Ranger flexible and balanced build help!

[Hariwulf]

I would like a balanced and damage oriented Ranger with the ability to (off)tank need should arise.

So, for sure I need Might to deal damage, Dex to DPS, Per to crit and reflexes, Int for skills and Res for melee survive-ability.

You see where I'm going... 

 

Might and Dex or Per should be maxed (18ish), but then I only have a bunch of points for Dex or Per, Int and Res. And no, dumping Con it's a baaad idea IMO.

 

Now, I could forget to increase Res (and probably regret it first time I enter in melee) but still, Dex/Per and Int aren't gonna be as effective. I tried with a:

Migh 18

Con 10

Dex 14

Per 18

Int 10

Res 10

 

Melee hurts bad and my skills are not as effective as I would dream.

 

So I am asking the opinion of some of our RPG experts.

 

1. Which stats are easier to keep up by other means than char-gen?

2. What is most important to achieve the results I am aiming for? 

3. In the aforementioned build, should I keep Dex at 10 and put those 4 points in Int?

4. Wood elf is good at ranged but I would go Human for more balance, is that ok?

5. What advice you have for me?

 

 

Thank you! ^^

[indika_tates]

I would say that is not attributes what make your character able/unable to offtank in cases of emergency. It's a matter of equipment. Since you want to shoot faster you should avoid medium-heavy armor but if you go melee light armored it hurts. This is a game where you can't be at the same time a tank and a DPS char as DPS/Defense specialized ones can be.

 

1) Your stats are fine.

2) Equipment. Put a tower shield+hatchet in your secondary slot and pray for the best when you need to offtank. Your pet can flank the same mob you are facing. Take in mind that if an enemy is chasing your wizard/priest it may ignore your character even if you engage it. But they are usually not willing to disengage your pet.

3) INT is not so useful for a ranger. Not to dump it, but 10 is fine. Look at the skills/talents that make use of INT to see that there are few. DEX, PER and MIG are important stats for a Ranger. DEX makes you fire faster, PER makes you accurate and MIG gives you damage.

4) Wood Elf is the best option for every character that cast/shoot from the distance. Not only for +5 ACC it gives you also +5 DEF & +5 REF.

5) Try to experiment yourself the better build that suits your playstyle. You can respec your character cheap to try different attributes.

Edited March 15, 2017 by indika_tates

[Boeroer]

Rangers have low endurance (but high health) - so even in armor they tend to go down quickly when they get pummeled a lot and don't receive healing. The good thing is that your animal companion can always step in front of you. Since it has no health it's no so bad if it gets damaged badly or even knocked out.

 

So in general a ranger who wants to tank/offtank without goind down quickly needs high deflection. Ranger's starting deflection isn't too bad. So with a weapon and a shield and a ring of deflection and so on it should be ok if you don't drop RES. Maybe also put on a Blunting Belt, it reduces the damage of grazes even further without the slowdown of fat armors.

 

Another approach is to use the pet for offtanking and staying near it and provide constant healing so it doesn't go down like the Riptide build does (it's a 2.x build without WM content and abilities). This is a melee ranger with focus on pet damage, but I guess you can easily grasp how Shod-in-Faith boots are used to keep the pet alive.

 

Luckily, ranger's health is quite high despite the low endurance. So an approach where you don't have high deflection but constant healing works quite well if you're not trying to tank it all.

This can be achieved with things like Shod-in-Faith and Veteran's Recovery as well as items with healing bonuses (Belt of Bountiful Healing, Fulvano's Amulet, Maneha's armor...) and bonus from survival. This way you can achieve a lot of staying power while not gimping your damage dealing too much. This might lead to more resting though because low health might force you to. More CON helps here - or some potions of Infuse with Vital Essence (they will give you back health if you drink them before encounter ends). A Moon Godlike would be the most powerful choice with this approach, but any other race will also do. Human is fine, too. If you go this road then high INT and MIG are benifical since both regenration as well as Shod-in-Faith will do more healing (because lasts longer) with high INT.

 

INT can also be very nice for stuff like Stunning Shots (or using Borresaine with stun on crit) and especially Binding Roots. Those have AWESEOME base duration already but it gets really nuts with high INT and a crit. You can cause the stuck affliction for up to a minute with this ability, removing the need to tank the guy who is stuck. And it's 5 per rest - some folks think that's bad but actually it's pretty neat: in easy encounters you don't need it but in tough encounters you can easily pin five enemies in quick succession for 45 seconds and more - turning some tough bounties into a cakewalk.

As a backup for emergency situations you can give Takedown to your pet - it's quite nice as an addition to Binding Roots. 

If you plan to use wounding weapons (Tidefall, Persistance, Drawn in Spring or Acuan Giamas) and also like Wounding Shots for pure damage then I would not go the "healing" way but push MIG to the extreme and drop INT altogether and maye even put on an item with a malus to INT (Dandy Hat of the Deseased Yak -1INT or Ultimate Hat of Alluring Perfection -2INT) because those woundings' overall damage (25%) gets increased by MIG but doesn't rely on INT at all. It just gets strechted over time by high INT. Low INT on the other hand leads to nearly instant appliance of the whole wounding damage which can be awesome.

It works quite well with an Island Aumaua with Arms Bearer talent (= 4 weapon slots): You pick up two arquebuses, Persistance and a weapon + shield. Usually you would fire with Persistance and watch the awesome wounding enchantment do its magic. But once you have to take out some enemy immideately you switch to arquebus and use Wounding Shot (it's devastating with low INT and arquebus). If the enemies are not already dead you switch to shield and tank a bit. 

 

There can be some very different approaches how you want to solve your issue. If you want to use a bow a lot and don't like to offtank too much but just want to stop attackers I would use high INT and MIG with Binding Roots instead of high deflection and RES. 

Edited March 15, 2017 by Boeroer

[Hariwulf]

Guys you are the best, really.

Thank you. Will experiment a little.

[Hariwulf]

I was trying my Ranger as a recruit of lvl 15 to see how to build it, but jeez...I am getting the headache trying to level up having something NICE to pick every odd level.

 

Why can't I just take my Abilities from a list, and Talents to improve them AT THE END of the process? Just like a re-spec pen-and-paper style?

I always end up being forced to pick up some crap since I cannot save the point for next level. I don't know all Ranger unlocks by hearth.

 

I really need to take them one by one in the "right order" so that every other lvl I have something decent?

Certain design decision are so obtuse... Is there any char planner at least? T.T

Edited March 15, 2017 by Hariwulf