Finalising my Bleed AP / HVR Tactician

Yes - this is a XPost from POE forums - this palce seems more engaged.

So - How much dakka do you need ? Well, you always want "More Dakka"

Welcome to my ethical pin Crossbow Tactician - Many content complete \_O_/

I may be cheesing the ethical tag here - but I absolutely zero to hero'd this build and I've geared into (mostly) deleting T16 maps just using currency from the floor. Prices have gone up a bit but most of the bling is only needed for T15/16's which are easy enough to get to.

Even better - you can see what's going on - yes.

https://preview.redd.it/g35myadybrpf1.png?width=1170&format=png&auto=webp&s=f56f0bcafd2a5327ca7bf98e38ed9bb348528ba5

So how did we get here? The standard Mortar Merc looked and played like shit. I tried permafrost and didn't love the scaling so I went off to build this fella around Armour Break with Armour Piercing rounds, High Velocity Rounds for boss boosting and then added some extra flavour as it evolved through the late game. I've probably spent 15divs total on the build to get to the point it will complete pretty much all maps (with the odd derp which is 100% performance not me being crappy at the game) and delete's Pinnacle bosses in a few seconds. No weapon swaps, no gimics, no mad rotations, just chilling to a top down twinstick shooter vibe with a couple of buttons.

Youtube highlight reel of some T15/16 bosses and a T16 abyssal map: https://youtu.be/U9oO82brVOY
(this broke - have a gif)

Kulemak i think - not sure the level but the abyss was i81 - //

I'm still trying to find some citadels, once I do I'm going to delete them too. Zarokh, Xesht T1 & T2 and The King are dead super fast. Anything I can find gets murdered. Except Xesht T3. I get 1-shot on the way to the boss. I think this is a fundamental Armour Stacking problem sadly.

Nothing particularly flashy here:

- AP Rounds Backed by Surrounded & the Run and Gun nodes you just keep firing and getting into mobs faces and keep moving and everything keeps dying. Chain xBow suffix spreads bleeds to the whole screen. All in the build has +10 levels to it - which is significant.

- HV rounds - If anything takes more than a second or two of AP rounds, pop a few HV's into it to proc huge bleeds and impales, then swap back to AP or for a big scary boss, or if you are in a rush for dinner time - switch to...

- Frag rounds - Backed by Shard Scavenger below, it consumes the AP from AP rounds with Exploit weakness, the Riven from HV rounds, procs Shard Scavenger and gives 4 seconds of close range devastation.

- Siege Cascade on Mirage Archer. Butchers packs. Uses up bleeds spread by AP Rounds with Haemocrystals for extra AOE Pop.

- Herald of blood - if it bleeds it goes pop. What's not to like

- Scavenged plating with Vitality and Precision II, because more armour is fine I guess, and the rest is good too.

- 'the Frenzy setup' with Combat Frenzy and Charge Regulation, generating enough charges to consume enough charges to give more skill speed eg more attack speed eg "more dakka".

Extra stuff that's probably totally optional but I've not had much else to do with money so:

- From nothing (Iron Reflexes) saves a bunch of skill tree points by letting you grab the nice nodes around Iron Reflxes. Was about 5ex

- AP Rounds Prism of Belief: This adds about 50k DPS but cost 4divs and really isn't needed.

- Constricting Command hat. This is BIS for a lot of people and is most of the cost of the build - and allows you to get Surrounded buff when near 1+ people. I'm saving up for the full +5 edition which seems to be scalped by 2-3 people and pushed up to 7div. Not sure how necessary the +5 is. Clear in T16's is fine. Bossing is fine and done up close and personal, so +4 is OK. Something to chase though.

- Weapon - My current weapon is a 750pdps Chain crossbow - which was about 2 div at the time but they have gone a bit mental recently o7

The rest is just armour, a bit of extra spirit, resists, life and leech. The usual stuff really. It's pretty mad and loads of fun to just drift around maps gunning everything down. POB tells me it's doing 300k DPS on clear - no frame of reference or idea how real that could be, but it works so hey. Who cares? It mostly works

POB: https://pobb.in/pRQvkQ7rtY-k

I'm sure smart people can figure out how to scale it further, bright ideas below?