Devoted/Sharpshooter weapon selection and stats

[yhal]

The idea is to combine critical bonuses from devoted with high sharpshooter accuracy. What weapon specialization should I choose? Crossbows look good for 10% bonus and long range, but I don't know if there are any good ones.  

 

Also, how should I balance might, dexterity and perception.

[zantesuken]

In fact crossbow by default has the best stats (same dps and penetration as arquebus, but without ACC penalty or crit debuff)

 

Sadly there is only one unique crossbow in the game the fleetbreaker.

But this one luckily fits the theme rather well.

 

It has two enchantments that together add +9 extra accuracy, +1 penetration, 10% miss to graze conversion and + 10% extra damage against targets further away than 8 meters.

 

as for stats:

Might: gives 3% extra damage per point (with legendary weapon and talents you can get around 75% (125% with crit) extra damage. So every point of extra might increases total dps by 1-2% (the more you crit the lesser the effect). But you get extra selfhealing from recovery which usualy isn't buffed by anything else.

 

Dexterity: that's a bit tricky since multiple bonuses to reload and recovery are not treated the same as one big buff. But overall one could say that one point reduces attack time and reload time by around 2 %.

With your build you can get around 30-40% from items and talents (after light armor and sharpshooter penalty). So each point in dex will increase total dps by around 1%

 

Perception: So lets say you have the same acc as your foe's deflection. Then you do roughly 60% of your sheets dps against them (30% miss, 20% graze , 50% hit 0% crits)

Each point of perception increases hit chance and crit chance, and reduces miss chance until you are 30 points above their deflection. So until then your dps increases roughly around 2-3% per point. Since you already have quite good graze to hit and hit to crit conversion you will not benefit as much from perception after that.

 

But there are tons of ways to increase acc in you build +15 from fighter, +15 from ranger +30 from gear

 

so i'd say per until 30 above enemies, then might, then dex.

Edited May 27, 2018 by zantesuken

[yhal]

Thanks. What is the location of fleetbreaker?

[zantesuken]

Quest reward from furrante when you kill aeldys

[Eraflure]

All 3 unique war bows scale extremely well with critical hits through their unique enchantments, and frostseeker is available right after you reach the capital.

 

War bows also offer both pierce/slash damage and dual damage type is very good for a devoted, since it lets him bypass most immunities without switching to another weapon and eating the penalty.

Edited May 28, 2018 by Eraflure

[PizzaSHARK]

The idea is to combine critical bonuses from devoted with high sharpshooter accuracy. What weapon specialization should I choose? Crossbows look good for 10% bonus and long range, but I don't know if there are any good ones.  

 

Also, how should I balance might, dexterity and perception.

 

You can switch proficiency with retraining.  I'd recommend war bow or hunting bow until you find a unique weapon you really like, ideally one with split damage types.  Crossbows are great until you fight skeletons or most blights.

 

If you want to focus on maximizing crit chance and crit damage, pick any single-handed ranged weapon and use OWS.  +12 Accuracy and 20% Hit to Crit ensures you'll be critting up a storm.

 

I'd also recommend NOT using Sharpshooter because Rangers in general are pretty bad right now.  You have a lot of really good options to mix with Devoted: take a Paladin for Flames of Devotion spam and their amazing buffs and passives (+5 Accuracy, +5% Hit to Crit aura.)  Take Rogue for mobility, even more Hit to Crit, and of course massive sneak attack bonuses; Assassin is REALLY nasty assuming you start the fight from stealth.  Barbarians can, for unexplainable reasons, use ranged weapons for Barbaric Blow and Frenzy increases your ranged weapon damage output (MY BULLETS ARE SO ****ING ANGRY!!!!!!)  Similarly, Monks can use guns and bows and **** with all of their abilities for some weird reason.

 

If you want to focus purely on crits, take a single-handed ranged weapon (pistol, blunderbuss, wand, or scepter IIRC) and go Devoted/Assassin.  If you take one of the goodie two-shoes backgrounds, Aloth will come with a pretty badass scepter, so kindly relieve him of it and put it to better use than he ever will.  Dual wielding one-handed ranged weapons and spamming out Full Attacks will produce even more insane DPS but you lose the 20% Hit to Crit passive and the inherent +12 Accuracy of OWS.  Serafen's custom blunderbuss is also a really good early game candidate for this kind of build.

[yhal]

Quest reward from furrante when you kill aeldys

 

That's... not ideal. Would have to use "vanilla" crossbows most of the game.

All 3 unique war bows scale extremely well with critical hits through their unique enchantments, and frostseeker is available right after you reach the capital.

 

War bows also offer both pierce/slash damage and dual damage type is very good for a devoted, since it lets him bypass most immunities without switching to another weapon and eating the penalty.

 

Yep, war bows look good.

 

I'd also recommend NOT using Sharpshooter because Rangers in general are pretty bad right now. 

If you want to focus purely on crits, take a single-handed ranged weapon (pistol, blunderbuss, wand, or scepter IIRC) and go Devoted/Assassin. 

 

 

Retraining is cheat . Firearms have blunted criticals, which might not matter too much but I don't like penalties to the thing I try to maximize. 

 

Some of the ranger abilities look interesting. Stalker's link, Evasion roll, the thing that makes projectiles bounce, accurate wounding shot, concussive tranquilizer. I only started playing with builds, so have no idea how it compares with other classes.

[Eraflure]

Multiclass rangers are completely fine. Several trap talents like all classes, the pet is definitely weaker than in PoE I (which imo is necessary now that we have multiclassing), but you have enough powerful actives to make things interesting. Most importantly, rangers get a LOT of accuracy, which means a lot of crits. Accurate wounding shot, evasive fire and combo takedown are all powerful active options. Combined  with their passive abilities, most importantly driving flight, rangers are a fine class for ranged characters.

[Braven]

Rangers can get the gunner passive ability making reload weapons good. If you combine it with a bunch of other reload reduction items (they all stack), the reload time is quite low. Because reload time is currently bugged (you can’t go lower than around 3 reload time regardless of equipment), I recommend the biggest gun with the +20 accurracy modal active (later after getting all equipment to reduce reload speed). Then you get the best of both; the highest accuracy and best base damage.

 

You will need to steal Maia’s armor and wear a hat for maximum reload reduction (so no godlike). If playing with a party, keep a chanter around for thier chant that reduces reload.

 

Another option is to look for a weapon with on-crit effects. You will have really high accuracy regardless of weapon as a ranger and it would be nice to do more than just just a small damage bonus. Crits, base, only do +25% damage now and I think that is additive math (though not sure) so it is pretty negligible later on. A special on hit effect may be more beneficial.

 

Devoted is a trap if you don’t know all the weapons available and where to find them. Some weapon types only have a single unique option. Take a look at the wiki if you want to know what the weapon possibilities are.

Edited May 28, 2018 by Braven

[Crucis]

Warbows seem like the best weapon option for a Devoted/Sharpshooter to me because there are multiple unique warbows, and you get a very good one, Frostseeker, fairly early in the game.  Unlike rogues where you might want to have a particularly high alpha weapon for your killing attacks, ranger based snipers don't have to be so focused on alpha and can care more about more general DPS, which means that bows can be quite good for them. 

 

Odd thing though... in my party, I have Maia, a ranger, using an arquebus, while I have Eder (pure rogue version) using a warbow.  I kept Maia using arqs (and kept her in her special armor) because that seemed the best way to optimize her, given her Gunhawk ranger subclass, as well as her special gun reload related armor.  So I just have Eder, who is a no subclass pure rogue, being more of a general DPS sniper, though he can put up some prodigious damaging strikes at times and he does lead my party in damage done, but a wide margin.

[Braven]

There are good warbows. Then you don’t have to worry about the reload animation bugs and can even kite if you want with the hit and run ranger passive ability instead of gunner.

 

A hunting bow with rapid shot actually has the best DPS in the game, if you don’t consider item enchantments or possible armor penetration issues. It has higher base damage than warbow and is faster. The main problem is that there is only one unique and it is not that good. The warbow enchantments are much better so they are clearly better because of that, if you have knowledge of available weapons. I really wish there was a more equal distribution of each weapon types.

Edited May 28, 2018 by Braven

[Boeroer]

Crits, base, only do +25% damage now and I think that is additive math (though not sure) so it is pretty negligible later on.

Ehhh - a crit increases stacked penetration by 50%. So a PEN value of 10 will get lifted to 15 on a crit which often leads to overpenetration or prevents underpenetration. This is not negligible. But it also works for weapons with blunted criticals like arquebus as well. Because of this crits are always nice.

 

I'd say crossbow is a decent choice. Only the single damage type is annoying for a Devoted. War Bow is also a good option.

 

I personally like the arquebus + modal + max reload speed, too - despite the weird blunted criticals. In the early game it's so satisfying. 

[Alhoon]

My vote goes for the Warbows. The fact that I consider Frostseeker to be the weakest of the three (Frostseeker, Saint Omaku, Veilpiercer) is a testament to how ridiculously powerful they all are, obviously discounting the bugs with that Monk buff.

[Stealthmandem]

I went for the frost warbow on my assassin sharpshooter. Amazing damage when combined with driving flight. 3 projectiles all then flying through to the next opponent and aoe effect kills them from long range. There is an item which stuns on crit damage which hits multiple times.

 

There is an interesting talent from the ranger talents allowing you to get nimble and move out of range of oncoming charges.

 

When they get too close i had another item which cause my character to be paralysed and heal but take little damage. There is an item that heals on kill which makes this the most fun build i have done so far.

[Crucis]

Devoted is a trap if you don’t know all the weapons available and where to find them. Some weapon types only have a single unique option. Take a look at the wiki if you want to know what the weapon possibilities are.

 

This is so true.  And on top of some weapon types having very few unique weapon options, some weapon types are even fairly rare with generic weapon drops.  Estocs, for example, are annoyingly rare weapons when it comes to generic weapons being normal random loot.

 

It seems to me that the devs put so much effort into the unique upgrades for unique weapons, shields, and armors that they also ended up with a lot few of them overall.  I think that I've come across only a single unique plate armor and I'm fairly close to completing the game (with most of my party at level 20).  On the flip side, there seem to be quite a few unique breast plates. 

[Voltron]

You are better with Rogue for sniper build than Ranger sadly at this point in game. If you really want to however play ranger I would recommend bleak walker instead of devoted. Higher alpha dmg with FoD + Sworn Enemy thatn with devoted and better defenses while having Lay on Hands for your pet too as sadly pets die fast like fles and are as useful...

Edited May 29, 2018 by Voltron

[Braven]

 

Crits, base, only do +25% damage now and I think that is additive math (though not sure) so it is pretty negligible later on.

Ehhh - a crit increases stacked penetration by 50%. So a PEN value of 10 will get lifted to 15 on a crit which often leads to overpenetration or prevents underpenetration. This is not negligible. But it also works for weapons with blunted criticals like arquebus as well. Because of this crits are always nice.

 

I'd say crossbow is a decent choice. Only the single damage type is annoying for a Devoted. War Bow is also a good option.

 

I personally like the arquebus + modal + max reload speed, too - despite the weird blunted criticals. In the early game it's so satisfying.

Good point, if you get over pen, than it is actually 55% (not considering other crit bonuses you might have). Edited May 30, 2018 by Braven