[Top 10] Path of Exile Best Unique Bows That Are Powerful (And How To Get Them)

As Path of Exile boasts over 1300 different Unique Items, it’s no secret that we have several strong choices, sometimes even build defining or Best in Slot, for Bow Uniques. As such, this is a list of the 10 best Unique Bows, either because of pure damage or its amazing build defining trait or flexibility.

10 – Quill Rain

Quill Rain 

Arguably the best leveling unique item in the game, the Quill Rain is an amazingly flexible bow that can help you through the acts if your build does not require flat damage to deal damage, such as Chaos Gems, like Toxic Rain or Caustic Arrow. In fact, a Quill Rain is BiS for TR until you can afford a +3/DoT Multi bow, which can be quite expensive early league, and even mid league.

Being such a phenomenal pick for levelling certain niche builds, it deserves a spot on the list despite being a low level unique that you can get right from the start.

What Makes Quill Rain Great:

• Flexibility in its uses.
• Quickest Bow in the Game.
• Wonderfully high Projectile Speed, which helps with clear and with Blink Arrow.
• Easily obtainable and affordable.

How to Get Quill Rain:

• You can always chance it, but the easiest way is to simply farm Heist. It’s the best place for unique items and rewards, and being as common as Quill Rain is, you’ll be swimming in several copies of it in no time.
• It has no dedicated Divination Card, but it can be picked by over half a dozen cards with random Unique item rewards.

Quill Rain full details: https://www.poewiki.net/wiki/Quill_Rain

9 – The Tempest

The Tempest

Yet another fantastic Leveling Bow, The Tempest is the Fated version of Storm Cloud. It’s a special bow that makes it so you deal no Physical damage at the cost of high %Lightning Damage, as well as upwards of 50% Attack Speed, being one of the fastest Bows in the game, right after Quill Rain.

One of the main benefits of The Tempest is that while it doesn’t have massive Flat elemental damage, it’s such a quick bow, and it has so much % Lightning damage, that it’s the perfect choice for any Elemental Bow Leveling, like Ice Shot or Lightning Arrow, or even Elemental Hit (If you’re using Frostferno for that juicy +4/+6/+8 gem Level).

What Makes The Tempest so Great:

• Extremely Quick Bow
• Can be used to Level until Endgame, depending on the build.
• Great for Elemental Bow Attacks with its high APS and % Lightning Damage.

How to Get the Tempest:

• Just like Quill Rain, The Tempest has no specific divination card, but you cannot chance it.
• The easiest way to get it is through Akii’s Prophecy Divination Card set of 3, which grants a Fated Unique, which The Tempest is. Since it’s a common item, it’s likely it won’t take many sets for you to get it.
• Besides that, there’s a Node in the Atlas Passive tree that grants an 80% Increased chance to drop a Fated Unique when you kill the Map Boss.

For more details, check: https://www.poewiki.net/wiki/The_Tempest

8 – Xoph’s Nurture

Xoph's Nurture

An old unique that’s been around since Breach League, Xoph’s Nurture saw a resurgence with how prolific Burning Arrow got a few leagues back. While it’s being slept on right now, it’s still a fantastic bow for Ignite builds, with its high DPS and easy 50% Phys to Fire Conversion, and being essentially a 7-L, with its free Ignite Proliferation Gem.

It also boasts a wonderfully ignored line, that recovers some of your life when you ignite an Enemy, helping you sustain through mapping.

What Makes Xoph’s Nurture so Great:

• High DPS for a Unique Bow.
• Best Ignite bow for Ignite
• A 7-Link Bow

How to Get Xoph’s Nurture:

• Every Breach unique is different because you can only get them from breach content, and then you need to upgrade them by using a blessing of their ‘parent’.
• So for a Xoph’s Nurture, you’d need a Xoph’s Inception, the underling of Nurture, and a Blessing of Xoph, to upgrade it to Nurture.
• It is unchanceable and it has no divination cards.

Xoph’s Nurture details: https://www.poewiki.net/wiki/Xoph%27s_Nurture

7 – Doomfletch’s Prism

Doomfletcher's Prism

While mostly forgotten by the meta, this bow is as strong today as the day it was conceived. It boasts a whopping 300% Phys Gained as Elemental damage (100% of each Element), which means you want as much Flat Physical damage in your gear.

Some people (Brittleknee comes to mind) took that bow and used a different unique in conjunction with it, to gain absurd amounts of flat physical damage through Jewels and Mines, using this bow’s insane scaling and pushing the envelope on it.

What Makes Doomfletch’s Prism so Great:

• Insane scalability
• Forgotten by the meta, so it is extremely cheap to get.
• It’s a build defining unique, as you need to build around it to support it and squeeze all of its potential through intelligent gearing.

How to get Doomfletch’s Prism:

• While it can’t be chanced and it is also a Fated Unique, it has a Divination card Set just for it, called Vile Power.
• You can also farm Akii’s Prophecy cards, and being fairly common of a drop, it won’t take you long to get one.
• But the easiest way is to buy it from other players, since no one is playing or using it, the price hits the floor.

For more information, check here: https://www.poewiki.net/wiki/Doomfletch%27s_Prism

6 – Iron Commander

Iron Commander

In a world where Dex Stacking is relatively common, getting as much as 12 Siege Ballistas is more than possible, and with the new Sentinel Boot Affix, that adds 2 to 4 Cold damage to Attacks per 10 Dex, and being able to reach easily over 2000 Dex, you get benefitted twice, from Iron Commander’s natural Scalling with 1 to 3 Phys per 25 Dex, as well as several other synergistic unique items.

This means you can literally have a movable army of Ballistas that will clear everything in your path, and this is the only unique that can give you so many ballistas in the game.

What makes The Iron Commander so Great:

• The best way to get as many Ballistas as possible.
• Can melt any boss in the game when properly built around.
• Build enabling and defining bow, that only it can produce the results you’d get from it.

Where can you get aa Iron Commander:

• It has no specific Divination card, but it can be chanced and there are over 7 Div Card sets that can give you unique bows that could give you an Iron Commander.

For more details: https://www.poewiki.net/wiki/Iron_Commander

5 – The Gluttonous Tide

The Gluttonous Tide

A new bow that drops from The Eater of Worlds, though not used much at all, is unique in how it can give you tons of projectiles and ping-ponging your Frenzy Charges. It’s perfect for builds that don’t rely on Frenzy Charge but will welcome it. Though it suffers from having low DPS, you can use its multiple projectiles to your advantage.

If you have a Minimum Frenzy Charge, you’ll always benefit from having Frenzy Charges, which means you will always have 30~50 Crit Multi. It’s also the best bow to generate Frenzy Charges.

What Makes The Gluttonous Tide so Great:

• Cheap and easy to get.
• An interesting mechanic that grants you as many projectiles as Frenzy Charges, making it perfect to generate as many charges as possible, as quickly as possible.
• A good Starter Bow until you can get a more solid option.

Where can you get a Gluttonous Tide:

• It’s a boss-only drop, that can only be obtained from killing the Pinnacle Boss Eater of Worlds.
• Since it’s not a coveted item and quite common to drop, (I have gotten over 3 this league so far without farming for it), you can easily get it for cheap.

The Gluttonous Tide details: https://www.poewiki.net/wiki/The_Gluttonous_Tide

4 – The Crimson Storm

The Crimson Storm

The only Maraketh Weapon unique in the game, the Crimson Storm is a unique bow focused on Bleeding damage, and it has the potential to be one of the strongest bows for any Bleeding builds, if you hit the lucky Veiled Mod that it comes with built in.

It might be either a Suffix or a Prefix, and since the stat that you most want as a Bleeding build is Physical DoT Multiplier, if you luck into a Suffix, your chances to get one are much higher.

What makes The Crimson Storm so Great:

• High variance in utility.
• One of the best bows for bleeding.
• Relatively affordable and farmable.
• Perfect for Rupture Deadeye builds.

How to get The Crimson Storm:

• It cannot be chanced nor does it have any Divination cards that would reward this bow.
• It is very farmable, however, if you spec into Betrayal, since almost every Member of the Syndicate can drop the bow when you run their Safehouse areas.

For more details: https://www.poewiki.net/wiki/The_Crimson_Storm

3 – Hopeshredder

Hopeshredder

The dream bow for any fully kitted Frenzy Stacking bow characters, Hopeshredder can grant you upwards of 200 extra cold flat damage just from Frenzy Charges, besides its base value, as well as a ton of attack leech and movement speed.

It comes with the cost of damaging you substantially while moving per Frenzy Charge, and you’ll need to mitigate that damage through several different means, but mostly through Regen and high Cold Res.

What Makes Hopeshredder so Great:

• Wonderful bow with high elemental base damage and great scaling.
• A perfect zooming bow, that can grant you over 40% movement speed by itself.
• It synergizes extremely well with other frenzy stacking mechanics.

How to Get Hopeshredder:

• It cannot be chanced nor does it have any div card.
• It can only drop from The Elder.

Hopeshredder full details: https://www.poewiki.net/wiki/Hopeshredder

2 – Windripper

Windripper

One of the most iconic unique bow items, the crown jewel of MFing, the Windripper is one of the bows that has carried a long tradition on its back, and you’ll always find it great to use if you know how to build it properly.

Though it has low eDPS, its 15% Quantity of Items Dropped is unparalled and it used to be even better!

What makes Windripper so Great:

• Best MFing bow.
• Pays for itself with the amount of extra currency you’ll be getting.
• Fairly quick bow with good crit chance.

Where can you get a Windripper:

• It not only has a specific divination card but it can be gotten from several other ones.
• The Wind drops from Jungle Valley, Atoll, and Mesa Maps.

Windripper full details: https://www.poewiki.net/wiki/Windripper

1 – Darkscorn

Darkscorn

The most build-defining and special bow in this list, that can enable a full playstyle, Darkscorn is the best bow for poison builds and not only does it deal insane amounts of damage, it’s extremely defensive as well, being the best source in the game for Phys Damage Taken conversion to Chaos.

It also has substantially high base damage that you can scale to further your poison damage, and it’s best paired with the Glorious Vanity Unique Timeless Jewel, for Divine Flesh, making it so you take 75% of Physical Damage as Chaos instead, and scaling as much Chaos resistance as possible.

What Makes Darkscorn so Great:

• It’s the last remaining source of ‘% chance for Poison to deal XXX% more damage’ in the game.
• It’s both a defensive and offensive item that pairs really well with Scourge Arrow or other Poison Bow builds.
• When combined with Poison Prolif and Pathfinder’s insane recovery, you can essentially create an immortal build because of this bow.

How to get a Darkscorn:

• It can be chanced and also drops from anywhere in the game.
• You can get it from a plethora of Divination cards though it has no specific one, besides League-Specific cards.

Darkscorn full details: https://www.poewiki.net/wiki/Darkscorn

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