What are some of the advantages/disadvantages of repeaters?

[General_Jah]

Hi guys,

I was wanting to try to make a ranged rogue build and was considering a repeater. I'm pretty new to the game though and not familiar with ranged combat really at all.

How do the repeaters work exactly?

What are the main advantages of them vs a more traditional bow or crossbow?

[baddax]

repaeters will fire significantly faster than a crossbow with the specific feat.
bows are good if you are a ranger and get many shot which allows you to fire up to 4 arrows at one for a limited time.
My advice is go 6 ranger for many shot 10 rogue to get your rogue abilities. and at level 12 you can get your assasin abilities which i believe will also work with many shot. not sure about the last part though.

[General_Jah]

repaeters will fire significantly faster than a crossbow with the specific feat.
bows are good if you are a ranger and get many shot which allows you to fire up to 4 arrows at one for a limited time.
My advice is go 6 ranger for many shot 10 rogue to get your rogue abilities. and at level 12 you can get your assasin abilities which i believe will also work with many shot. not sure about the last part though.

Do you do less damage with each bolt fired from a repeater or have any other disadvantages?

Also, any idea how long many shot lasts? DDO wiki has been down :(

[baddax]

many shot is like 10-15 seconds something like that on like a 3 min timer. not sure of specifics. The biggest difference is the fact you dont get str damage from any kind of crossbow. so basicly repeaters are like a poor mans version of many shot. ie dont want to make a ranger or spend the feats to aquire it.

[Aranticus]

many shot is like 10-15 seconds something like that on like a 3 min timer. not sure of specifics. The biggest difference is the fact you dont get str damage from any kind of crossbow. so basicly repeaters are like a poor mans version of many shot. ie dont want to make a ranger or spend the feats to aquire it.

at L6 (6 BAB) manyshot is 20 seconds, 2 min timer, 2 arrows per shot. at 16 BAB, the number goes up to 4 arrows per shot. the higher level you are, the more shots you get

[Aranticus]

repaeters will fire significantly faster than a crossbow with the specific feat.
bows are good if you are a ranger and get many shot which allows you to fire up to 4 arrows at one for a limited time.
My advice is go 6 ranger for many shot 10 rogue to get your rogue abilities. and at level 12 you can get your assasin abilities which i believe will also work with many shot. not sure about the last part though.

bear in mind that the OP is a new player and playing MCs will be a challenge. he also do not have access to 32 pt builds which makes it hard to him to make a decent tempest assassin (which needs decent dex, int, str, con scores)

OP, start small and learn more about the game first. if you like the use of repeaters, make a 12rog/4ftr specced for repeaters. the 4 levels of fighters will give u additional feats for you to specialise in repeaters, boosting damage by +2 (weapon specialisation). alternatively, try out some of the basic templates listed in the thread listed in my sig

have fun

[Angelus_dead]

I was wanting to try to make a ranged rogue build and was considering a repeater. I'm pretty new to the game though and not familiar with ranged combat really at all.
Since you're new, you need a warning:
Ranged combat is not a good idea in DDO.

[Noctus]

Yep.
Damage output is low in ranged Combat. To be halfway effective you need to have a pile of good effect weapons, which is really hard to get by if you are new.

I would not recommend you to focus one of your first characters as a ranged combat specialist, or you will get disappointed once you reach the levels 8+
From there on the gap between melee DPS and Ranged DPS gets unbearable, imho, and you need to have good on-hit-effect weapons to compensate for the low damge with Paralsying/ banishing / wounding / puncturing effects.
But those weapons are expensive.

[EightyFour]

I would like to say that I agree with the idea that ranged combat really does start to lose a lot of dps towards the end game is not very effective at higher levels unless you have all the right gear. Some of the things you well need is a Wounding of Puncturing repeater, banishing repeater, disruption repeater or Ghost Touch of disruption(but there are some nice gloves or bracers that well give you ghost touch), smiting repeater, and a Wounding of Puncturing Bow(for your manyshot), and a few greater banes for red names tell you get a couple of greensteel bows.

But I would still recommend that you build towards being able to melee as your going to have situations where the group is going to need more dps than you can provide with a bow/repeater. The rangers TWF feats come in handy, just try to make sure that you don't have agro, seeker is your friend in your off hand, and don't forget to focus on your str, dex and con. If you want rogue levels focus on int and maybe cha for UMD(my personal opinion, I try to add UMD to every character I build) but don't kill your wisdom as you need that for will saves, or you can drop wisdom(which will reduce your spell points, but make sure you have enough to get the spells you need) and you could take force of personality to offset that.

So if your going to make a ranger/rogue for ranged combat just focus on having a high str, dex, con, int, and cha with a decent wis or high wis if you don't take force of personality. You need to balance these stats almost perfectly, you need enough int to be able to handle most of the traps in this game on elite, you need a high enough con for hp(toughness helps as well) so that when you get hit and you well get hit, you don't drop at the first hit. As for dex, it has to be high enough so you can hit everything and you need str to back up some of that stat dmg you are doing if a mob has a high dr as wounding only works if you bypass dr. As for a ranged rogue I can't speak to much, I would imagine that rogues would be more TWF, which I think if you went ranger for TWF/Rogue you would have to focus on the same stats.

Hope this helps a little, it's not the only opinion out there, but I would say that it comes from some experience, but there are others out there that are more experienced than I.

[Zenako]

The other problem is finding "good" repeaters can be very hard. At low levels they rock, since they can dish out way more hits in a short period of time than almost any other attack, and add in the safety of doing it from distance. That being said, most of the players who end up with a repeater build do it after the fact. They pull a few nice repeaters in loot and THEN build a repeater using character. For example I pulled a nice Lowbie Repeater (Frost of Good RR halfling and low and behold I tried out a halfling repeater character who dominated lowbie quests (and is now level 7 and is still hard a heck to hit/hurt but their dps is starting to lag as other characters get more effective melee attacks.)

The fire rate of repeaters does not significantly change as you level up which is why they fall back in power other attacks have rates which continue to climb.

[unionyes]

IMHO, the only real benefit with repeaters is special effects. At low levels, if you get for example a flaming repeater, you get the flaming effect for extra damage. At high levels, that damage is going to be pretty negligible, and mostly cancelled out with resistances that the mobs have on since each bolt counts as a single hit for the purposes of reaching the DR.

At higher levels, the only repeaters that would really really rock would be banishers, smiters, enfeeblement, that kind of thing. Those are extremely rare, although I have seen a banishing repeater once. The odds of finding one of these ultra uber repeaters is very small, and the amount of plat you would need to buy one would be astronomical.

If I happened to pull one of these uber repeaters, I would keep it and build a new toon to use it well, but without one of these, you are better off by far to go with a bow if you are doing ranged attack.

[Talon_Moonshadow]

Wizard now has, extra shot power. :)

[General_Jah]

IMHO, the only real benefit with repeaters is special effects. At low levels, if you get for example a flaming repeater, you get the flaming effect for extra damage. At high levels, that damage is going to be pretty negligible, and mostly cancelled out with resistances that the mobs have on since each bolt counts as a single hit for the purposes of reaching the DR.

At higher levels, the only repeaters that would really really rock would be banishers, smiters, enfeeblement, that kind of thing. Those are extremely rare, although I have seen a banishing repeater once. The odds of finding one of these ultra uber repeaters is very small, and the amount of plat you would need to buy one would be astronomical.

If I happened to pull one of these uber repeaters, I would keep it and build a new toon to use it well, but without one of these, you are better off by far to go with a bow if you are doing ranged attack.

So you think in the long run bows are much more viable than the repeaters?

The logic i was using for the range rogue was being able to get the extra 1d6 sneak attack and do it from a distance as well as be able to disable traps etc. The repeater just sounded fun/cool but if like you say they blow at higher level perhaps a bow would be a better choice?

Then again though, aren't you specializing in a certain bow to be effective?

[Angelus_dead]

So you think in the long run bows are much more viable than the repeaters?
Bows are a little better because they can use the Manyshot feat (which works only once per 2 minutes).

However, as already mentioned, ranged combat in DDO is not a good idea. There are a few rare situations where it works, but in general being ranged simply means being less effective.

[white_lab_rat]

OK I have been playing a range attack char since beta more or less. And it is a build that by today's standards is considered sub-par namely 14 fighter/ 2 ranger. Currently the build of choice is 16 ranger for range attack and it is used almost only when many shot is ready for use... otherwise you melee. =)

My fighter range attack char gets decent damage per hit and I don't miss much. I have shot-on-the-run so I can run and jump and still not take any penalties. I don't get the kind of damage over all that a duel wield char or barbarian would get but the trade off is I can apply that damage from range allowing me to climb and shoot from places normally considered "caster safe spots". Also when i activate many shot and fighter haste boost together there is no one in the game that can come close to my DPS... for 20 seconds at least. Well accept casters and that is not really a fair comparison.

You will have to simply accept these differences, that is not the hard part. You will also have to accept that most of the people playing this game are looking for optimal builds... we are almost (I said almost people) all power gamers and exploiters in some form. At the moment (as in in this lvl cap) duel wiled has a huge advantage over other builds. Last few caps it has been barbarian 2 weapon fighters or 2 handed weapon builds. Every one will tell you all kinds of info about how the path your taking is sub optimal and you should be aware of what they tell you... you will hear it a lot in game also and in groups they will expect you to fill these rolls... if your a 14 fighter/ 2 ranger they want you to tank. =)

All that being said... the best route to go with a repeater char is one of 2 really. People who are looking to use effect repeaters (like Wounding of Puncturing) tend to go mostly fighter for the feats with a few things like a few lvles of rogue added in to give some extra Dex and evasion. Mostly rogue is the other and can be very effective but you have to keep in mind a few basic ideas. First you will only get the majority of your sneak attack damage when your really quite close to the combat... 30 feet is the limit and you will probably be supprised at how close that really is in practical terms. Second there are a lot of constructs, elementals, and undead in the game all of whom are going to be more or less immune to your damage and they have a lot of hit points. When your higher lvl you can get banishers and disruptors to help off set this problem but it that is only a partial substitute.

Here are the things you want to take for sure with a mostly rogue build.

1. Improved Critical: Ranged ---- I can't stress enough how much this will help particularly when you get effect repeaters later. Repeaters, of all ranged weapons, have about the best critical range... take advantage of it.

2. Have a good jump and armor class---- You will be in the thick of combat more often than not in spite of your best attempts. With a good jump you can jump over or around many enemies while twisting and turning in the air. You can avoid more hits this way than most people realize. Also there are quite a few places still where you can get an elevation advantage and enemies will not climb up to you...but most of the best ones will involve really being able to jump.

3. Repeaters fire in 3 shot bursts then have a reload time. The various cross bow feats will shorten this reload time so make sure you take as many as you can. This is the primary reason for taking a few lvls of fighter in the mix... as a rogue you will be hard pressed for feats.

4. Select a race like elf or halfling if you end up being mostly rogue for the extra Dex. This will help your to-hit and AC a good bit...strength means basically nothing to you except you can haul more loot. You loose a lot of to-hit in the rogues levels compared to a fighter or ranger and you will need this to make it up or you will probably miss more than you want to later in the game. I favor halfling because of the extra sneak attack damage and flanking to-hit they get as well as the bonus to ac and to-hit they start with. I personally would also take one level of monk for much the same reason...you get an extra feat and your wisdom bonus to ac when your not in armor (you will stop wearing armor around level 8 or 10 once your Dex is high enough that you get more AC that way than with armor).


In the Bows vs. Repeaters debate what you need to know for the comparison is something like this... with a bow you can hit harder (with a lvl or 2 of ranger) on each hit but your over all rate of fire will be lower. A repeater will do less damage per hit but fire much faster. Repeaters do not get many shot but they do get feats that have no cycle time and will increase how quickly they reload increasing the number of arrows you fire. With a bow if you get a banishing or smiting long bow that is great and all but it runs off critical hits (the effect only activates on a critical) making it of very limited usefulness. A repeater has a higher crit rate so when you have access to those kinds of weapons later you gain a very significant advantage over bows. A case can also be made for disruption or other special effect weapons being more effective the more shots you manage to get off. As far as overall effect is concerned the differences are very similar to the debate of making a duel wield melee or a 2hand weapon using melee... one hits much harder and slower while the other hits many more times but for less damage. (repeater is like 2weapon fighter, bow is like 2hander).

Not sure if that helps but it may answer your questions.

[Sushizuki]

<snip> So if your going to make a ranger/rogue for ranged combat just focus on having a high str, dex, con, int, and cha <snip>
So only those stats need to be high? All the rest can be low?

Geesh.

[Zenako]

One thing about Rangers, is the "free feats" they get that are helping combat, both ranged and melee styles, which offsets most of the difference in feats between them and a fighter. With the free feats you also don't need to have the prerequsites filled either.

Manyshot is nice, Improved Precise Shot is VERY nice, allows you to spread your attacks over everything in the line of fire, which if you are using a good bow, Manyshot, have improved Critical can devastate a whole corridor of foes.

As for losing BAB with a rogue, you can offset that fairly simply once you get a Divine Power Clickie, which gives you a str boost and full BAB. My Ranger/Rogue split activates the Divine Power before important Manyshots to get the full effect.

[EightyFour]

So only those stats need to be high? All the rest can be low?

Geesh.

Yep. unless you don't have room for an extra feat than you have to have a mid to high wisdom as well. Somewhere between a Mod of +7 to +12 should be good for those stats.

I kinda find it funny that you have to make a ranged build like a superman just to be average. Prob. why not many people build one.