Today comes a new Last Epoch 1.0 guide that dives deep into the art of crafting an incredibly formidable Detonating Arrow Explosive Trap Marksman. I will provide you with all the essential information necessary to master this highly potent build.

Pros & Cons

Pros: It offers an outrageous amount of damage with easy access to scaling it further. You will have very fast movement speed thanks to an almost permanent haste buff with high effectiveness. You can easily reach high amounts of health paired with excellent health recovery and solid damage mitigation. A pair of commonly found unique daggers is the only requirement to start, and you can easily level up with bows.

Cons: There are also some disadvantages. The damage is inherently delayed by throwing the trap and waiting for the arrow detonation. The sources of health are fairly limited, and playing without gear and idols can be annoying.

Gear Setup

The only requirement is a pair of unique daggers, which are necessary to eliminate the Mana cost of your Detonating Arrow. Without them, you can use a traditional bow setup to level up, but it won’t be as powerful. The unique amulets offer useful defensive bonuses but are not required. This build is suitable for players who don't possess a substantial amount of Last Epoch Gold.

The Jelkhor’s Blast Knife is a unique dagger that converts the Detonating Arrow into a melee skill, offering an insane amount of damage for this skill and lowering its Mana cost. When you use 2 of them, you will gain tons of damage and eliminate the Mana cost completely, which is very important with such a high trigger rate. It is very easy to reach absurd amounts of damage, so you should focus mostly on your defense.

At first, the Bleeding Heart is a great amulet option to use. It enhances your throwing speed and provides you with a vital leech for sustenance. It is a common unique, so it is easy to get one with good legendary potential.

Omnis is a very convenient amulet that can grant you over 300% total resistances and boost the level of all your skills. It makes stacking health much easier as you don’t need to include that much resistance on your remaining gear.

To improve your damage, you should seek critical strikes, flat damage for melee attacks, and throwing speed. Do not get confused by throwing damage. It’s specific to Explosive Traps, not your Detonating Arrow. On your rings, it is essential to lower the throwing Mana costs. Ideally, you should source your health leech from the Stolen Tithe relic, but it might be hard to find one with good modifiers at first.

At later stages of the game, improving your survivability is much more important. Focus on increasing health, capping critical strike avoidance, improving dodge, armor, resistance, and endurance. It is possible to opt for the Ward version for better protection against single hits, but it has worse sustain and requires more unique items with good Legendary Potential bonuses to work.

Skills & Specializations

Detonating Arrow: The Detonating Arrow is your major source of damage in this build. We convert it into a melee attack, but since it is triggered by traps, you can essentially use it from a long distance. The Arcing Blast is a very important notable for your clear speed. It adds the Lightning Tendrils to the explosion.

The Weak Spot applies the Critical Vulnerability, making it much easier to cap your critical strike chance. The remaining notables are very straightforward. They just boost your damage, which is why additional levels of your daggers are very useful.

Explosive Trap: Upon detonation, this trap will activate adjacent traps, subsequently initiating the Detonating Arrow. Notably, the initial trap does not initiate the arrow's activation, necessitating the simultaneous deployment of multiple traps. The Explosive Trap notable is pivotal, facilitating the activation of Detonating Arrow.

You will also need the Traps corresponding conversion nodes and Clustered Explosives for 5 traps thrown at once. The Subtle Sabotage and Jelkhor's Blueprint are very helpful in reducing the Mana costs. The Trap Sprinkler and its upgrades grant a high chance to create a new trap upon detonation.

Shift: The Shift serves as an invaluable skill, swiftly propelling you toward a designated area while providing beneficial bonuses along the way. Shadowslip renders you impervious to harm during the shift. Through Swift Recovery, Shadow Recuperation, and Breathing Technique, you'll recover health and Mana.

The Molting effect will purify any adverse ailments affecting you. Following the use of the shift ability, you will experience a surge in speed, courtesy of the Arcane Momentum notable. Lasting Presence generates a shadow clone, providing supplementary damage.

Net: The Net stands as a powerful skill. When hurled, it enhances your DPS for a brief duration while slowing and enfeebling your adversaries. It can serve as a means to evade incoming attacks if preferred. The primary allure of this skill lies in the Leading the Hunt and Rapid Throws nodes.

Upon activation of this skill, your damage output increases by 10%, and your throwing speed receives a 20% boost for a duration of 6 seconds. Entangled adversaries will suffer reduced physical damage and acquire 3 stacks of Frailty, diminishing their damage output even more. The Bold Throw allows you to eliminate the backflip or modify jump behavior using alternative notables.

Smoke Bomb: The Smoke Bomb exhibits considerable potency as a defensive maneuver. It generates a veil of smoke that grants both offensive and defensive advantages, while also spawning Shadow Clones at regular intervals to emulate your actions. Enhanced melee damage is conferred by the Smoke Blades as you remain ensconced within the smokescreen.

The Umbral Assault generates shadow clones to further amplify your damage output. The Moonlight Bomb bestows upon you a stack of Silver Shroud, ensuring evasion of incoming attacks, even in the absence of natural dodge abilities.

Passive Skills

You’ll be using up most of your points in the initial Rogue skill tree. The Twin Blade holds the utmost significance in this build. It allows you to use 2 melee weapons at the same time at the cost of taking slightly increased damage when dual-wielding. You will gain all bonuses from each weapon.

• The Evasion provides a significant damage reduction, but only when you are moving. By wielding 2 daggers, Critical Precision provides a substantial increase in critical strike chance.
• The Sapping Strikes are very important early on, as you can use your Detonating Arrow manually to refill your mana to throw more traps.
• The Agility grants you haste on hit, which you will have almost permanently. The remaining passives will boost your glancing blow chance, dodge, health, or dexterity.

In the Bladedancer passive tree, you will get even more chance to receive a glancing blow and a bit of movement speed. With the Cloak of Shadows, your Glancing Blow chance is significantly boosted. You can convert your dodge chance of an even more Glancing Blow chance for a more reliable defense via Apostasy. The Shroud of Dusk grants you Dusk Shrouds when you’re hit. If you find yourself manually using the Detonating Arrow often in the beginning, the Veil of Night is a good option for you.

In the Falconer skill tree, you will gain minor bonuses to your attack speed, dodge, mana regeneration, and damage. The Raptor’s Wings grant you a chance to gain haste and improve your damage if you have that buff active. We didn’t spend a single point on the Marksman Mastery, as most passives there do not work with daggers. But you still need that Mastery to unlock the Detonating Arrow active skills tree.

Idols & Blessings

You can obtain a significant amount of health with your Stout Lagonian Idols, which can also grant resistance or armor. If you prefer to get more damage, look for critical strike chance or multiplier while dual-wielding, armor shred chance, throwing speed for explosive traps, or some increases to your damage.

The Health Leech blessings from the Black Sun are somewhat underwhelming, yet still preferable to having none at all. Alternatively, you can prioritize enhancing your leech rate or getting enough critical strike chance or multiplier.

While the blessing from the Age of Winter might serve as the sole means of boosting armor in this setup, you also have the option to select physical or cold resistance if those are more pressing needs. In the Spirits of Fire Timeline, you have the choice between fire resistance, armor, dodge, or endurance, depending on your current priorities.

The Reign of Dragons offers you the melee Health Leech, which you need for your sustenance if you don’t have it elsewhere. All options in the Ending the Storm Timeline are related to lightning, but you should aim for the Lightning Resistance Shred to significantly improve your damage against enemies.