Reign of Winter Bowmage Marksman Guide

Reaching Empowered Monolith unlocks all the level 100 Timelines and the ability to farm Empowered Blessings. Unlike Normal Blessings, these need to be farmed until you get the desired ones for your build. It is extremely important to get this set up as fast as possible to free up affix slots on your gear. Remember, the more value you get from your Blessings, the easier it is to craft efficient gear!

These are the core Combat Empowered Blessings for this build:

• If you are lacking Resistances, start with Grand Echo of Solarum or Grand Bastion of Divinity.
• If you are lacking Critical Strike Avoidance, start with Grand Survival of Might. A high roll on this Empowered Blessing can be combined with Heightened Senses or a single T5 Critical Strike Avoidance to completely cap it.
• Once your core Defenses are sorted, grab Grand Rage of Winter for a huge Damage boost. Make sure you eventually get a high roll!
• Combine a high rolled Grand Embers of Immortality with the Engraved Gauntlets Implicit to cap your Endurance.

Consider these Combat Empowered Blessings once your gear allows it:

• Grand Resolve of Humanity has insane value for this build. It helps cap Resistances and offsets the downside from Mourningfrost if your Dexterity gets super high. Grab it once your Critical Strike Avoidance is sorted.
• Grand Body of Obsidian can be hard to fit until you have a super optimized setup. However it has way better value than Grand Embers of Immortality and great synergy with the %Armour buff from Shurikens and Throne of Ambition.

These Empowered Blessings are flexible and depend on your current needs and goals.

These are valuable Empowered Drop Rate Blessings for this build:

• Grand Winds of Fortune since this build uses many Unique Items.
• Complement it with Grand Apex of Fortune or Grand Right of Conquest depending on what specific Unique you are farming for.
• Lastly Grand Vigilance of the Damned helps you find more Exalted Bows.

• Glancing Blows: Thanks to Arrowguard and the Marksman Passive Tree, you can easily get 80% permanent Glancing Blow chance, and reach 100% chance when using Smoke Bomb thanks to the Dusk Shrouds it provides. You take 35% less damage from Hits with Glancing Blows.
• Dusk Shrouds: Each grants 5% Glancing Blow Chance and 50 flat Dodge.
• Smoke Bomb: Can be used as an extra gap closer that leaves a persistent Slow on the ground for easier kitting. It provides Dusk Shrouds while standing on the fog. Additionally it has a Cleanse and gives Silver Shrouds on use.
• Silver Shrouds: As long as you have one up, the next hit you take is Dodged instead. You also gain 100 Ward per Silver Shroud once they proc to Dodge the incoming attack. Since they last 10 seconds each, you can time Smoke Bomb and Covering Fire apart to make sure you always have one Silver Shroud active, or quickly recover them if they proc. If you do this properly you can always have this protection against hits that can be Dodged, including some major Boss mechanics!
• Dodge: Dexterity, Dodge, %Dodge and the extra Dodge provided by Dusk Shrouds, allow you to reasonably reach between 20% and 40% permanent Dodge, on top of Silver Shrouds. The Elusive Node on Shift provides a massive Dodge boost for 1 second and can provide up to 80%+ Dodge for the duration.
• Shift: This dash gives immunity frames while it's used thanks to the Shadowslip node. Time this Skill properly to avoid incoming damage or potential 1 shots. It provides a massive boost of Dodge and procs 5 Shurikens on use.
• Shurikens: Can be used as an extra gap closer for a total of 3 different dashes on this build. Thanks to the Stagger node they also Root anything that gets close to you. This is an amazing last resort defensive layer against melee enemies that rush the player. They also grant a ton of %Armour while active thanks to Bladed Armor.
• Armour Mitigation: Surprisingly this build can get a ton of Armour too. Just with the implicit Armour from your gear, the Grand Body of Obsidian Blessing and Shurikens your Armour easily reaches 35%+ Mitigation. Thanks to Throne of Ambition this Mitigation increases to 45%+ while Bossing. This is huge on top of all the other defensive layers the build has.
• Decoy: Crazy support skill. Aside from its multiple temporary buffs, it Taunts. While Taunted, enemies focus the Decoy instead of attacking you. Additionally you can instantly Fear anything inside its AoE on use.
• Health: Rogue has access to Large Shadow Idols with %Health. Not all classes have access to this amazing Idols, so take advantage of it.
• Health on Hit and Crit: Draining Arrows and Perfect Aim provide the build with insane sustain. With the amount of hits it does the build can recover all of its HP almost instantly.
• Evasion: The Damage Reduction while moving is great while escaping from threats.
• Chill and Slow: Are Ailments that greatly reduce the Action and Movement Speed of your enemies. They are must haves on most builds, specially once you reach hard content with insane speed modifiers.
• Frailty: This Ailment reduces the Damage dealt by enemies by 6% for 4 seconds. Stacks 3 times.
• Ward and Ailment Cleansing on Potion Use: Cleanse all Ailments on Potion use.