Thank you for providing this build along with the updates. I just completed this from 1 to 34, 100% following the feats, skills, enhancements, destinies, etc. Overall... it seems weak at most levels. Not until mid-epics did the damage numbers start to get beyond a steady stream of low digits, and even then, there were not regular critical hits with damage that could keep up with previous barb, bard, sorc, and paladin lives. Buying new equipment at every level or so marginally improved the AC, damage, and skill numbers. Tempest used to be able to rip things up fast, but it seems it is now more below average compared to most in a party, but it was good fun to soak up extra damage with the additional HP.
Thoughts on improvements...
- Skip any toughness feats. HP was already higher than many, and 22 reaper points helped push this up too.
- Take Spring Attack. It's great fun to dart ahead and using smoke bomb (or better, invisibility pots) could help with that initial sneak attack.
- Skip the Metamagic Quicken spell. It's a feat that could go to something else to improve damage, speed, survivability for only two suboptimal abilities. Smoke bomb can get by with just using at the initiation of a fight; snap trap doesn't land much on reaper and isn't worth the faster action in an actual fight with mobs.
- It was suggested to switch from rapiers to scimitars to improve the damage. Not sure if this is the solution but could help with skeletons and others that have resistance to pointy and sneak damage.
- The epic/legendary feats seemed to hinge on the sneak attack or helpless targets but seems way behind a vistani rogue or other assassin build.
Thanks again and was good fun to get to the end even though it felt rough at times and happily contributed a bunch of clicks to the page view counts.
MX
Hi MarauderX,
Thanks for taking the time to post your experience with the build and share thoughts on improvements, much appreciated
> I can see you compared damage output to previous lives/builds you ran: that certainly feels useful for those seeking the builds/classes with the most damage output, so thanks for sharing this
Some thoughts ref your suggestions, if I may:
- Ref toughness feats: generally speaking, I personally prefer to have the amount of hit points I have gone for than to have less in favor of more damage. I think a balanced approach like this is likely to favor characters with no/very few past lives in the long run: I do delve a bit more on this in this thread, as it is a personal playstyle choice. Being able to soak up a bit more dmg makes my gaming experience a lot more fun than being a glass canon.
- This build uses FoTW's 'Fast and Furious', so I already have one 'sprint' attack, which I personally consider superior to Spring Attack because it grants a crit multiplier bonus.
- I'm not fully convinced I would significantly benefit from a second sprint attack... I dunno. I used Spring Attack in my previous Ranger build (with the old Shadowdancer that had the T5 assassinate attack), so sneak damage was a focus even back then, and I found myself avoiding Spring Attack a lot of the time in order to reach the frontline a bit later, after agro was taken.
- I'd say decisions like this depend a lot on what's going on with the game: currently, my melee alts are frequently the only melee in the groups I join, where many are using the cheese ranged builds, so I dunno if I would care to get there any faster. They grab agro from far ahead, I get there and dish all the sneak damage tbh.
- I find quicken super useful, I would not drop it. I initially played without it and found Smoke Bomb (invisibility) and Smoke Trap (lose immunity to sneak attacks and -25% fort) were interrupted far too frequently, as I use them a lot during combat
- DCs for Smoke + Snap traps might not be where they need to be yet (I feel this is because assassinate does not benefit from trances, and therefore cannot beat saves that are balanced around what tactics with trances can reach). I am happy to stick with them until they hopefully get adjusted some day: I personally shared this feedback with the Devs, and suggested, amongst several things, that they could perhaps start benefitting from trances too, now that assassinate bonuses have similar values to stun, trip, etc in gear, trees, etc.
- hinging on sneak attacks and helpless damage is exactly where I personally want this build to be: it reaches 46 sneak die very often ('Opportune Moment' combined with Smoke bomb). Whether behind a vistani/assassin or not, I feel this is the focus that will mostly benefit the very large bonuses that Dark Hunter and Shadowdancer give.
- Admittedly, I do make a personal choice of investing in Assassinate DCs via filigrees, to the detriment of going full-on melee power. I am personally happy with this compromise, though. Others are free to do as they wish, of course.
Grateful for the suggestions, I hope my responses came across ok.
If I may now delve on some points that are specific to my personal playstyle, and therefore, significantly shape how I play and the choices I tend to make (such as the ones I outlined just above):
> I play around 23 characters
> I like playing several classes and races, and not as 'past lives', but as real characters available permanently
> I don't TR each character often: I build with the endgame in mind, and that's where I spend the vast majority of my time with each character
> Each character kind of specialises on one weapon (sometimes a group of weapons): it's how I deal with my stable of alts
> I enjoy gear tetris, and strive to gear my characters up every 4 levels or so (kind of matching how bonuses on augments go) with 'optimal' gear, including set bonuses and augments. Not everyone bothers with that, but I do.
> I don't particularly compare the damage output between different classes, as I am not personally seeking a/the 'top'/'meta' build: I am fully disinterested in meta
> Vistani 41 might be considered by some as the only way to go, but such rigid 'meta' choices are just not interesting enough to me.
> I am still very hopeful someday all bonuses in the Vistani tree are fixed to apply only when holding daggers and kukris
So with those in mind,
> Ranger (specifically the Tempest variety) has been very fun to play for years. Even if not as powerful as other classes, I am happy to stick with it for this character
> My druid uses my collection of scimitars. This ranger has focused for years on piercing, rapiers mostly (crit profile) BUT, this is a TFW build: there's a bunch of off-hand swappable weapons I do use all the time, particularly from raids when/if I acquire them (especially if they have 'keen' on them when they are not piercing)
> the off-hand helps significantly when dealing with mobs with bludgeon and slash DRs
> I must confess my builds do not focus at all on the journey to the endgame: the choices I make are for the endgame. So some things could/should be tweaked as you go along (even if to be dropped completely later in favor of what I propose)
> Filigrees play a very significant role for many builds, and take a significant amount of time to put together (i.e. level the sentient gem and artifact to full, find all the rare filigrees, un-slot from the previous life/build and slot as per my specific build). I feel this needs to be bared in mind when reaching endgame and assessing the potential of a build without the filigrees being the same.
> My general experience seems to differ from yours, and I suspect this is heavily affected by expectations, points of comparison, playstyle, etc.
- I solo all content R3 or so up to mid Epics and this character shreds things to pieces (particularly after it gets Dance of Death) even when sneak attack damage doesn't feature heavily
- I am mindful I don't have the same point of comparisons you had (i.e. your number of past lives and/or the specific builds you ran), which have likely generated expectations (e.g. speed for running content): only you can attest to these, and I am grateful you have shared them
- I mostly compare performance with the previous build I had with this alt (a major build/race/class change is typically the reason that forces me to TR, which I don't often do): in this sense, I feel this Dark Hunter build is superior to the non-archetype Ranger build I used to play
- the journey to endgame is not my focus: the endgame is. I can see that those doing the 'past life hamster wheel' would tend to focus far more heavily on this part of journey, with little/no focus to the endgame (at least not while simply seeking past lives)
Hope these make sense, and genuinely appreciative of your time and suggestions
