Barrage 9 Impale Champion. "The Balloon Popper" – 1.5M+DPS 6k+HP Ranged Tank. Delete Bosses Safely.

My goal with this build was to have a ranged character that truly felt tanky. I also prefer builds that only require a few active skills with no gem swaps. This led me to the idea of using Barrage for both clear and single target. This single main skill lets us stack a ton of life, life recovery, and defensibility. Champ was the clear choice for the build as the ascendancy nodes synergize very well with the defensive and offensive mechanics of our gear.

Pros:
• Respectable Damage output.
• High Life
• High Damage Mitigation
• Solid Life Recovery Mechanics
• Sounds great to make a bunch of monsters explode.
• No issue with Elemental Reflect.
• Good movement speed
• Simple playstyle
• No Regen maps are no problem
• No Leech Also possible

Cons:
• Expensive to Optimize
• VERY slow starter during the leveling process (build feels sluggish until about lvl 78, when it becomes an unholy nightmare in the best possible way).
• Life Recovery mechanics are a dependent on enemy presence, making labrynth traps a bit dicy for less experienced players. Lab is doable, but this is no juggernaut.
• Not Freeze immune (HAS BEEN FIXED)
• Clear speed can feel weird at times (enclosed maps that group enemies are much more efficient than open ones)
• Physical Reflect will annihilate you.
• Low Intelligence and Resistance on the Tree make the Rare Gear for this build even more expensive.

If I see one more person say a build is budget and then show a link of a Headhunter, I think I am going to lose my mind. Everybody’s concept of “budget” is a bit different, but can we just agree that if you are wearing one of the most expensive unique items in the game, that you no longer qualify for the “budget” title? That said the starting budget for this build is about 1-2 exalts, (this should get you into a decent 5 link, the belt, some decent jewels, but not the rings). I am not through optimizing the build at this time, but I have spent ~15 exalts thus far and I feel like I am getting my moneys worth. Optimized I would not be surprised to have spent 40-80 exalts. It all depends on how crazy you want to get on your major purchases.

Damage scaling for this build is straightforward. We increase the amount of projectiles that are fired by Barrage using the gear below (anywhere between 15 and 22 projectiles is going to feel pretty great). After that we will be abusing Impale, and a few other mechanics. This is a good time to note that neither your tooltip, nor path of building will calculate your damage correctly. In fact, it’s difficult to really know how much damage you are doing without thinking about your range to target, and it’s size. Not to mention our damage changes every 8 seconds anyway. Suffice it to say, it’s plenty.

Haemophillia



These gloves are the reason for the name of the build. Just listen to the sound Barrage makes when you hit a mob and several of the monsters explode. That sound is so satisfying. Functionally speaking these gloves out-dps Tombfist quite nicely (since we both maim and intimidate) while adding quality of life by helping us evenly damage and destroy packs of monsters. That said, if I wanted to try out a single target setup, Maligaro’s Virtuosity is definitely worth a look)

2-3 Volley Fire Jewels.

No one in their right mind puts too much effort into barrage which makes getting great corruptions on jewels very cheap. Corrupting blood immunity cost me about 40c, and getting crit chance was around 10-20 per jewel. Not bad for a major defensive and offensive boost. From a damage optimization standpoint 3 jewels is probably not the best set-up, but it does make you more defensible. If you have access to great jewels or corrupted gear that adds additional arrows, I’d stick to 2 Volley Fire’s.

Lioneye’s Fall

This jewel gives us the ability to transform 6 claw nodes by the Shadow into bow nodes. These nodes give us crit, life and mana leech, chance to blind, and a bunch of damage. Nuf said?

Arborix

I initially planned to use Lioneye’s Glare for this build, and with the gear tweaked a bit it’s still a VERY viable option. That said, Arborix is just too damn perfect for this build to pass up. 2 additional projectiles, additional move speed, far shot or pseudo point blank, and either a bunch of evasion or a bunch of armor. Combine that with some very high physical damage, and you have exactly what we need.

Since the begining of this build I have made some tweaks to the way I use this particular piece of gear. The new POB link that the bottom should help explain some of these changes. Essentially, freeze and chill during Uber Elder were making the runs a bit rough. As a result I made the decision to incorporate Kaoms Roots



.....this led a to fairly significant repathing of the tree as I was no longer getting any evasion due to Resolute Technique. The good news is that we are now freeze/chill/temp chains immune. We also have MUCH more damage in single target. The bad news is that we move a bit slower and we lose the defensive sockets (which can be swapped in and out...but I prefer to live with the speed I will be rolling for the stiffer content just to get used to it).

2 rare elder rings with Life-Gain-On-Hit.

With Barrage we are going to hit our targets a lot (between 15 and 22 shots per attack * ~3 attacks per second). Even a small amount of LGOH can equate to Pre-Nerf-Vaal-pact like recovery. Between that and leech it is extremely difficult to get ganked to death.

Finally….Perserverance

This belt gives us permanent onslaught. The quality of life boost from this feature is mind blowing. I would like to write some sort of epic sonnet as to how much I like this belt, but I will simply say “It’s dirt cheap, it’s great, buy it”

Kaom’s Heart

I had a bit of a hard time deciding whether this was required gear, or if this was recommended gear. The build manages a pretty respectable health pool on a budget with high life gear, but kaoms is pretty hard to beat as an end-game goal. Remember: More Life = Less Death

Devoto’s Devotion

This helmet is best in slot, firing an additional projectile would be a great enchant (though expensive). Enough has been written about this helm that I am not going to add to it. There are other options (Rat’s nest, Starkonja’s…come to mind), this helmet gives us everything we need.’

Drillneck

I could probably do better than this…but it works well till you can find something that is a significan upgrade.

Dying Sun

This flask is very cheap this league (thank you molten strike nerf). It amplifies both our damage and the size of our corpse-explosions. Get one with reduced charges used so you can get 2 uses out of it.

Watcher’s Eye

I'll admit that I waited to post this guide until I could snag this particular piece of gear...but the pride interaction that gives us 2 additional impales is a VERY significant damage boost. The additional life is nice, and the additional mana allows us to run a higher level precision (late game). There are plenty of good secondary interactions you could get with this jewel….but my pic would probably be life gain on hit from vitality.

Up Last and Jewel with 2 mana Gained on hit.

Consider that barrage costs about 28 Mana, and we fire ~15 arrows each time we fire, it's pretty easy to have great sustain between that and leech even though we reserve down to extremely low levels.

For our main skill:

My Initial Setup for this build was to use the following combo.
Barrage > Brutality > Impale > Pierce > Maim > Vicious Projectiles
If I was running a Rigwalds Quills I might swap Pierce for Slower Projectiles.

This works, but is VERY dependant on your ability to position yourself correctly to knock mobs off. This is just not always practicable. To speed up clear speed I finally conceded to one do a bit of gear/gem swapping.

For Anything not Shaper and Up.
Barrage > Brutality > Impale > Chain > Maim > Vicious Projectiles

For Shaper and Up
Barrage > Brutality > Impale > Pierce > Maim > Vicious Projectiles

If you were in a TRUE single target scenario you could pull about a bit more damage by swapping pierce for slower projectiles, but the loss of quick add-killing ability is just not worth the additional damage in most cases.

Also, for general mapping I am using a Rare Shaper quiver with additional projectile, for Shaper and Up, I am using Drillneck.



Auras:
Pride, Vitality, Dread Banner, Enlighten.
I used Herald of Purity until I could get a decent Watcher's Eye with the Vitality life gain interaction. This works well for reservations. Note the enlighten is required to make Vitality work out. Precision interactions for Watcher's Eye could also be used but are quite expensive.

Misc Buffs:
Blood Rage, Ice Golem, Enhance, Dash
Enhance tied to dash is fantastic as it reduces the cooldown of the skill and makes it much more effective for repositioning.

Defensive Setup:
Cast on Damage Taken Lvl-10, Molten Shell Lvl-10, Poacher's Mark Lvl-13, Increased Duration
Since we do not generate endurance charges for this build, Molten Shell makes for the best defensive choice (Self Cast Vaal Molten Shell would be better, but I am lazy like that). Tying our defenses to Poacher's Mark also gives us some additional Life and Mana on hit...making the build fairly mod-proof as far as no-regen and no-leech maps are concerned. The extra frenzy charges are a nice bonus.

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