Saint Vitus: Physical crit ranger guide[Always Updated]

Looks like we got our work cut for us. Tbh, I'm not liking the life changes, and I feel the general Ranger populace that stays in the dex side of the tree will universally lose health.

Yeah, unforunately well all lose life, now its mostly just a question of going IR or evasion.. its pretty hard to get big damage and decent life now

i think vaal pact and iron reflexes might be a safe way to go with

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VictorDoom wrote:

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Serendipitious wrote:

Thanks for the response! I like the guide so far, and I'm about 40 levels in. However, I'm not a huge fan of IR, what are some alternatives for me? I'm fairly new so I apologize if this is inane.

You need armor when you are going physical damage because it is the only way to defend yourself properly from reflect mobs. IR gives you a huge amount of armor which you need, with evasion you can evade the reflect but if you get unlucky and do not evade it a few times in a row you will die, with armor the reflected damage is a lot easier to deal with because you receive a lot less damage from the reflect.

Actually armor is pretty useless against reflect because it will get prieced by the high dmg. IR based crit chars can have a very though time dealing with reflect (can tell from own experience) while acro + EV + block builds practically won't get hit by reflect at all.

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candoerfer wrote:

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VictorDoom wrote:

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Serendipitious wrote:

Thanks for the response! I like the guide so far, and I'm about 40 levels in. However, I'm not a huge fan of IR, what are some alternatives for me? I'm fairly new so I apologize if this is inane.

You need armor when you are going physical damage because it is the only way to defend yourself properly from reflect mobs. IR gives you a huge amount of armor which you need, with evasion you can evade the reflect but if you get unlucky and do not evade it a few times in a row you will die, with armor the reflected damage is a lot easier to deal with because you receive a lot less damage from the reflect.

Actually armor is pretty useless against reflect because it will get prieced by the high dmg. IR based crit chars can have a very though time dealing with reflect (can tell from own experience) while acro + EV + block builds practically won't get hit by reflect at all.

Yeah i think youre right, i just chcked poebuilder with some decent gear, the build im making will have enough life, but the damage will be so high with a relatively decent bow that the armor wont reduce it properly and if you hit a bunch of reflect mobs with a crit you can 1 shot yourself, evasion + arco + ondars it will be i think

funnily enough that used to be the basically the first way this build was, but evasion was too shit to use back then so i specced it to IR since, now it looks like the tables have turned and eva is actually nice

The reason why I still stand by IR (I switched out of dodge/evasion) was not because of reflect but with vaal constructs and evangelists. In solo play, they wrecked my character even with Phase Acro.

Of course, with Atziri's Step slink boots, you can boost your spell dodge, but atm I don't have a spare. I think builds with 5k+ hp with Atziri's Step can pull off dodge/evasion, but don't quote me on this though.

I think ill do something like this in the new leagues:



ive tried to find some other routes for more tankyness and good dps, but its just so hard to do that with the life nerf

acutally fuck it im going IR again, youre right isildox, with a large amount of armor its going to be pretty hard to get 1 shot by reflect

This will do:

5k life shouldnt be too hard to get and the damage and armor would be pretty massive

Not sure if you caught the patch notes, but Frenzy is getting nerfed hard for some reason. (Huge loss of IAS)

I've decided to retool my phys/crit archer into a more freeze-oriented build using the newly buffed Iceshot for single-target and Tornado Shot for AoE. Should be good. I'll wait until the real tree is posted before posting my build.

Why do you get 8% proj damage in the ranger area when there's 10% phys dmg nodes in the shadow area?

Phys bow right?

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Islidox wrote:

Not sure if you caught the patch notes, but Frenzy is getting nerfed hard for some reason. (Huge loss of IAS)

I've decided to retool my phys/crit archer into a more freeze-oriented build using the newly buffed Iceshot for single-target and Tornado Shot for AoE. Should be good. I'll wait until the real tree is posted before posting my build.

Yea im going for barrage as single target i think, the mana sustainability seems really easy with it and the damage seems pretty sweet, i might try tornade shot as well, but i just like RoA and Split so much...

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Syncness wrote:

Why do you get 8% proj damage in the ranger area when there's 10% phys dmg nodes in the shadow area?

Phys bow right?

projectile damage increases all of the damage that your arrow has, its basically a 8% physical increase and a further 8% to the cold and fire you gain from added fire damage and hatred, 10% IPD is just slightly better than a 8% proj node for phys builds, so the shadow start is pretty much the same dps wise as the ranger start, the only difference is that you use an extra point as the shadow.

Plus its not the final tree since it hasnt been released yet, so stuff will change around when the final version is up