Petrov's Ranger Build: Lightning Strike or Reave+Abyssus+Lightning Coil+EB+MoM+VP

It's been a while since I did my last Ranger build (http://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/44814, so please be gentle.

I'm posting this in Ranger because, while I've built this on a Shadow on an alt account of mine, it's a marginally better build from Ranger. I'm running this in Domination with good but not godly gear (apart from a 6L Lightning Coil - I think a vastly underappreciated and underpriced unique).

The goal of this build was to have an outstanding DPS character who can also tank, but do it in a more elegant and thoughtful way than simply stacking HP or Armour/EVA. It evolved over time to what I'm posting today. It's nominally a Lightning Strike build - but it could just as easily be a Reave, Double Strike or Spectral Throw build. The magic is not in the main skill. I have included my current Reave-based spec below as well. For the Reave build, I have sacrificed some DPS to get unwavering stance (I still do 27k DPS Reave on Domination). Given Reave is a melee skill, it is vitally important you never get frozen or stun-locked because, if you do, you'll stop leeching and die.

Let's get to the substance of things. The keys to this build are:

- Lightning Strike with Dagger: Lightning Strike-Life Leech-Lesser Multiple Projections-Multistrike-Faster Attacks-Weapon Elemental Damage). 25k DPS at level 80ish means I can leach my health back instantaneously with Vaal Pact.
OR
- Reave with Dagger: Reave-Life Leech-Concentrated Effect-Melee Physical Damage-Faster Attacks-Multistrike

- Lightning Coil chest: enormous physical damage mitigation, and used to offset Abyssus' downside. Must have, enough said.

- Eldritch Battery: key to getting 1.5+k mana, 170 mana/sec regen and enough to sustain spamming 6L LS/Reave and Arctic Armour, etc)

- Mind Over Matter: awesome damage mitigation along with huge mana pool - to maximise the benefit of MoM you should aspire to have 43% of your HP pool as unreserved mana. I have capped 75% res without Purity now, so unless I am running an Elemental Weakness map (where I run Purity) or I want to run Purity of Lightning (for 79% capped res), I have only about 750 unreserved mana (about half of peak efficiency) and 170 mana/sec regen (amazing for survivability). Now, if you optimise the use of MoM, it can give you an effective HP pool of +43% MORE hitpoints. Ie, with a HP pool of, say, 1000 - with a peak efficiency of MoM, your effective HP pool becomes 1,430. This is awesome, and gets even more awesome with the use of Lightning Coil.

- High ES shield: key for having a decent mana pool and defences via EB/MoM

- Vaal Pact: (key to dealing with reflect mobs and maps, and thorns)

- Abyssus Helm: *huge* DPS boost in the order of 10-15k dps for my LS or Reave builds. If you want more tank and less DPS, feel free to run a high ES helm with resistances and life (if possible). This will probably ensure you can run a peak efficiency unreserved mana pool of 43% of your HP (ie only run Hatred), or have mega mana regen (if you want to run Clarity as well).

- 2-3x Cast on Damage Taken gems linked to your chosen combination of: Enduring Cry, Molten Shell, Arctic Armour, Immortal Call, Increased Duration/Area of Effect, Temporal Chains/Enfeeble, Summon Skeletons, Decoy/Devouring Totem or Detonate Dead. I have 1) CODT-IAOE-Enfeeble-End Cry (all low level); 2) CODT-Arctic Armour-Immortal Call (all low level); 3) CODT-Inc Duration-Immortal Call-Enduring Cry (level 15). For me, the high level Immortal call/CODT proc is really helpful - it procs fairly often and lasts about 2.5 seconds, which is a long time to be immortal in the heat of combat.

- Flicker Strike as a distance closer: Only if/when I run with Reave as my main skill, I replace the 3-linked #2 CODT above with Flicker-MPD-Endurance Cast on Melee Stun, which allows me to use Flicker as a great distance closer alongside Reave, and ALSO fairly regularly proc an endurance charge when I flick in to mobs. flicker is NOT linked to CoDT (and it wouldn't work anyway, as it's an attack, not a spell).

- 1-3 Auras from your choice of: Hatred, Clarity and (if required) Purity (or Wrath). Given MoM's peak efficiency point described above, my view is that if you can 75% cap res without purity, you'll be best off just running Hatred and/or Clarity depending on your own preference of unreserved mana vs mana regen (imho, the former is better to avoid OHKOs, the latter is better for mitigating damage over longer fights).

- Optional: Lightning Warp, Decoy or Devouring Totem (for chaos degen maps) and Elemental Weakness or Faster Cast

- 4x pots: I use 2x Instant Mana (for instant MoM replenishment), 2x Granite and 1x Jade pot.- Your pots should keep some debuffs on them, such as remove shocking, frozen and bleeding most importantly, or remove curses.

Elemental and Physical Reflect mobs or maps are a non-issue. Don't even scratch me.

Lightning Coil is key for the conversion of phys damage to lightning damage. With 79% capped res, 40% phys damage conversion to lightning damage is massive, while taking additional lightning damage is easy to deal with. Don't underestimate the survivability benefit of Lightning Coil.

The build itself doesn't stack defences per se, and has a relatively modest c.3-4k life pool. But this doesn't matter because you are so tanky from your Lightning Coil, Mind over Matter, and various CoDT procs, that stacking life is not as important as in most other non-ES builds.

As you will see below, there are a lot of other options you have with this path: you can stak more/less dps for less/more life. You can sacrifice some dps or life if you want to pick up Ondar's Guile and/or 75% shock avoidance. You can take Point Blank, or not. You can take Stabbing Comeback instead of Aspect of the Panther. Lots of subtle variations exist.

Here's the Lightning Strike build:

Here's the Reave build:

On gear, the key for me was to get Lightning Coil, a good DPS dagger (not so much a crit dagger, just a big phys dps dagger) and Abyssus. Apart from those, try to stack as much ES as you can. With my setup below, I have 1.5k mana and 170 mana/sec regen (if I run Clarity), which allows me to perma run Arctic Armour. Lighting Coil is key to mitigating the downside of Abyssus. I like dagger because of the great dagger-specific nodes around and near Eldritch Battery specifically.

Here's my gear (please note that, for the Reave version of this build, I rely on life leech a lot more, so I run a Carnage Heart amulet and Dream Fragments ring):


For quest rewards, just get the skill points. Not such a big deal now given the changes to bandit quest respecs due to come in.

I hope this is interesting for you. I'll try to keep this updated and answer questions until I get bored of it. Note, this is a pretty cheap build too.

Special thanks to VictorDoom, Hardstyle, Turtleken and Moosifer for both their specific and general help and guidance.

Petrov.

[kept for future]

Awesome! I used to play a ranger build of yours a while back. Perfect timing with your new one :D

you should probably either go IR for the extra armor or arrow dodging for evading projectiles, since you do have some evasion and evason increase from the dex it might be better (note: you can evade reflect)

Also, you should search for life leech gear, use a warlords mark maybe or bloodrage so you can replace the life leech gem for added fire


Really good build, i should probably level my witch some more in domi so we can run together again, i wanna check it out

"

VictorDoom wrote:

you should probably either go IR for the extra armor or arrow dodging for evading projectiles, since you do have some evasion and evason increase from the dex it might be better (note: you can evade reflect)

Also, you should search for life leech gear, use a warlords mark maybe or bloodrage so you can replace the life leech gem for added fire


Really good build, i should probably level my witch some more in domi so we can run together again, i wanna check it out

I haven't found I need more Life Leech, and given most of my dps is from elemental, LL gear is less useful. That being said, would rather have more LL than less of course - but it's all about priorities.

I have thought about taking IR, but I like the evade//ondar's guile option, which I may spec into. Frankly, with Lightning Coil you don't need armour.

P.

Cool stuff

stole all my ideas.

"

Moosifer wrote:

stole all my ideas.

and successfully facetanked kole in the 71 map with vulnerability! hoho

Edit: Dont worry, I'll get him killed soon enough!

This is a very nicely put build...

and once you get a better dagger, deeeeeeps

really close to path of panther too which will be really nice...

the down side of abyssus is mostly mitigated! well done!

Thanks T, and thanks for your help too. I'm tempted to try Point Blank (2 nodes away) just to see if the DPS is as crazy as it looks. Go berzerk.

EDIT: Err, Point Blank is nuts with this. Not sure if I'll keep it because it makes you psychologically suicidal, but...

P.