Today, our focus will be on the Detonating Arrow Marksman of Last Epoch. With simple item swaps, no need for any passive or specialization point adjustments, you can boost your damage against bosses significantly. This offers the perfect balance for smooth Monolith runs coupled with remarkably rapid boss takedowns.

Melee Detonating Arrow

This is a Melee version of Detonating Arrow, and we can use Jelkhor's Blast Knife to accomplish this, which also grants additional specialization points for Detonating Arrow. By utilizing Eye of Reen and Julra’s Stardial, you can take the boss damage potential of this build to another level.

Eye of Reen provides an 84% chance to gain a stack of Reen’s Ire for 5 seconds on Melee crit, synergizing with the build's high critical strike chance. Each stack increases the Melee critical strike multiplier, amplifying the build’s damage and fire damage over time.

The focus lies on maximizing the Melee critical strike multiplier. By using the Traversal skill, we gain increased attack speed and double the effect on the Legendary Potential. For example, a 25% increased attack speed, using Shift would grant 50%, leading to over 1,000% critical strike multiplier potential when combined with Eye of Reen. Equipping 2 Julra's Stardials doubles this effect.

While the Jelkhor's Blast Knife can be equipped at Level 36, this build becomes fully viable once you’re able to equip these knives. Prior to that, you can use a bow for a ranged version of the build.

Eye of Reen requires a level of 70, meaning to utilize Legendary Potential, you'll need to clear Tier 3 Temporal Sanctum with a capable character. This build setup cost a large amount of Last Epoch Gold and requires the Core of the Mountain, only obtainable from Tier 4 Lightless Arbor.

Mana Management

Now, the biggest thing with this build is managing your mana. Automated Bombardment has an additional 70% chance for that Trap Sprinkler node to activate at the cost of 11 more mana. It also allows Explosive Traps to have a chance to throw at enemies within a nearby distance, and we can have the addition of Acid Flask with this build as well.

We can go in and just expend our entire mana pool and allow that damage to kill the boss all in one go. You’ll use Shift for mobility, or you can use it defensively to keep your character alive, and then you throw out a number of traps in the field that you want to develop with this build.

Skills & Specializations

Shift and Shuriken are a very popular combo for Marksman. Shift has a reduced cooldown and a chance to grant us increased movement speed, which can synergize with our passive tree, providing additional damage. The major function of Shuriken is to increase their duration and boost our armor while active. We can Shift, become invulnerable, cleanse ailments, and gain armor simultaneously.

Through these specializations, we can also gain Haste and cause Blind on enemies, enhancing our survivability. With Acid Flask, the efficiency of this build is greatly improved since it activates automatically.

Detonating Arrow is the skill we aim to trigger through explosive traps, primarily to deal massive damage. Lightning Tendrils penetrate a significant 60% of lightning resistance, while increasing the arming time of Detonating Arrow enhances its damage upon detonation.

Gear Recommendations

The best recommendation would be to swap Eye of Reen in for bosses, and if you have the Julra's Stardial with throwing attack speed on it, you would swap that in as well. For general Echo, you’ll actually want to run something with throwing damage and minus throwing attack mana cost. This will help your mana conservation and just give you a smoother experience through the Monoliths.

The Devotion is also a good option, adding some additional lightning damage and lightning penetration. Alternatively, you can also run the Apostate's Sanctuary, as this will give you more damage to bosses and rare enemies.

Foot of the Mountain will grant you a stack of Mountain's Endurance whenever you aren’t moving. This allows 100% of dodge rating to convert to Endurance Threshold, and you can get an enormous amount of Endurance Threshold, and you can easily hit this 60% Endurance cap even when you are moving. Pair that with some solid armor and a high chance to dodge.

The final Mountain item that we use in this setup is Peak of the Mountain. This just supplies an enormous amount of critical strike chance to the build and allows you to proc the Eye of Reen stacks even faster. Getting some Legendary Potential on the best pieces to swap for bosses that’ll help take the build to another level. And overall, the character is actually very tanky.