Explosive Shot Witchhunter Build Guide

• Wind Dancer provides more Evasion Rating per active stage, stacking up to 4 stages at 20% quality. This tremendously increases your overall chance to Evade, but resets when you get hit. When this happens, monsters are also knocked back.
• Sorcery Ward is a Witchhunter Ascendancy Skill that gets added when allocated with Ascendancy points. Sorcery Ward passively provides a barrier which takes Elemental Damage from Hits for your until depleted. The barrier recharges to full value after a short time.

Recommended Skill Levels and Quality

• Explosive Shot
  • Skill Level 20+.
  • Do not go too high in Skill Levels, as this will cause Mana issues.
  • Quality irrelevant.
• Shockburst Rounds
  • Skill Level 20+.
  • Do not go too high in Skill Levels, as this will cause Mana issues.
  • Quality currently bugged. Becomes highest priority after a fix is implemented.
• Emergency Reload
  • Skill Level 20.
  • Quality no priority.
• Voltaic Mark
  • Skill Level irrelevant.
  • Quality low priority.
• Herald of Ash
  • Skill Level 7.
  • Linked to the amount of Strength you can get on your build.
  • Quality no priority.
• Herald of Thunder
  • Skill Level 17.
  • Quality high priority.
• Herald of Ice
  • Skill Level 10.
  • Requires 46 Intelligence, just like your The Three Dragons.
  • Quality high priority.
• Overwhelming Presence
  • Skill Level 8.
  • Linked to the amount of Strength you can get on your build.
  • Quality high priority.
• Wind Dancer
  • Skill Level 17.
  • Quality highest priority.

How does Shock work?

• Due to The Three Dragons, your Explosive Shot now has a chance to shock instead of igniting.
• The probability of shocking a target takes the enemy's Ailment Threshold as well as your hit's damage into consideration.
• Overwhelming Presence greatly helps you shock your enemies.
• On top of that, Shock also increases the amount of damage your target takes by up to 20%. The Shock 1-20% damage range depends on the amount of damage your hit has dealt. This can also be increased by increasing "Shock Magnitude".
• You can check if your Explosive Shot has shocked a target by paying attention to its health bar at the top of the screen (see green circled icon).
• Shocked targets also have fine blue sparks around them (see green squared sparks).

Skill Rotation

Skill Leveling Priority

• The Overwhelm cluster provides tons of damage for your crossbow skills.
• Adrenaline Rush speeds up map clear tremendously.
• Instant Reload keeps downtime between Explosive Shots to a minimum.
• Emboldened Avatar helps with applying your important Elemental Ailments.
• Lightning Rod makes your non-critical hits Lucky. Lucky means, that the value is rolled twice and the higher one is chosen.
• Giantslayer provides incredible value against Rares and Uniques.
• Polymathy and the attributes cluster help solve all your Attributes issues.
• Beastial Skin tremendously increases the amount of Evasion Rating your Body Armour provides. Make sure you use something similar to this Expert Serpentscale Coat to make the most out of this node.
• Falcon Technique increases your Attack Speed by 1% per 15 Dexterity your character has.

Attributes

Make sure to double-check your Attributes allocation according to the following list:

• 46 Intelligence
  • The Three Dragons requires 46 Intelligence.
  • Herald of Ice Level 10 requires 46 Intelligence.
• 180 Dexterity
  • Provides Accuracy for Shockburst Rounds.
  • Falcon Technique turns Dexterity into a scaler. Make sure you only have a multiple of 15 in Dexterity to min/max your Attributes. Using either 150, 165, 180 or 195 Dexterity is sufficient for this build as you also want to increase your Strength for more Defense.
• Leftover Points for Strength
  • 1 Strength grants +2 Maximum Life

Here's how you should gear your Explosive Shot Witchhunter. Sorted mostly in order of importance:

Crossbow

• +#% increased Physical Damage
• +#% increased Physical Damage / +# Accuracy Rating
• + adds # to # Physical Damage
• +#% increased Attack Speed
• + adds # to # Fire / Cold / Lightning Damage
• +#% increased Elemental Damage with Attacks
• Leech #% of Physical Attack Damage dealt as Mana
• +# to Level of all Projectile Skills
• Loads an additional Bolt (mostly for Explosive Shot)
• +# to Strength for additional maximum Life
• +# to Attributes (if needed)

Currently the Expert Forlorn Crossbow is the highest DPS Crossbow base in the game.

Helmet (you need The Three Dragons)

• Sufficient +#% to Fire, Cold, Lightning and Chaos Resistance to cap your Resistances
• +#% increased Evasion Rating
• +# to Evasion Rating
• +# to maximum Life
• +#% increased Rarity of Items found (luxury stat, do not prioritize)

Body Armour

• Sufficient +#% to Fire, Cold, Lightning and Chaos Resistance to cap your Resistances
• +#% increased Evasion Rating
• +# to Evasion Rating
• +# to maximum Life

Gloves

• Sufficient +#% to Fire, Cold, Lightning and Chaos Resistance to cap your Resistances
• +# to maximum Life
• +#% increased Attack Speed
• +#% increased Evasion Rating
• +# to Evasion Rating
• + adds # to # Physical Damage
• + adds # to # Fire / Cold / Lightning Damage
• Leech #% of Physical Attack Damage dealt as Mana
• +#% increased Rarity of Items found (luxury stat, do not prioritize)

Boots

• +#% to Movement Speed
• Sufficient +#% to Fire, Cold, Lightning and Chaos Resistance to cap your Resistances
• +# to maximum Life
• +#% increased Evasion Rating
• +# to Evasion Rating
• +#% increased Rarity of Items found (luxury stat, do not prioritize)

Belt

• Sufficient +#% to Fire, Cold, Lightning and Chaos Resistance to cap your Resistances
• +# to maximum Life
• +# to Strength for additional maximum Life
• +# to Armour

Rings

• Sufficient +#% to Fire, Cold, Lightning and Chaos Resistance to cap your Resistances
• +# to maximum Life
• + adds # to # Physical Damage
• Leech #% of Physical Attack Damage dealt as Mana
• +#% increased Mana Regeneration
• +# to Evasion Rating
• +# to Strength for additional maximum Life
• +#% increased Rarity of Items found (luxury stat, do not prioritize)

Amulet

• Sufficient +#% to Fire, Cold, Lightning and Chaos Resistance to cap your Resistances
• +# to Spirit
• +#% to maximum Life (very expensive)
• +# to maximum Life
• Instill a node that isn't too costly but grants a decent boost in power until you have a really good Amulet. High Alert is a decent option that grants additional Evasion Rating and Stun Threshold while on Full Life.
• +# to Level of all Projectile Skills
• +#% increased Evasion Rating
• +#% increased Mana Regeneration
• +# to Strength for additional maximum Life
• +#% increased Rarity of Items found (luxury stat, do not prioritize)

Jewels

Generic % damage increases on the passive tree are fairly rare. Jewels are a great way to alleviate that problem by having multiple damage stats on them at once, granting a large boost in damage.

This build allocates at least 5 Jewel sockets which provide an excellent way to further customize your build. Specifically, look out for the following stats on them in rough order of importance:

• +#% increased chance to Shock
• +#% increased Shock Duration
• +#% increased Attack Damage
• +#% increased Attack Damage with Crossbows
• +#% increased Projectile Damage
• +#% increased Attack Speed
• +#% increased Attack Speed with Crossbows
• +#% increased Crossbow Reload Speed
• +#% increased Evasion

Any of these mods are also good on a Time-Lost Jewel that affects a lot of nodes in the vicinity.

Energy Shield Variant

Due to the incoming damage in the highest Endgame content exceeding your Maximum Life with the variant above, you want to slowly transition into the Energy Shield variant when approaching the highest Tiers of Pinnacle Bosses. In its current form, Energy Shield provides tons of survivability with small to medium investment.

Energy Shield Variant Gear Changes

• Swap your body armour to Expert Waxed Jacket to add tons of flat Energy Shield to your character, while keeping Evasion Rating high for Beastial Skin. Make sure to include +30 Spirit for the Energy Shield Variant Skill Changes below.
• Your Lunar Amulet is an incredible source of % increased Maximum Energy Shield to scale your Defenses further. Make sure to instill Ancient Aegis to maximize your Energy Shield.
• Expert Intricate Gloves and Expert Feathered Sandals provide additional Energy Shield.

Energy Shield Variant Passive Tree Changes

• Your passive tree changes quite drastically as you travel through the Ranger to the Monk starting area to include Mindful Awareness and various strong nodes located around it:
  • Honed Instincts
  • Flow Like Water
  • Essence of the Storm
  • Flow State
  • Essence of the Mountain
• Remove Acrobatics as you lost quite a bit of Evasion Rating to make it worthwhile. The combination of Energy Shield and your Evasion Rating without Acrobatics makes you more durable in the end.

• Your Jewels change to Sapphire. Follow this priority list:
  • #% increased Maximum Energy Shield
  • #% increased Elemental Damage
  • #% increased Magnitude of Shock you inflict
  • #% increased Magnitude of Ailments you inflict
  • #% increased Area of Effect
  • #% increased Chance to Shock
  • #% increased Chance to inflict Ailments
  • #% increased Shock Duration

• To get the full details on how your Passive Tree changes, check out the Energy Shield Variant in the Passive Tree above.

Energy Shield Variant Skill Changes

• To further boost your Energy Shield while Mapping, you now include Grim Feast to effectively double your Energy Shield through Overflow, whenever killing Monsters and collecting Remnants. Make sure to collect the Remnants to maintain high Energy Shield Overflow, while trying your best to not get hit.
  • Level Grim Feast as high as possible, while maintaining high enough Strength and Dexterity. Recommended Level 11.
  • Add +20% Quality through Gemcutter's Prism as soon as possible.
• Since you do not really get a chance to collect tons of Remnants during Pinnacle Boss encounters, swap Grim Feast for Ghost Dance with Fast Forward on these encounters.

• In the main Atlas you make sure that you never run out of Waystones, while also increasing Magic Pack Size and Rare Monster number as well as difficulty.
• Breach provides incredible Monster and Rare density with Monsters that mostly run towards you. Since Explosive Shot and your Heralds deal extremely well with tons of Monsters, you can farm Breaches very well.

I dont have The Three Dragons, can I still play this build?

No. Follow this Grenade Mercenary Leveling Guide – Witchhunter and Gemling Legionnaire until you can afford the Helmet.

I dont have 150 Spirit, can I still play this build?

Yes. Until you get an Amulet with +50 Spirit it is okay to drop Overwhelming Presence and / or Herald of Ash. Make sure to target an Amulet with +50 Spirit soon to make activate all recommended Spirit Gems.

I struggle with my attributes, what should I do?

Make sure to allocate the Attributes cluster at the south-most point on the Passive Tree. It is not necessary to scale Intelligence or Dexterity into oblivion. 46 Intelligence and 180 Dexterity are enough, focus all other Attribute points on Strength to increase your Maximum Life. Make sure to also check out the Attributes section in the Gearing section.

I keep dying! Is there any way to solve my defense?

• Prioritize +#% to Fire, Cold, Lightning and Chaos Resistance to cap your Resistances.
• Prioritize +# to maximum Life over offense.
• Make sure your Wind Dancer is active and not just equipped and all your equipment bases grant Evasion Rating.
• Stay at range and don't stand in the fire.

What bonuses should I choose from Relics in Act 2 and Venom Drought in Act 3?

• Relic: 15% increased Mana Recovery from Flasks
• Venom Drought: 30% increased Elemental Threshold
• Cruel Relic: 15% increased Life Recovery from Flasks
• Cruel Venom Drought: +10% to Chaos Resistance

What is next for the build?

I'm working on the following points, in no particular order:

• Double Crossbow Setup to min/max the Passive Tree further.
  • Allocating more Area of Effect for Explosive Shot, while allocating more Lightning Damage for Shockburst Rounds.
• Super-Late Endgame Gear and Setup, including Hand of Wisdom and Action.

• Explosive Shot is an incredible AoE ability that is coupled with Herald of Thunder, Herald of Ice, Herald of Ash to annihilate screens of enemies with (mostly) one bullet!
• Shockburst Rounds is your single target Skill. To unlock Shockburst Rounds' incredible single target, your target must be afflicted by a Lightning Ailment.
• The Three Dragons is required for this build to function, as it makes your Explosive Shot shock, unlocking Shockburst Rounds' full single target potential.