U53 Ranged Showdown: Damage Calculations for 17 Builds

[StashAugustine]

Hey I'm considering a bow build in a life or two and probably gonna use one of these, do have Horizon Walker. My one big question is gear. The gear in the sheet seems to be entirely BIS stuff, and the new player build seems to be mostly f2p and sharn only. I have a Chaosbow and Void, and plan on getting the wall watch helm by the time I do bows; but I don't have a lot of the more advanced gear- I do have a fair amount from the Ravenloft raids at least. Does anyone have a good geared that has limited raid gear beyond helm and weapon but has access to all content?

[Oliphant]

Consider regularly running Legendary Vision of Destruction, Lord of Blades and Master Artificer raids, all f2p. You will be welcome on LH even if your build is just so so. Can get the Suulo and Tinkers set items pretty much guaranteed within a month or so.

[Bjond]

U53 Ranged Showdown (Summary)

I confess to not having read the builds at all until just a few days ago (only the summary). I was considering reworking my VKF thrower and wanted to see if there was anything big I wasn't already doing. Didn't really see any, but I did note a couple of minor issues.

Bard/Swashbuckler weapons are all 15x3 (except L.Pick @ 17x4). Your bards only show 16x3 for critical profile. This change means your bard results are ~6% too low for the "can-crit" portion of their DPS.

And, I don't see non-bard in the list; 12 rogue 6 ranger 2 art might outperform 11/6/3 due to 12 rogue's +3d6 improved sneak and RA's 2d10 @ 2xRP. Swash AP slides into VKF to pickup DS+5 and the RA adds another 2 DEX for net DS-3 (pretty much reduces it to sneak & proc v ~6% change in profile).

Heh, and a minor amusement: my builds were also taking the "bypass silver" feat in the same spot as yours (and most of the rest in the same spots, too, but that one struck me as funny). Guess there's just not very much variation past deciding "dws vkf thrower".

[Killblock]

So this (the 12 rogue, 6 ranger, 2 warlock version) is not a build to solo the game?
I wondered why this build has no self healing at all.
Is it possible to solo the game with it, or will there be problems with healing?

Why is the red dragonscale armor in the gear list? I was just wondering, not that I have a better one in mind.

[Hobgoblin51]

So this (the 12 rogue, 6 ranger, 2 warlock version) is not a build to solo the game?
I wondered why this build has no self healing at all.
Is it possible to solo the game with it, or will there be problems with healing?

Why is the red dragonscale armor in the gear list? I was just wondering, not that I have a better one in mind.

it is not designed to heal itself no.

It is designed for hard content where you have other people that can toss heals on you that are not as hit by the reaper penalty for heals.

The armor on this is purely for the extra damage. when you are running in groups there is a high chance someone will be stripping immunity for that tasty fire damage.

[Fisto_Mk_I]

So this (the 12 rogue, 6 ranger, 2 warlock version) is not a build to solo the game?

All Carpone's builds are raid/r10 group build.

I wondered why this build has no self healing at all.
Is it possible to solo the game with it, or will there be problems with healing?

Ranger spell include cure light/moderate/serious wounds. Monk have Wholeness of Body
ability. Also you can take Wholeness of Spirit instead Inner Focus to more heal.

Why is the red dragonscale armor in the gear list? I was just wondering, not that I have a better one in mind.

Because Dripping with Magma, of course.

[Bjond]

I wondered why this build has no self healing at all

Context is everything for builds like these -- they might not be at all happy outside of capped raids; eg. I run INQ sub-cap then swap to thrower (it's just a gear + tree change). 'Dunno how nice HW/Bow is sub-cap, but trying to run a thrower sub-cap is a lot like trying to walk through a brick wall instead of using the door; just because it's beautiful all grown up doesn't mean it's not hideous as a duckling.

Ranger spell include cure light/moderate/serious wounds. Monk have Wholeness of Body
ability. Also you can take Wholeness of Spirit instead Inner Focus to more heal.

This diverges from the all-out dps nature of the thread, but from a practicality standpoint, I pretty much never want to need an active (button-press) heal on a DPS character. They slow down the dying process, but they also halt the killing; ie. you'll likely still die, but more slowly. A real healer is great, but when there isn't one, I go for HOTs and Hires.

I typically punt LD for EA, slot a Devotion augment in OH, and run in EA mantle for the aura heals. This works for the strange puglet mix of ubers & newbies we get in our raids. It helps keep me alive and others that don't run off (oddly, people will social-distance out of aura-heals when you stand on them .. ). If another covers heals, I'll swap to Shiradi mantle mid-raid. Our toughest DPS raid is Hunt/r1, though, so I often forget to swap mantles.

EA Mantle is enough healing to permit laid-back solo'ing @ R4 and tougher solo @ R6+ if you're fully geared. For 20~23, you can run FOTW:Mantle (similar but less healing than EA:Mantle).

BTW, people won't laugh if you take down one of the lovely builds and hack it up into the perfect Frankenstein for your play. Maybe they'll admire it instead, "Wow, that thing is a monster!"

[Kielbasa]

Context is everything for builds like these -- they might not be at all happy outside of capped raids; eg. I run INQ sub-cap then swap to thrower (it's just a gear + tree change). 'Dunno how nice HW/Bow is sub-cap, but trying to run a thrower sub-cap is a lot like trying to walk through a brick wall instead of using the door; just because it's beautiful all grown up doesn't mean it's not hideous as a duckling.

Having run a bow build for much of the last 6 months I'll never level again with a bow in heroics. What they did to the bow animation/ranged feats sub level 20~21 make using one a terrible user experience they might as well delete all heroic bows to prevent people from self-harm. They took all of the joy out of leveling with a bow build in favor of scaling the combat style to be "balanced" at cap. And at cap bows now perform wonderfully for people who like big numbers. Just level as anything else if possible or regret everything even just going 15-20 with a bow on an iconic is a painful experience. 100% of the bow builds here will have a much better time picking up gtwf, imp crit piercing and leveling with vistani. Feats like nimble fingers, sneak of shadows, and imp crit ranged can be feat swapped back in during epics or just epic tr to fix things.

[Tilomere]

Having run a bow build for much of the last 6 months I'll never level again with a bow in heroics. What they did to the bow animation/ranged feats sub level 20~21 make using one a terrible user experience they might as well delete all heroic bows to prevent people from self-harm. They took all of the joy out of leveling with a bow build in favor of scaling the combat style to be "balanced" at cap. And at cap bows now perform wonderfully for people who like big numbers. Just level as anything else if possible or regret everything even just going 15-20 with a bow on an iconic is a painful experience. 100% of the bow builds here will have a much better time picking up gtwf, imp crit piercing and leveling with vistani. Feats like nimble fingers, sneak of shadows, and imp crit ranged can be feat swapped back in during epics or just epic tr to fix things.

Hahahah. The key to making melee or ranged builds for leveling is just to use a 20 dps caster setup, or at least 10 dps caster if just going 1-20. Max + empower on a sorc/wiz/warlock/arti/alc, use your weapon as cleanup between AoE nukes, and just use the feats in lieu of IPS or more AoE cleaves to AoE.

This for example is a totally valid framework for any 1-20 melee or ranged build. Just drop the weak 10 paladin levels off and you have a framework for epics.

Bow damage is so low while leveling you actually have to lower the difficulty to hard so an uberpletionist with best in slot everything can kill mobs fast enough. You don't have enough DPS to level in elite. Maybe this helps:


The game is entirely balanced, it is just economically balanced. Using Iconics which start closer to rewards at 30:
Ranged doesn't take a +1 heart purchase due to Racial AA/HW/Inq/VKF, which means that it can only have the leveling power of a non-capstone caster, because that is all it pays in to support the game.
Melee is also not really dependant on purchasing a +1 heart of a capstone to make a dps character. 18 dps 1 iconic 1 divine might works for most builds. So melee can also generally start at 15 closer to cap, which means it also has to suck, but not quite as much as ranged to level.
DPS casters (2nd mulfivial sla, sorc immunity bypass, 30% crit multiplier or ES capstone) are completely dependent on capstones and do not have iconics available. So the people dominating leveling are supporting the game and paid to do so on iconics, or are punished twice as many levels 1-15 to get to rewards at cap so need to have more power than melee or ranged.

You get what you pay for. The game can't economically allow ranged builds to level well, because they are built without supporting the game. 20 DG Wizard is the best leveling bow build, because you can just Max + Empower AoE 1 shot things as a wizard, and triple death auras proc shiradi in epics (on top of healing), and it starts closer to rewards at 30. DG wiz has been acknowledged as a mistake though by devs, it should have been another troll/flavor build like a handwrap wiz instead of a shortcut for wizards to get to 30 that is actually more powerful than a level 1 starting wiz without paying anything every life.

At 15 max + emp dbf, necrotic blast, and arcane tempest will all AoE 1 shot everything in R1 on a DG wiz.

What's funny is they can't even deliver an archtype that would be good to level from 1 even if you asked, because it would need to be tied entirely to capstone power to be fiscally responsible, which means 1-19 leveling would suck. So really economic game balance says "oh no, oh no oh no!"