Manni's Tornado Shot Deadeye Build Guide (PoE Necropolis 3.24)

Due to the latest balancing changes, we do not recommend playing this build anymore, as it does not meet the high standards we apply to our guides in terms of fun and performance. We are leaving it up as a reference and it might be revived in a later patch.

Introduction

Tornado Shot has been one of the ultimate, high budget speed farming builds over many leagues in PoE’s history. With recent patches, Bow builds like Elemental Tornado Shot have become a lot stronger on affordable gear levels to the extent that it can even be efficiently played as a first character in a fresh league! Despite significant nerfs to the build in PoE Necropolis (3.24), Tornado Shot is without a doubt still one of the strongest builds in terms of clear speed and coverage.

In this build guide, we showcase a Tornado Shot Deadeye Build on a moderate budget that shines with excellent clear speed and high damage output without neglecting defensive capabilities to create a very smooth and pleasant mapping experience.
The guide also explains the progression to the final build in multiple steps and gives advice on how to invest to improve the character beyond the budget of this build.

While we have intentionally forgone using expensive items like Crystallised Omniscience or Mageblood to keep the build affordable, Tornado Shot is a skill that will feel exponentially better with higher investment into stronger gear.
For a much lower budget yet similar playstyle, I recommend a Lightning Arrow Deadeye Build that can work as a perfect stepping stone before converting the character into this Tornado Shot build.

Build Overview

This section covers the playstyle and Pros & Cons of the build to help you decide if it is the right build for you.

Playstyle

Tornado Shot offers a very satisfying play style that allows us to concentrate our damage output on a single enemy by aiming our primary projectiles right behind them while letting the many secondary projectiles take care of clearing a large area in all directions, even reaching far off-screen with enough investment into Projectile Speed.
With Deadeye’s built-in Tailwind, we move through maps quickly and kill monsters before they have a chance to reach us.
For tanky enemies, we place up to three ballista totems that join us in using Tornado Shot, resulting in a mayhem of countless arrows for solid single target damage output.
The build is simple to play, requiring no more than 3 or 4 hotkeys as we use automated setups like Manaforged Arrows Support + Frenzy and Sniper's Mark + Mark On Hit Support.
While we make an effort to build defensive layers to minimize the amounts of deaths, the build still operates on a “kill them before they kill us“ – philosophy.

Pros

• Extremely good clear speed for efficiently farming maps and many league mechanics.
• Strong single target damage output to melt map bosses and beat endgame bosses.
• Solid Allrounder – the build handles nearly all content well with a few exceptions that require more tankiness.

Cons

• Lackluster defensive capabilities make it hard to run content where we cannot avoid taking damage, such as Simulacrum.
• High investment is required to make the build unleash its full potential.
• Uber Pinnacle Bosses are difficult and there are far more cost-efficient build choices if your goal is to tackle these bosses.

Build Concept

We are going over the basic mechanics and concepts of the build below

Tornado Shot Mechanics

Additional Arrows and increased Projectile Speed are extremely important stats for our build and are the main reason why Tornado Shot scales so well with gear upgrades.
To explain why, we will go into detail about the mechanics of the skill below:

The Tornado Shot skills consists of two components.
The primary projectile is fired at the location we aimed our mouse cursor on, always pierces anything on the way and any Additional Arrows and Projectiles are added to the number of primary projectiles.

The secondary projectiles are then created at the location where the primary projectiles were aimed at and shot out in a random direction. There are 3 secondary projectiles per primary arrow fired by default and as of Necropolis League, there is no way to modify this number anymore.

The primary projectiles behave like almost every other projectile skill in the game, where each enemy can only be hit once per attack even if we have additional arrows that physically pass by the enemy. Each enemy can be hit once by each set of secondary projectiles however, granting Tornado Shot a so called “shotgun effect” that allows us to hit the same enemy multiple times with the same attack for enormous damage output. The amount of additional hits on one enemy varies due to the random direction in which the secondary projectiles travel and depends on where we aimed the primary projectile as well as the size of the hitbox of the enemy.
It is often estimated that we hit around 30-40% of our secondary projectiles which means our build that fires 8 arrows would hit a boss four times per attack.

Because of the above mentioned shotgun-effect, Tornado Shot is a build that scales extremely well with additional arrows. Our build gains two additional arrows from the passive skill tree, two from the Endless Munitions Ascendancy passive, one from a rare Quiver and two more during the flask effect of Dying Sun. More arrows can be gained from a rare Bow with the “Fires two additional Arrows” modifier but is not included in our build due to its extremely high price.
The Greater Multiple Projectiles Support is not worth using for our build because of its harsh damage penalty on top of consuming a gem socket in our 6-Link.

Modifiers to Pierce, Fork and Chain only work on the secondary projectile of Tornado Shot. We opt to use Chain from the Ricochet Ascendancy passive on our build which allows our secondary projectiles to seek out another enemy after they hit their first target.

The secondary projectiles fade over time, so increasing our Projectile Speed will make the secondary projectiles travel further to increase the distance at which they can hit enemies. With over 240% increased Projectile Speed on this build, the secondary projectiles travel far off-screen for great clear speed. Projectile Speed also increases the travel speed of the primary projectile, reducing the delay between attacking and creating the secondary projectiles making the playstyle smoother and more responsive. Additionally, we use the Bow Mastery that grants “Increases and Reductions to Projectile Speed also apply to Damage with Bows” to benefit even more from stacking as much Projectile Speed as possible.

For maximal single-target damage output, we try to aim our mouse cursor right behind the enemy so that the primary projectiles hit the enemy and the secondary projectiles spawn as closely to the enemy as possible, maximizing their chance to hit the enemy.

Elemental Damage & Trinity

We choose to scale our damage with added Elemental Damage because it is more cost-efficient than relying on a strong Physical Damage Bow, although building the character with Physical Damage and converting to Elemental Damage is often preferred on very expensive versions of Tornado Shot.

To activate the Trinity Support, we need a high amount of added Lightning Damage on our Bow. Because our total Lightning Damage has a wide range of values in which it randomly rolls some of our hits have Lightning Damage as their highest elemental type, building up Fire & Cold Resonance while other hits have Fire Damage or Cold Damage as their highest damage type, building up Lightning Resonance.

Far Shot

When the primary Tornado Shot projectiles impact and create the secondary projectiles, the secondary projectiles inherit the distance that the primary projectile travelled. It is therefore very easy to gain maximum value from Far Shot for the massive 60% Damage Multiplier. To capitalize further on this, we also use Longshot and the Bow Mastery that grants up to 100% increased Critical Strike Chance for projectiles that travelled far.

We should try to keep a safe distance from enemies and aim our primary projectiles behind enemies, allowing them to travel a long enough distance for maximum Far Shot effect.

Defensive Mechanics

While this build mostly avoids taking damage because of its long-range clear and high damage output, we opt to set up a few efficient defensive layers that do not compromise our investment into offence too much.

• 100% Spell Suppression is an obvious choice and reduces incoming Spell Damage by 56% on this build.

• 95% Chance to evade Attacks grants us an enormous Effective Life Pool against Attacks, leaving us only vulnerable to Attacks that hit hard enough to one-shot us. The following measures are taken to prevent this:

• The Wind Dancer Keystone lowers Attack Damage taken by 20% in the rare cases that we do get hit.

• 24% of Physical Damage is taken as Elemental Damage instead and mitigated by 75% Elemental Resistance instead of our very low Physical Damage Mitigation.

• Endurance Charges generated by the Disciple of the Unyielding Anointment to mitigate Physical Damage by up to 12%.

We achieve 95% Chance to Evade Attacks thanks to a high amount of Evasion, a Dread Banner + Generosity Support setup that lowers enemies’ Accuracy by 31% and a Watcher's Eye granting +8% Chance to Evade while affected by Grace.

Path of Building, Passive Tree and Gem Links

We included a comprehensive Path of Building for the build, including levelling trees and multiple variations.

For detailed information about the Passive Tree and Gem Links, check out the dedicated page linked below:

Passive Tree & Gem Links

Ascendancy, Bandit Choice and Pantheon Powers

For a breakdown of Ascendancy choices, Bandit choice and an explanation of Pantheon Power options, check the dedicated page linked below:

Ascendancy, Bandits & Pantheons

Gearing

A detailed analysis of all gear slots, Eldritch Implicits, Jewels and Flasks can be found on the dedicated Gear Page of the Guide:

Gear, Jewels and Flasks

Below is a short summary of the most important aspects of each gear slot

Item Slot	Important Stats
Bow	High Elemental DPS with a high base Crit Chance Spine Bow
Quiver	Rare Feathered Arrow Quiver with Additional Arrow and high Projectile Speed
Chest	High Evasion Rare with Spell Suppression and the “6% of Physical Damage is taken as Fire/Lightning” bench craft
Helmet	Rare with Life, Resistances, Suppression or Accuracy
Boots	Rare with “chance to gain Onslaught on Kill” + Movement Speed, Life and Resistances
Gloves	Rare with Life and Accuracy, Attack Speed, Suppression or Resistances
Amulet	Rare with Crit Multiplier, Life and Attributes or Resistances
Rings	Death Rush and a Rare with Life, STR and Accuracy
Belt	Rare with Life and Resistances or STR

Additional Notes

Mapping

There are a few map modifiers that give us trouble:

• Elemental Reflect – With Awakened Elemental Damage with Attacks Support we can run this modifier if we also remove the Frenzy gem from our sockets.

• Physical Reflect – runnable with the Yugul Minor Pantheon, but can still be dangerous.

• – 20% to the amount of suppressed spell damage prevented / Monsters have 50% increased Accuracy Rating is by far the most deadly modifier for our build as it targets our two main defensive layers.

Bossing

Below is a list of adaptions we can make to improve our power against bosses. Most of these make our build significantly worse for mapping, so only consider these when you are focussing on endgame bosses.

• We can change the Ricochet Ascendancy passive to Focal Point. The map clear will be noticeably worse, but Focal Point’s 75% increased Mark Effect for our Sniper's Mark is a large damage boost.

• We replace Death Rush with a Ring that provides extra Life or DPS because Death Rush’s on kill effects are largely irrelevant in boss fights. The Taming or a Rare Ring with Life, Crit Multiplier and Elemental Damage are good options.

Levelling

I recommend using Rain of Arrows until our Passive Tree & Ascendancy Passives provide us with four additional Arrows and changing to Tornado Shot only when we enter maps or even later.
Below is a walkthrough of the campaign, using Rain of Arrows for a very smooth levelling experience.

If you prefer to use Tornado Shot as early as level 28, you can stick to the same walkthrough below and simply change the Rain of Arrows gem setup to

Tornado Shot + Greater Multiple Projectiles Support (or Lesser Multiple Projectiles Support before lvl 38) + Mirage Archer Support + Added Cold Damage Support

I included a Twitch VOD of a Campaign Playthrough of mine, following the guide below

Campaign

After Hillock, we use Galvanic Arrow with Momentum Support to start progressing through Act 1.

During Act 1, our goal is to find items that have the proper sockets to use our gems, most notably a G-G-G 3-linked item. We also want two Iron Ring and a Serrated Arrow Quiver as early as possible to get a very significant damage boost.

After Tidal Island and Mud Flats, we buy a few gems and our setup looks like this:

• Galvanic Arrow + Mirage Archer Support + Momentum Support (or Added Cold Damage Support after level 8)
• Shrapnel Ballista + Pierce Support (+ Faster Attacks Support at level 8)
• Sniper's Mark
• Dash and Blink Arrow (at level 10)

Make sure to cast Sniper’s Mark on tough enemies and don’t forget to summon and resummon ballistas during boss fights.
Note that Blink Arrow does not share a cooldown with the other Movement Skills, so we can use both in quick succession to move quickly through areas.

Upon reaching Merveil’s Lair and level 12 we can change Galvanic Arrow to
Rain of Arrows + Mirage Archer Support + Added Cold Damage Support
and replace Dash with Frostblink.

At level 16 we can add Herald of Ice and a temporary Herald of Ash.
Once we get another G-G 2-link, we can start running Frenzy + Manaforged Arrows Support to generate Frenzy Charges, which grant inherent bonuses to Damage and Attack Speed.
Blood Rage is also an option to gain increased Attack Speed, but can easily be skipped if you do not want to deal with the life degeneration debuff that it applies.

At Level 24 we replace the Herald of Ash with either Grace or Haste, depending on your preference and the level of comfort with your current survivability,
At this point, we should have the Precise Technique Keystone allocated which requires our Accuracy Rating to be higher than our Maximum Life. I strongly recommend regularly checking your Character Panel (Default Hotkey C) to check that this is in fact the case. Replacing Herald of Ice with Precision is an option to fix our Accuracy, but is usually not necessary.

1. Rain of Arrows + Mirage Archer Support + Added Cold Damage Support + Faster Attacks Support
2. Artillery Ballista + Elemental Damage with Attacks Support + Elemental Focus Support + Added Cold Damage Support (replaced by Focused Ballista Support once you get it.)

At level 38 we add Mark On Hit Support to Sniper's Mark to automate triggering it.

For the rest of the campaign, we do not need any new gems and we just keep following the passive tree progression as outlined in the PoB. Always keep an eye on your Accuracy Rating to make sure it is higher than your Life total, enabling Precise Technique and its large boost to damage. Don’t neglect to identify any rare Bows and Quivers that you come across, and try to constantly upgrade them. If you cannot find a weapon upgrade for a long time, consider using an Orb of Alchemy, Orb of Binding or an Essence on the highest level Bow base you can find.

There are many strong levelling uniques for this build, most notably Storm Cloud which can work all the way up to level 50 or higher. On top of the usual levelling uniques that grant Movement Speed, most unique items that grant flat Elemental Damage are very good for us, for example, Prismweave, Tasalio's Sign, Lioneye's Paws and Wake of Destruction.

After Campaign

At around Level 65, after Merciless Labyrinth, I recommend changing from Rain of Arrows to a Tornado Shot setup.
The provided Path of Building includes passive trees for levels 65, 80 and 92 to showcase the recommended order of picking the passives towards the final version.