[1.2.0] Ice Pierce Crit Ranger

Hi, I just want to thank you, Kirielis, for sharing your build and for taking the time to structure your post so well. Before the latest free respec, I had used another to try out an elemental damage based build with Iron Reflexes, but I've always been a fan of the more dexterity based side of the tree.

I changed your build slightly to take in all the Frenzy nodes, since I'm currently using which already saved me countless of times. They are also helping to circumvent another problem I ran into with Frenzy, the heavy drain on mana, which is still a slight problem. But with two mana flasks I'm able to sustain my attacks when need be (big champion packs, bosses). Going for some form of Blood Magic sustained main attack would also be an option, since the regeneration from 7 Frenzy Charges is pretty awesome and with additional life leech it should be high enough. Getting Conduit would also be nice for groups I guess, but it's not a priority atm.

To all new Ice Pierce Crit Rangers I'd like to give a bit of advice: Get a good bow before you spec this! Like I said, I was Split Arrow/Elemental Damage before this, and at about 1400 dps (but really low survivability). After going for Ice Pierce Crit, I was at about 800. With gear like



This is my old bow:



and this is my new one



Jumped to about 3180 dps with level 16 non quality Hatred and 2760 without. So, go to http://poexplorer.com/ and get a 240+ dps bow with local Crit rating and you will just breeze through merciless with this build :)

How much tooltip DPS can this build reach with IceShot and good gear ? Can this build hit as hard as Piety's IceShots ? :D

Certainly not. Piety is a menace.

I picked up a nice Glare (6S5L, 293dps) and tried to roll GGGRR on it.
Since my iceshot was in the armour anyway, I took it out for a spin:

My old bow (245dps) gives me 3889 DPS tooltip.
This Glare gives me 3931 DPS tooltip.

YOU DON'T SAY.

In addition, managing charges is a lot more annoying when depending on the single-target attack to do it for you. (Looking at you, LA crit shadow video.)

Guess who went all in.



I took this into two Shipyards and a Precinct, besides the smaller maps. For, I suppose, some value of "smaller".

Major update to gear in first post.

"

Kirielis wrote:

(Looking at you, LA crit shadow video.)

lolwut Me getting charges through single target has never been or ever will be annoying. I've been doing that from lvl 92 to 95 and it hasn't even bothered me at all. Knowing that I have to do more than click away at one key is annoying if anything. I played terran on SC2 so I like to micro... alot.

I'm using bows to level up a character till I later switch him to melee, but with a variation to my main.

I just tried using ice shot again last night, and it seemed to out perform lightning arrow.


I'm using blood dancer boots, currently 6 frenzy charges, and then deaths harp bow, extra 1 arrow. using ice shot with lmp chain, and blood magic. The hp regen is enough to sustain it, but I sure would prefer to be able to also link loh. Or even weapon elemental damage. I don't have hte pierce passives, but proj weakness sure helps. I tried dropping chain, and couldn't get the same performance I was getting before.

I have used ice shot in the past but not that effectively.

Currently I have mostly all hp passives, with frenzy charges, and additional points will be hp until they are msotly done in which I will take my melee defining points.

Would it be worth it to pick up pierce passives to respec out later? 5 points.

Should I change my supports up a bit, or does this set up work ok if my hp regen can sustain it?

anything else I should do to help improve my leveling experience?

"

Blastrophe wrote:

lolwut Me getting charges through single target has never been or ever will be annoying. I've been doing that from lvl 92 to 95 and it hasn't even bothered me at all. Knowing that I have to do more than click away at one key is annoying if anything. I played terran on SC2 so I like to micro... alot.

I'm not much of a micro person. Currently using Frenzy single-target, it's good and I don't mind having frenzy charges, but I don't always remember/manage to keep them up. And when I set PCoC on it to stack power charges that way...yeah, never doing that again. Glad it works for you, though.

Also, "a lot". And hi.

"

I tried dropping chain, and couldn't get the same performance I was getting before.

I dunno mate. The thing is, if the arrow pierces it will never chain. I made a straight line to piercing and specced for 100% chance to pierce, therefore I never ran chain. With the ~50% pierce chance from a lower-leveled projectile weakness, I am not surprised that chaining arrows after they fail to pierce is effective.

"

Currently I have mostly all hp passives, with frenzy charges, and additional points will be hp until they are msotly done in which I will take my melee defining points.

Would it be worth it to pick up pierce passives to respec out later? 5 points.

You get 18 free respecs total through questing, you tell me. I can say that when I got enough links to put a Pierce gem in, my damage when partying (no curses in play, like, ever) went through the roof because my arrows weren't being stopped any more.

"

Should I change my supports up a bit, or does this set up work ok if my hp regen can sustain it?

One major thing I noticed about the spec is that there is a LOT of competition for sockets. It's why I worked so hard to go mana sustainable. Luckily, it's also powerful enough that not-quite-optimal socketing doesn't affect it too badly.

"

anything else I should do to help improve my leveling experience?

Using a bow to level up a melee, taking only generic skill points, gets really annoying around level 45. (Split arrow elemental stacking with crit, planning to switch to Terminus Est. I have a lot of elemental damage twink items.) Part of this is the bow passives. The rest of it is...well, boredom and annoyance. I'm having more fun leveling as melee, even in Onslaught. But hey, whatever gets you to wherever you want to go.

Thanks for the input, the reason why I wanted to do something different is I had just leveled up an almost duplicate character using melee the whole way, and I just didn't want to get burnt out, and the desync was annoying.

So sounds like I shouldn't fret about it too much, this ice shot is working well so far. So I will just do a bit more, till I'm bored and wait for reave to come, and that will be fun and give me a chance to see it in action mid level before i just use it high level.

nice build