[1.xx] Islidox's Build tips/critique section for Rangers

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Montanx wrote:

This thread is awesome and extremely helpful. I was hoping for an in depth skill breakdown for those of us unsure of wich to proceed with. Physical and elem are clear but within those are some choices. My example would be that I'm not sure if I want frenzy or poison arrow for single target dps. Wich skills fit best with wich builds and gems, and why, would be the sum up of the request.

In my case I'm going the strength ranger route and know I want IR and IG but after that, not sure if I really want blood magic over mana. Also like I said, I'm unsure if I want poison arrow over frenzy (wich I use but isn't impressing me, but I'm only lvl 25.). Any advice is welcome.

Anyway, great thread and keep up the good work.

Poison Arrow. Frenzy requires you to shoot several times to get the frenzy charges up, and you may already be under attack when you do that. PA is one of those skills that you shoot and forget, and is probably one of the best skills you can have if soloing big bosses. Blood Magic does circumvent the entire lack of mana problem, but you need to invest quite a bit of life, life regen, and life leech to survive. There's pros and cons to both.

Can I get an explanation of how piercing works? does it bypass armor?

Is Iron Grip a must have if I'm elemental?

@jbitz: Piercing involves arrows hitting a target, and if the chance to pierce rolls, the arrow will go through the target in the direction it was flying from. It has nothing to do with armor penetration. There is a passive in the Ranger skilltree that gives shots a 35% additional chance to pierce as well as the support gem Pierce. Projectile Weakness also adds more chance to pierce.

@bidoof01: It's not a must, but I don't see why you wouldn't pick it up. A lot of elemental skills work off of physical damage, and Iron Grip does this better by converting melee physical damage to projectile damage, which encompasses elemental damage as well.

Thanks so much for your help! This is really invaluable and amazing information.

I'm really liking the critical ranger build, but what could be a possible build if I wanted to combine the best of the frenzy ranger mana build into it as well? Is that feasible?

Also, how exactly do I "build my fuel" if I'm using a mana build? I'm just starting out, but I definitely miss having fast mana regen like on my witch with Clarity.

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Islidox wrote:

Poison Arrow. Frenzy requires you to shoot several times to get the frenzy charges up, and you may already be under attack when you do that. PA is one of those skills that you shoot and forget, and is probably one of the best skills you can have if soloing big bosses. Blood Magic does circumvent the entire lack of mana problem, but you need to invest quite a bit of life, life regen, and life leech to survive. There's pros and cons to both.

I believe this statement--ie. Poison Arrow as a got-to single-target skill--is only valid for low-to-mid content. I believe that once geared up and over level 55, Frenzy is the best single-target DPS if a build supports it.

I went pure physical damage with Frenzy, 7 stacks (+3 from skill tree, +1 from Bandit quest reward). I must admit that Frenzy is quite disappointing in early 30s and 40s. You are not able to stack it too high, the buff lasts too short and its costs are very high. However, once you get 2x increased duration buff from passive tree, maintaining Frenzy charges becomes very easy. I'm now farming Docks on Merciless with very high uptime, probably loosing it 2 or 3 times max per full clear.
High Frenzy charges provide significant buff to physical damage, which will shine once you get decent physical bow.
The last and probably most painful problem is the mana consumption. It is almost inevitable to use Mana Leech support gem in order to sustain Frenzy. Once I got 3% Mana Leech from leveled gem, I could spam Frenzy forever unless I was missing a lot. Now that I have 5% leech (additional +2 from passive tree), I can use Frenzy to replenish my mana pool.

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Baron01 wrote:

Info

I was planning similar build. Could you show it linked on passive tree? Or PM if it's a secret.

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volanchik wrote:

I was planning similar build. Could you show it linked on passive tree? Or PM if it's a secret.

I'm currently lvl74, the build is pretty much finished. I can see myself getting another 4-5 in the long run but it will take a while. I will get 2 passive points for finishing Piety on Merciless, which will be spent on getting Bloodthirst. Any points after that will go against Deadly Draw. Once done, Ill put any newly acquired passive points to % HP increase nodes.

The build is my modification of common physical damage frenzy ranger posted in this thread. I just wanted to have Piercing Shots and focus more on critical strike chance.

My skills are:
4L Frenzy - added fire damage, increased critical strikes, mana leech
4L Split Arrow - added cold damage, piercing, faster projectiles (recently replacing mana leech since now I got 2% mana leech from passive tree)
Hatred and Haste aura linked with mana reduction support gem

Thanks for the tips! It helped a lot.
- What would compensate lack of Hatred Aura (Ice Shot oriented ranger) if I go Blood Magic route?
- What debuff is more suitable for Ice Shot - Frostbite or Projectile Weakness?
- Is Split Arrow a no-go for elemental aoe? I.e., is [Ice Shot+Fork+LMP] better than [Split Arrow+Fork+ some elem. dmg gems]?
- Did i waste my quest reward taking Wrath if I've decided using Ice Shot as main aoe?

Thanks!

i copy/paste from a pm i sent to islidox, so if he answer will be useful for all:



hi islidox! first of all i wanted to thank you for have shared all ur knowledge on rangers.
i started to play about 4 days ago, and atm i'm lvl 40.
i looked at ur builds and setups, but there are some things that arent so clear to me.
i planned to go elemental ranger, and in the first lvls i followed this build, because its the only one i saw in the first days, and maybe its wrong, dunno.

http://www.pathofexile.com/passive-skill-tree/AAAAAgIBAdEEswguDq0UTRR1FSAZjhm0KaUqTSzpMn4yiTWGNZI26DpSOrM64TwtPydKfUz_TeNOyFb6V-JYr1-qY6dnoGqTbPZuqnPhdEF35XgNeriC5Id2iPGQEZuNnaqiAKJAplepbqxZrpOvbK_rtBq18rc-uc3AD8SixYrGrsrT037dDd1G37_nY-pi7YPuDvAf8kX0-PeI-rH8TvzF_gr-j4qvAnGQCsHY4ss=

anyway here are my questions:
1) i read ur setups, but i cant figure out how u can sustain the life cost of the spell. i plan to use light arrow vs lot of monsters and poison arrow vs boss or unique; but i see this is ur configuration:

> Lightning Arrow + WED + Faster Projectiles + LightningPenetration/ALD
> Puncture/Poison Arrow + Faster Projectile + Culling Strike + Increased Duration

so how u gain back the life u use? i dont see any life leech, i am missing something?

2) here u wrote:
- Also, any of these skills can be modified with Multi-projectile supports for crowd control. The four skills below are usually the best candidates for such treatment:
> Lightning Arrow + LMP/GMP + Fork/Chain
> Ice Shot + LMP/GMP + Pierce/Fork
> Split Arrow + Chain/Fork
> Poison Arrow + LMP/GMP + Pierce/Fork

i cant understand the crowd control part... ok ice shot slow and freeze, but how u can crowd control with light and poison? so i dont know which support put to light and psn arrow... the first u wrote or those for cc?

i hope u will answer me, thank you so much again!