Dual Wield Rangers

[mauriceleo]

So I just soloed a dual wield ranger, and I must say, I think people underestimate the damage output of the ranger, almost to the point that I think it's a hush conspiracy to prevent a nerf. Just some points I noticed about my playthough:

 

Melee damage is WAY more powerful than ranged. I respecced a couple times to compare melee with fully specced and levelled Stormcaller, no question melee trumps. Start by using plate armor and aim for high DR, that way you can soak damage while you and your wolf take enemies down. There are plenty of abilities and equipment (partially due to the expansion) that will reduce the armor speed penalty. once you gear up, you can start wearing padded for ultimate speed. Interruption and stunning compliment the ranger's high accuracy, so weapons like the stunning clad spear and vile loner prevent enemies from attacking while you take them out. Use pet's Takedown for those that get through. the fact that the pet is considered an "ally" allows for many synergies like the Dozens' talent, ally weapon buffs, etc. all increasing the already crazy accuracy of a ranger and giving them tons of crits for added benefits and stuns.

 

Key Abilities: Wounding Shot (of course), Swift Aim (speeds up dual wield), Predator's sense (pump up pet damage), stalker's link (of course), Takedown (your pet is nearly an equal companion), Binding Roots (of course)

 

Key Talents: companion talents, accuracy talents, and dual wield. at higher level, spec into savage attack because of ridiculous accuracy already.

 

Key items: shod in faith and sanguine plate (because of low deflection), cladhaliath, vile loner's lance, stalker's torc, stat raisers.

 

The idea is to use your high accuracy to interrupt and stunlock enemies while you and your pet destroy. Shod in faith and moon godlike abilities heal the pet to keep them alive, also take some points in lore to heal the pet with scrolls. of course for solo, figurines help.

 

IMO Rangers are completely underestimated in this regard. I tried ranged for a while and it couldn't even compare.

[Boeroer]

I think the damage output with twin arrows and driving flight might be better.

 

Does wounding shot work in melee? Because Runner's Wounding Shot does not.

[mauriceleo]

I fully respected a couple times with driving flight and twinned arrows with stormcaller to compare. I really don't think it compares. You hit really fast and accurately as a ranger, so with dual wield, I was critting half the time with like around 50dps. Fully specced range is just too slow even though it hits multiple. And yes wounding shot works in melee

[KDubya]

What weapons are you using to dual wield?

 

Swift Aim just gets you something like +20% attack speed, same as Dual Wield, plus it has a big -7 accuracy malus.

 

Melee will do more damage but unless you are wearing heavy armor you get trashed in melee, and a Ranger is about as durable as a Rogue except you miss out on all the big damage boosters like reckless,sneak attack and deathblows.

[MasterCipher]

Duel wield is playable, but it's hard for me to see a Ranger wearing -50% base speed armor outperforming Stormcaller and it's proc with 0% armor penalty. Notice no penetrating shot and carry a chanter with +20% ranged attack speed chant. Not sure how bloody slaughter was changed, but I've seen it trigger once on a mob with 3 out of 5 dots of health . . . 

 

Talents:

vicious companion

merciless companion

apprentice sneak attack

bloody slaughter

heart of the storm

hunting bow weapon focus

marksman

 

Abilities:

marked prey

predators sense (swift aim here until lvl 13)

stalker link

driving flight

wounding shot

stunning shot

twinned arrow

 

MIG 19

DEX 19

CON 3

INT 16 (for Stormcaller proc aoe and stun duration)

PER 18

RES 3

 

Suggested Nature Godlike, beat down to half endurance pre-fight for 22 MIG 21 DEX and 6 CON. With 12m range and CC micro, I'm not having death issues in white march on potd.

 

Gear

Stormcaller

2 DEX Durgan robe mirror image

Head N/A

Neck +10% ranged damage (equip Stalker Torc once then unequip)

Hands 15% haste

Waist 3 MIG

Ring 1 overseer, +10% AoE

Ring 2 arcane suppression 1 INT

Feet +10% vs flank

Edited September 30, 2015 by MasterCipher

[mauriceleo]

I was dual wielding cladhaliath enchanted with stun on crit and +4 accuracy/ +25% damage attacking same enemy as an ally and the vile loner's lance in the other hand. Like I mentioned, I wanted to take advantage of the high accuracy/crit of the Ranger to stunlock/interrupt.

 

Note that I was also soloing, so I didn't find ranged soloing very appealing, because I couldn't easily heal my pet, and enemy control was tough. I find it much easier to focus on one enemy at a time, stunlock them to death very quickly, then move on. With the bow it just seems like it whittled enemies down too slowly with the aoe effects, and not nearly enough single target power. And I would be interrupted so often with the slower bow that my dps would plummet.

 

Note also that I didn't always use full plate, I started off with it, but then eventually moved to padded when my survivability increased. But as for the -50% recovery, remember that sanguine plate gives a speed boost of 33% when crit, which is every fight because of such low deflection.

 

So yes, I suppose the case could be made that it's the gear that's making dual wield so good, but you can't discount the really high added dps of the pet, which is fully specced into in this build, which imo makes this class shine compared to other melee dual wielders. (I like dual wielding, I've tried many classes doing it)

 

 

I'll try to do some tests with my character and add a heavy tank to the party so that they can keep the groups of enemies at bay and test the dps of ranged that way and compare it to dual wield. that may give better insight for non-soloing.

[Ymarsakar]

The pet is already a large part of the ranger dps, irregardless of what weapons style a ranger uses.

 

In fact that's probably the only way to get the highest damage per second, is to have the pet keep hitting, along with the passive buffs to it.

 

In solo I can see how a ranger dual wield plus pet can be very powerful.

 

But in a party, ranged ranger provides more tactical flexibility and probably dps as well. Not generally front loaded dps like arquebus alphas, but tactical dps, hitting people that you can't reach normally with arquebuses or your melee characters, stunning them or just interrupting them.

 

<B>But as for the -50% recovery, remember that sanguine plate gives a speed boost of 33% when crit, which is every fight because of such low deflection.</b>

 

That's a good point, since -50% recovery is equal to about 30-33% attack speed.

Edited October 1, 2015 by Ymarsakar

[KDubya]

I did not catch the solo part before.

 

I definitely see where you are coming from now and your build and plan all make sense now. As a solo there is no frontline to hold enemies at bay while you shoot them, they'd just run up to you and smack you. With you and the pet in melee you can cover each other's back and both benefit from Shod in Faith boots.

 

Different question - If your Ranger gets KO'd can the pet win the fight and you get up afterwards?

[Oralaina]

I did not catch the solo part before.

 

I definitely see where you are coming from now and your build and plan all make sense now. As a solo there is no frontline to hold enemies at bay while you shoot them, they'd just run up to you and smack you. With you and the pet in melee you can cover each other's back and both benefit from Shod in Faith boots.

 

Different question - If your Ranger gets KO'd can the pet win the fight and you get up afterwards?

 

Not in my experience.  It seems that once the ranger goes down, the pet is down as well.  Too bad too....

[mauriceleo]

Actually no, as the main character, your ranger can go down and the battle will continue until your pet goes down too. It happened a few times in my run and a few times my pet saved my ass.

 

On another note, I've been testing ranged dps vs dual wield dps on my character, and average twinned arrow hit is about 40 each, with the driving flight giving on average 25 each. At level 14 against staelgar in northwield. With the approx 3.5 second cycle time of stormcaller, that's about 37dps. Dueal wileding my spears with the dual build, I was getting about 42 damage per hit on average while striking roughly every second. For 42 dps. Add on the extra damage talents given to the pet and the bonus effects of two weapons (stunning, interrupting, reducing defenses, ally bonuses, etc.) I think even in a party situation the dual wield would prevail

[Ymarsakar]

"I think even in a party situation the dual wield would prevail "

 

You're not accounting for lag time to apply dps on target. Ranged apply dps immediately within view, but melee has to spend time re positioning every enemy or so.

 

Melee will have empty seconds due to movement in party fights. Whereas as solo, all the enemies come to you, and your only lag time in melee is if you are trying to push through the front line to the enemy's back line.

Edited October 1, 2015 by Ymarsakar

[Oralaina]

Actually no, as the main character, your ranger can go down and the battle will continue until your pet goes down too. It happened a few times in my run and a few times my pet saved my ass.

 

<snipped>

 

I haven't found that to be the case at all.  I don't have the premades as companions though, if that might make a difference.

[mauriceleo]

Roll up a solo ranger real quick and check it out. Pet can be a lifeline.

[mauriceleo]

"I think even in a party situation the dual wield would prevail "

 

You're not accounting for lag time to apply dps on target. Ranged apply dps immediately within view, but melee has to spend time re positioning every enemy or so.

 

Melee will have empty seconds due to movement in party fights. Whereas as solo, all the enemies come to you, and your only lag time in melee is if you are trying to push through the front line to the enemy's back line.

Good point. Definitely an advantage of ranged in a party situation

[MasterCipher]

Comparing ranger melee to ranged dps, you can and should load the same pet dps talents and abilities, so the pet contribution should be equal in both cases.

[KDubya]

One big help for the melee is Shod in Faith boots healing the pet that is standing next to you. The bow ranger is going to be far away and probably not even get hit in the first place.

 

For solo It looks like melee is better since you can help keep the pet alive and the enemy will melee you in the first place, regardless of what you want.

 

On a team there are five other team members to consider as far as what is better for the Ranger - dual wield or ranged. With five barbarians you'd be better as ranged, with five wizards you might be the tank so melee would be better.

[Ymarsakar]

"On a team there are five other team members to consider as far as what is better for the Ranger - dual wield or ranged. With five barbarians you'd be better as ranged, with five wizards you might be the tank so melee would be better. "

 

Right, also in tight corridor fights, it is very difficult to make use of more than 2 melee front liners, the rest have to use reach weapons or ranged, because the corridor interiors are too narrow. They can't focus fire on an enemy very well, but the vice a versa is also true for the enemy.

 

So with ranged, no matter what terrain people fight on or what the battle formation line is or how the enemies are splayed out, effective focus fire dps can be hard with some micro. But for people who use the 3-4 main front line melee tactic, it sometimes gets too crowded in caves and interiors for the ranger to do melee.

 

1 Paladin + 1 monk + 1 extra + 1 ranger melee pet.

 

The front is getting crowded and they are having a hard time focus firing down the enemy, if the monk has no wounds to use. The ranged ranger frees up space and makes it easier to move, reposition, and change focus fire targets.

[mauriceleo]

Comparing ranger melee to ranged dps, you can and should load the same pet dps talents and abilities, so the pet contribution should be equal in both cases.

In theory, yes, but in reality, when speccing out a ranged ranger, more talents and abilities have to go to the ranged to maximize it. You can maximize a dual wield ranger in a few abilities and talents then the rest can easily go into fully buffing the pet. I always find it hard to buff the pet fully when speccing out a bow ranger

[bescheid]

I would love it if u would like to specify ur whole build with starting stats and so on. Thx in advance

[bescheid]

btw what difficulty are u playing on?

[gkathellar]

I know it's an established genre convention at this point, but I still find the idea of a wilderness expert using paired weapons baffling and incoherent, and I curse RA Salvatore's name every time someone raises the notion.

[Blades of Vanatar]

It's a TSR issue, not Salvatore's. It was the rule system that he was writing for that implemented 2 weapon fighting for Rangers. Plus Drizzt was trained by Zaknafein, a Fighter. It was his experiences after fleeing home that turned him into a Ranger. In that regard it was a pretty unique character that Salvatore was building in his writing. He lost control of it IMO, but the basic premise was a good start.

[gkathellar]

Yeah, but they added the "rangers can dual wield" rule in 2E as a response to Drizzle's popularity. Prior to that it was, "drow can dual wield," which was at least less stupid.

[Blades of Vanatar]

Dual wield was already a possibility for all warrior types anyway. Rangers got a better penalty reduction for doing so. Salvatores books came out after the edition release. It was not a "in response to" situation. But definitely it was an influence to the players as it was adding an element to AD&D that was kind of overlooked. But think for a minute... heroes from books(sales

[bescheid]

I would love it if u would like to specify ur whole build with starting stats and so on. Thx in advance

 

 

btw what difficulty are u playing on?

 

mauriceleo pls im rly interested in this. do you mind to share it?