Ansalons Ranged Weapon Tier List

[Kaylon]

 

 

 

Aamiina's Legacy (and probably Essence Interrupter too) should be in the god tier with the Red Hand. Dual damage, no blunted criticals, no reduced range, with 20%lash it hits almost as hard as the Red Hand and Rapid Shot allows to easily attack under 2s... Rapid Shot penalty is less harsh than for pistols because hunting bows have +5 accuracy bonus (hunting bow with Rapid Shot has only 5 less accuracy than an arquebus). The only drawback is the penetration, but with the right choices you can overcome it rather easily.

 

You don't take into account the fact that the base damage for Arquebus is much higher. You mention a lot of the weapon effects of Hunting Bow but if you compare a normal Arquebus next to a Hunting bow thoughs effects are balanced around having different recovery, base dmg, penetration, modals etc.It's simpler to just look at what additional modifiers the weapons of themselves get, to get a comparison on the relative strength of the weapons. Basically  the total theoretical dmg output of Red Hand is gonna roughly double that of Essence Interrupter if you have a lot of Guilty Conscience stack.  If you compare it to a standard Arquebus it attacks twice (bit less then doubling its dps, due to having two attack animations), then another 40% from max stacked Guilty Conscience.

 

Essence Interrupter gets a 20% Lash effect, which is multiplicative dmg, making it decent. This is obviously simplified and won't translate 100% into game but its close enough to see the massive disparity. Got some feedback on the summon for Essence Interrupter on reddit and it was better then my initial assumption (summoned creature does scale with enemy level), so Im planning to move it into B - Tier atleast but my post seems to be bugged atm.

 

Well, then you don't understand very well how it works...

 

The 20% lash damage basically compensates for the lower base damage. The main dmg advantage of the Red Hand is given by Guilty Conscience which can be used by ALL weapons (and by itself it represents overall only a 10-20% dmg increase - depending on your total dmg bonuses). On the other hand Aamiina's Legacy will shoot at least 10% faster (based on the average attack of a double shot with the Red Hand).

 

That means Aamiina's Legacy has 10% lower dps than the Red Hand in the worst scenario and 20% higher dps in the best scenario (if you're using Guilty Conscience with Aamiina's Legacy)

 

If I understand you correct, you mean that you first stack The Red Hand to max THEN swap to Aaminas Legacy and you retain the buff? That obviously does complicate the calculation, but seems very cumbersome especially since the buff resets on rest. There might be something i'm missing but attacking twice should be a much more powerful effect unless you have insane recovery time compared to a 20% lash. Are you making the case that Hunting Bows are just way better weapons then Arquebus and that compensates for a weaker effect, or that the Lash effect is stronger then shooting twice? It just seems you are only taking into account the positve effects of a Hunting Bow and not the negative effects like lower pen, weapon modal giving a huge accuracy penalty, lower base dmg etc.

The main damage advantage of the Red Hand is the ability to shoot twice, not Guilty Conscience.

 

Shooting twice without reloading is like having an arquebus with half reloading time. Rapid Shot does nearly the same thing for the recovery time of the bow.

 

The average base damage of the Red Hand is 23. The average base damage of the hunting bow is 19. That's 21% higher base damage for the arquebus, but Aamiina's Legacy has 20% lash which is almost as good.

 

After that the Red Hand has 3 more penetration and 5 more accuracy but less range and blunted criticals, only a damage type and, of course, the buff (which can be considered an advantage or not). 

 

PS. Playing without resting is perfectly viable and the buff is easily obtained if you have a chanter.

Edited August 13, 2018 by Kaylon

[Verde]

It's funny how both Rod of the Deep Hunter and Three Bells Through are kinda crap, considering how you get them.

[Ansalon]

 

 

 

 

Aamiina's Legacy (and probably Essence Interrupter too) should be in the god tier with the Red Hand. Dual damage, no blunted criticals, no reduced range, with 20%lash it hits almost as hard as the Red Hand and Rapid Shot allows to easily attack under 2s... Rapid Shot penalty is less harsh than for pistols because hunting bows have +5 accuracy bonus (hunting bow with Rapid Shot has only 5 less accuracy than an arquebus). The only drawback is the penetration, but with the right choices you can overcome it rather easily.

 

You don't take into account the fact that the base damage for Arquebus is much higher. You mention a lot of the weapon effects of Hunting Bow but if you compare a normal Arquebus next to a Hunting bow thoughs effects are balanced around having different recovery, base dmg, penetration, modals etc.It's simpler to just look at what additional modifiers the weapons of themselves get, to get a comparison on the relative strength of the weapons. Basically  the total theoretical dmg output of Red Hand is gonna roughly double that of Essence Interrupter if you have a lot of Guilty Conscience stack.  If you compare it to a standard Arquebus it attacks twice (bit less then doubling its dps, due to having two attack animations), then another 40% from max stacked Guilty Conscience.

 

Essence Interrupter gets a 20% Lash effect, which is multiplicative dmg, making it decent. This is obviously simplified and won't translate 100% into game but its close enough to see the massive disparity. Got some feedback on the summon for Essence Interrupter on reddit and it was better then my initial assumption (summoned creature does scale with enemy level), so Im planning to move it into B - Tier atleast but my post seems to be bugged atm.

 

Well, then you don't understand very well how it works...

 

The 20% lash damage basically compensates for the lower base damage. The main dmg advantage of the Red Hand is given by Guilty Conscience which can be used by ALL weapons (and by itself it represents overall only a 10-20% dmg increase - depending on your total dmg bonuses). On the other hand Aamiina's Legacy will shoot at least 10% faster (based on the average attack of a double shot with the Red Hand).

 

That means Aamiina's Legacy has 10% lower dps than the Red Hand in the worst scenario and 20% higher dps in the best scenario (if you're using Guilty Conscience with Aamiina's Legacy)

 

If I understand you correct, you mean that you first stack The Red Hand to max THEN swap to Aaminas Legacy and you retain the buff? That obviously does complicate the calculation, but seems very cumbersome especially since the buff resets on rest. There might be something i'm missing but attacking twice should be a much more powerful effect unless you have insane recovery time compared to a 20% lash. Are you making the case that Hunting Bows are just way better weapons then Arquebus and that compensates for a weaker effect, or that the Lash effect is stronger then shooting twice? It just seems you are only taking into account the positve effects of a Hunting Bow and not the negative effects like lower pen, weapon modal giving a huge accuracy penalty, lower base dmg etc.

The main damage advantage of the Red Hand is the ability to shoot twice, not Guilty Conscience.

 

Shooting twice without reloading is like having an arquebus with half reloading time. Rapid Shot does nearly the same thing for the recovery time of the bow.

 

The average base damage of the Red Hand is 23. The average base damage of the hunting bow is 19. That's 21% higher base damage for the arquebus, but Aamiina's Legacy has 20% lash which is almost as good.

 

After that the Red Hand has 3 more penetration and 5 more accuracy but less range and blunted criticals, only a damage type and, of course, the buff (which can be considered an advantage or not). 

 

PS. Playing without resting is perfectly viable and the buff is easily obtained if you have a chanter.

 

The burst damage effect of the Red Hand is very powerful to quickly kill a backline threat, severely crippling the enemies damage output. Arquebuseses are especially useful on Assassins that has tools to reset stealth, due to getting assination bonuses which synergizes nicely with slower weapons. Combining it with Sharpshooter's Garb and/or Gunner you are gonna have very competetive dps. As others have pointed out, making  attacks underpenetrate is a huge deal which can be an issue for Hunting Bows. It's possible to build around this fact, but in a lot of the circumstances where you would be able to achieve normal penetration with a Hunting Bow, you would overpenetrate with an Arquebus.

I will probably end up putting Essence Interrupter and Aamina's Legacy higher, same with Kitchen Stove/Hand Mortar. Just need to figure out how Im gonna edit the post and do some more testing.

Edited August 13, 2018 by Ansalon

[thomas_krantz]

The Red Hand also has the Double Tap upgrade which kills all vessels (including pierce immune) that aren't "top tier". This means the lesser Constructs, standard Fampyrs (like the ones on the island to the East of Neketaka), Rotghasts (though not the higher level spitting ones), skeleton warriors/sorcerers/marksmen (though not the risen mages/armsmen/champions etc.), revenants and luminous revenants, etc. etc.

 

Also the knockback is bugged (or at least it was in 1.2, haven't tested again in 2.0) and works even at full range.

 

Finally, both the above work with driving flight, though for Double Tap it needs to pierce on to the same target on both shots.

 

Overall an insanely powerful weapon.

 

Agree that this is the most broken part of the Red Hand. In my experience though it works on all vessels, provided they are a lower level than the attacking char. I've killed all risen kinds, fampyrs, all rothgast etc. on PotD with lvl scaling, with my char lvl 18+.

[eschu101]

i dont think this tier lists work very welll because they need to be taken in context, build and etc. its really subjective

example? amiras wing, not anything really special besides a PL8 wizard spell, right? except you can get it very early in the game, which almost break some encounters since wilting wind melts everything....its only a "D tier" if you test it via cosole in a lvl20 character with no context where its placed in the game or when you get it

[thundercleese]

 

The Red Hand also has the Double Tap upgrade which kills all vessels (including pierce immune) that aren't "top tier". This means the lesser Constructs, standard Fampyrs (like the ones on the island to the East of Neketaka), Rotghasts (though not the higher level spitting ones), skeleton warriors/sorcerers/marksmen (though not the risen mages/armsmen/champions etc.), revenants and luminous revenants, etc. etc.

 

Also the knockback is bugged (or at least it was in 1.2, haven't tested again in 2.0) and works even at full range.

 

Finally, both the above work with driving flight, though for Double Tap it needs to pierce on to the same target on both shots.

 

Overall an insanely powerful weapon.

Agree that this is the most broken part of the Red Hand. In my experience though it works on all vessels, provided they are a lower level than the attacking char. I've killed all risen kinds, fampyrs, all rothgast etc. on PotD with lvl scaling, with my char lvl 18+.

That's odd, as I've had it destroy vessels with a skull over their head (higher level) but then not kill others with no skulls. This was all in 1.1/1.2 though so they may have changed/fixed it. Edited August 13, 2018 by thundercleese

[1TTFFSSE]

After observing how Ecea's Arcane blaster works on a cipher with access to full attacks or an item that gives full attacks like Rakhan Field boots I would have to say it is even more broken than the Red Hand at this point. 

[MarkTheDP]

I happen to be running a party with two rangers (I know I know, but you gotta make the game challenging somehow right?), one with Essence Interrupter and one with Red Hand.

 

The essence interrupter ranger does about 1.25x the damage of the Red Hand ranger. The Red Hand ranger is also a geomancer and thus has access to buffs the Beastmaster EI ranger does not, although this is probably canceled out by the fact that the Beastmaster is using miscreants leather.

 

I really don't think you should be making these lists if you arent willing to do such direct comparisons before putting a single weapon alone in "God Tier."

[Ansalon]

I happen to be running a party with two rangers (I know I know, but you gotta make the game challenging somehow right?), one with Essence Interrupter and one with Red Hand.

 

The essence interrupter ranger does about 1.25x the damage of the Red Hand ranger. The Red Hand ranger is also a geomancer and thus has access to buffs the Beastmaster EI ranger does not, although this is probably canceled out by the fact that the Beastmaster is using miscreants leather.

 

I really don't think you should be making these lists if you arent willing to do such direct comparisons before putting a single weapon alone in "God Tier."

I would love to be able to do such comparisons but too be frank its too time consuming do to irl constraints. The best I can do atm is giving educated guesses backed up by limited tests. Therefore most of my time spent testing has been with weapons with complex mechanics. Essence Interrupter is one of the weapons I would really love to do a full run with, but its so new I haven't had time to do anything more then quick tests (where my initial assumptions were quite flawed). 

 

As a side note its very hard to conclude why your EI user is doing more dmg then your Red Hand user. You mentioned he was a Geomancer which might mean he is spending time throwing out debuffs and CC resulting in lower dps. Another factor can be which weapons you chose to upgrade first, which might skew the results one way or the other. The three most likely sources for error is probably that I have vastly underestimated the usefulness of the summons (which might end up adding a lot of dmg), my understanding of the relative strengths of a Hunting Bow vs Arquebus might be flawed, and three that your Beastmaster might have a more dps oriented build and is built more towards the Strenght of a Hunting Bow then your Geomancer is. From my experience (Done multiple runs with The Red Hand) The best 3 classes for this weapon is Ranger because of Gunner, Assassin due to Assassinate beeing so much stronger on slow 2hs, and Chanter because of Sure-Handed Ila Nocked Her Arrows with Speed (but it does turn the build into a utility build resulting in lower dps for the character but higher dps for the party).

[MarkTheDP]

 

I happen to be running a party with two rangers (I know I know, but you gotta make the game challenging somehow right?), one with Essence Interrupter and one with Red Hand.

 

The essence interrupter ranger does about 1.25x the damage of the Red Hand ranger. The Red Hand ranger is also a geomancer and thus has access to buffs the Beastmaster EI ranger does not, although this is probably canceled out by the fact that the Beastmaster is using miscreants leather.

 

I really don't think you should be making these lists if you arent willing to do such direct comparisons before putting a single weapon alone in "God Tier."

I would love to be able to do such comparisons but too be frank its too time consuming do to irl constraints. The best I can do atm is giving educated guesses backed up by limited tests. Therefore most of my time spent testing has been with weapons with complex mechanics. Essence Interrupter is one of the weapons I would really love to do a full run with, but its so new I haven't had time to do anything more then quick tests (where my initial assumptions were quite flawed).

 

 

 

 

As a side note its very hard to conclude why your EI user is doing more dmg then your Red Hand user. You mentioned he was a Geomancer which might mean he is spending time throwing out debuffs and CC resulting in lower dps. Another factor can be which weapons you chose to upgrade first, which might skew the results one way or the other. The three most likely sources for error is probably that I have vastly underestimated the usefulness of the summons (which might end up adding a lot of dmg), my understanding of the relative strengths of a Hunting Bow vs Arquebus might be flawed, and three that your Beastmaster might have a more dps oriented build and is built more towards the Strenght of a Hunting Bow then your Geomancer is. From my experience (Done multiple runs with The Red Hand) The best 3 classes for this weapon is Ranger because of Gunner, Assassin due to Assassinate beeing so much stronger on slow 2hs, and Chanter because of

Sure-Handed Ila Nocked Her Arrows with Speed (but it does turn the build into a utility build resulting in lower dps for the character but higher dps for the party).

I've noticed in quite a few of your responses to people you tend to assume there are all sorts of other factors at play other than what the poster mentioned. Were there other factors that could have significantly influenced damage, I would have mentioned them. Please don't assume people are idiots and throwing out comparisons without taking such things into account.

 

My Beastmaster (the EI user) uses exactly two spells, natures mark and insect swarm. Insect swarm targets Fort and therefore does very little damage in PotD Upscaled due to high fort (the average chance to hit is about 25%, i throw it on big groups and am lucky to get 2 hits tops). Natures Mark affects my whole team.

 

My Geomancer uses Merciless Gaze and Combusting Wounds, thats it. If anyone is getting more damage out of spells, its the Red Hand user. If my Geomancer was spending half her time doing debuffs and CC I would have taken that into account in my post.

 

As you may have noticed Natures Mark and Insect Swarm have vastly longer cast times than Merciless Gaze and CW. Additionally, my Beastmaster is the main party healer (although heals are rarely used in a well built party). Advantage: Red Hand

 

Additionally, my game has the significant "EI doesn't summon correctly" bug. I get a summon once in a blue moon, seriously maybe one or two per day of playing. Admittedly there's no way you could have known this, but had my EI user been getting a lot of damage from summons I would have taken that into account. She gets practically no damage from summons at all, given their extreme rarity in my game.

 

I'm not a moron, both builds are tuned towards the respective weapons being used. Were there differences in gear upgrades I would have said so.

 

Edit: I would say a big thing you havnt taken into account is the simple fact that (especially on PoTD) AR is the single greatest damage mitigator in the game. EI has the massive advantage of doing Pierce/Shock (although this seems buggy. Ive witnessed multiple fights where EI targets pierce despite the target having lower shock AR). Much like in PoE1, weapons that deal /elemental are absolutely amazing.

Edited August 17, 2018 by MarkTheDP

[bigwillystyle]

Lot of drama in these threads, but I didn't see a lot to disagree with , other than Amalina's Legacy being a bit lower than I would expect.  Not as powerful as the Red Hand, but still quite a bit better than ranked.  

[Kaylon]

The lash of Essence Interrupter reaches 20% only at 40 Metaphysics, thus in terms of pure dps it's worse than Aaamiina's Legacy.

[Dorftek]

The lash of Essence Interrupter reaches 20% only at 40 Metaphysics, thus in terms of pure dps it's worse than Aaamiina's Legacy.

But it totally makes up for it in style!

[Boeroer]

How does one get 40 Metaphysics?

[Kaylon]

How does one get 40 Metaphysics?

With the console.

[Boeroer]

As feared.

 

How high is the lash with 20 Metaphysics (which would be realistic in an uncheated playtrough)? Or let's put it differently: what is the gain per point of Metaphysics?

[Kaylon]

As feared.

 

How high is the lash with 20 Metaphysics (which would be realistic in an uncheated playtrough)? Or let's put it differently: what is the gain per point of Metaphysics?

In fact the whole point was to give you a nice round number, easy to remember, so you can do the math by yourself. 

[Dorftek]

0.5 per point is truly bad. Most players who play this game who don't look into these kind of things might think ""scales with metaphysics", nice I'll put it on my *insert class* because she has 8 metaphysics how awesome" not realising they would only get a measly 4% lash

1% per point wouldn't be OP especially not for the majority of players

[Boeroer]

 

As feared.

 

How high is the lash with 20 Metaphysics (which would be realistic in an uncheated playtrough)? Or let's put it differently: what is the gain per point of Metaphysics?

In fact the whole point was to give you a nice round number, easy to remember, so you can do the math by yourself.

I couldn't because I'm not home and don't know how high the lash starts. And last time I checked the Essence Interruptor wasn't in a wiki yet. So I assumed one could get a simple answer instead of trying to search for that stuff.

 

Since I guessed that the bow doesn't start at 0 lash but rather starts at something like 10 or so and then reaches 20 with 40 Metaphysics it was impossible for me to do any math with a definite outcome. You needed to provide either the value for 20 Metaphysics or even better the value for each point of Metaphysics - I mean between lifting the jester's cap and pulling up the smarty-pants.

 

But I've checked again and found the bow in the fextralife wiki. It starts at 5. So if it reaches 20 at Metaphysics 40 that would mean each point of Metaphysics will add 0.375. Is that correct?

Edited August 23, 2018 by Boeroer

[Kaylon]

Yes, it's 0.375%/point for a total of 12.5% at lv20.

Edited August 23, 2018 by Kaylon

[Dorftek]

Holy **** that's even worse

[Teclis23]

I ran both an essence interupter and redhand build in my last playthrough.

 

It was extremely obviously clear that the red hand out dps it. I kept checking the total damage done on both characters regularly because i was very interested in the outcome.

 

I did not find the summons on the bow that useful. If anything the summons just got in my way and it was not consistently summoning anything powerful. Most of the time just trash.

 

The red hand is clearly a better weapon but the essence bow is also very powerful.

[thundercleese]

On my tests with IIRC 23 Metaphysics the lash was about 12.5% so yeah it's pretty underwhelming.

[Teclis23]

 

 

 

 

Aamiina's Legacy (and probably Essence Interrupter too) should be in the god tier with the Red Hand. Dual damage, no blunted criticals, no reduced range, with 20%lash it hits almost as hard as the Red Hand and Rapid Shot allows to easily attack under 2s... Rapid Shot penalty is less harsh than for pistols because hunting bows have +5 accuracy bonus (hunting bow with Rapid Shot has only 5 less accuracy than an arquebus). The only drawback is the penetration, but with the right choices you can overcome it rather easily.

 

You don't take into account the fact that the base damage for Arquebus is much higher. You mention a lot of the weapon effects of Hunting Bow but if you compare a normal Arquebus next to a Hunting bow thoughs effects are balanced around having different recovery, base dmg, penetration, modals etc.It's simpler to just look at what additional modifiers the weapons of themselves get, to get a comparison on the relative strength of the weapons. Basically  the total theoretical dmg output of Red Hand is gonna roughly double that of Essence Interrupter if you have a lot of Guilty Conscience stack.  If you compare it to a standard Arquebus it attacks twice (bit less then doubling its dps, due to having two attack animations), then another 40% from max stacked Guilty Conscience.

 

Essence Interrupter gets a 20% Lash effect, which is multiplicative dmg, making it decent. This is obviously simplified and won't translate 100% into game but its close enough to see the massive disparity. Got some feedback on the summon for Essence Interrupter on reddit and it was better then my initial assumption (summoned creature does scale with enemy level), so Im planning to move it into B - Tier atleast but my post seems to be bugged atm.

 

Well, then you don't understand very well how it works...

 

The 20% lash damage basically compensates for the lower base damage. The main dmg advantage of the Red Hand is given by Guilty Conscience which can be used by ALL weapons (and by itself it represents overall only a 10-20% dmg increase - depending on your total dmg bonuses). On the other hand Aamiina's Legacy will shoot at least 10% faster (based on the average attack of a double shot with the Red Hand).

 

That means Aamiina's Legacy has 10% lower dps than the Red Hand in the worst scenario and 20% higher dps in the best scenario (if you're using Guilty Conscience with Aamiina's Legacy)

 

If I understand you correct, you mean that you first stack The Red Hand to max THEN swap to Aaminas Legacy and you retain the buff? That obviously does complicate the calculation, but seems very cumbersome especially since the buff resets on rest. There might be something i'm missing but attacking twice should be a much more powerful effect unless you have insane recovery time compared to a 20% lash. Are you making the case that Hunting Bows are just way better weapons then Arquebus and that compensates for a weaker effect, or that the Lash effect is stronger then shooting twice? It just seems you are only taking into account the positve effects of a Hunting Bow and not the negative effects like lower pen, weapon modal giving a huge accuracy penalty, lower base dmg etc.

The main damage advantage of the Red Hand is the ability to shoot twice, not Guilty Conscience.

 

Shooting twice without reloading is like having an arquebus with half reloading time. Rapid Shot does nearly the same thing for the recovery time of the bow.

 

The average base damage of the Red Hand is 23. The average base damage of the hunting bow is 19. That's 21% higher base damage for the arquebus, but Aamiina's Legacy has 20% lash which is almost as good.

 

After that the Red Hand has 3 more penetration and 5 more accuracy but less range and blunted criticals, only a damage type and, of course, the buff (which can be considered an advantage or not). 

 

PS. Playing without resting is perfectly viable and the buff is easily obtained if you have a chanter.

 

An extra 3 PEN is a pretty huge. Like out of this ballpark huge

 

Ive played hundreds of hours on POE1 and alot of Deadfire and in the whole time ive been playing these games the red hand is the only weapon i have ever wanted obsidian to nerf. I personally will never use it ever again because you can win most encounters with it by just auto-attacking which is super boring.

 

The fact you can do all this DPS from range without entering combat has IMO been overlooked. It would be far more fun to have a OP melee weapon like the redhand so it actually encouraged you to engage in melee and not just hover on the outskirts of battle blasting everything with it.

Edited August 24, 2018 by Teclis23

[Dorftek]

The red hand doesn't need a nerf, it just needs to be fixed so it doesn't keep giving u the dmg buff indefinitely because that's where things start getting out of hand.