[Top 5] Path of Exile Best Ranged Builds (3.21.0c)

Updated:

24 Apr 2023

5 – Mathil’s Ice Shot Deadeye

Bow league. And of course, Mathil would league start with a banger of a build. Bringing back this old skill due to the new Vaal version designed to solve Ice Shot’s issues, lack of single target damage, combined with the impossibly brokenness of Vengeant Cascade, makes this for a fantastic build.

What Mathil’s Ice Shot Excels in:

Easy to League Start with
Fabulous clearing speed
Easy to craft gear upgrades
Insane single target with Vengeant Cascade and Vaal Ice Shot

Pick Mathil’s Ice Shot if you Like:

Satisfying screen-wide shatterings
Melting bosses from off-screen
Play the same skill right from the start and progress easily

Mathil’s Ice Shot full details:

As it’s a league starter build, this build can work with minimal gear but can scale well as you play and upgrade your gear. You want to focus primarily on getting the strongest bow you can get. The easiest way to do that is with a Spine Bow, high item-level, and spam with as many Deafening Essences of Hatred as possible. (Shrieking works too, but you want to progress eventually). It’s okay if you get a Phys Bow too, but you’ll have to convert the rest of the Phys to Cold with the Passive Tree.
For defences, you’ll want as much Evasion as possible. You can lean in with the updated Kintsugi, which lost its life in place for even more Less Damage Taken, from 20% to 35%. This, combined with Wind Dancer and the new Life Mastery for 15% increased life while you use a body armour that doesn’t have a Life Tag, means you’re trading 70 Life for over 55% Less Damage Taken from the first hit. And if/when you do get hit, all your Evasion is magnified and can more than triple its value!
And you absolutely want to be fully Spell Suppressed, as that’s the best way to mitigate Spell Damage. Things that scale the build well are Abyss Jewels with as much Added Cold Damage as possible, and with the buffed Darkness Enthroned, you can get some insane amounts of damage from your belt, as well as life and Crit Multi!

For more information, check here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YnPsqX5YwVY

4 – CptPotatoe’s Spectral Shield Throw Champion

Spectral Shield Throw returned with a vengeance this league, due to the Crucible Passive trees you can get on your Emperor’s Vigilance. Since the best way to scale SST’s damage is by strong shields, and you can get over 3,000 Armor and 1,000 ES, you are multiplying your damage to the skies!

What Spectral Shield Throw Excels in:

Fantastic Mapper
Massive Single Target damage
Very unique playstyle and method of scaling damage
Insanely broken with some endgame Crucible Items.

Pick Spectral Shield Throw if you Like:

Shield Skills
Learning more about Crucible than it is healthy
Big numbers
Cosplaying as Captain America!

Spectral Shield Throw full details:

The way SST works, and in particular the Phantasmal alternative gem, is by scaling your damage based on how much Armor and Evasion your shield has. With Phantasmal, you also gain 20% Critical Multiplier per 100 ES. This also gets scaled by your Ashes of the Stars and Dialla’s Malefication, and goes up to 50% Crit Multi per 100 ES.
Since we’re using Emperor’s Vigilance, we have over 1800 Armor and almost 400 ES base. But with Crucible Trees, you can get a perfect base of over 3000 Armor and 1000 ES!!!! And the best way to scale SST’s damage, unlike most attacks, is to scale Gem Level until it reaches the next threshold, which is 24. This means you need a +1 or +2 amulet (Ashes is +1), a Level 21 Gem, and another +2 from another source.
This means that those 3000 armor becomes around 1200-1700 base physical damage. And that’s a massive amount of base damage. Comparately, that’s over 1100pDPS one-handed weapon!

For more information, check here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6V8SBhlPeQ8

3 – Goratha’s Lightning Arrow Champion

Goratha is famous for making strong starting builds that can do all content on a budget and SSF. This one is no exception, and his build guide is so thorough that you won’t feel lost at any point. He takes a different spin to the ‘Bow League’, and instead of going Deadeye like most did, he went with the tanky monster that is Champion.

What Goratha’s Lightning Arrow Champion Excels in:

Fantastic Clearing
Super Tanky
Great single target
Perfect for League Starting

Pick Goratha’s Lightning Arrow Champion if you Like:

Bow playstyle
Zooming but also taking a punch without keeling over
So many projectiles on the screen you can barely see

Gorathat’s Lightning Arrow full details:

The first thing you want, and the most important one, is a strong bow. You want a Deafening Essence of Wrath, preferably on a Fractured Bow. Thicket is the best base (you don’t care about going crit with this variant). Thanks to Crucible Trees, you want to go for the highest eDPS possible, and it’s quite easy to reach over 1200 eDPS.
As I said, we aren’t going crit, so we use the Precise Technique Keystone. As such, you want to make sure you have more Accuracy than Life values to use the 40% More Attack damage. That’s quite easy to do while leveling, and will carry on being easy as long as you pay attention to it.
The endgame of this build uses the reworked Abyss uniques, Shroud of the Lightless and Bubonic Trail, to gain a lot of life, elemental penetration, and Mana Reservation Efficiency. This allows you to allocate a 3rd 50% aura (Anger or Wrath) for even more damage.

For more information, click here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9jjZqVx1-KQ

2 – Zizaran’s Poison Artillery Ballista

Now this a surprise of a build that no one really expected to be this good, but it took the meta by its horns thanks to Ziz’s prowess and popularity. It’s a very strong build that builds upon a skill that was already fairly notorious for great league-starting and melting bosses, but that not everyone was too fond of for one reason or another. However, this requires a hard-to-get Crucible Passive to work, but when you have it, it’s glorious.

What Zizaran’s Poison Artillery Ballista Excels in:

Unique build pathing
Good clearing with Ballistas
Awesome single-target damage with properly setup builds.
Quite Tanky with 100% Flask uptime

Pick Zizaran’s Poison Artillery Ballista if you Like:

Ballista playstyle
Poison with PF (prolif)
Easy to play builds

Zizaran’s Poison Artillery Ballista full details:

This build revolves around a specific Crucible passive tree that allows all damage from Artillery Ballista and Blast Rain to Poison, and 25% of the time, those poisons will deal 100% more poison Damage. So this essentially reads as a 25% more Poison Damage.
The caveat is that though ALL damage CAN poison, it doesn’t mean it will. So you still need 100% chance to poison. However, because All damage CAN poison, you can scale Elemental Damage (or Physical) from all gear and bow, getting insane 1200eDPS + bows, which will feed into the poison at 25% more value than before.
We also use a cool tech from the last league, Wilma’s Requittal, that makes it so all of your cast speed also applies as Attack Speed. So this means that buffs like Onslaught (which can be massively increased by Flask Effect from Pathfinder by using a Silver Flask) that grants 20% MS/AS/CS, will double the amount of Attack speed it provides. Other things like Frenzy Charges work the same, and that’s a massive boost to damage, since poison builds love stacking as much attack speed as possible.

For more information, check here: https://youtu.be/AYwDZOGRpJw

1 – Crystalized Omniscience Tornado Shot Deadeye

Crystalized Omniscience is probably one of the biggest mistakes and simultaneously one of the most potent items GGG ever made, in basic raw power. Combining it with massive Elemental Bow Buffs, we are left with a ton of damage and can essentially ignore Resistances both on our gear and on enemies, as we shred through any, having over 90% Triple Ele Pen and 90% All Ele Res.

What the Crystalized Omniscience Tornado Shot Excels in:

One of the best clearing skills in the game
Can delete bosses with proper investment
Scales supremely well

Crystalized Omniscience Tornado Shot full details:

While this build can be quite squishy, and thus not played in hardcore, we tend to circumvent this issue by simply killing everything in our path way before we are killed. Additionally, getting your hands on a 6-Linked 1500+ eDPS bow (thank you, Crucible Passives) is quite cheap in this league, and as such, there’s no need to worry further about lack of damage.
Since we are an Omni Build, our gearing is unique, forgoing any form of resistance in lieu of Attributes, stacking it as much as possible, granting us 1% Ele Pen and 1% All Elemental Res per 15 Omni, and we can easily reach over 1300 Omni.
The most important thing for Tornado Shot is extra projectiles, and as such, we try to get it both on our bow +1/+2 and through our Quiver +1. But since GGG added +2 Projectiles on the passive tree, that has become even easier and stronger! That, combined with a Dying Sun pretty much covers our needs.

For a full breakdown, check here: https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/3244077