June 29: not sure when or if I'll update this. last update for the guide was 0.75, and there have been many changes since then.

The build here is still viable, but there is a lot of room for improvement now that a few things have been rebalanced (# nimbuses/lightning arrows capped, cdr reduced, amulet nerfed).

This first video is a mostly optimized version of the build in action. You'll see a quick run-through of the gear, skills, and mastery that I'll talk about more in later sections.


This second video is intended to highlight how the build performs while you're still gearing up. The gear shown is a only a little better than the minimum required to get all of the build's synergies, and the Mastery/Anomaly ratio is close to what you naturally enounter when starting up. You can ignore the 2 piece thorns set bonus - that's only a coincidence.

Note: this is an older video where I'm still using Flash Freeze instead of Freezing Shot.

There's a lot of flexibility in the gear. Technically, the only requirements are 3 pieces of the Stormcaller's set. I'll show you what I recommend, and I'll share a note or two about good options.

One note about the gear in general: Sources of resistances are somewhat limited, so I recommend taking 1 of each resistance type on the gear.




The 4 set bonus is largely defensive, and that doesn't matter nearly as much when starting out. Once you gamble 3 pieces of the set, you're good to go - you'll be able to gamble or find the 4th piece before the extra defense is necessary.



I like these because of their free enchantments. Both are very strong. Warden relies heavily on movement speed to get around efficiently, so even though health is at a premium, I prefer the "Kill Haste" enchantment over 1500 additional health.

Cloudrunners (not shown - legendary boots) are a good alternative because we can get the "immune to movement impairing effects.." enchantment for free with 1 skill point. I don't think that Cloudrunners' "Hurt Movement Speed" enchantment is better than Hermes' traditional movement speed enchantment, but it's close.



I don't really like any accessory for this build, but Druid's Scroll comes with a free +%companion health. That increases our effective health pool because Storm Warden's shield scales off of that.

Maddoc's Cure is great if you don't use the Jeopardy ring. Spoiler:It's the reward for completing the Act 3 main quest

And The Skyshard is as good as always here. It increases the actual damage we do by about 2-3%. At higher levels, the build needs help staying alive more than it needs more damage, so I'm recommending the Scroll for that reason.



Probably the 2nd strongest item in the game, and no other class has anything like it. If you don't have one (or don't want to use an OP item), any legendary amulet works as a replacement. I recommend using Nimbus instead of Lightning Arrow if you don't wear Storm Pendant.




Jeopardy is at least 2x as strong as the next best ring, and it allows us to drop all critical hit-related enchantments from our gear. Any ring will suffice if you don't use Jeopardy, and I particularly like Retaliator's bond because it has a free movement speed enchantment. Movement speed is especially valuable for the first few hundred Anomaly levels.

The skills you use should vary a bit depending on the gear you use and your playstyle preference. These are the skills I recommend for the gear shown above. I'll touch on some of the variations for skills here.



The attack speed passive helps reduce the animation time of Lightning Arrow/Nimbus to less than the 0.35 second cooldown, so it's especially useful. The Archery passive isn't actually useful if you're only using Nimbus for an attack, but it does help unlock the evasion passive further in the Wind Ranger tree, so I take it regardless of my attack.

There's a Treant pet on this skill tree that has a short range taunt as well. I love that guy - he didn't make the cut, but he makes for a fun option. He's really good at facetanking bosses.

I tried the movement skills here, and while they can be used to move forward with a little practice, they simply don't travel fast enough for my liking. Freezing Shot makes for a more proactive defensive maneuver as well.


A much needed defensive passive and movement speed. The shield utility seems too small to be useful after level 100.


The most OP skill tree in the game? Maybe ;-)

I like the movement speed utility. You can also take the 1-point Elusive passive if you want to wear Cloudrunners or something other than Hermes'.

Storm Mender is just crazy strong. With full +% companion health gems, using this will nearly triple your health pool. If you want to be really really hard to kill, bind it to its own key and hold that key down all the time.

There's a lot more going on in this tree, but it's mostly straightforward. The ultimate is in a class of its own. The Static/Lightning Rod passives are required because that's where the build's damage comes from.

Remember to use Nimbus instead of Lightning Arrow if you don't use Storm Pendant - it's the stronger of the two skills in general, and thunderstorms make great pets.


The CDR passive is required to hit max cooldown reduction.

I recommend Freezing Shot instead of Flash Freeze even though we lose the resist all buff. Freezing Shot gives ranged crowd control, and the damage bonus is nice against as well.

The damage increase from the Wolves' passive isn't as good as it looks because it's an additive bonus, but they also serve as an excellent meat shield vs. bosses. If you're not using Jeopardy, the crit chance passive connected with the wolves is very nice.

I dropped the Hail Synergy from the build since it just wasn't doing significant damage.



or

Use Lightning Arrow if you wear Storm Pendant, otherwise use Nimbus

Refer to the Mastery sections as much or as little as you want. I'm including lots of pictures if you want a broad overview, and I'm including several steps to fairly optimized Mastery spending.

I've broken down spending into 100-level stages. Within each stage, there is no set order to spend points. Each of these stages has been confirmed to perform very well.


In any order..

• Spend 20 points in Reach
  
• Spend 10 points in Movement Speed
  
• Spend 15 points in the Mastery for Lightning Rod
  
• Spend 50 points in the Mastery for Nimbus/Lightning Arrow

In any order..

• Spend 10 points on Effect Duration (Eternal Storms)
  
• Spend 15 points on Archery Mastery's crit damage (Sharpened Arrowheads)
  
• Increase Charged Lightning to 50
  
• Increase Infused Thunder to 86

In any order..

• Spend 10 points in Storm Mastery's capstone (Cyclone)
  
• Spend 10 points in Storm Mastery's Overpower
  
• Spend 10 points in Archery Mastery's Overpower
  
• Increase Charged Lightning to 80
  
• Increase Infused Thunder to 119

In any order..

• If you are using Storm Pendant, spend 10 points on Archery Mastery's capstone (Master Archer)
  
• Max out all 3 Enhanced Resistances (this will give 75% to each elemental resistance, and 72% to physical if you're copying the recommended enchantments shown on the gear)
  
• Max out Nature Mastery's Overpower
  
• Max out Evasion (Storm Reflex)
  
• Max out Charged Lightning
  
• Increase Infused Thunder to 145

In any order..

• Max out crit dmg in Lightning Mastery (Electrifying)
  
• Max out Companion Health in Nature Mastery (Harmony)
  
• Max out Companion Health in Frost Mastery (Bond)
  
• Increase Infused Thunder to 177

• Spend all points in Infused Thunder

• Spend half your points in Infused Thunder
  
• Spend half your points in damage (Sniper)

Here, spending half your points in Sniper does yield slightly less damage for Nimbus, but the extra damage given to Lightning Arrow more than makes up for it.

Totally optional reading here. This is my rationale for the stats/attributes I recommend on gear and Mastery. If the build isn't working for you, this might help.

• Cooldown Reduction x5 - required to reach maximum cooldown reduction
  
• Effect Duration x3 - This increases the duration of all our buffs, and it increases the duration of both Nimbus and Lightning Arrow. In particular, increasing Nimbus' duration makes clearing Anomalies faster because they will follow you longer.
  
• Reach x1-2 - Reach extends the damage radius of our attacks. It takes a backseat to Effect Duration, that's why it's only on 1-2 slots.
  
• Resistances x5-6 - I recommend all 7 resistances (6 minor, 1 major) on gear eventually. At lower levels, taking reach on the arrow instead of a resistance is fine.

• Damage x3 - one of the strongest enchantments for increasing damage.
  
• Overpower x3 - Eventually, all monsters inside Anomalies have 50% to all resistances (and some will have 100% resistance to lightning), so Overpower becomes increasingly important.
  
• Resist All x5 - These are the biggest defensive stat, and they apply to Storm Mender's shield as well.
  
• Health x2 - We get so much benefit from health. It's unfortunate that there aren't more slots where we can take it. It takes a backseat to several other enchantments (including Resist All), so that's why we don't take it more on more slots.
  
• Physical resistance x1 - Physical resistance is a major enchantment, and it's as important as the others. We're taking it on the Helm slot, where the main enchantment it competes with is Critical Hit Damage, so it's an easy take there.

• Kill Damage - This is so easy to keep up with good builds, and so useful, that I consider it to be mandatory. On the ring slot, it doesn't compete with anything that comes close to its power level at this time, so it's an automatic take for me there.
  
• Crown Damage x1-2 - A standalone multiplier for damage vs. Crown enemies - eventually every enemy is a Crown. It will have you deal 20% more damage to everything. To put that in context, that's the same as going from 10k to 12k damage on your stats page. The only thing that keeps this from being an automatic take is that dealing more damage doesn't necessarily mean you clear maps faster. I do recommend it on the bow, though.
  
• Damage Reduction x0-1 - DR is a separate multiplier from Resistances for reducing damage, and it's in very limited supply. I snatch this up anywhere I can get it. Early on though, it's not nearly as useful as Movement Speed or Crown Damage, so you can take either of those until non-boss enemies start killing you.
  
• Kill Haste x1 - This competes with 1500 health on boots. With maximum support in gems and mastery, 1500 health is actually worth more than 6500 health, yet I still recommend this instead. Being able to zip across empty areas, dart through a pack of enemies, or re-position quickly is very valuable.

Attack speed: Buffs and cooldown-based attacks have a base animation length of 0.5 seconds (30 frames). This is based on 100% attack speed. Doubling attack speed to 200% reduces the base animation length to 0.25 seconds (15 frames). This build uses a main attack that has a cooldown of 0.35 seconds, in order to get its animation length shorter than its cooldown, we need ~145% attack speed total. Everything above that is only helping buffs cast a tiny amount faster.

Evasion: I'm not a huge fan of RNG-based defense, but the cost for Evasion is low enough that it's worth taking in a few places.

Archery/Storm damage: Another type of damage multiplier. These are in fairly short supply, and they're strong enough that we take them all (including in Mastery, eventually)

Companion Health: Storm Mender's shield is just more health, and it scales with +%CH. So I recommend using CH gems, the Druid Scroll, and eventually maxxing out CH Masteries.

The 2nd vid at the top shows the build in a half-built stage. If you can get 3 pieces of the set, you're good to go. After that it's just about getting the pieces together and tweaking it to your liking.

If you don't have 3 pieces of the set, the build still performs well. Just follow the stat priorities below, and keep killing bad guys.

Stat priorities evolve with your Mastery and Anomaly level, as well as gear. Here's a short rundown of early stat priorities and some gear-dependent priorities.

• 1) Cooldown - the higher this is, the faster things will die. Get this to 90% ASAP - even with 0 set pieces and 0 other recommended items, this build will perform well if you can get close to max CDR.
  
• 2) Damage & Movement Speed - I'll call these tied for 2nd. Things will die fast enough that you will be able to zip around the map.
  
• 3) Lightning damage
  
• 4) Crit chance - its usefulness depends somewhat on your critical hit damage, but CHD starts at 170% while CC starts at 5%, so this is more valuable to boost up. You can ignore this once you have Jeopardy.
  
• 5) Crit damage
  
• 6) Pickup radius/Crystal find (including "Kill Hoarder") - Insane crystal find + pickup radius is a great way to get set pieces and non-true legendaries thanks to gambling. Depending on the difficulty level and your need for new gear and more materials, I would rank this stat combo as high as #2.

This list applies for the first few hundred Anomaly levels (until 400-500 or so). At that point, I recommend enchanting new gear with the stat priorities shown in the pics.