant attacking at exactly the right intervals to trigger void shot as fast as possible, it'll still take 4 seconds to run out. And with the usual moving and kiting/dodging, you're not likely to run out in practice anyway.

Void shots will fire to explode at the location of your cursor, just like tshot, so aim them in pretty much the same fashion. With my gear, void shot actually didn't do much for clearing, since most stuff dies to ice shot before void shot even detonates, but with less dps it might be more relevant there. Regardless, against bosses it's a huge help, cuz it's easy to get all the explosions to overlap on most bosses. Between the Tshot and voidshot, and possibly mirage archer ice shot-ing, bosses will go down fairly quickly and with my setup will be chilled, blinded, sometimes frozen, and constantly knocked back til they rip.

https://pastebin.com/imS1s1qg

This is the gear I used in my finished Synthesis build. I've got a little less life than last league, but still a bit over 5k. As usual, all rares were found or rolled up myself.

Not a ton has changed in priorities overall. But:

-I managed to roll up a pair of onslaught boots, those were a nice addition this league, and in going for a synth helm with implicit crit mult I stumbled into hitting a decent life/res one so i went with it. So a few slots where i previously had generic non-shaper/elder rares now have synth rares instead.

-I also made a +2 min power charge shield for my weapon swap. By swapping to this shield ever so briefly I instantly gain up to 2 power charges, so it's not a bad thing to have, but not necessary by any means. I wound up not using it much, partially because swapping off of Voidfletcher means losing all accumulated void charges so i'd have to wait for them to replenish when i swap back. Not a huge issue either way.

-I finally decided to go for a shaper ring with Assassin's Mark this league. In the past I've been reluctant, because curses were so weak vs bosses and frankly they're mostly unnecessary everywhere else, but now they're a bit better (and the slight change to assassin's mark's extra crit chance is overall better). Additionally, one of my past curse tactics of using enfeeble on hit gloves is weaker now vs bosses and rares (and magics and normals die instantly), so it was a good time to drop the enfeeble approach.

-Dropping the enfeeble approach also lowered my incentive to stick with 1 socket tombfists, which were MUCH cheaper and more reasonable to find with enfeeble on hit. But now that i don't care about that, I'm back to using a 2 socket. This does mean that I give up a gem socket, and as a result I decided to get Hatred from a corrupted implicit on Mark of the Elder and get rid of the actual gem.


Overall the build felt better this league than ever before, unsurprisingly. Onslaught helped a bit, as did assassin's mark, and the changes to Hatred were overall a pretty substantial buff for this build (like 12-14% more dps than before). At long last I found (and beat) an Aul, so now I can finally say this build can handle him, too. And Cortex boss, in addition to all the lesser synth bosses.

Help Alira, crit mult is solid and all res helps free up equipment choices

Using Deadeye, I went Far Shot -> Endless munitions -> Fast and Deadly -> Gathering Wind

+1 Arrow is the biggest factor, and you can get that from Ascendant as well, but Deadeye offers plenty of great boosts and utility.

For pantheon, I use Ryslatha and Brine King, with at least the former getting it's upgrade. Brine King protects against stunlock, Ryslatha gives extra flask recovery in emergencies and restores charges if there's nothing around to kill (helpful in lab/trials in particular).

Tornado Shot - Elemental Damage with Attacks - Cold Penetration - Added Cold - Hypothermia - (choice 6th)

Ice Shot - Elemental Damage with Attacks - Bonechill - Added Cold - Mirage Archer - (choice 6th)

These are the main damage setups, Tshot mostly for focused damage and ice shot for clearing and mirage archer supporting dps. Bonechill on ice shot helps all your skills deal more cold damage, so even though it's not the best support for ice shot dps itself it's worth using. Use an Omen on the Winds threshold jewel to get +3 pierce for ice shot.

For the 6th links, i use Faster Attacks for both Tshot and ice shot. There's other supports that could result in better dps, but all in all with the relatively low attack speed in the build and the plentiful dps already, i've elected to go with faster attacks to keep things smoother and allow me to attack-and-move more ably, which this build needs for defense.

As for the other setups:

Frost Bomb - Phase Run - Vaal Grace - Increased Duration

Cwdt (~level 10) - Steelskin (~level 15)

Hatred - Herald of Purity - Blink Arrow - Precision (level 1)


The first is just utility skills, frost bomb for helping boss dps and whatnot, phase run for some travel/avoidance, vaal grace for a big dodge boost.

the second is a replacement for the old cwdt-immortal call setups. The levels you use can vary depending on how much strength you have and how strong of a buff you want to get.

And finally the reservations and blink arrow. Hatred's got damage, Precision grants some cheap 40% inc crit chance and offers watcher's eye options, and HoP gives flat phys damage (which is mostly converted to cold/added as cold) and provides the sentinels which are great for drawing aggro and bodyblocking enemies and projectiles.




For other options:

-Aspect of the Cat, if using farrul's fur. Not really a gem, but still a setup. You may want to socket whatever's providing it with less duration, so that you have no downtime on your charges. Note that using phase run will eat all your frenzy charges, so you may want to drop that.

-Herald of Ice. Some people still like using Herald of Ice for this build. Personally, aside from the flat cold, i think it's not worth it since Herald of Purity came to be. Both give you around the same amount of damage, but sentinels of purity are nice for defense, while ice explosions are mostly worthless (the build doesn't get much of anything to scale them). Some people use it with CoH and ice bite and such though.

-Barrage. There's a gimmick interaction with barrage + voidfletcher that used to not exist when i made the build originally, in that barrage will cause all void charges to be expended rapidly and fire as many voidshots. Talking to support it seems it's not considered a bug, despite patch notes suggesting otherwise (apparently those patch notes were the one in the wrong). As such, barrage can make for potentially high burst hit-and-run style damage with voidfletcher, in particular for single-target. Not my thing, i still feel like it's imbalanced and a bug, but to each their own.

-Chain, GMP, various other supports. I prefer my gem setups, but i've seen plenty of people swap in others. There's plenty of stuff that works and you should use whatever feels comfortable. I don't feel the need for more projectiles with GMP when i've got 4-5 (6-7 with dying sun), and i don't much like chain support compared to pierce (especially since piercing for ice shot doesn't even cost a link, much less diminish damage per hit with that link). But other people differ in their opinions. Go with what you like.

Just some tips for working with a slimmer budget. Can't guarantee you'll be able to do t16s and the like, but you should be able to do up through t15s even with cutting substantial cost from the build.

-5Ls do just fine for most content (my budget version in Incursion does guardians and whatnot just fine)

-inc crit strikes support can be swapped into gem links to pump up crit chance if Farrul's Fur or an elder crit chest is unavailable (think I'd recommend Hyrri's Ire as a budget chest in that case, though it lacks life). Not ideal, but it can be swapped out when you've got better crit established.

-Frenzy can be used to maintain frenzy charges (even against bosses) if Farrul's Fur isn't available. It can even be used instead of Ice Shot for clearing. I swapped mine for a test run and it felt fine, albeit not as good as Ice. And vs bosses it's not a bad idea to attack every now and then with that setup anyway as it helps maintain mirage archer, so with frenzy it'll build/maintain frenzy charges as well.

-Dying Sun isn't a must (Atziri's Promise or Wise Oak would make a suitable dps flask alternative til you can afford one)

-+1 arrow Voidfletcher isn't a must, 4 arrows is still pretty damned good

-Tombfist is by no means necessary, especially a 2 abyss socket version. A 1 socket version can still get you room for one abyss socket as well as intimidate, and there's plenty of other gloves available for crit (Oskarn would be nice in particular, I've got over 6k accuracy without any notable rolls on gear... that'd be 60% crit chance plus Assassin's Mark on hit. Either that or Maligaro's)

-Watcher's Eye is not necessary either, but it is a pretty solid amount of damage. Any one you can get with a hatred mod is useful to this build, though the conversion one is only really helpful for tshot. Barring that, abyss jewels with good flat cold rolls aren't bad either.

-Pandemonius isn't usually that expensive and easily worth the cost in my opinion, but even so if you need a budget version any old amulet with some flat cold, %cold, %elemental damage with attacks, crit chance/mult, etc would do just fine. A Karui Charge would at least give some decent dps (and movespeed) in the meantime while being dirt cheap.

-Lioneye's Fall is the main thing that's hard to swap out, besides the bow and quiver. It allows you to pick up 45% crit mult and 60% chance from the claw wheel (while also getting life and mana leech, but that's not enabled by Lioneye's), it's hard to replace that with a budget jewel... or any jewel, for that matter. If you can't afford it right away, you can still spec that part of the claw wheel to get the leech for now, and get a big upgrade later when you can get Lioneye's Fall.