Petrov's Elemental Bow Ranger Build(s) (0.10)

Why Iron Grip? Damage boost it provide to elemental build is extremely low.

I'm a complete noob when it comes to builds, so I may be completely wrong here but I'm wondering why the build from the first post drops down from near Iron Grip towards Blood Magic, which results in quite a lot of Str nodes. Now they may have some hidden benefit when compared to Dex nodes, but as I said: noob :D

What I am looking at now is moving along the bottom of the tree. Drop down to the bottom past the Might node that is already taken (to get to 3x +8% life), then right to Iron Reflexes, opening up the path left towards Unwavering Stance, then continuing on to Blood Magic when needed.

Listed build:
9x Str, 3x Dex, 2x 8% Life, 1x 12% Life to get to Iron Reflexes, Blood Magic, Unwavering Stance and that Berserking next to it.

This also takes 3x 8% life after a Might node near Iron Reflexes. These three could be moved to near the Golem's Blood for 8-8-12 (gain of 4%). This allows for removing the +30 Str node as well.

Alternative: Click here!
7x Str, 7x Dex, 1x Golem's Blood (to open up more +life% if needed, I don't know the value of regeneration tbh), Diamond Skin.

Differences:
-50 Str, +40 Dex, -24% Increased Maximum Life, +1.5% Life Regenerated per second, +15% to all Elemental Resistances

So my questions are:
1. Is it worth it to try and avoid Str nodes, or is the +hp from Str sufficiently nice?
2. Does this build allow for losing that 24% max life?
3. Is life regeneration per second actually useful?
4. Is Diamond Skin worth it?
5. Is Iron Grip actually worth it in the original build (not that much Str anyway), and could it be dropped after losing 50 more Str? That'd free up another point.

Comments from people that do know what they're doing are very welcome :)

@Bundin I cant answer all your questions but i'll try
1)The point in getting the str is because he picks up Iron Grip :The increase to Physical Damage from Strength applies to Projectile attacks as well as Melee attacks

2) losing 24% life is going to seriously dent your abillity to spam thanks to Blood Magic, all hp you can get is important

3)Life Per Second is incredably usefull when your using HP to cast abilities

4)-

5)im not entirely sure on this one without doing the theory behind it, im on my way out but when i get back alter ill take a bigger look into it.

Hope this helped a little, i dint have much time

Hey all!

I´m experimenting with an LA build. I am trying to make it work after the nerve.

Since LA can hit only 3 targets my thought is to have aditional projectiles to destroy large groups that are close together.
Right now i´m only in the 20ish level so most of what i´m saying is theoretical.

So: LA + LMP+ Fork + pierce
LMP adds to a total of 3 arrows. When they each hit they fork for 3*2=6 additional arrows adds up to 9 LA hits. With pierce at higher lvl the chance to pierce is about >50% which gives about 5 piercing arrows. Giving a total of 14. Each LA can hit the AOE of 4 targets. So maximum damage when every single arrow hits the maximum amount of mobs you can hit with one attack is 14*4=56 times.

The damage of LA itself is not that impressive, but if you use this multiplicative mechanic the damage output could be huge.

With a five link you can conveniently add life leach or life on hit. Since that is unrealistic in the next weeks (at least for me) you can swap out pierce for leach.

So far i´m using LA + fork + pierce which is very effective for large groups of mobs. i have no idea how that will scale at higher levels, so, we´ll see...

I would be very interesting what you guys think.

Edit:
The mana (or life with BM) cost increase is: 10% (pierce) + 50% (LMP) + 25% (fork) so 85 %. LA at low lvls cost 12mana (don´t no the cost at high lvl) adding up to 12+12*0.85= 22 mana which is not a lot.
The projectile damage reduction is: 30% (fork) + 30% (LMP) + 0 (pierce) = 60% which is pretty bad.
If we take a fictional damage per shot of 100 the reduced damage would be 40. With the multiplier of the aoe hits and projectiles this gives 40*56=2240 damage output per attack.

Edit2:
if you take life on hit as a 5L combo:
you get an additional cost of 50% which adds to 12+ 12*1.35=28. Life on hit gives (at lvl 15) 23 life/hit. With the maximum hits this gives 23*56=1288 life per attack. Comparing that to life leach this would be 57% of damage leached as life.

Please correct my math!

Is this the best build for bow ranger?

I am using this build as a fairly new player, playing extremely safe on HC. I am currently lvl 40 and just finished normal. The build is really solid though I am beginning to have some mana issues because I am too scared to take Blood Magic(though I just got mana aura so hopefully that will help).

What skill gems are peopel using with this ?

Im using Split Arrow + LMP + Faster Projectile for AOE and Burning Arrow + Piece (Ugg) for single target DPS. As soon as I can get a Elemental Hit I will start using that as my single target dps. However, this may be terrible but it has worked for me so far (I only played till about lvl 35 in beta, so my advice is probably not the best to follow).

TBH the only reason I think I have survived till lvl 40 on HC is that I got decoy totem to drop at lvl 5 LOL =)

I've got a question,

I put a few points into "bow damage and speed" and "greater impact" as I was leveling my Ranger.

Reading over the forums it seems like phys/crit builds are considered weaker than elemental builds so I'd like to go for the elemental build instead. Did I really gimp myself by wasting those ~4 points? I'm not sure how much harder it will be to level up later or how many respec points I will come across (I only have two for now) but I don't really want to start a new toon if I can avoid it.

Thanks :)

I like the idea of a pierce/LMP/fork/chain lightning arrow ranger. probably what I'm going to shoot for. I wonder if Static Blows wouldn't be a good addition to a lightning build. it's only another 10 points out of the way from Petrov's build. yeah, its up near minion instability, but for extra shock it might be worth it? Maybe?