Explosive Shot Shockburst Rounds
Early Access – Day 20 – December 26, 2024
My second POE 2 build and I was excited to try the crossbows and the WASD gameplay. I followed this build from Palsteron and it was a blast!
Levelling the build was easier as I followed this levelling guide with Gas Arrow. I learnt after that you can even use the Radiant Grief helmet instead of Flame Wall to make levelling a one-button build.
I then bought the unique helmet The Three Dragons, a good crossbow and I was able to swap around level 50 to complete the campaign and start mapping.
Mapping was great with the explosions, single target was great if I played correctly. I did a lot of T15 and T15 with +1 levels. I had to add some Energy Shield and Grim Feast which will probably be nerfed soon for some extra survavibility.
I died like a noob on a citadel boss and on the Sanctum boss for the 4th ascendancy but with a better pilot, this build can definitively do it. I’m stopping for now because I’m excited to try other builds, and I don’t believe in myself enough to do the bosses with the crossbow gameplay which require more skill that I have.
The guide and Palsteron videos are great, give it a try, it’s a blast! If you don’t like the gameplay, at least you can say you played counter strike in POE!
- Patch 0.1.1 (January 2025) – They improved the issue where the crossbows were sometime jamming. I tried a little bit and I didn’t experience the issue again.
| Bossing | ★★★ |
| Defence | ★★★ |
| Mapping | ★★★★★ |
| Budget | ★★★★ |
| Overall score | 15 |
What I liked
- Map clear – boom boom explosions with all 3 heralds, Deadeye move fast
- High single target DPS – if mob shocked properly
- Affordable – life version can be put together for probably less than 2 divs with entry crosssbows and ES version for less than 10 divs at present time
What I disliked
- Aiming – I’m an old man and I can’t aim
- Conditional single target – Yes, the DPS is high but the mob needs to be shocked. Again, I’m not that skilled so checking if the boss is shocked before blasting it while also trying to avoid 8,000 things is not something I enjoyed
- Visual Polution – boom boom explosions is great but my optometrist does not recommend this build
- Misfiring? Sometimes, I felt like I couldn’t fire my shots, especially when weapon swapping. Maybe due to a combination of poor weapon swap speed, crossbow reload speed (0.44s for explo and 0.34s for shockburst), or getting stunned?
- One-shots – low effective health pool on an evasion build, what can you expect, could be solved with more Life/ES
- Load on graphgic card. The 3 heralds, explosions and the overwhelming presence making everything looks shady makes it for a bad visual experience where everything looks pixelated at time and sometimes even causes crashes
Would I play it again?
Yes, but probably as a map clearing character with high investment in reload speed.
Path Of Building and stats
Sorry POB is not yet available
| Hard Core? | NO |
| Solo Self Found? | YES, if you can find the unique helmet which is pretty common |
| League starter? | NO, because you need the unique helmet and some good crossbows |
| Levelling skill |
Lightning Arrow + Lightning Rod until lvl 22 Gas Arrow + Flame Wall until lvl 45-60 |
| Budget | Probably less than 10 div |
| Death count | 27 (14 in campaign) |
| Level | 89 |
| Played | 1 day 14 hours |
Please visit this Google Sheet to see the main information and POB data I kept track of. You can more easily compare with other builds.
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