Ranger 20 vs. Monkcher 14/6 vs Monkcher 20 vs ???

[Kodwraith]

So I haven't even gotten my Tempestadin back to 30 and I'm already planning the next life. perma-Ranged is hella fun and seems to be the way to fly for LE seeing as how getting hit is bad. I'll be going iconic (probably sunelf) no matter what. Mainly because I hate slogging from 1-15.

What seems to be the current wisdom of the endgame w.r.t. fulltime AA/DWS ranged class splits?

I thought pure ranger /elf or PDK would be the obvious choice, but looking around at the various monkcher builds with 100k arrow crits, I'm not so sure anymore. Are these stupid huge numbers mostly from slayer arrows + fury? I'm currently leaning towards 14 monk/6 ranger elf mainly so I can get the monk PL.

It seems for pure pure bow use the destiny to be in is currently Fury. It seems for maximum flexibility, elf/helf for AA access is needed on anything that isn't at least 18 ranger. But it looks to me that the only viable ranger splits are be 1, 2, 6 or 20.

So I guess the question is: 10k stars + stances + extra AP for activating AA => worth losing DWS capstone and crit mults? For everything else it looks like the basic damage math works out to:
-> how high can you get your primary stat? WIS/DEX/STR depending on which one you're using.
-> how high can you get your doubleshot?
-> are you critting all the time?
-> how squishy are you willing to be?
-> do you care about your PL (for once the nerf comes)?

10k stars seems to have a 50% duty cycle and gives you the most bang is you could go WIS as your dmg stat. Which of course does not exist as a thing so you need to split WIS + DEX or STR depending on if you ended up with bow str or not.

[Kodwraith]

And I have a pile of shuriken, but no real interest in a hybrid thrower build. I also already have a 14/5/1 xbow alt, so all longbow all the time.

[unbongwah]

There are a lot of factors to consider, including:

• Which PL feat do you want? [sounds like monk]
• Do you care more about heroic leveling, epic leveling, or endgame performance?
• Do you care more about CC (i.e., Paralyzing Arrows) or pure DPS?
• Do you care more about burst DPS or sustained DPS?
• Related to that, do you care which ED you use? [i.e., are you working on an EPL as well]
• Do you care about anything other than DPS (e.g., rog splash for trap skills)?

[mikarddo]

I realise you are asking for bow only - so feel free to ignore this entry or keep it for comparison. I used to play bow only but changed to a mixed shuriken/bow which plays just about the same except for the extra hassle of swapping to the bow during manyshot.

Helf, 18 monk / 2 ranger, dex based with 70 dex and 40ish wisdom.
Shurikens (TF T3 + LGS good as a swap in) most of the time, Bow TF T3 during Manyshot.
49% doubleshot, 42 ranged power
Acid AA and Acid Legendary Feat. (380 acid spell power)
Fury for the win.

I just parsed this build for 10 mins on the guild ship cannon (which is probably an optimal target, so real single target dps is most likely lower).
Over the full 10 mins I did 4150 dps

acid damage.     781147	 30% AA imbue + lvl 30 Leg Feat
damage.           49767	  2% lvl 29 Bane feat
force damage.     97297	  4% TF Mortal Fear force proc
fire damage.      45807	  2% TF 1st degree burn 
slash damage.   1657020	 63% Shuriken and Bow main damage

total damage.   2631038	100%

For comparison I also parsed Blitzing but its total damage came in 10-15% lower and I like Fury better for the extra fun

I know the 4150 dps might seem respectable but understand that some other builds will blow this away. It would be fun to know just how much other builds are doing though in a similarly controlled envirronment. WRU test kobold targets with 2mill hp+!

[CThruTheEgo]

Since you mentioned LE, I'll point out my own ranged build, White Feather Sniper (link in my sig), which was built specifically for LE. It's a full time ranged build with an emphasis on CC and dps. Because getting hit at all in LE pretty much means you're dead, I wanted to see what I could do with paralyzing arrows. I currently have a 62 DC and it performs quite well in LE content. There are a few types of mobs (e.g. blackguards in LE Tempest Spine) that take longer than others to paralyze, so there is room for improvement, but most mobs are immobilized quickly and stay that way until they're dead. DPS is pretty solid also. The main loss of dps that comes from using paralyzing arrows is not using electric arrows, which is a sizable chunk of damage at endgame, but well worth it to not have the entire group constantly getting one-shotted.

I can only speak to pure as I have no experience with monkchers. I take the level 18 core in AA for +1 multiplier, and tier 5s and capstone in deepwood stalker. I chose those for more persistent dps instead of burst dps. If you want to focus on burst dps, then slayer arrows in fury is still the way to go. Tier 5s in deepwood stalker are the better option for persistent dps, though, along with either dreadnaught or divine crusader. With the changes to doubleshot, divine crusader is actually a solid choice. I prefer it over dreadnaught. DPS in divine crusader goes in waves due to the slowly fading stacks of zeal. But when I've got all boosts up at once (i.e. full stacks of killer and zeal, manyshot, damage boost, and ranged power boost), I've got 275 ranged power and 235% doubleshot. That'll clear out a room pretty quickly or take out a nice chunk of a boss's hp.

I did damage calcs for my specific build comparing the deepwood stalker and AA capstones. Deepwood stalker came out ahead, only marginally with no boosts, but a lot with full boosts. I can't say if that is true for every build.

Have a look through the thread if you want some ideas. Others have talked about taking some ideas from the build and adapting them to a monkcher, as well as other builds.

[jakeelala]

I just parsed this build for 10 mins on the guild ship cannon (which is probably an optimal target, so real single target dps is most likely lower).
Over the full 10 mins I did 4150 dps

acid damage.     781147     30% AA imbue + lvl 30 Leg Feat
damage.           49767      2% lvl 29 Bane feat
force damage.     97297      4% TF Mortal Fear force proc
fire damage.      45807      2% TF 1st degree burn 
slash damage.   1657020     63% Shuriken and Bow main damage

total damage.   2631038    100%

What does this mean? How do I do this?

[Kodwraith]

Mostly it's DPS and survivability. Although I'll probably level up from 1 this time around so a single rogue splash level that I TR out of at cap is also looking like a possibility. I have a lot of rogue gear from the first life 12ranger/7monk/1rogue build back in the WSS tempest phoenix days. What I'm mostly trying to figure out is how the relative DPS tradeoffs work.

Arguably the highest figure of merit is time to completion for EE content since that's the bulk of what I spend my time doing.

CThru: I've actually been looking at your White Feather build as the benchmark. So far pure ranger with max paralyzers seems like the winner.

I wanted to see if I could make a viable 6/14 or 6/12/X ranger/monk split. Something that had comparable DPS or at least wasn't orders behind. I'm trying to figure out for said viable monkcher build what the typical level split is and about how much behind I anticipate being. 4.1k is really good for an archer.

Assuming you take DWS T5 and AA core6 (which is all your AP gone) vs 14 racial, 41 AA and 11 ninja (which is all your AP gone):
AFAICT the real difference on a monkcher is:
down: lack of viable melee option (since you don't have twf feat line) and you actually need to LR to get to melee, not just respec your AP.
down: much more squishy.
wash: All AP spoken for.
down: +1 crit range from DWS.
down: +20 ranged power from DWS core 6
down: armor-piercing loss from DWS cores
down: +20DS from DWS T5.
up: Arrow of slaying from AA
up: 30 secs of DS from 10k stars.
up: Way better WIS for paralyzing arrows
up: GMoE stance crit bonus
up: 1.5[w] from dance of flowers twist
up: 25% incorp from ninja.
down: all your feats are gone.
down: sniper shot / head shot is pretty nice.
down: SA dice.

Forgetting about all the other stuff, the big difference is the 20 ranged power from DWS and the 20 DS from T5 in exchange for slayer arrows and 10kStars. So 10k stars is WIS to ranged power and monk level *5 to doubleshot. But it's on cooldown half the time.

So naively you have a break even at 40 Wisdom and 8 monk levels with the monkcher pulling away when 10k is on and loosing ground when 10k is off. So it looks to be at least a fair fight assuming you never pull out a pair of shortswords. I would have thought the ranger would be the obvious choice but it looks like th emonkcher might actually be capable of higher DPS. Especially if you don't mind burning all your feats on archery. I'm not convinced though that the SA dice don't make the deal more weighted to pure ranger.