Crit Lightning Arrow Deadeye Build - Path of Exile 3.24

Are you looking for a good bow build that can destroy enemies with ease? If so, the Lightning Arrow Deadeye is definitely a worthy contender! If you are interested in creating this character, be sure to read our guide to learn everything you need to know about this build.

Basics

The Lightning Arrow Deadeye, as the name implies, is a build in Path of Exile that utilizes Lightning Arrow as the main attack skill. The gem converts 50% of your physical damage to lightning damage. What's more, the arrows hit three additional enemies near the main target, which is why it’s great for clearing maps. 

In 3.21, most players who use Lightning Arrow would anoint their amulets with Vengeant Cascade. This particular anoint-only passive skill ensured that the projectiles you fire would return to you, effectively hitting your foes twice.

Well, Vengeant Cascade has been reworked in Patch 3.22: Trial of the Ancestors. Instead of projectiles returning to you, this notable passive skill only increases the speed of returning projectiles by 150%. Vengeant Cascade, to put it bluntly, has become useless outside of very niche builds in PoE.

Fortunately, Grinding Gear Games (GGG) has allayed the fears of Lightning Arrow players by making Vengeant Cascade's previous effect more accessible. Instead of anointing the amulet, you will now use the new Returning Projectiles Support, which is almost the same as the 3.21 VC, albeit the projectiles that return to you deal less damage. Despite the slight nerf in damage, Lightning Arrow is still a pretty good bow skill to use in the current league!

In 3.23, the Lightning Arrow's base version can now hit two additional targets, similar to the labyrinth enchant in previous leagues. This can be achieved by using Gemcutter's Prisms to increase the quality of the gem to 20%.

The new Transfigured Gem, Lightning Arrow of Electrocution, works quite differently in that the projectiles stick to the final target as opposed to passing through it. Hence, the support gems that you'll use for this are slightly different compared to the base version to accommodate the mechanical changes. More on this in the appropriate section of the build guide.

To improve your single-target potential, you can utilize the Artillery Ballista. You can drop several ballista totems on the ground that will fire numerous projectiles in the area. In Path of Exile 3.24 Necropolis League, there is a new Transfigured Gem called the Artillery Ballista of Cross Strafe, which you can definitely try out.

Unlike the base version, the Artillery Ballista of Cross Strafe fires arrows that land in two perpendicular lines as opposed to the projectiles landing in random directions. This means that the damage is more concentrated, making it more potent against single targets like bosses and essence monsters.

One of the common questions people ask about Lightning Arrow builds is which projectile behavior they should choose: Pierce, Fork, or Chain. Among these three, you should only consider either Pierce or Chain. Pierce is great early on as it can make your projectiles pass through targets once they hit them. However, you must transition to Chain once you have Ricochet. When that happens, make sure to unspec any Pierce nodes you may have allocated on the passive tree.

This build is quite versatile in that you can take things off the ground with minimal investment. As you gain more currency, you can craft your endgame gear, which consists of a tri-element bow, a quiver that fires an additional arrow, and a pair of rare boots that provide you with Onslaught on kill that lasts for several seconds, among others. Read our ultimate crafting guide to learn how to craft these things.

When you have a good bow and quiver, you can build an MF (magic find) character. Do this if you want to farm a lot of stuff, though this definitely requires heavy investment. Don't worry, this build variation will also be discussed later in the guide.

Playstyle

So, how do you play the Lightning Arrow Deadeye? Well, you use your Flame Dash or Blink Arrow to move around the map. Look for juicy packs of monsters and unleash a barrage of Lightning Arrows toward them! When you encounter more challenging foes, drop your Artillery Ballista and fire your arrows until they get wiped out.

Because you only really need to think about firing arrows and dropping ballistas when eliminating enemies, you can focus on positioning yourself to get out of harm's way or to deal the most amount of damage possible.

The Lightning Arrow is so flexible that you can actually swap some of the gems that will be outlined in this build guide for something that you think works better for you. For example, you can use Blink Arrow so that you can traverse areas faster.

Ascendancy

As you can tell by the name of this build guide, the Deadeye is the only ascendancy class that perfectly complements Lightning Arrow. The Deadeye is a staple in many bow builds simply because of its notable passive skills.

When you finish your first labyrinth, you can get Gathering Winds. This gives you permanent Tailwind, which is a buff that increases your action speed. On top of that, every time you use an active skill, you gain one stack of Gale Force. Each Gale Force increases the effect of Tailwind by 15%, which goes up to a maximum of 150% at 10 stacks! If you don’t know, action speed in Path of Exile refers to a stat that encompasses your movement speed, attack speed, and how fast (or slow) your character performs actions.

For your second labyrinth, you'll take Ricochet. This allows your Lightning Arrow to chain an additional time. But, the cool thing about this ascendancy passive is that your projectiles have a 30% chance to chain when colliding with terrain. When you have Returning Projectiles Support, Ricochet can certainly help with map clear speeds. Note that if you're allocating some Pierce nodes on the passive tree, you can replace Ricochet with Far Shot instead.

Endless Munitions is one of the reasons why most bow builds utilize the Deadeye. This ascendancy passive makes your attack skills fire two additional projectiles. If you have the mod "Bow attacks fire an additional arrow" on your weapon and quiver, you can forgo Greater Multiple Projectiles Support in favor of a better support gem. Get this after the completion of the third labyrinth for sure!

For your fourth ascendancy passive, you can choose between Far Shot or Focal Point. Far Shot applies a "more" damage multiplier the farther the projectiles have traveled. Thanks to the new Returning Projectiles Support gem, your projectiles will always cover their maximum travel distance (150 units), ensuring that you get the most out of Far Shot every time you use Lightning Arrow.

Since you're going to use Sniper's Mark on this build, Focal Point is also a very good choice. It increases the effect of your marks by a whopping 75%. Moreover, this ascendancy passive serves as a defensive node because you'll take 25% less damage from the enemies near the marked target.

The choice for the final ascendancy passive is entirely up to you. Pick one that suits your playstyle. Don't worry, you have the option of taking all of them if you have enough currency to buy the Forbidden Jewel Set.

Gear

Although the Lightning Arrow Deadeye works really well with high-end gear, you can actually make the build work with some pieces of equipment that you can craft yourself. Let's first start with the weapon since it's quite important for the build.

Weapon

Your bow should be a rare one with an item level of 82+. There are two bases that you can choose from: Thicket Bow and Spine Bow. For your endgame gear, you should definitely invest in a good Spine Bow due to its inherently high critical strike chance.

A Thicket Bow is not bad at all, especially for your budget-to-mid-game setup. This bow has high attack speed, which makes it a great choice early on. Once you reach white or yellow maps, you typically allocate the keystone passive, Precise Technique, until you get enough pieces of gear to scale your critical strike chance to 60% or more.

No matter which bow you're going to use as a crafting base, the end result is a weapon that has all three elements on it (fire, cold, and lightning). The reason why you need a tri-element bow is that you're using Trinity Support as one of the support gems for your Lightning Arrow setup.

To put it simply, Trinity Support grants you increased elemental damage and elemental penetration if you have 50 resonance for each element. You'll know if you have maximum resonances by looking at the Trinity icon on the top left portion of the screen.

In order to get resonance, you only need at least two high-damaging elements. But, to maximize your overall damage output, having all three elements can do wonders! By firing a Lightning Arrow using a tri-element bow, you have a chance of inflicting Freeze, Shock, and Ignite when you deal a critical strike. That is just the nature of the different types of elements in Path of Exile.

Anyway, crafting your main weapon is very easy to do. We highly recommend that you get one with an item level of 82+ and a fractured flat elemental damage, preferably Tier 1 (T1) fire and cold. This makes it easier for you to get all three elemental damage types by spamming the bow with Screaming/Shrieking essences. If you don't have access to a bow with a fractured elemental mod, that's fine. You just have to obtain more essences to get a decent set of explicit modifiers when crafting. Here are the steps to crafting a relatively good bow on a budget:

1. Increase the quality of the bow to 20% by using Blacksmith's Whetstones
2. Spam it with Screaming/Shrieking Essence of Wrath until you get flat fire/cold damage (depending on your fractured mod, if any)
3. When you have all of the prefixes populated by added fire, cold, and lightning damage, go to your Crafting Bench and apply "Prefixes Cannot Be Changed"
4. Next, go to the Horticrafting Station and use Harvest Reforge Speed until you get "% Increased Attack Speed. Selecting this option will sometimes populate all of the suffixes on the bow". If that happens, you can settle with the bow until you have the currency to craft the endgame weapon. If you still have an open suffix, proceed to the next step
5. When you have attack speed and an open suffix from using "Reforge Speed", go to your Crafting Bench again and put the suffix, "20-24 to Strength and Intelligence, 21-25% Increased Critical Strike Chance"

For your endgame bow, the crafting steps are slightly different. You begin with Step 3 mentioned above, then you follow these steps:

1. After putting Prefixes Cannot Be Changed and use a Veiled Orb to get a juicy mod that can benefit the build
2. Before going to Jun and unveiling the mod, however, head to your Crafting Bench and put "5-6% Increased Damage per Power/Frenzy/Endurance Charge". Doing this blocks these mods from appearing on the list
3. Once that's done, go to Jun and unveil. The mod that you want has some attack speed on it, preferably "#% Increased Attack Speed while a Rare or Unique Enemy is Nearby" or "15% Chance to Trigger Level 1 Blood Rage When You Kill an Enemy, 13% Increased Attack Speed". If you got unlucky and both of these mods did not appear on the list, repeat the process until you get one of them
4. When you obtain the desired mod, go to your Crafting Bench and put "# to Dexterity". The tier of this suffix doesn't matter since you're just using it to block mods again
5. After that, use an Exalted Orb and hope that you get either a critical strike multiplier or attack speed (the former is more ideal, though)
6. To finish the craft, go to your Crafting Bench and apply "# to Strength and Intelligence, #% Increased Critical Strike Chance" suffix mod

Getting a fractured bow makes the entire crafting process so much easier, so it's best that you farm enough currency to purchase one from the trade website.

Quiver

For the Lightning Arrow Deadeye, nothing beats a well-crafted rare quiver. There are actually several good quivers you can use as a crafting base, namely Feathered Arrow Quiver (Projectile Speed), Broadhead Arrow Quiver (Attack Speed), Primal Arrow Quiver (Elemental Damage), and Penetrating Arrow Quiver (Pierce).

You'd want to get any of the above-mentioned quivers with an item level of 86. This is so that you can roll Tier 1 increased damage with bow skills. When you have secured your preferred quiver to craft on, you spam it with Deafening Essence of Torment until you get these mods:

• Adds # to # Lightning Damage to Attacks (from essence)
• + to Maximum Life
• % Increased Damage with Bow Skills
• Bow Attacks Fire an Additional Arrow
• +#% to Critical Strike Multiplier with Bows
• % Increased Attack Speed (Bench Craft)

Keep in mind that "Bow Attacks Fire an Additional Arrow" is a bit rare, so you may need a number of essences to obtain this. After getting the desired mods, you should have something like this:

Crafted Quiver (Endgame)

You can also settle with "Increased Critical Strike Chance with Bows" if the additional arrow mod eludes you.

Crafting a budget quiver is the same, albeit you will use either Screaming/Shrieking Essence of Torment. Once you are happy with the mods, bench-craft critical strike chance and you should be good to go until you can craft the endgame quiver.

Body Armor

For your body armor, you actually have two options. If you don't want to do crafting, you can settle with Hyrri's Ire. This unique Zodiac Leather Armor provides the following stats:

• +40 to 50 Dexterity
• 140-220% Increased Evasion Rating
• 25% Increased Chill Duration on Enemies
• (104-145) to (160-200) Added Cold Damage with Bow Attacks
• +30% Chance to Suppress Spell Damage

Hyrri's Ire provides a huge boost to your spell suppression chance. Equipping this body armor enables you to use your passive skill points on other nodes since it's so much easier to cap your spell suppression.

Additionally, the added cold damage with bow attacks ensures that you won't have problems activating your Trinity resonances. When you use Hyrri's Ire, make sure to get "15% Increased Maximum Life if there are no Life Modifiers on Equipped Body Armour" from the Life Mastery to get a considerable increase in HP.

If you do not mind dipping your toes into crafting, you can actually create good body armor using a rare (yellow) Zodiac Leather (for pure evasion) or General's Brigandine (for hybrid armor and evasion). Here are the steps:

1. Get a Zodiac Leather or General's Brigandine with an item level of 86+, preferably with a fractured T1 or T2 "% Chaos Resistance" or "Chance to Suppress Spell Damage" mod
2. Quality it up to 20% using Armourer's Scraps. If you have the currency, use Perfect Fossils to achieve 25% quality or above
3. After that, spam your preferred body armor with the Deafening Essence of Loathing. This guarantees that you get the mod, "+9-10% Increased Mana Reservation Efficiency of Skills"

4. Use as many essences as you need until you get:

   1. #% Chance to Suppress Spell Damage (if not fractured)
   2. % Chaos Resistance (if not fractured)
   3. #% Increased Armor and Evasion
   4. +# to Maximum Life (T1/T2)
   5. +9-10% Increased Mana Reservation Efficiency of Skills (from Essence)
5. Leave a prefix slot open so that you can put "6% of Physical Damage from Hits taken as Fire/Lightning Damage" from your Crafting Bench If your prefixes are fully populated, use a Lesser Eldritch Ember and an Eldritch Orb of Annulment to remove a prefix modifier, and then proceed to add the said mod
6. Finish the craft by using Eldritch Ichor to obtain "Anger has #% Increased Aura Effect" and Eldritch Embers to get "#% Increased Effect of Non-Curse Auras from your Skills"

During league start, use any armor/evasion-based chest armor you can find. Spam it with any essences you can get your hands on until you get elemental resistance, life, and attributes. Lesser Eldritch Ichors and Lesser Eldritch Embers are fine at this point in the game.

Helmet

The beauty of the Lightning Arrow Deadeye is that it's quite versatile when it comes to gear. This is quite evident in the helmet slot because there are several viable options available to you.

The Black Sun Crest grants you a huge boost to your attributes, which is quite useful if you pair it with Crystallised Omniscience. This helmet can be corrupted with a Vaal Orb to unlock certain implicits, such as:

• +2 to Level of Socketed Aura Gems
• +2 to Level of Socketed AoE Gems
• +2 to Level of Socketed Duration Gems
• +1 to Maximum Power Charges
• Socketed Skill Gems Get a 90% Cost & Reservation Multiplier
• 0.5% of Fire/Cold/Lightning Damage Leeched as Life
• #% Increased Effect of Cold Ailments
• #% Increased Effect of Shock

If you're having mana problems or you just want to insert an additional aura, you can craft a rare helmet using Pig-Faced Bascinet as a base. This helmet gives you the best armor and evasion values, making it the perfect choice if you're going the crafting route. Speaking of which, here are the steps to craft the helmet:

1. Make sure to get a Pig-Faced Bascinet with an item level of 85+ to roll T1 Spell Suppression. If you have enough currency, get one with a fractured INT or maximum life mods
2. Increase the quality of the helmet by using Armourer's Scraps or Perfect Fossils

3. Then, spam it with Deafening Essence of Loathing to get the following:

   1. Chance to Suppress Spell Damage (T1)
   2. +# to Maximum Life (if not fractured)
   3. # to Intelligence (if not fractured)
   4. +# to Armor, +# to Evasion Rating
   5. Accuracy Rating (if not yet hit capped) or Chaos Resistance
4. Leave a prefix slot open so that you can put "+1 to Level of Socketed AoE Gems/10% Increased Area of Effect" from your Crafting Bench. If you don't have an open slot, use a Lesser Eldritch Ember and an Eldritch Orb of Annulment to remove a prefix mod
5. After you have all of the explicit modifiers sorted out, use Eldritch Ichors to get "% Increased Mana Reservation Efficiency of Skills" and Eldritch Embers to acquire "% Reduced Mana Cost of Attacks"

Gloves

Some huge adjustments were made in the previous league that have affected the Lightning Arrow Deadeye. One of those changes involves Kaom's Spirit, where instead of generating 1 Rage per 100 life recovery per second, you now need 300! That is probably okay for builds that spec in life regeneration, but that is certainly not something that you'd want to do on this build. For this reason, you will go back to the basics: crafting.

There are two variations of the gloves that you're going to wear for this build. During league start, get either Essence of Greed (HP) or Essence of Envy (Chaos Resistance). As much as you can, get at least "Screaming" essences to get better stats.

Then, get armor/evasion or pure evasion-based gloves. Next, spam it with essences until you get "% Chance to Suppress Spell Damage". The tier of the mods doesn't matter early on, but as you progress through Path of Exile, you will need to start saving for the endgame gloves.

Speaking of which, the base for the endgame gloves can be obtained from the boss in the Temple of Atzoatl. The gloves in question contain the mod "+(46-48)% to Cold Resistance, (30-50)% Increased Damage with Hits Against Chilled Enemies."

Acquiring the gloves is just half the battle; you still need to fracture it on your own. To do that, make sure that the gloves have three other mods on them. This is a requirement because Fracturing Orb can only be used on an item that has at least four modifiers. You have a 25% chance of fracturing the desired mod. Just hope that you're able to do that successfully.

Because the gloves that can drop from the Temple Atzoatl boss have an item level of 85, you can roll T1 Spell Suppression using essences.

Follow the rest of the steps to craft the endgame gloves for the Lightning Arrow Deadeye:

1. You will be spamming essences on the gloves. You can choose any essence you want, so long as they guarantee a suffix rather than a prefix. The reason is that you'll be using a Veiled Chaos Orb later on. If you need recommendations, Deafening Essence of Envy (Chaos Resistance) and Deafening Essence of Zeal (Attack Speed) are great
2. Spam the gloves with your favorite essences until you get T1 Spell Suppression, preferably chaos resistance or attributes. Fire and Lightning Resistances are good as well, particularly when you're not capped yet
3. Next, go to your Crafting Bench and put "Suffixes Cannot Be Changed". Then, use a Veiled Orb. Before you unveil the mod, head to your Crafting Bench and put "% of Physical Damage Converted to Fire/Cold/Lightning". Any of those elements are fine. This is just to block them from appearing, though keep in mind that whichever you choose among the three, will be the only one that's not going to appear during the unveiling
4. After you've put the mod, go to Jun and unveil. You're hoping to get "+2 to Level of Socketed Projectile Gems, Projectiles Pierce an Additional Target". If successful, go back to the Crafting Bench and put "% Increased Damage While Leeching". If the mod did not pop up during the unveil, repeat step 3
5. The final step of the process is to use Grand Eldritch Embers to get "Gain 1 Rage on Hit with Attacks". This is the only reliable way to generate Rage since Kaom's Spirit has been nerfed to the ground in the previous league. Aside from that, spam the gloves with Grand Eldritch Ichors until you get "%Increased Effect of Your Marks".
6. If you're adventurous and you want to get the best possible mods on these gloves, you can use an Orb of Conflict after using the Eldritch Currencies mentioned in the previous step. This orb works by elevating one of the implicit mods to the next tier, while the other is downgraded to a lower tier. Use as many Orbs of Conflict as needed to achieve the "Perfect" Rage on hit with attacks Searing Exarch implicit. You can see this by pressing the "Alt" key. This step is only optional, so don't feel forced to do this

Although the Rage generation is not as fast as the combo of Voll's Vision and Kaom's Spirit in the past, this endgame pair of gloves is definitely a worthy contender thanks to the Temple of Atzoatl mod and the Rage implicit modifier from Eldritch Embers. When you wear the gloves, you can use the Berserk gem for even more damage!

Boots

Hopefully, you are into crafting because you're going to create another piece of gear worthy of the Lightning Arrow Deadeye: the boots. If you need an armor and evasion base, you can choose the Dragonscale Boots. On the other hand, if you want pure evasion, the Slink Boots is the best one. Acquire any of them with an item level of 85+ to roll T1 spell suppression.

That being said, you need to craft your own pair of boots because you want to put the Onslaught mod on there. To do that, you can follow the steps outlined below:

1. Increase the quality of the boots to make it easier to obtain high-tier mods

2. Next, spam it with Deafening Essence of Loathing for these suffixes:

   1. Chance to Suppress Spell Damage (T1/T2)
   2. Chance to Avoid Elemental Ailments (from essence)
   3. Chaos Resistance
3. Make sure that you have an open prefix to put "Suffixes Cannot Be Changed" from the Crafting Bench
4. Then, use a Veiled Orb to obtain a prefix modifier
5. Before you head to Jun, go to your Crafting Bench first and put "#% Increased Evasion Rating" Doing this will block any evasion mods from getting unveiled
6. Once that's done, go to Jun to unveil the mod. Your objective is to get the prefix, "25-30% Increased Movement Speed, 13-16% Chance to Gain Onslaught for 4 Seconds on Kill"
7. After obtaining the said mod, go to your Crafting Bench again and put "+70 to Maximum Life"
8. If you still have an open prefix, use an Exalted Orb to fill it up

Take note that there are three possible movement speed mods that you can unveil from Jun, which means that you have roughly a 33% chance of getting the desired one. If you do not get the Onslaught version, you have to repeat steps 3 to 8.

To finish this crafting project, use Eldritch Ichors for "#% Chance to Avoid Elemental Ailments" and Eldritch Embers for "#% Increased Action Speed".

For the budget version, just obtain any evasion-based boots you can with at least an item level of 68 for Tier 3 and 76 for Tier 2 spell suppression. Next, spam any Screaming Essences of your choosing as long as they grant a guaranteed suffix. Screaming Essence of Envy is good, but if that is too expensive, you can go for Spite (INT) or Rage (STR).

Spam the boots with essences until you get spell suppression. If you don't have any movement speed mod, just put one using the Crafting Bench.

Amulet

The amulet and ring slots for the Lightning Arrow Deadeye are actually quite flexible. For amulets, you have a couple of viable options depending on your budget. If you're still in the process of putting up some of the gear mentioned above, you can pick Hyrri’s Truth. This unique Jade Amulet is very affordable and has all of the goodies that you’d want to have for the build, including:

• Grants Level 30 Precision
• +40 to 80 Dexterity
• +25-50% to Global Critical Strike Multiplier
• Bow Attacks Have Culling Strike
• Precision Has 100% Increased Mana Reservation Efficiency

Hyrri's Truth provides a huge boost to your accuracy rating thanks to level 30 Precision. What's more, because this amulet also grants 100% increased mana reservation efficiency for the said aura, activating it has the same mana cost as if Precision was set to just level 12.

In addition, your Lightning Arrow hits have a culling strike, meaning enemies below 10% of their maximum life are instantly killed. This really helps improve your map clear speed by a lot!

Although this is optional, you can corrupt Hyrri's Truth to obtain the following implicit mods:

• Anger has #% Increased Aura Effect
• #% Increased Attack Speed
• # Increased Elemental Damage with Attack Skills
• +1 to All Maximum Resistances
• #% Increased Strength/Intelligence
• +% to All Elemental Resistances
• #% Movement Speed

Once you transition to your endgame gear, the best-in-slot amulet for the Lightning Arrow Deadeye is the Crystallised Omniscience. This unique Onyx Amulet is quite special because it converts all of your attributes (STR, DEX, and INT) into a pseudo-attribute known as Omniscience.

The said amulet gives you +1 to all elemental resistances for every 15 Omniscience you have. But, the biggest reason why you'd ultimately go for the Crystallised Omniscience in the endgame is that the amulet grants you 1% elemental penetration per 15 Omniscience. This is why most people who use this particular amulet stack as many raw attributes as they can to pump up their Omniscience.

As a rule of thumb, aim to have at least 900 Omniscience. Of course, the higher the number, the better the results. You can achieve high Omniscience by allocating attribute nodes on the passive tree or getting STR, DEX, or INT mods on some pieces of gear.

It is important to note that because all of your attributes are converted to Omniscience when you have the Crystallised Omniscience amulet equipped, you won't get their inherent bonuses, such as HP from STR, accuracy from DEX, and mana from INT. Hence, you may have to change some of the mods on your equipment to account for any deficiencies.

The Crystallised Omniscience can be obtained by defeating The Searing Exarch. It can be purchased from the trade website for some Divine Orbs as well.

For anointments, you can choose any of the viable options below:

• Assassination

  • +25% to Critical Strike Multiplier
  • 25% Increased Critical Strike Chance
  • Requires Black Oil, Opalescent Oil, Golden Oil

• Utmost Might

  • +40 Strength
  • 8% Increased Strength
  • Requires Amber Oil, Azure Oil, Crimson Oil
  • Only use if you equip Crystallised Omniscience

• True Strike

  • +15% to Critical Strike Multiplier
  • 45% Increased Critical Strike Chance
  • Requires Teal Oil, Crimson Oil, Black Oil

• Deadly Inclinations

  • +30 Dexterity
  • 16% Increased Projectile Damage
  • 18% Increased Evasion Rating
  • +12 to Maximum Life
  • Requires Verdant Oil, Black Oil, Golden Oil

• Trickery

  • 20% Increased Critical Strike Chance
  • 20% Increased Damage
  • +10 to Dexterity and Intelligence
  • Requires Verdant Oil (2x), Black Oil

• Ash, Frost, and Storm

  • 30% Increased Elemental Damage
  • 30% Increased Effect of Non-Damaging Ailments
  • 10% Chance to Freeze, Shock, and Ignite
  • Requires Crimson Oil (2x), Sepia Oil

• Throatseeker

  +30% to Critical Strike Multiplier
• Requires Amber Oil, Violet Oil, Opalescent Oil

• Avatar of the Hunt

  • 30% Increased Damage with Bows
  • 6% Increased Movement Speed
  • 30% Increased Damage over Time with Bow Skills
  • +200 to Evasion Rating
  • Requires Clear Oil, Opalescent Oil (2x)

Rings

When it comes to rings, you'll have to craft them yourself. Fortunately, it is not that hard to do. You just need to get good rings to start with. Some of the recommended base rings to use are Amethyst Ring for chaos resistance, Diamond Ring for more critical strike chance, and Two-Stone Rings for more elemental resistance. Make sure they're at least item level 84 to get T1 rolls.

There are a couple of ways to craft the rings. If you're crafting a ring for Crystallised Omniscience, use Deafening Essence of Sorrow (DEX), Deafening Essence of Rage (STR), or Deafening Essence of Spite (INT) to get a guaranteed attribute mod. Spam any of these attribute essences on the rare (yellow) ring until you get the following explicit modifiers:

• +# to Dexterity
• +# to Strength
• +# to Intelligence
• +# to Maximum Life
• #% Elemental Damage with Attack Skills
• Non-channelling Skills have -7 to Total Mana Cost (Bench Craft)

It's easier to craft rings for Crystallised Omniscience if one of the attributes is fractured. Therefore, save up some currency and purchase a couple with a fractured T1 attribute roll from the trade website.

The rings you equip can solve problems with your resistances as well. For instance, if you're having trouble capping your chaos resistance, you can use the "Reforge Chaos" option from the Harvest Bench to get a guaranteed chaos res roll.

For more damage, you can spam the rings with Deafening Essence of Torment (Lightning), Suffering (Cold), or Anguish (Fire) for that flat elemental damage roll.

If you're wondering where you can get the mod, "Non-channeling Skills have -7 to Total Mana Cost", it can be unlocked by unveiling a ring that is dropped by Elreon.

The Taming - a unique Prismatic Ring that you can acquire by selling Berek's Grip, Berek's Pass, and Berek's Respite to the vendor, grants these mods:

• 20% Increased Damage with Hits and Ailments per Freeze, Shock, or Ignite on the Enemy
• +20-30% to All Elemental Resistances
• 30% Increased Elemental Damage
• 10% Chance to Freeze, Shock, and Ignite
• 30% Increased Elemental Damage with Attack Skills

The Taming provides a huge boost in damage, as well as good elemental resistances. The only downside is that the said ring doesn't give you HP, so you may have to get mods that increase maximum life elsewhere.

Belt

Two unique belts are great for the Lightning Arrow Deadeye. The Headhunter is a unique leather belt that increases your damage against rare monsters. Its main attraction is that you gain all of the modifiers a rare monster has after killing them, which lasts for 60 seconds. When you farm red maps, the Headhunter gives you so many rare monster modifiers that you can clear entire screens full of enemies quickly and easily!

Even though the Soul Eater monster mod has been nerfed in Path of Exile 3.24 Necropolis League, it is still a noteworthy buff that you can steal with the Headhunter.

Another great unique belt that you can equip is the Mageblood. With this belt, the effects of four magic utility flasks are up all the time. For this reason, you want your flasks to have mods that increase their effectiveness for maximum effect. Although the Mageblood is not cheap, every PoE currency you spend to purchase the belt is definitely worth it!

Both of the aforementioned unique belts are great, but they might be out of reach for you. Don't fret, you can craft and use an item level 85+ Stygian Vise instead. You can spam it with different essences depending on your needs.

If you are using Crystallised Omniscience, use Deafening Essence of Sorrow (DEX) or Spite (INT). You should use these essences because rare belts cannot roll Dexterity or Intelligence naturally.

For chaos resistance, you can use Harvest Reforge Chaos until you get these explicit modifiers:

• Regenerate # Life per Second (T1/T2)
• Fire/Cold/Lightning Resistances
• +# to Maximum Life
• % Increased Elemental Damage with Attacks (Bench-Craft)
• % Increased Damage (if using Warlord-influenced belt)
• % Increased Maximum Life (if using Hunter-influenced belt)

At some point, you should aim for 100% ailment immunity. One of the ways you can achieve this is by equipping the Stormshroud jewel, but it only works if you have the mod, "chance to avoid being shocked". For this reason, you can use the Deafening Essence of Torment to give you a good chunk of shock avoidance. Additionally, the Stygian Vise allows you to insert an abyss jewel. You can get shock avoidance from such jewels as well.

Flasks

• Diamond Flask
• Jade Flask
• Amethyst Flask
• Quicksilver Flask (for mapping)
• Granite Flask/Stibnite Flask (for bossing/improved survivability)

The Lightning Arrow Deadeye is a glass cannon build. It can hit hard and fast, but it cannot take a lot of hits. To improve survivability, you can use a Jade Flask and Granite Flask to boost your evasion rating and armor, respectively.

For the flask mods, aim to get the following:

• 17% Increased Attack Speed during Effect (of the Dove)
• 60% Increased Evasion Rating during Effect (of the Impala)
• 40% Additional Elemental Resistances (of the Rainbow)
• 14% Increased Movement Speed (of the Cheetah)
• 60% Increased Armor during Effect (of the Armadillo) (Only use this mod if resistances are already capped and you're wearing hybrid armor and evasion gear)
• 55% Chance to Avoid Being Shocked during Effect (of Bog Moss) (for Stormshroud)

It is highly recommended that you use a Life Flask with the "Seething" or "Bubbling" prefix for your fifth flask until you're comfortable with the playstyle. You can replace this with a Bottled Faith or Dying Sun later on if you want to.

Jewels

There is a wide assortment of jewels that you can use for this build. Chief among them is a Watcher's Eye unique Prismatic Jewel. This thing can be dropped by the Elder (2-mod) or Uber Elder (3-mod). Anyway, the Watcher's Eye can roll a bunch of different mods that can affect your character when you have certain buffs turned on. That being said, you can get any two (or three) of these Watcher's Eye mods, whichever fits your budget:

• #% Increased Fire Damage While Affected by Anger
• #% to Critical Strike Multiplier While Affected by Anger
• #% Increased Attack Speed While Affected by Precision
• Gain a Flask Charge When You Deal a Critical Strike While Affected by Precision
• +# to Critical Strike Multiplier While Affected by Precision
• #% Increased Movement Speed While Affected by Grace
• #% Chance to Suppress Spell Damage While Affected by Grace
• #Regenerate # Life per Second While Affected by Vitality
• Gain # Life per Enemy Hit While Affected by Vitality
• #% of Damage Leeched as Life While Affected by Vitality

Unlike other builds in Path of Exile, the Lightning Arrow Deadeye is not a tanky character. Although you can allocate some passive skill points to increase your maximum life, you have to bolster your defenses to improve survivability as well. One way you can do that is by making sure that you are immune to elemental ailments. This can be achieved by equipping Stormshroud or Ancestral Vision.

When you use Stormshroud, you must have the mod, "chance to avoid being shocked", on your gear. That's because this mod also applies to all elemental ailments when this jewel is placed in an open socket on the passive tree.

If you opt for Ancestral Vision, you can get as much as 50% chance to avoid elemental ailments, provided that your spell suppression is capped at 100%. Ancestral Vision is best paired with self-crafted boots that provide at least 50% ailment avoidance, which is doable with Deafening Essence of Loathing for the explicit mod and Grand Eldritch Ichors for the implicit.

Another great jewel to add to your Lightning Arrow Deadeye is Lioneye's Fall. This unique Viridian Jewel converts all melee passive modifiers in its radius to bow modifiers. This should be placed in the jewel socket located above the Blood Drinker notable passive.

Lethal Pride is a Timeless Jewel that improves the passives in its radius by adding some juicy bonuses. Place Lethal Pride in the jewel socket above Fervour since a huge chunk of your passive points are allocated in this area. The bonuses that you should aim for include:

• 5% Chance to Deal Double Damage
• 4% Increased Maximum Life
• 5% Strength
• +20 to Strength
• 12% Increased Totem Placement Speed (if you use Artillery Ballista)

While you can certainly spend your passive points on the nodes that are naturally on the tree, you do have the option of using cluster jewels for even better notables.

Get an 8-passive Large Cluster Jewel (bow base) with any three of these notable passives:

• Arcing Shot

  • Arrows gain Critical Strike Chance as they travel farther, up to 100% Increased Critical Strike Chance
  • Arrows gain Damage as they travel farther, dealing up to 50% increased Damage with Hits to Targets

• Martial Prowess

  • 20% Increased Attack Damage
  • 6% Increased Attack Speed
  • 15% Increased Global Accuracy Rating
  • 20% Increased Damage with Ailments from Attack Skills

• Calamitous

  • 30% Increased Elemental Damage with Attack Skills
  • 10% Chance to Freeze, Shock, and Ignite
  • 15% Increased Effect of Non-Damaging Ailments

• Feed the Fury

  • 0.4% of Attack Damage Leeched as Life
  • 30% Increased Damage while Leeching
  • 15% Increased Attack Speed while Leaching

• Fuel the Fight

  • 8% Increased Attack Speed
  • 0.4% of Attack Damage Leeched as Mana
  • 20% Increased Damage while Leeching

You can also fit in at least two Medium Cluster Jewels into the build. Get at least one with a critical strike chance base to roll Quick Getaway and Pressure Points using Harvest Reforge Caster.

The other should be one with projectile speed as a base. This is so that you can roll Eye to Eye and Repeater. You can replace Eye to Eye with Streamlined if you are using Far Shot from the Deadeye ascendancy. Use Harvest Reforge Caster for this one as well.

Gems

This build is quite versatile when it comes to the support gems that you can use. You can find the main ones below:

Weapon

• Lightning Arrow
• Returning Projectiles Support
• Inspiration Support
• Awakened Elemental Damage with Attacks
• Increased Critical Damage Support/Mirage Archer
• Trinity

Lightning Arrow is actually pretty good now, especially because you no longer have to rely on alt-quality gems. The base version already grants "Lightning Arrow Hits 2 Additional Enemies" which was previously only available via a labyrinth enchantment. Now, you simply use Gemcutter's Prism to increase the gem's quality to 20% and you can enjoy this effect without heavy investment! You do have the option of corrupting the gem with a Vaal Orb in the hopes of turning it into Vaal Lightning Arrow. The Vaal Skill is helpful in clearing maps, which is quite useful during the few weeks of a new league when you still don't have the endgame gear.

Returning Projectiles is a support gem that makes your Lightning Arrow projectiles return to you after they've reached their maximum travel distance. This is similar to Vengeant Cascade before it got reworked a couple of leagues ago. While the projectiles that come back to you deal less damage, you can compensate for this by taking Far Shot, Long Shot, and Arcing Shot on the passive tree.

While the base Lightning Arrow gem works fine, you could replace it with Lightning Arrow of Electrocution if you want to. If you do, make sure to remove the Returning Projectiles Support gem and replace it with either Increased Critical Strikes Support if you';re not crit-capped or Overcharge Support so that you have a reliable way of inflicting Shock to your enemies for more damage. Besides that, remove all Pierce nodes you have on your passive tree and put those points into nodes that improve your critical strike chance, attributes, or projectile speed/damage, whichever you need at the moment.

Inspiration Support got better in Patch 3.23. The new version now reduces Lightning Arrow's mana cost by 5% at max gem quality. This effect was previously available in the "Divergent" quality version of the gem, so it's nice to know that it is now placed in the base version.

Awakened Elemental Damage with Attacks is self-explanatory. It provides a huge boost to your elemental damage. At level 5, your Lightning Arrow damage cannot be reflected, allowing you to freely run maps with the elemental reflect mod.

Increased Critical Damage is a support gem that increases the critical strike multiplier of the main attack gem it's attached to. Get this support gem to level 21 by corrupting it with a Vaal Orb. Doing so grants you a sizable boost of 150% to Lightning Arrow's critical strike multiplier!

An alternative to Increased Critical Damage Support is Mirage Archer Support. Whenever you fire your arrows at the enemy, you will summon a Mirage Archer that will use Lightning Arrow as well.'

Trinity Support gives Lightning Arrow increased elemental damage and elemental penetration. Because you're using a tri-element bow for this build, you'll have no problems with this support gem's Resonance mechanic.

You can also swap Trinity Support for Hypothermia Support for that "more" cold damage multiplier and a higher chance to freeze enemies that are chilled.

Body Armor

• Artillery Ballista/Artillery Ballista of Cross Strafe
• Awakened Elemental Damage with Attacks
• Inspiration Support
• Awakened Elemental Focus
• Increased Critical Damage Support
• Focused Ballista Support

Lightning Arrow, by itself, does poor single-target damage. To aid you in dealing with tougher enemies, you can use this ballista setup.

Artillery Ballista lets you drop up to four ballista totems on the battlefield, improving your overall damage immensely. It got a huge buff in the past league, where it now fires an additional arrow per volley instead of providing 20% fire damage. This should be linked to Focused Ballista Support for that increased damage and totem placement speed. The disadvantage of using this support gem, however, is that the ballistas only fire when you do. But, that is not an issue at all considering the sheer firepower these ballista totems provide.

The new Artillery Ballista of Cross Strafe is a new Transfigured Gem that was introduced in the 3.24 Necropolis League. Unlike the original version, this one fires arrows that land in two perpendicular lines, which hit enemies in a more concentrated area as a result. You can experiment with this one or the original version and see what works best for you.

Awakened Elemental Focus is a support gem that boosts the damage of your Artillery Ballista by up to 39% at max level and 20% gem quality. Furthermore, at level 5, Awakened Elemental Focus raises the level of your ballista gem by one. There is a noteworthy negative to using this support gem, though, and that is your ballistas cannot inflict elemental ailments with their projectiles.

If you don't mind a slower totem placement speed, you can replace Focused Ballista Support with Awakened Added Cold Damage Support. The advantage of doing this is that your Artillery Ballistas will attack enemies on their own. Faster Attacks Support is also a viable alternative.

Helmet

• Anger
• Precision/Vaal Haste
• Vaal Grace
• Enlighten Support

You're probably wondering why it's best that you use Anger over Hatred or Wrath. Well, there are a few good reasons. For one, Anger grants added fire damage as opposed to Hatred. When put against Wrath, Anger has higher minimum damage compared to the said lightning aura. Moreover, Anger can roll the Watcher's Eye mod that increases your critical strike multiplier. Wrath only has the modifier for increased critical strike chance.

Precision is primarily there to help you cap your accuracy. You should have a 100% chance to hit enemies to make every projectile count. Besides that, this aura increases your critical strike chance by up to 58%. Unlike most of the aura gems in Path of Exile, Precision requires you to reserve flat mana rather than a percentage of your total mana. For this reason, you can opt not to level this gem to the max, particularly when your accuracy is already capped.

If you are wearing the Hyrri's Truth unique amulet or if your hit chance is already sorted out, you can replace Precision with Vaal Haste. Keep in mind that you are only using this for the Vaal skill since you do not have enough mana left to activate the aura. Still, the boost in attack speed is a welcome bonus!

For your third aura, you can go for Grace. Grace gives a sizable boost to your evasion rating. You can use a Vaal Orb to corrupt the gem if you want. Vaal Grace is another way to improve survivability by granting a 15% chance to evade attack hits.

Enlighten Support increases the mana reservation efficiency of the gems it is linked to. If your budget permits it, get a Level 4 Enlighten gem so that you'll have a comfortable amount of unreserved mana for your Lightning Arrow.

Gloves

• Frenzy of Onslaught
• Power Charge on Critical
• Ensnaring Arrow
• Manaforged Arrows Support

Frenzy is an attack gem that gives you the ability to gain a Frenzy Charge on hit. Gem quality now offers 2% more attack damage and attack speed per Frenzy Charge, which is a bit more balanced than the raw 10% increased attack speed prior to this patch.

Once you gain access to its Transfigured version, you will replace the base gem with Frenzy of Onslaught. This Transfigured Gem is nearly identical to the normal Frenzy except that you gain the Onslaught buff by consuming all of the Frenzy Charges you have on you when you hit an enemy while at maximum charges. When you get your hands on this, you do not have to worry about getting a pair of boots with the Onslaught mod on it. Instead, you can swap it with one that has a 10% increased movement speed if you haven’t been hit recently.

Power Charge on Critical is a support gem that, as the name implies, allows you to get Power Charges every time you deal a critical strike to the enemy.

Ensnaring Arrow allows you to ensnare enemies that are hit, causing them to take increased projectile damage as a result.

All of these gems should be linked to Manaforged Arrows Support. That's because this gem triggers the bow attack skills it is linked to after consuming 300% of their mana cost. For example, Frenzy costs 10 mana to use. After you spend a total of 30 mana with Lightning Arrow, Frenzy is triggered automatically.

Boots

• Sniper's Mark
• Mark on Hit Support
• Flame Dash
• Blink Arrow

Sniper's Mark puts a curse on an enemy, making them take increased damage from projectiles. This is linked to Mark on Hit Support so that the curse is applied automatically when you hit a rare or unique monster. Lifetap is included to let you apply Sniper's Mark without worrying about mana.

In Patch 3.24, Sniper's Mark has been dealt a huge blow. Now, a 20/20 Sniper's Mark only makes cursed enemies take 34% increased damage from projectile hits. But more importantly, it no longer scales to four additional targets at the max level. This means that your arrows will only split towards two additional targets now, which can have a noticeable impact on your map-clearing speed.

On the positive side, replacing Sniper's Mark with Assassin's Mark is now a viable thing to do. Assassin's Mark increases your crit chance and critical strike multiplier against affected enemies, so you can certainly use this one as a good alternative.

Blink Arrow is a means of zipping through the map. Flame Dash is a commonly used travel skill in PoE because it grants you three charges that you can use in quick succession. If you do not like how Blink Arrow performs, you can replace it with any gem that you like.

Tattoos

Even though the removal of the secondary ascendancy classes is a huge blow to any build in Path of Exile, the good news is that GGG has brought back Tattoos to compensate for that.

Here are some of the tattoos that you can use for the Lightning Arrow Deadeye:

• Tattoo of the Arohongui Warrior

  • 5% Increased Cold Damage

• Tattoo of the Ramako Sniper

  • 5% Increased Projectile Speed

• Tatoo of the Tasalio Scout

  • 4% Increased Effect of Your Marks

• Tattoo of the Ramako Archer

  • 5% Increased Global Accuracy Rating

• Tattoo of the Hinekora Storyteller

  • +3% to Chaos Resistance

• Tattoo of the Valako Shaman

  • 5% Increased Lightning Damage

• Tattoo of the Valako Scout

  • 10% Reduced Effect of Shock on You

• Tattoo of the Valako Warrior

  • 5% Chance to Shock

Passive Tree

Magic Find Version

The beauty of the Lightning Arrow Deadeye is that you can tweak the build to suit your needs. In fact, you can even make this your magic find (MF) character if you want to. You just have to equip some unique items that increase your item rarity and item quantity. Here is a rundown:

• Body Armor: Greed's Embrace
• Boots: Goldwyrm
• Rings: Ventor's Gamble
• Amulet: Eyes of the Greatwolf (with increased quantity of items found as an implicit modifier)
• Flask: Divination Distillate

When using Divination Distillate, you should have the Petrified Blood aura activated so that the flask's effect will remain even when unreserved life is filled. You could also opt for Master Surgeon via the Forbidden Jewel set, though they are very expensive.

Because magic find builds are very squishy, you can replace a couple of your gems to fit Portal and Cast on Death. This is so that a portal to your hideout opens up automatically when you die, thus enabling you to get back into the action shortly after.

Now, before you try to make a magic find version of the Lightning Arrow Deadeye, it is vital that you have a very good weapon and quiver. Aim to get T1 flat elemental damage mods on the bow. Furthermore, the suffix, "Bow attacks fire additional an arrow" on both the weapon and quiver can truly help increase your damage output.

POB

Lightning Arrow (Main)

Lightning Arrow (Magic Find)

Final Thoughts

The Lightning Arrow Deadeye is one of the best and most fun builds to play in Path of Exile. It is very flexible in terms of the gear and gems that you can use.

With enough investment, you can change things up a bit to create a magic find character using Lightning Arrow as your main skill. Just make sure that you have the right equipment for the job to make it comfortable to play.

This article should only serve as a guide to help you build the Lightning Arrow Deadeye the right way. Don't be afraid to experiment with different gems and equipment combinations. For instance, swapping Grace for Purity of Elements is great if you want ailment immunity without a huge investment.

Be sure to bookmark this guide so that you have something to fall back on, especially if you forgot a thing or two.

With all of that said, good luck on your adventures in Wraeclast, Exile!

PROS:

+Fast mapper

+Flexible in terms of the gems and equipment you can use

+Can be used as a league starter

+Scales really well with higher investment

+Can be built as a magic find character

CONS:

-Has poor single-target damage without the right gear

-Glass Cannon (not a tanky build)