Curse

Jaen · May 12, 2005, 09:36 PM // 21:36

Simple question: Does a Kindle Arrows/Conjure Flame/Dual shot combo work? How does it stack up against the other damage options of a ranger.

Stats would be (without runes):

10 Expertise
8 Fire Magic
6 Marks
11 Wilderness

Planning to pump marks via runes to get it high enough to use a decent bow.

What do you guys think?

Zeru · May 12, 2005, 11:36 PM // 23:36

6 marksmanship will be your biggest problem. Even if you put on a superior marksmanship it's still only at 9, 10 with headgear. And with either a major or superior rune for expertise to make that at 12+ you are going to have serious HP issues.

If you want to do effective damage it needs to be at 11 or 12; much more important than wilderness survival.

The combo you stated should work fine. The only thing is that you would probably want to throw in another spammable skill in there as well to rotate with dual shot.

I would go with barrage personally, as it is just plain good even after the enemies space out (extremely spammable and 2 energy with 13 expertise), but then you have the issue of barrage canceling out any preparations, which would include kindle arrows in this case.

Jaen · May 12, 2005, 11:55 PM // 23:55

Thanks for the feedback...but if I pump up marks, I'd have to either lower wilderness or fire magic and lowering wilderness makes kindle do less damage and lowering fire magic lessens trhe effect of conjure?

SereneD · May 13, 2005, 01:38 PM // 13:38

And therein lies the root problem of the ranger.

Marksmanship needs to be high enough to make a good range build. It requires you to spread yourself too thin to make a damage build. You need high expertise and high marksmanship. You also want a high wilderness to make casting Kindle or apply poison worthwhile. That leaves you NO room to put more than 6 into one line of your secondary profession. Six points into a conjure will only give you about 6 damage( and that's if your using a Fiery Bow string or Greater Conflag) You can get 6 points per shot from using favorable winds. If they ever make Expertise Bows, you'll be set.
This is the reason most rangers go with a disrupting build.

Oh, and as far as I know, at this time nobody has been able to acquire Barrage.