Best unique weapon for ranger?

[Real Rahl]

Do you have enchants on the weapons?

Currently, no. I save enchanting for max lvl, typically. Wreaker, comes with suberb, and has room for a damage lash. As for Hold-Wall, who cares, it's not a top tier weapon.

[Real Rahl]

Your wrong, Kaylon. Not all weapons have same base stats. Borresaine does not have the echanting room to be superb. The Rain comes with superb, + speed mod (asumming it works), plus higher min-max damage. So, in this case, It comes to player preference, the higher damage, dps of Rain vs the stun of Borresaine.

[Climhazzard]

I think I saw someone saying Envenomed Strikes don't interact with every shot of a Blunderbuss. I like the Lenas Er hunting bow with vicious aim, penetrating shot etc. Fast attack speed, extremely consistent damage dealing.

 

Does anybody know where Lenas Er is located?  I'm interested in using it for one of my characters.

[Real Rahl]

Just google it. Why derail my thread.

[Francis Ironwood]

Your wrong, Kaylon. Not all weapons have same base stats.

Seems you're wrong about that. I just tested this with 10 might character and both Hold-Wall and Aedrin's Wrecker with superb enchant the damage on both is 32-46.

Edited April 18, 2015 by Francis Ironwood

[Real Rahl]

I'm wrong about reading in-game numbers? Ok. The might of your individual toons is irrelevant so I'm not sure why you mentioned that. Perhaps your drunk?

 

In my current up to date patched game, no enchants, wreaker has 56 max damage and Hold Wall has 41.

Edited April 18, 2015 by rahl

[Climhazzard]

Just google it. Why derail my thread.

 

 

Every answer google provides is "location unknown", so sorry for derailing your thread.

[Francis Ironwood]

You're just trolling aren't you? if in your current up to date patched game you enchant your Hold-Wall with superb it will have the same damage as Aedrin's Wrecker.

[Kaigen42]

It's not just ranged weapons. I was testing melee weapons with speed and there doesn't appear to be any effect. Given that, Hold Wall is no better than a normal arbalest, and The Rain of Godagh Field is "just" a superb war bow. With the options you gave, I would stick with Aedrin's Wrecker.

 

@Climhazzard

 

I believe I read somewhere that Lenas Er is a possible reward from the quest "Hunter, Brother" depending on how you resolve the quest. I haven't quite gotten there to check for myself if that's the case.

Edited April 18, 2015 by Kaigen42

[Climhazzard]

It's not just ranged weapons. I was testing melee weapons with speed and there doesn't appear to be any effect. Given that, Hold Wall is no better than a normal arbalest, and The Rain of Godagh Field is "just" a superb war bow. With the options you gave, I would stick with Aedrin's Wrecker.

 

@Climhazzard

 

I believe I read somewhere that Lenas Er is a possible reward from the quest "Hunter, Brother" depending on how you resolve the quest. I haven't quite gotten there to check for myself if that's the case.

 

Ok thank you.

[Real Rahl]

Climhazzard, http://pillarsofeternity.gamepedia.com/Unique_Weapons. Keep in mind many of the items stats are not up to date. If you have a spicific question for a item I will help, if I know it.

 

Yes, Francis, I'm trolling my own thread, you got me. Dispite the fact your the one ignoreing my original post to go on some personal vendetta to prove that the weapon Hold-Wall somehow competes with the Wreacker. What can I say, in my game Hold-Wall doesn't come with any enchant other than speed. Even if it did come with superb it's base damage would still be lower, but I think I'm talking into the wind.

 

You win, man. Hold-Wall is awesome. Enjoy.

[Ruminate]

The base damage in an item description is misleading. The description is adding enchant modifiers to the base damage. The base damage that you see isn't the real base damage.

[Francis Ironwood]

I don't get why you don't understand what i'm saying here (maybe that's why I thought you're trolling). Hold-Wall has the same base damage as Aedrin's Wrecker. The reason you think Aedrin's does more damage is probably because the damage it shows to you includes the 45% bonus from the superb enchant it has.

Actually Hold-Wall isn't awesome since the speed enchant is not working, but if Hold-Walls speed enchant was working it would be better for dps. Though you would need to wait to level 12 to enchant it with superb.

[Real Rahl]

When I reach max lvl on this play thru, I will revisit this thread to see if in fact enchanting Hold-Wall to max will bring it up to Wreaker damage. That said, there are only 2 dragon eyes in game for max range upgrade to subperb. If you waste these on Hold-Wall, you can't for example use them on Leap-Spitter. Finding weapons that alrdy have the superb trait is pretty huge.

 

If anyone would actully like to go back to my orignal question, with opions on why one is better than the other. With expamle of why. That would be great.

[Climhazzard]

Decided to confirm for myself that the attack speed mod wasn't working after reading this thread.  Method used was to time 10 attacks with the quarterstaff "Llawran's Stick" which has a 1.2x atk speed mod, and time 10 attacks using a regular quarterstaff.  Running the game in slow mode both took approximately 32.3 seconds to execute 10 attacks.  I'm sorely disappointed because that would have been the best quarterstaff in the game...

 

Btw, the wiki lists the base damage of hold wall at 32, and the wrecker at 46, the superb mod is 1.45 and 32x1.45 is 46.  As long as that atk speed mod isn't working though hold wall is just a plain arbalest that costs more than usual...

[Kaigen42]

Check the Combat Mechanics thread in this forum. There's a lot to sift through, but they establish around page 5-6 that damage multipliers, including ones from weapon qualities like Fine or Damage 2 (but with the notable exception of the "Lash" effects), stack additively and affect the weapon's base damage, despite misleading tooltips to the contrary. What you should be paying attention to is not the weapon tooltip, but the damage range listed on the left side of the character sheet. Example: My Ranger has Borresaine, which lists its damage as 20-30 in her hands. She has Vicious Aim active, which should provide a 20% damage bonus, bringing it up to 24-36. Instead her character sheet lists 22-34, which, if you add up her damage bonuses (36% Might + 20% Vicious Aim + 15% Fine = 71%) and multiple by the War Bow base damage of 13-20, works out.

 

If you want to see this starkly demonstrated, acquire a couple of two-handed weapons of the same type with different damage qualities, and compare them in the hands of a Fighter with Two-Handed Style, Savage Attack, and Weapon Specialization + Weapon Mastery. If the weapon quality really did improve base damage, then that extra 60% always-on damage applied to that extra base damage would lead to a massive increase. Instead, the difference between them is those hands is the same as the difference between them in the hands of a 2 Might character with no damage modifiers (4-6, in the case of the Fine Llawran's Stick vs. the Superb Wend-Walker).

 

This means that you won't actually see a huge damage difference between a Superb weapon like Aedrin's Wrecker and an Exceptional one of the same type, because that extra damage is not itself multiplied by any other bonuses. The extra accuracy, on the other hand, may be more significant. At any rate, it's an excuse to pay more attention to other special qualities, such as the Wrecker's Stunning crits, which are a little redundant with the Prone effect, but stack some nice debuffs to enemy defenses.

 

Another area where tooltips are misleading you is with regards to damage/healing over time effects. The tooltip displays the total amount healed/inflict over the base duration of the effect and doesn't adjust that total for higher or lower durations from Intellect. If you observe those powers in action, however (which I did using the Cipher's Soul Ignition power), you'll find that the amount per tick is constant, and that a shorter duration means fewer ticks and a longer duration means more ticks.

[peddroelm]

...also ranger has no good talents ..

I wouldn't call 40% multiplicative (lash) vs 25% target DR for 30+ seconds useless  (Marked Prey) .. It takes an action to cast but on DPS build it can add quite a bit of damage ..

[voad1]

Check the Combat Mechanics thread in this forum. There's a lot to sift through, but they establish around page 5-6 that damage multipliers, including ones from weapon qualities like Fine or Damage 2 (but with the notable exception of the "Lash" effects), stack additively and affect the weapon's base damage, despite misleading tooltips to the contrary. What you should be paying attention to is not the weapon tooltip, but the damage range listed on the left side of the character sheet. Example: My Ranger has Borresaine, which lists its damage as 20-30 in her hands. She has Vicious Aim active, which should provide a 20% damage bonus, bringing it up to 24-36. Instead her character sheet lists 22-34, which, if you add up her damage bonuses (36% Might + 20% Vicious Aim + 15% Fine = 71%) and multiple by the War Bow base damage of 13-20, works out.

 

If you want to see this starkly demonstrated, acquire a couple of two-handed weapons of the same type with different damage qualities, and compare them in the hands of a Fighter with Two-Handed Style, Savage Attack, and Weapon Specialization + Weapon Mastery. If the weapon quality really did improve base damage, then that extra 60% always-on damage applied to that extra base damage would lead to a massive increase. Instead, the difference between them is those hands is the same as the difference between them in the hands of a 2 Might character with no damage modifiers (4-6, in the case of the Fine Llawran's Stick vs. the Superb Wend-Walker).

 

This means that you won't actually see a huge damage difference between a Superb weapon like Aedrin's Wrecker and an Exceptional one of the same type, because that extra damage is not itself multiplied by any other bonuses. The extra accuracy, on the other hand, may be more significant. At any rate, it's an excuse to pay more attention to other special qualities, such as the Wrecker's Stunning crits, which are a little redundant with the Prone effect, but stack some nice debuffs to enemy defenses.

 

Another area where tooltips are misleading you is with regards to damage/healing over time effects. The tooltip displays the total amount healed/inflict over the base duration of the effect and doesn't adjust that total for higher or lower durations from Intellect. If you observe those powers in action, however (which I did using the Cipher's Soul Ignition power), you'll find that the amount per tick is constant, and that a shorter duration means fewer ticks and a longer duration means more ticks.

 

Are you saying that might and weapon quality damage are insignificant? As in might is not very useful and can be dumped for a melee dps class?

[Kaigen42]

Are you saying that might and weapon quality damage are insignificant? As in might is not very useful and can be dumped for a melee dps class?

I wouldn't say that weapon quality is insignificant because it improves accuracy as well as damage, and the difference between a superb weapon and a normal weapon is quite large. I would say that since you can enchant weapons up to exceptional without too much difficulty, finding a good special on a weapon is more important than using the first Superb weapon you can find.

 

As far as Might goes, that's something of a point of contention in the Combat Mechanics thread, especially regarding its importance vs. Dexterity. One the one hand, it's true that as you pile up more damage bonuses from weapon qualities and your class that Might becomes a proportionally smaller part of your DPS and Dexterity becomes more important. On the other hand, the hardest part of the game is often the early game, and Might is very significant there for helping you do good damage past enemy DR, and some classes will never have a lot of reliable damage bonuses. On the gripping hand, there are very few DPS builds where you don't have the points to max Might and Dex anyway, so you might as well.

[Crucis]

 

Are you saying that might and weapon quality damage are insignificant? As in might is not very useful and can be dumped for a melee dps class?

I wouldn't say that weapon quality is insignificant because it improves accuracy as well as damage, and the difference between a superb weapon and a normal weapon is quite large. I would say that since you can enchant weapons up to exceptional without too much difficulty, finding a good special on a weapon is more important than using the first Superb weapon you can find.

 

As far as Might goes, that's something of a point of contention in the Combat Mechanics thread, especially regarding its importance vs. Dexterity. One the one hand, it's true that as you pile up more damage bonuses from weapon qualities and your class that Might becomes a proportionally smaller part of your DPS and Dexterity becomes more important. On the other hand, the hardest part of the game is often the early game, and Might is very significant there for helping you do good damage past enemy DR, and some classes will never have a lot of reliable damage bonuses. On the gripping hand, there are very few DPS builds where you don't have the points to max Might and Dex anyway, so you might as well.

 

 

Nice sci-fi reference.  Kudos.

 

I agree with the first paragraph.  When it comes to how "good" a weapon is, at least in the longer term, the unique ones with special abilities that you cannot add yourself are more valuable than a generic Exceptional or Superb weapon, since you CAN do an enchantment to add those enhancements.  Short term however, if you have a unique weapon with a good special ability but it doesn't have any Fine, Exceptional, or Superb enhancement, and a generic Exceptional or Superb weapon, the latter generic weapon may be more useful in combat for you until you have time and/or the ingredients to perform an enchantment to upgrade the unique weapon.  After all, a special ability isn't so special if you can't get any hits because your weapon doesn't have enough of an accuracy bonus to get those hits to use that special ability.

 

As for Might, a higher Might score may also enhance a Fighter's Endurance regeneration ability (don't remember its name).  So that could be one point in favor of some additional points in Might, at least depending on how one sees said Fighter character.  OTOH, if one wants to play a swashbuckler style of Fighter who isn't going to be wearing heavy armor, and wants to be quicker and more nimble in battle than your average full plate wearing fighter, then more DEX might be preferable to increase the character's action speed and Reflex save.  Honestly though, it's strange to me that DEX isn't a part of the mix for determining a character's deflection rating.  Or for that matter, his accuracy.

 

 

[voad1]

So is Dex much less useful if you decide to wear heavy armor?

[Kaigen42]

So is Dex much less useful if you decide to wear heavy armor?

Not necessarily. The short answer is: Dexterity can still help you mitigate the recovery penalty of armor. My 3 Dex Paladin in plate has outrageously long recovery times, which means that if I want to use one of her support abilities and she just made an attack, I will be waiting several seconds before she can actually use it. High Dex would probably cut that down to a 2-3 second delay or so.

 

But we're way off topic already without me going into a long-winded explanation of how attack speed and recovery modifiers work and where Dex fits in with that.

 

Edit: @Crucis, Yeah, Might remains important for anything that's hard to boost otherwise, mainly damaging spells and healing abilities. If you had to choose, a caster probably gets more mileage from pumping up Might and Intellect to get the most from each spell as opposed to pumping Dexterity to fire them off a little bit faster.

Edited April 19, 2015 by Kaigen42

[drumther]

Going back to #1 post. I ended up using Persistence 'cause of the DoT. I had a guy on my party taking benefits from it

 

Also, as rangers can get really high accuracy, I crit'd a lot. And having a dude with 20 endurance left get hit by a blunderbuss was a waste of a time. I've found more productive having a decent bow with high attack speed than having massive damage with really really low frequency.

[Crucis]

Edit: @Crucis, Yeah, Might remains important for anything that's hard to boost otherwise, mainly damaging spells and healing abilities. If you had to choose, a caster probably gets more mileage from pumping up Might and Intellect to get the most from each spell as opposed to pumping Dexterity to fire them off a little bit faster.

 

 

Yep, this should be true, as long as the spells you're casting are damage producing or healing.  Might isn't going to do squat for spells that charm or confuse, at least not that I can see.

[dudex]

Just a warning about Aedirin's wrecker I have been playing around with the Borresaine's crit to stun mod..

 

It doesnt give deflection penalties on the stunned target and it doesnt trigger sneak attacks for my rouges. It however freezes the enemy for almost 12 seconds with my 19 intel rogue.

 

also given ranger's stunning shot talents I think that weapon is no better then a normal suberb bow.

 

I would not use hold-wall or The Rain until weapon speed mods gets fixed. I  would play around with Lenas,cloudpiercer, wendgar, and good friend as im not sure which one works the best. This game is very buggy so u wont know what mods work and which ones doesnt. (EX:Coordinating not giving damage bonus according to other topics).