So it starts off like this, I was planning on making a really beefy marauder with lots of armor and life but as I played the plan started to change significantly.

After the first boss I killed, I picked up a yellow bow that could basically one shot everything ( I know, in the beginning it doesn't really matter ). However, that got me thinking, if I can just be a really tanky marauder but have good damage via ranged weapon so that even if they did get close to me, it wouldn't matter, why bother with a sword and board? The mitigation would be higher, sure, but whats the point of that if they just die before they even get close to me? ( bosses excluded ).

So far, I'm almost to act 2 and it's working surprisingly well. Tons of life, armor, and the only downfall really is that I have to rely on the base damage of the ranged weapon as I don't have much damage boosting effects in the skill tree, which isn't TOO much of a problem, as I still kill things rather quickly.

Weird build but effective, and I've yet to die!

You guys got any weird builds ?

if youre gonna stick with this setup you should move ahead the passive skill that makes your str. to increase bow dmg, dont remember its name but its in the duelist part of the skill tree,,

with that said, act1 is easy, weird setups have to wait with real testing of its usefullness to higher dif. settings,,, but ofc thats a part of POE's magic, loads of weird setups possible, great base for theorycrafting and experiments,,,

I find that any build works, you will be able progress no matter how inefficient your build is, because the game is way too forgiving IMO especially at the beginning. I am in act 3 without a single death on my main, I've messed around with totally wrong builds (like unarmed lol) and all it did is slow down the kill speed.

Otherwise with any logical build (2h DMG marauder with life regen), you are basically running around 1shotting all normal mobs and bursting down bosses with your most powerful special.

It is fun, but where is the challenge?

If there is one glaring problem with PoE that they have not pushed this genre much, they made a hell of a Diablo clone...but that's it.

This Is Actually Not An Uncommon Build, Lots OF Bow MARAUDERS On The Forums, The Game Also GETS A Lot HARDER At Higher Diffs, You Can Make It THROUGH The First ONE With ANY Build.

Sorry About The Caps, Phone Is Acting Up

Originally posted by tzj2006

This Is Actually Not An Uncommon Build, Lots OF Bow MARAUDERS On The Forums, The Game Also GETS A Lot HARDER At Higher Diffs, You Can Make It THROUGH The First ONE With ANY Build.

 

Sorry About The Caps, Phone Is Acting Up

Sad too hear, I thought I was being slightly special lol I've only seen my marauder with a bow in town so I was like, "..Interesting.." haha, should have figured as much.

Originally posted by halfmystic

Originally posted by tzj2006

This Is Actually Not An Uncommon Build, Lots OF Bow MARAUDERS On The Forums, The Game Also GETS A Lot HARDER At Higher Diffs, You Can Make It THROUGH The First ONE With ANY Build.

 

Sorry About The Caps, Phone Is Acting Up

Sad too hear, I thought I was being slightly special lol I've only seen my marauder with a bow in town so I was like, "..Interesting.." haha, should have figured as much.

Doesn't Mean THERE Isn't Something Out THERE Yet To Be Discovered :-)  There Are No Real COOKIE Cutter Builds, Lots OF Variation

If I was going to make a tanky archer I'd definately delete the marauder and make them as a dualist. They are closer to the large pack of projectile nodes from the Archer class starting point and are still very close to the marauder's tanking nodes. They have their own bow and tanky nodes right from the start as well. It would be even easier than you are finding it now.

The marauder has very few dexterity nodes around it's starting point so you are going to have to head over to the dualist and archer's areas anyway because you'll need more Dex to be able to equip the higher level bows. Not a problem to start with but it will be later on... around level 50. I think being a bow marauder will end up biting you in the ass.. You'll have to waste too many points to get over to the ranged nodes you'll want. My advice is to start again now before you get to the point where you're gimped, compared to other archers, and will probably start again anyway.

Originally posted by Vannor

If I was going to make a tanky archer I'd definately delete the marauder and make them as a dualist. They are closer to the large pack of projectile nodes from the Archer class starting point and are still very close to the marauder's tanking nodes. They have their own bow and tanky nodes right from the start as well. It would be even easier than you are finding it now.

The marauder has very few dexterity nodes around it's starting point so you are going to have to head over to the dualist and archer's areas anyway because you'll need more Dex to be able to equip the higher level bows. Not a problem to start with but it will be later on... around level 50. I think being a bow marauder will end up biting you in the ass.. You'll have to waste too many points to get over to the ranged nodes you'll want. My advice is to start again now before you get to the point where you're gimped, compared to other archers, and will probably start again anyway.

www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/62789

Iron grip bow marauders have been a standard go to class for high defence decent damage builds for the whole duration of the closed beta. It used to be that with the right itemization you only needed to grab the Catalyze nodes and you were set in terms of damage and the remaining points went into stacking hp/hp regen/armor/str. The marauder starting area offers the best mix of those defences, hence the choice of the class. This is still true to some extent nowadays.

And yes, the difficulty is going to ramp up in ruthless and further in merciless.

Originally posted by tzj2006

Originally posted by Vannor

If I was going to make a tanky archer I'd definately delete the marauder and make them as a dualist. They are closer to the large pack of projectile nodes from the Archer class starting point and are still very close to the marauder's tanking nodes. They have their own bow and tanky nodes right from the start as well. It would be even easier than you are finding it now.

The marauder has very few dexterity nodes around it's starting point so you are going to have to head over to the dualist and archer's areas anyway because you'll need more Dex to be able to equip the higher level bows. Not a problem to start with but it will be later on... around level 50. I think being a bow marauder will end up biting you in the ass.. You'll have to waste too many points to get over to the ranged nodes you'll want. My advice is to start again now before you get to the point where you're gimped, compared to other archers, and will probably start again anyway.

www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/62789

It's a good build, my friend has used it.. but it's very specialist. 134 Dex at level 75 though? Gunna be stacking Dex on equipment to equip the higher level bows, which limits the uniques you can use. They talk about dex problems straight away at the start of the discussion. it's also no where near as good now that some of the main skills it uses have been nerfed. Plus, it suffers from low attack value, which is why it uses Resolute Technique. A bow build that does have high attack/dex though can easily out damage this because of the criticals they will get (but then there's the issue of damage reflection killing you).

Don't get me wrong, it's all viable to play the game and exploring this type of stuff is what makes it so great. But right now.. if I was trying to make the strongest bow build I could that didn't rely on specific loot drops, I wouldn't start marauder or go elemental damage.. it'd be a physical damage bow dualist all the way stacking about the same STR and DEX so that Iron reflexes is more useful by using Armor/Evasion armor. But that's just me and how I think when making builds.