Curse

Scaphism · Aug 09, 2005, 10:23 PM // 22:23

I misunderstood your post, but you need to be more clear what you're asking about. It appeared that it was only question about Whirling Defense as a farming tool.

Dual Shot + Ignite owns henchies there hardcore as well, and will do the same to you if you're the only target. And, as I've said, the 75% evade is hardly foolproof. You need some power regen to add to that, at a minimum. If you go for troll unguent, you're already in Wilderness Survival, and then traps make sense. If you're a R/Mo and you have access to healing, that might work too.

Healing Seed will not work- it's target Other ally. Healing Hands won't work either, for 2 reasons: It's elite (conflicts with Oath Shot) and it only triggers on physical attacks- no good vs ignite arrows.

Mending and healing breeze are possibilities, as is live vicariously. Unfortunately Healing doesn't have many good self heals. The best are Heal Area and Healing Touch- but Area wont work in a farming build and touch is only good with high divine favor.

Aegis is a poor choice at 15 energy and a roughly 8-9s duration with a 30s recharge. It's good if you have a party, because 15 energy to cover 8 people is a good tradeoff sometimes. But on a solo build, on a ranger's energy pool, I can't see that working out.

Prot spirit is bad because most of your damage comes in fast, small packets, isntead of slow, large packets. That is, however, the thing Shielding Hands excels at.

Good luck farming that one area. Here are a few possible suggetions.

Mending+Life Vicariously(+dual shot)
R/W with tactics and traps. (Use Victory is Mine + barbed/flame trap for self heals, find more stances to fill in the recharge on Whirling Defense) Watch Yourself and Healing Signet are possibilities if you want to keep Oath Shot + WD.

R/E with Expertise, WS, and Earth Magic.
Bring PBAOE attacks- crystal wave and aftershock (+ Whirlwhind?).
Armor of Earth will help with any damage that manages to sneak in, and the movement penalty wont matter. You'll still need some self-healing, so Troll Unguent is still probably necessary. While you're there, why not pick up a trap? (Noticing a trend?)

Farming builds usually require a ton of frontloaded offense, enough to nuke the threat into obvlivion before it becomes a threat, or highly durable, with good defense and sufficient offense. As you've seen, whirling defense is good defense, and OK offense, but Whirling Defense alone is not a build.

Edge of Extinction is nice, but not great. Even with high levels in beast mastery you'll only do 40ish damage per death, You still need to be able to get 3 or 4 monsters dead in order to set off the domino effect you're going for. Unless you have a way to take out a small group quickly, you're either dying before the monsters (current situation) or they're all dropping at roughly the same time- in which case EOE overloads, wiping out everything, However, if you were already able to whittle down a large pack without EOE, what do you even need it for?

anti_z3r0 · Aug 09, 2005, 10:42 PM // 22:42

EoE + traps

usually only a small group of monsters set off the traps. This means you get a chunk of 5 or 6 to set off the traps and they'll all die around the same time, which should be substantial enough to domino it up if you've been AoEing the rest of the group.