My Ranger Life Question 2: GS bow

[Djeserit]

Is a GS bow neccessary as you level up?

I am only doing this life for TR purposes, will TR to bard the day I reach cap.
I have a lot of other nice bows. (W&P, para/PG, silver, sinew) Mostly with icy burst added.

Radiance makes so much difference to a rogue, it's like a totally different character once you craft your rad rapiers. If you haven't played a rogue properly equipped, you haven't played rogue. I wonder if that's going to be the experience with rangers.

Does GS make so much difference to a ranger while you are levelling?

[Fenrir_Lorengard]

My personal experience tells me that a GS bow is definitely not needed while leveling up. During lower and mid levels, bows like the silver bow and a paralyzing bow own pretty much all the content.

In fact, I would debate if I would make a litII bow at all today, considering we have the Bow of Sinew to fall back to (and with the pirate trinket you just got seeker 10 on your weapon). I would postpone it until all my melee and other GS equipment were done myself.

[Bengalih]

Is a GS bow neccessary as you level up?

I am only doing this life for TR purposes, will TR to bard the day I reach cap.
I have a lot of other nice bows. (W&P, para/PG, silver, sinew) Mostly with icy burst added.

Radiance makes so much difference to a rogue, it's like a totally different character once you craft your rad rapiers. If you haven't played a rogue properly equipped, you haven't played rogue. I wonder if that's going to be the experience with rangers.

Does GS make so much difference to a ranger while you are levelling?

It depends on how ranged focus you want to be. If you are going to be 80% melee, 20% ranged then I don't think it is necessary at all. The higher those numbers shift in the other direction, the more you want to consider. For a quick TR though (and from your other thread which didn't seem to be too keen on high levels of ranged), I wouldn't spend the scales.

The Silver bow is amazing up until GS is available, and even some levels after. The Bow of Sinew I think is much better for those without Bow Strength, but I can't honestly say if it is better than the Silver Bow all around (mostly because I wasn't leveling in that rage when the Sinew was available).

Another bow which I made was a Flaming Burst of Pure Good with Risia Icy Burst on it. ML6 and was really a nice all-around damage dealer.

The great things about bows is you can use DR-passing arrows, so a plain old Metalline bow with Silver or Cold Iron arrows is nice. With arty buffs now, alot of DR can be passed too situationaly.

[WruntJunior]

Slight thread necro (same month, though, so okay in my book), but if it's still relevant, I use bow of sinew on my ranger (which stayed capped as a ranger for a while, and will again) simply because it's better than most other options if you're a tempest, don't have improved crit ranged, and can't be bothered to use scales on a gs bow yet. If you want a gs bow, though, a cheap pos 2 longbow will make leveling pretty easy, but then again a silver longbow/bow of sinew combo will work just fine, especially if you're not an AA for the tr.

[Djeserit]

Currently I'm thinking I would start as a deepwood sniper and swap to AA at higher level.

My thinking: I have access to crafted holy arrows and tons of xoriat arrows from quivering quiver. That's +3 (damage type) arrows with no min level. What AA gives you is not much better than that until high level. So I can just take the two feats required for sniper first and get the bonus to crit range and extra sneak attack range, then switch when I have space for the feat and the benefits of AA outweigh sniper.

Still trying to figure out how many levels to splash. Lately improved evasion seems so valuable at higher levels. I usually try to run an elite of Monastery and other later quests and the rogues I meet can't handle it. Thinking 6 ranger, 9 monk, 1 fighter and use a reincarnation to get the ranger life credit at the end. Meaning I probably won't craft a GS bow, just use the nice ones I've got.

[Rydin_Dirtay]

Why not go Tempest, since you probably have other melee gear ready to go? It will be less painful especially if your previous lives were melees. You'll still have a nice bow capability (Manyshot / IPS/ BS).

Of course if you just want to play an AA or DS, that is fine. But if I were used to melees (sounds like you have some RadII weapons in the bank) I would probably go Tempest on my Ranger life.

[WruntJunior]

Not to mention, if you have rad IIs in the bank, a deep rogue splash could make leveling even easier, as rad IIs + sneak attack damage = awesome.

[krackythehoodedone]

If you have a GS Bow it will probably (99%) be a lit 11.

After ur Parylser starts to lose effectiveness (15 ish, depending on pack). For the next few levels ur lit 11 will pretty much instakill anything it hits. So yeah its a real big help. A manyshot and a lit 11 is a mob killer.

[Rydin_Dirtay]

Not to mention, if you have rad IIs in the bank, a deep rogue splash could make leveling even easier, as rad IIs + sneak attack damage = awesome.

OP I forgot about this thread from the other week. Yes what Wrunt says here is good. You could go 12 Ranger/7 Rogue/1 Monk or 12 Ranger/7 Rogue/1 Fighter, OR 12 Ranger/7 Rogue/1 Barbarian (fast zerger build ftw) if you wanted to play around with your RadII's on a Ranger Tempest build.

Would be o so nice.