The Easiest of the Easy Beginner Build Guides [1.1 SotV UPDATED]

What about Ice-shot totem? Link Ice Shot to a Ranged Attack totem, and it works like temporal chains. Add lmp and/or chain, then you slow entire packs.

Also, Life Gain on Hit and Chain are far superior to pierce and Life Leech, since chain gives you more damage, and life gain in instantaneous. With Life gain on hit, you hit monsters so many times that it becomes extremely effective, and makes surviving far easier.

Also, why not conductivity? It gives a chance to shock, and with resolute technique, you can't get shocks otherwise (unless you get static blows). At level 1, it has 10% chance to shock, and considering you hit a single enemy so many times, it can augments your damage by a huge amount.

Good guide

Nice guide. :D

Hey I'm a new player just got the game yesterday. I've always played rangers/archers in these kind of games before and was thrilled to find this beginner friendly guide. I've decided to follow this guide for my first beginner character and I started on the Anarchy league. Hope I made the right choice :)

Would appreciate any advice for new ranger players following this guide too. Thanks alot :)

I'm not very experienced myself though this isn't my first build but I do have some advice for a fellow beginner.

You will have problems with sustaining mana while you don't have Blood Magic. Without +Mana on your gear you'll have just around 200 mana which is really really small. You don't necessarily have to get +Mana on your gear but you'll need to rely on your mana flasks a lot. You should bring along 2 hp flasks and 3 mana flasks.

Since you'll be starting from scratch it will be a bit hard to get the skills and support gems and the gear to socket them in. Prioritize getting Lightning Arrow, Lesser Multiple Projectiles and Frenzy which are the gems you need the most. You should have LA linked to LMP as soon as possible. At first you should forget about using auras, just run them once you finally have Blood Magic.

Since this build relies heavily on Blood Magic you should get it ASAP. Here is the tree you should follow until you get it.

With this you can reach Blood Magic at around lvl 35.

After you get BM you should get the HP nodes that you immediately can and then get the rest of nodes you skipped.

Once you get BM you need to link Life Gain on Hit or Life Leech with LA and LMP or else you'll be in big trouble.

Since the build is somewhat difficult to pull off until you get BM, it might be good to do areas in a team. Good luck, hope I helped. :)

@Andrax great points and tips. I agree with beeline-ing for Blood magic asap. It's quite easy to support even in the 30's. Life gain on hit will carry you through until your regen picks up. Better than trying to deal with mana. Up to that point just get whatever mana gear you can for leveling.


Just wanted to let everyone know I will be updating this build with a new video/tree/etc for the 1.0.0 launch!

It's been a huge success and I've gotten a ton of great feedback from new players it's helped so I want to keep it relevant.

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ZiggyD wrote:

[...]


Just wanted to let everyone know I will be updating this build with a new video/tree/etc for the 1.0.0 launch!

[...]

This is awesome, major kudos to you for this. I actually never used your guide but everything that gives New Players a bit of orientation early on is good in my book.

Actually, this build isn't really the "easiest of the easy", however, it is much more fun than the true "easiest of the easy".

This Build, both strengths and weaknesses:
1. Single target. All enemies attack you.
2. Blood magic allows you to focus on one resource.
3. Best possible variant is mainly physical damage to maximize life restoration from attacks.
4. Cannot run certain auras and can't run to many auras, as they will reserve life instead of mana.
5. Is gear dependent, especially if you level quickly and don't get many good drops.

The Summoner:
1. Tons of friendly targets that absorb most attacks from most enemies. It is very easy to "ditch" enemies by running into a cloud of minions.
2. Uses both life and mana, but it not mana intensive depending on what alternative skills you use.
3. Minion Instability greatly enhances your efficiency. If you only focus on minions with faster cast speed, you save on mana since you don't use other skills. Minions deal 33% of their life as fire damage in a large AoE explosion larger than a Fireball, and about the size of a Fire Trap. Minion Instability helps you know when you lose minions because of the huge explosions.
4. Minions act as both defense and offense, allowing you to use gear that is many levels below what you may need so that you can focus more on sockets, links, item attributes, and saving currency.
5. Easiest class to play since you don't require better gear the more you level up. You can get by most of Normal and Cruel without upgrading your gear very often.
6. Because you don't upgrade your gear often, you save more currency to upgrade more gear later, better.

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Natharias wrote:

*snip*

You have some good points there about the summoner, but as someone who has tried both summoner builds and LA ranger builds, I find that the summoner build is eeeeextremly slow and tedious to play until you get to level 50+. I don't know if this is due to having crap gear, might as well be, but the guide is aiming at beginners anyway, and beginners don't have a stash of great stuff. It's easy to play though, you got that right :)

Is this build still viable after the official release? Thanks!