3.21 - A10 Pts+Lab - Elemental Hit Deadeye - 3h39m34s

A10 All Skill Points and Story Lab run using Elemental Hit Deadeye in 3h39m34s. Elemental Hit is an interesting skill due to its mechanics and as a result took some tinkering around with to find good ways to set the skill up itself and the passive tree. I found through my runs that swapping to Elemental Hit before you had a number of power spikes really wasn't ideal. The skill doesn't have quite enough juice without things such as a 4L, Precise Technique, Tailwind, Point Blank, Elemental Equilibrum. The more of those you have, the better Ele Hit is when you swap. I was swapping sometime between 24-28 around when I got a 4L because at that point I would also likely have at least Precise Technique. One aspect for Ele Hit that I highly valued was not having to mess around with weapon upgrades a lot given it doesn't use weapon base damage and flat added rolls only apply to the matching element when it rolls on Ele Hit. As a result, you could just jam a Short Bow for most of the run, which is nice given how early you could get a good colored one. One downside, however, is that you are more reliant on tree power spikes for damage. Given these quirks to ele hit, it made sense to level as CA/TR before the swap since those skills do not overly rely on the attack stats of the bow. Try to get a pierce quiver as soon as possible for ele hit as it allows you take pierce out of clear links.

Because I completed this run so close to league start (night before) and had only been working/iterating on it for a couple days, this is still very much a work in progress in terms of timings of everything and choices made as there are absolutely improvements that can be made still. As a result of these two things, closeness to league start and still working on figuring build out, I will not be releasing a detailed PoB with notes as I've been for the last few runs. I plan on running this exact build in 3.22 hunting for a sub 3h30, which should be very doable

Vendor Regex: Act 1 until Level 23: "!to b|hand|dag|law|scep" g-.|.-g|nn 24 and Beyond (for 4Ls): "sockets: .-.-.-."

PoB with Actual Gear/Tree at End of Run (No Notes): https://pobb.in/m2w_dIhdmvmX

Some Questions and Answers: Why Ele Hit/Why Not LA or RoA/Is This Better than LA/RoA? I've always enjoyed Elemental Hit and the mechanics that come with it as it allows a different set out build options compared to other elemental attack bow skills. Moreover, I really liked the idea of not needed to upgrade the base multiple times in a run. Finally, both LA/RoA have been done many times by a lot of very talented speed runners (Havoc, Timmy) and endgame gigachads (who btw also slap at early leveling such as Manni, Tuna, Legi to name a few), so the leveling process for those feels pretty damn well ironed out. Given above, doing Elemental Hit felt like a more intriguing and enjoyable choice as due to the skill mechanics different avenues for pathing were presented. Ele Hit is not better than LA/RoA for speed leveling as Ele Hit will not have the same top end speed as those builds will be better than Ele Hit as LA/RoA can reliably benefit from added damage sources which means with good rolls LA/RoA can do some absurd levels of blasting. On other hand, Ele Hit offers a serious level of consistency from run to run given the need to not rely on upgrading bases. Ultimately, I think LA/RoA will outcompete Ele Hit, but Ele Hit provides a fun and competitive alternative.

Why Withering Step as your supplemental movement instead of Frostblink? Withering Step has early synergy with the CA/TR leveling until swap. Moreover, its easy to left click withering and let your Mirage archer blast while you run. It is also very easy to cancel withering which is a downside. The movement combo actually felt really good and at times allowed for some gigazoom. Blink arrow and frostblink is excellent, but they performed worse for me because I wasn't very good at managing the combo (kept frostblinking too early for example).

Why both EE/Inversion Mastery? So I don't know if this actually works out well or not and my brain couldn't quite figure it out with myself, 4 Ballistas, EE, and Inversion. Originally, I would use EE until Barrage on Ballistas then do Inversion. One run, I accidentally left both specced as I was not trying to have both at same time due to not being clear how having both would impact single target DPS. Felt like it did more damage, but I can't really figure out if this actually case or just placebo. If it does interfere with DPS, its a simple 1 point swap and I can go faster next time. If it doesn't great more power to build. But this is something I need to sit down and actually figure out (or someone send ELP)

Table of Contents: 0:00 - A1 22:43 - A2 42:09 - A3 and Normal Lab 1:16:19 - A4 1:34:45 - A5 1:50:52 - A6 2:12:19 - A7 and Cruel Lab 2:36:08 - A8 2:57:09 - A9 3:17:52 - A10 and Merciless Lab

Exported from my twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/balaar_