Best Ranger specc?

[VidX]

yip, critshot forums.

for normal shots, % chance to stay stealthed is:

(Your stealth level / your level ) x 100

For Critshots:

((Your stealth level - 10 ) / your level ) x 100

so if oyu only have 50 stealth at level 50, then you will remain stealthed all the time with normal shots, but only an 80% chance to stay stealthed on critshots.

Sucks really, that we are the only class that needs to spec over 50 to get the full benefit.

 

[keela is]

VidX, is that 50 base stealth, or 35+15 (50)stealth ?

 

[VidX]

total spec, i.e.: 35+15.

So to get 60 I need to respec to 40 base stealth and get rr10 lol

 

[Faeldawn]

Originally posted by Turamber
There do appear to be some imbalances at this early level though ... being outtanked by a minstrel is a bit annoying

Get used to it

 

[Falcon]

Originally posted by VidX
Higher bow means higher weaponskill, which reduces the chance of evade/block by targets.

Yes, having a total of 55 bow instead of 50 only means an extra 30 damage-or-so, but increasing it will also increase the WS, and makes killing assassins while using TS alot easier.

When I was 50 bow, true sight specced on Xest, the whole reason I dropped True Sight was because even with 50 +14 bow assassins evaded well over 50% of shots, and all too many times evaded every shot, and still managed to PA me despite being shot at. Yes, bow weapskill does help, but the difference from speccing so high is absolutely negligible. The same goes for blocks, block rates are high no matter what your bow weapskill and engage is a 99% block rate no matter what too. There's two reasons for that, the first is that +spec from items gives more weapskill than base spec, and secondly archers can acheive real high dex anyhow giving enough weapskill to pretty much.

Using charges for damage add is a real bad idea, they only last 30secs and are useable every 2mins, also cost 4g a peice, relying on damage add charges means you can forget about trying to fight a tank in melee as you need the damage up the whole way through the fight and you wont drop a tank in 30secs - especially a paladin. Speccing a ranger without pathfinding leaves you no chance vs. an equally kitted out assassin because without PF a ranger has exactly the same weapspec line as an assassin's baseline but loses out on crit strike styles and the immensly useful evenom debuffs. Pathfinding damage add offers rangers a way to bring their melee output roughly on par with assassins, ignoring it is a bad idea unless you plan to either purge (if need be) and bail out if one ambushes you or try and avoid assassin areas except when TS is up. Also, think outside the box on the speedshout, yes it's crap for escaping but it rocks for catching targets - having high PF adds sheild tanks and speed classes to your list of killable targets.

The most efficient way to handle bow is to keep it specced low 27 - 35, and make sure you get as much dex as possible, along with +11 from items, the drop in spec will allow you to make much more efficient use of the spec points elsewhere. This is even more the case in ToA with the abundance of +dex cap increase items.

Also, on the note of stealth spec, having over 50 is an even more horrific waste, if you've capped your qui which shouldn't be hard to do, it needn't matter if you unstealth or no, your draw times shouldn't be so long to make much of a difference.

Having high bow and stealth spec is fine for a sniper, if you intend to rely on True Sight to take out assassins, or indeed rely on others around you to defend you from them, however for solo purposes you'll be assassin meat, with such low CD and PF there's no feasible way to stand upto an assassin in melee, chances are, even with IP up you'll die to a buffed assassin with low spec cd/pf.

Yes high bow and stealth are good if all you wanna do is snipe and run, but using those points more efficiently into CD and PF allow you to take down a much wider range of targets solo. Bow damage is still perfectly adequate and I often capped with 362 dex, 27 +9 recurve bow on Xest. Having a well balanced spec is the best bet, and moving slightly more towards what type of combat orients you is safest.

My spec with ToA and stealth lore, as well as increased dex cap items will be:
- 46 Pathfinding
- 44 Peirce
- 27 Recurve bow
- 25 Stealth
- 23 Celtic Dual

This is pretty much the spec I had before, but with higher peirce, lower stealth, bow is still perfectly adequate to take down enemy stealthers, support classes, mages (bar some of course, bonedancers anyone?), unsheilded tanks. Anything with a sheild, PBT or instas you're going to have to take down in melee no matter how high your bow or stealth spec is.