Boeroer

Yes, with a hireling you can choose another pet when retraining - but not with Sagani. And you can use Swift Aim and then retrain at lvl 13 when you get Twinned Arrows. Before that Swift Aim is totally fine for Stormcaller. Another way is to use Outlander's Frenzy plus Vicious Aim. This will result in +5% (+25%,-20%) speed and a lot more damage per hit because you get +32% damage (+4 MIG, +20% Vicious Aim) and also +20 ACC which leads to a lot more crits. Outlander's Frenzy and Swift Aim don't stack by the way. Just out of curiosity you could even try to use Vicious Aim (more crits = more wounding damage) with Persistence and Swift Aim (more hits = more procs of Returning Storm) with Stormcaller and compare the dps. Should be interesting. At lvl 13 you should use Twinned Arrows instead because it's clearly superior. Using Outlander's Frenzy can result in a shortage of talent points when it comes to the talents that you want to take for the animal companion. As I said I recommend at least Merciless & Vicious & Resilient Companion as well as Predator's Sense (but that's an ability). When all those are active (easily with Stunning Shots or Binding Roots, combined with Persistence or Wounding Shot) the pet's damage is very, very high per hit. Even higher for a wolf (single target) or stag (AoE damage). If you take the Takedown ability for your pet (it's not that bad anymore, in fact it's quite cool) and later Brutal Takedown (talent - adds crush damage which stacks with the normal, already sky high damage of the hit) then the pet becomes even more impressive. But then you will see that you run out of talant points for your shooting. Maybe that you'd have to skip marksman or Pen. Shot then. I focused my persistence based ranger on pet's damage, so I took all the pet's goodies and skipped Marksman and Outlander's Frenzy. I used Persistence as a "wounding marker" for my pet mainly. But of couse it still does great damage. With Stormaller it was the other way round: I wanted to proc Returning Storm as much as possible and keep up the -6 shock DR for my teammates. Just to have a bit of diversity in the two rangers' playstyle. This is not necessarily the best way to do it, but It worked out well and was fun.

So... shouldn't it damage pierce immune foes then? Why does a sabre with a burning lash damage an earth blight which is immune to slash, but Persistence wouldn't damage a flame blight which is immune to pierce? That would mean that burning lash and wounding get calculated before DR, but there was a different kind of handling when it comes to immunities. Man, I really don't want to look into that code. Sounds like a complete mess...

Well you can retrain.

You have to use a bit higher move speed (camping bonus or/and Fast Runner and sugar e.g.). The AI doesn't follow you for long if you have higher move speed. If you have the same or lower, they will follow you forever. The dialogue should get triggered when you walk around the throne. The combat has to end first. Works for me. At last time a few days ago with kiting solo chanter.

Ah OK. Good to know.

Yeah. Although you can give your speedy rogue (or whatever class) a path with shift+click. Usually I did this in a way that he ran in wide circles around the mob. At the start of an encounter, I just shift+clicked around the mob clockwise like a twenty times and then unpaused. Most of the time the rest is like a Benny Hill show.

Yes. Put them into grimoires. You can always edit what spells are in a grimoire, even if it's not your own. You just have to equip it. Then, later, learn from the grimoires again when you retrained. Costs a bit of extra money though. You don't need to keep 50 grimoires. Just put the spells you like and which you don't plan to pick during retraining into one, two or three grimoires. Sell the rest.

This whole (slightly vitriolic) discussion would be obsolete if OBS did it right and bash worked like dual wielding and also got buffed by Two Weapon Style. Still don't get why it doesn't. Now, with the single proc of Thrust instead of two the Barricade got nerfed a lot. Before that I had the feeling that the Barricade was better than any other shield because - as I said - the Full Attack abilities like Blinding and Crippling Strikes and so on worked clearly better, because the Thrust triggered a lot. Normally you could win some fights without using all of your Full Attacks, making the use of auto attacks (which are worse because of bash) obsolete in some fights. Maybe that's why mosspit and I have the impression that Badgradr's Barricade works better than a normal shield: because Riposte and Full Attack abilities add up quite nicely and there are fewer auto attacks than one might think. With a dumped DEX value you would do less attacks overall in one encounter. This would shift dps more towards the Barricade, because the ratio of "done full attacks" to "done auto attacks" in an encounter would be shifted towards full attacks (because encounters aren't endless and your party members will finish the mobs before you get to use auto attacks). With a solo rogue this all would shift towards auto attacks, no matter the DEX, because you would have to kill all enemies by yourself, thus using a tin of auto attacks. If you had a party that kills mobs quickly and you are only the guy that runs around and kills the casters or ranged back liners with a few Full Attacks and dish out Ripostes while getting there, I assume the Barricade would still be better. For a caster hunter it also might be better because of the 10% to 25% reflection. So I think it's not easy to test this in a matter that it comes close to "real" combat. When only doing auto attacks a normal shield wins - when only doing full attacks the Barricade wins. But neither the first nor the last will be the case in a usual encounter.

Right - only exception: when you combine Deep Wounds with AoE pierce/crush/slash damage the can do massive damage. For example take a spell binding of Overbearing Wave or a scroll of Twin Stones or Concussive Missiles: they will apply Deep Wounds to all enemies who get hit by the spell. That can mean up to 20 extra raw damage per spell with high MIG and INT.

This time I'm 100 % sure because Deep Wounds were the base of the Mad Hornet build and I used it a lot: Deep Wounds are better with high INT (and high MIG of course). Other than with wounding where the fixed damage is spread over the time, you get a certain damage per tick (damage gets influenced by MIG) and more ticks with more INT. It doesn't stack as wounding does though. So you could say that high INT isn't better if you hit a target more often (because Deep Wounds gets refreshed anyways) - and that's right. High INT only pays off if you hit once, let the Deep Wounds "bleed" and in the meanwhile turn/run towards another target.

Yes, one ranger with Persistence, the other with Stormcaller. 1.: Persistence: lvl 4 Endless Paths, southwest of the map on a dead body. Stormcaller: WM, Russetwood. After entering the Russetwood map, sneak southwest until you find a wounded wolf. Get the silver arrow that sticks in his flank. You can heal the wolf with enough survival or special spells like charm beast or just put him out of his misery. Then go to Durgan's Battery map and sneak to the northeast of the battery and climb up the watchtower (the battery lies in the norhwest of the map, the watchtower lies east of it). On th top of the watchtower you will find the bow. Arrow and bow will automatically merge and form Stormcaller. You can then bind it you your ranger and start to upgrade it (shouldn't take too long - it's already exceptional and does -6 shock DR on hit). As I said with this ranger you can use war bows first because Stormcaller works with any weapon focus. The 20 INT on your second ranger is maybe better for Stormcaller than for Persistence. The -6 shock DR debuff will last longer. I would also take Binding Roots with that ranger because those will last for a very long time with 20 INT. The shock DR debuff of Stormcaller will help your druid enormously if he uses shock spells (which he should). Relentless and Returning Storm are a great tandem and will stunlock most enemies in range while doing good damage. 2.: Both bows work fine with Twinned Arrows, Stunning Shots & Driving Flight. The rest is plain old ranged skilling. Marksman, Penetrating Shot, such things. Swift Aim doesn't work with Twinned Arrows so you could think about taking Outlander's Frenzy for more damage and attack speed. I would always take Merciless, Vicious and Resilient Companion plus Predator's Sense. I would take wolf and Stag companion, never the lion - and never two of the same because you'll confuse them all the time. Wolf is the best single target dps animal companion (he is running faster, hits faster than a bear or a lion and has 2 more base damage which means all the damage mods from merciless/vicious companion and predator's sense work even better). The stag has a 40sec carnage attack mode which it can be triggered 1/encounter. Your druid can do DoT AoE spells (Plague of Insects for example) which will trigger Predator's Sense for all the carnage targets - very powerful! The lion's roar only causes frighten (not terrify) which is quite lame and also misses a lot. The duration and AoE is also bad (the duration and AoE is determined by the pet's INT - and as you might guess a lion's INT isn't too high...). Wolf and Stag are better. The bear is not bad for a bit of tanking, but he hits very slowly.

That may be. But what does work is running around the mob with high speed and lots of deflection. Even without riposte this can be very effective. Most of the time the enemies try to follow you and totally forget to attack your party and don't use spells or things like that. It's a bit like abusing the KI. Did it once with a speedy paladin and it worked. And when you can squeeze in some ripostes and Deep Wounds for damage... why not?

Well, my trick works without kiting & fighting, and class or build don't matter - so I win.

Two rangers and their bows. There are few topics/questions that are that clear for me. 100% Persistence + Stormcaller. There are no better weapons for two bow rangers. Seriously. War bows can't compete with those. One big advantage is that you can get both quite early if you want. The parts of Stormcaller can be obtained via scouting/sneaking - no combat necessary. Persistence is the ranged weapon with the highest DPS because of it's wounding which works as a raw lash and gets calculated before DR - so this weapon is even good against high DR foes. It also triggers Predator's Sense. Stormcaller's Returning Storm gets triggered every third shot with Twinned Arrows and Driving Flight. It's base damage also works with Heart of the Storm and has a DR bypass of 11 if you use Penetrating Shot. With Stormcaller you can even use Weapon Focus Adventurer first and use war bows until you get Stormcaller (has universal weapon focus). I think most people here will agree that those are the best weapons for rangers. Edit: Twin Sting is nice as an addition but comes really late. It's also not bad for a cipher, because you can shoot two times without reloading.

Why not put on clothing? Looks less stupid and has the same stats (as long as you don't enchant it).

Yeah, that's why I wanted to add Cape of Withdrawal, Fast Runner and Graceful Retreat for +32 deflection while disengaging. Did you try that as well? Hahaha - I just realized that Escape lets you move without any engangement while you also have the +25 deflection bonus - thus obliterating my plan to provoke disengagement attacks, dammit.. So potions or scrolls have to buff your deflection - or a party member like a paladin with Reinforcing Exhortation or something.Hm, when you use Spelltonge and Riposte gets triggered a lot then maybe that rogue could prolong the deflection buffs throughout the whole encouter... ? @Loren Tyr, have a look into the code and tell us what ACC bonus and how much bonus damage disengagement attacks have please.

The best thing about Overwhelming Wave is that you can cast it out of combat and it's range is huge. You can open a combat with it even if you don't see the enemy.

Funnily the bash ACC is not that much lower than that of the main weapon. If I remember correctly it was only 5 points lower or so...? Thrust of Tattered Veils only works with Deathblowas, not Sneak Attack. It does work with Penetrating Shot though without slowing you down.

The trick is to summon a distraction, run past behing the throne, wait until combat ends and start a conversation with the steward.

I tested Battle Forged with a rogue a bit, Deathblows work, Sneak Attack works, like all the other melee stuff like Vuln. Attacks and Savage Attack - so I assume Dirty and Vicious Fighting also work - even Reckless Assault should work (if you don't take Savage Attack - they can't be stacked). So a rogue with fat armor who gets grazed a lot and has some heals can be a good thing with Battle Forged. It also stacks with normal retaliation - which also works with all of this and even deals Deep Wounds. YOu can even stack this wit a potion of Flame Shield - which also works with all those things. I recently imagined a dual sabre riposte rogue with Escape (+25 deflection), max bonus against disengagement attacks (+32), high move speed (+4 from Boots of Speed + Fast Runner), Cautious Attack, and so on to boost delfection even further and combine this with Fire Godlike and Garod's Chorus for retaliation and a potion of Flame Shield. The deflection while running in circles and provoking diseng. attacks should be high enough to get lots of grazes so riposte triggers all the time and also trigger retaliation. When things go bad and I hit 50% endurance Battle Forged with Sneak and Deathblows should kill most attackers quickly. If deflection is too low with sabres maybe hatchets work. The one that deals fatigue on hit (-10 ACC) could also be great for this rogue. If this is also not enough deflection I'd have to try out shields...

Hu? It should. Yesterday, I killed earth blights from the Dweller's party with a sabre + burning lash - only with the burn damage of the sabre (because they are immune to slash). And since wounding should work like elemental lashes it should also work like this, or not? Didn't test that with persistence lately though.

A few things in addition to what you said (which won't make the choice any easier ): Persistence: - The wounding enchantment stacks - this is especially good with Twinned Arrows - Wounding gets influenced by MIG - high MIG means more pierce damage - this means also the raw lash will be higher. But it also raises the wounding damage itself. - You can level it to legendary while Stormcaller "only" reaches superb (without any resources though) - You can enchant it with durgan steel (+15% speed, hit-to-crit conversion, higher crit damage) - The wounding's raw damage lash is calculated based on the damage before DR gets substracted. This even works on pierce immune foes. The wounding will always fully apply. You can kill everything with this bow, high DR or immunities will be no problem for the raw lash. - Wounding triggers Predator's Sense - Graze to hit can still be good against dragons, Concelhaut, bounty fighters and so on. All those fights that really matter. The trashmob fights are easy at higher lavels anyways - the weapon doesn't matter - You can enchant it with an elemental lash, adding another +25% lash that gets calculated before DR (but gets substracted by 1/4 elemental DR). Stormcaller: - Works with Heart of the Storm. Even the pierce damage gets boosted by 20%. It not only raises the weapon damage, b ut also the damage of the Returning Storm - Returning Storm gets triggered a lot because of Twinned Arrows + Driving Flight. This means you hit 4 times with one shot, raising the chance to trigger Returning Storm from 10% per shot to ~35% per shot - so every third shot you will trigger a Returning Storm which stuns and does good damage. - The cracking sound when Returning Storm procs is very satisfying. - The Returning Storm can stun other enemies as the ones you targeted with your stunning shots. However - they are both great weapons for rangers. I even did a playthrough with two rangers because I couldn't decide which bow to use. Both rangers had nearly the same damage numbers after the playthrough, Persistence slightly higher (and you can't see the damage dealt by the pet). Both can be obtained quite early (Persistence earlier of course). I also like Stormcaller for a cipher because the -6 DR and +20% damage with Heart of the Storm really help with focus generation while Persistence's wounding does nothing for focus. It lacks an elemental lash (which works with focus generation) but the +20% make a bit up for this. So, if you have a bow ranger and a bow cipher in the team you might want to give Persistence to the ranger and Stormcaller to the cipher.

No, it's cool. I only wanted to know if I recognized the origin of that snippet correctly.

Taken?

Report how it works - I only did some hich lvl bounties solo with it (which was easy - even with this more party based build). I am curious how it performs solo during midgame.