Artillery Ballista Scion – Uber viable, attainable, fast and fun. Clickbait title best overall totem build in the game under 30D.

edit: Updated PoB with a piece of Kalandra jewelry and a few more levels. Also I did Uber Sirus Deathless.

The strongest build I've ever made.

https://pastebin.com/2kDxNTrb

TLDR: Uber viable (I’m 7/7 on it and Sim30 done too), modestly priced totem build with a mixture of good DPS and survivability through high life pool, great berserk uptime, spell suppression, ailment immunity and good movement speed. For full transparency, it’s not particularly beginner friendly for end-game bossing as it requires a lot of buttons and totem/buff management, although totem based DPS does provide some degree of simplicity versus self-cast. It also isn’t faceroll tanky, but is more than tanky enough for most content.

Cost: Startup ~2-5D, Maven/Sirus ~8-10D, Current build ~30-50D

PoB: https://pastebin.com/2kDxNTrb

Level 69 transition tree - https://pastebin.com/XUqzD3kc

Videos:

Deathless Maven Witnessed Uber Cortex - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9injUyRpqk4&t=7s – super easy mods though…

Feared – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2iTLgk3thAU&t=51s - I thought I would be able to tank Flameblast. I was not.

100% Deli Beyond Strand - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TG0dgnXNMjo – pretty good for Deli

150% Quant Twisted - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BJPLdJjibQ0 – can do height of hubris stuff pretty easily if you don’t go completely overboard.

Elder - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_vI3SZcrLHs – not a lot of input required here

FAQ:

Why Arty ballista and why strength stacking: Most of the time if GGG buffs something its pretty good, even if it doesn’t look that way at first. I started building and this worked. I actually was going to iterate some more but Mathil started something similar recently and I worry people will just think I took a Mathil build, swapped in a bow and a new skill and called it good.

What is your DPS: I don’t know. I can’t calculate number of hits. It’s a lot more than the number in PoB. Around 15-20M with full totems and around 20-40M with berserk up if I had to guess. That’s based on conquerors and T16 bosses and Elder phasing and things like that. I also rarely use any sort of DPS flask on this build, so if you went a different direction you could probably hit 50M. You also might use anger and a watcher’s eye with pen and phys as fire to get another 10-15% more damage over determination or purity of elements if that is your bag.

One way to calculate it is just assuming a few things and hoping you are close. I use (½ projectiles)*totem DPS*# of totems for both berserk DPS and non-berserk DPS and average that number (berserk is about 50% uptime). That value is ~25M which feels about right.

You can’t calculate it based on Uber bosses as they just annihilate totems and you have to nearly spam them. I will pick 25M as a static value for an average. This is an important aspect of the build for Uber bossing. It isn’t a “set and forget” build. You need to use skills.

How does Artillery Ballista work: Fuck if I know? Like for real, it is SUPER hard to test other than start doing Shaper and stick with what feels best. That is literally, 100%, my testing methodology. My n value is way too low, I didn’t test a bunch of things etc… so I am not posting any sort of spreadsheet. My feelycraft opinions about area, projectiles, arty ballista, etc..

Projectiles: Feels like 50% hit a single target the size of an uber boss up to any reasonable number of arrows. The “perpendicular lines” enchant doesn’t seem to help with this. Odds numbers of arrows on the perpendicular lines thing may actually be a loss as it makes this weird formation. Rain of Splinters seems good, I wouldn’t fret after that.

Area: I originally wrote that I thought Woke AoE was best, BUT I ended up using conc effect a bunch on bosses and found it about the same for Uber bossing. Woke AoE definitely best for mapping.

Arty v. Siege or EA: This build is not better than high investment Siege ballista hierophant or EA Elementalist/Champ since that will be a question. For a specific playstyle and a narrow currency value its competitive. Its far tankier than Siege and it moves faster than any EA though and its pretty damn fun. It’s a better mapper than either at similar investments almost undoubtedly. Most importantly you can use Sniper’s mark without buttfucking the entire screen with arrow spam. Its actually the best build I’ve ever played for Expedition, although its probably not better than some of the dot builds that are hit agnostic.

You can also play this as Siege Ballista. Just socket in barrage over your area support gem and probably take point blank.

Crafting and gear guide: Youtube video forthcoming if people have interest, but also have notes in PoB in NOTES section.

Is this really as good as your clickbait title joke?: In all honestly, it’s the best build I’ve ever played for a balanced approach at the game for less than 50D. YMMV. It’s fast, you can do any content, you don’t die all the time, the playstyle is fun (to me). Etc… You could make a version that was MUCH faster with little effort (call of the void, winterweave). You could still improve the DPS by probably 50% more without affecting survivability (Kalandra rings) for 10-20 more divines investment. You could get another 2K HP if you wanted. It handles almost any map mod other than no leech.

A real cons list: You have no regen so you are going to die on things like Eater’s ball phase, Exarchs ball phase. Its hard to generate chaos resistance, so Sirus can be a bit tougher. Starting it almost requires playing something totally different for the entire campaign.

League start?: Sort of. You can’t play it as strength stacker at league start and it would be shitty AF without twink gear. On the other hand, if you are willing to do some respeccing, or deal with a poor campaign, it really rapidly gets strong due to relying on relatively cheap uniques.

How to start?: Iron Fortress, Crown of eyes, Alberons, Kaoms glvoes, PP quiver, Astramantis, Bow with implicit + spam 2-3 essences til you get something serviceable. That will run you around 2D-4D without enchants or corrupts. Use cyclopean coil and astramantis early.