Horizon Shot - do you guys ever choose it?

[Requiro]

Like the title says. I wonder if this capstone have any use...

[Hipparan]

I usually always take it but with my latest Ranger I've given up on the 20 core in Deepwood Stalker and gone with the 20 core from Arcane Archer. I still get the tier 5 from Deepwood Stalker though so I have a total of 40% doubleshot from the enhancement trees. So far I've enjoyed that a lot more.

[Hjarki]

Like the title says. I wonder if this capstone have any use...

It's a great capstone... but it's not normally great enough.

Rangers already have a great bow tree (Arcane Archer) and a great melee tree (Tempest) that are going to take precedence over DWS.

That really leaves "non-Bow ranged". We can safely toss thrown weapons out of consideration since there aren't any practical non-Shuriken/non-Monk Throwing builds. That leaves Crossbows.

However, for any sort of Crossbow, Endless Fusilade is effectively mandatory. It's so much more powerful than other Action Boosts that the standard Great Crossbow build gives up +1 critical multiplier and ~6d6 Sneak Attack to grab it (as well as dedicates most of the AP in its build to grabbing EF and supporting it with extra action boosts). Classically, Endless Fusilade required multi-classing. With Inquisitive, you can get it on a pure build - as long as you're willing to commit your T5 to Inquisitive.

But if you're committing your T5 to Inquisitive, then it doesn't make much sense to spend your 5th/6th Core in DWS since the 5th/6th core in Inquisitive are just as good (or better) and it's cheaper to take the capstone and T5 in the same tree.

That being said, it's somewhat possible to justify a Bow Ranged build with the DWS capstone. A 41 DWS/31 AA build is actually better if your primary concern is non-burst dps. Unfortunately, this sort of bow build doesn't really 'work' in the modern game:

- Such a build is effectively required to be Dex-based. Unfortunately, Dexterity is at a low ebb of power largely due to a lack of a Dex-based trance. The normal replacement trance (Intelligence) is one that shares the same save type (via Insightful Reflexes) and is normally dumped by Dex builds (barring skill point investments).
- A large part of the value of the AA tree over other weapon-based trees is the control abilities it offers. However, if you're a Dex-based Archer, you eventually run into the problem that none of your control abilities will work except when the target fails on a 1.
-Bows are glacially slow. Unfortunately, the modern game feeds on speed. Players attack so quickly that the notion of 'burst dps' doesn't make much sense unless you can justify it as some sort of quasi-insta-kill. Which is precisely what Furyshot builds do - until you start moving up in Reaper and it stops annihilating enemies and starts mildly speeding up your kill rate (and not enough to justify the build in comparison to builds that just do better continuous dps).

TLDR: Horizon Shot isn't bad. The alternatives are better.

[Requiro]

I usually always take it but with my latest Ranger I've given up on the 20 core in Deepwood Stalker and gone with the 20 core from Arcane Archer. I still get the tier 5 from Deepwood Stalker though so I have a total of 40% doubleshot from the enhancement trees. So far I've enjoyed that a lot more.

(...)

TLDR: Horizon Shot isn't bad. The alternatives are better.

Exactly. That's what I meant.
I played with Horizon Shot for some days, and always returned to other capstones.

I wonder what they could add to that capstone to make it more attractive...

[Hjarki]

Exactly. That's what I meant.
I played with Horizon Shot for some days, and always returned to other capstones.

I wonder what they could add to that capstone to make it more attractive...

Maybe adding an additional ability to the capstone:

Horizon Shot: Make a ranged attack at a target more than 15 yards away with +4 critical multiplier. If this attack is a Sneak Attack, the target is instantly killed. Cost: 10 stacks of Archer's Focus. Cooldown: 1 second.

[barecm]

Some folks like SA damage.

[janave]

I usually want to spend most of my points in AA at level 30, the APs are too short for anything else if i took capstone in DWS. (No room for any other stuff). Even if I would prefer the capstone, spending mostly in AA means that it is best to pick up its capstone, this lets me play more with APs everywhere else.