Curse

fires Scape · Aug 12, 2005, 07:35 AM // 07:35

Well i hear quite a few farming strategies for Wars and Monks, but are there and good ways for a ranger to farm?

ravemonger · Aug 12, 2005, 08:25 AM // 08:25

Trap. This is the combo I use. I've done some UW with this build. Graspings are easy, Aataxes and Smites are harder (usually requires to rounds of trapping) and Colds are near impossible. I just can't seem to deal enough damage to the Colds even at 16 WS. This has served me well above ground though, not much you can't take down.

You need 16 WS and 15 or 16 Expertise.
Druids Armor and a wand w/ +10 energy, this should get you above 40 energy.
Dust, Barb, Flame, Spike, Edge, Serpents, Whirling, Troll

Fire up serpents and start laying traps all in the same spot. Re-apply serpents as needed. At ~65 seconds you want to lay edge then one more round of traps. Go pull at this point and run them back to the spirit sitting above your traps. Use whirling and troll and lay one more set of traps on the enemy. If enemy still isn't dead either run or try to continue trapping if you have the health.

Cymmina · Aug 12, 2005, 11:37 AM // 11:37

Use your imagination a little.

Oath Shot, Meteor Storm, Fire Attunement, Whirling Defense, [trap of choice], Troll Unguent, Glyph of Lesser Energy, [skill of choice]

P.S. Isn't 15 or 16 Expertise a bit of a waste? Having 13 drops 10 energy skills to 5 and 14 drops 5 energy skills to 2. Don't you need 4 points of expertise to get 1 energy reduction?

Epinephrine · Aug 12, 2005, 01:46 PM // 13:46

Traps typically cost a lot, so expertise can help; 14 drops 10 energy skills to 4, making flame and spike cheaper, and bumping up to 16 will decrease the cost of Dust and Barbed traps by another 2 each, down to 9 and 5 respectively. My guess is that he wants to be able to chain down 4 traps at a time, as soon as possible. I'm curious too, so I'll play with numbers here.

Since all traps expire in 90 seconds, and it takes a certain amount of time to get the enemy into your traps you have <90 seconds in which to lay all the traps that they will initially hit, or you start losing them to expiration. Serpent's Quickness lasts 31 seconds at level 16 IIRC, which is just long enough for it to recharge itself in time for constant use

You can thus have 33% reduced recharge times while trapping, at a cost of about 4 energy per minute at Expertise of 13 or above.

With that in mind, the new recharge times of the traps are:
Dust = 20 (30*.666)
Flame, Barbed, Spike = 13.333 (20*.666)

Assuming you start with the longest recharge trap you can finish your 4th Dust trap after 22*3 seconds (we don't count the 2 seconds to place the first as the recahrges don't start until it is down) In the interval between dust traps you can place the other three traps easily - in fact to place the three traps takes 6 seconds, plus the 13.333 second recharge time, so every 20 seconds or so you can place a string of 3 traps.by around 75 seconds of trapping you could have 4 dust traps down, and 5 of each of the others... leaving you close to the end of the traps, so probably wiser to use 4 sets of most with 3 of the dust to have time to gather things. If traps have an aftercast (I never really noticed, I tend to move around a bit to make a trap corridor of sorts) you may have to add a few seconds to the total time, but really with several seconds of down time per cycle it shouldn't matter much.

3 Dust Traps and 4 of the others in 60 or so seconds uses 2 Serpent's Quicknesses, so with no Expertise it costs (3*25)+(4*10)+(4*10)+(4*15)+(2*5) = 225 energy, the ranger regenerates 60 energy over a minute and thus would need a 165 energy pool; clearly unfeasable.

at 9 Expertise it'd be (3*16)+(4*6)+(4*6)+(4*10)+(2*3) = 142 energy, minus the 60 the ranger can gain during a minute and you have 82 energy, still out of reach.

at 14 Expertise you get (3*11)+(4*4)+(4*4)+(4*7)+(2*2)= 97 energy, so you could conceivably do this and have no energy left in a minute if you had a pool of 37 energy, or with 31 energy if you allowed 6 extra seconds to regenerate (66 seconds). Because 14 is a break point for the 8*10 energy traps as well as for the 3 dust traps you actually save 11 energy by having the 14 expertise vs the 13. Of course, because the spending comes in waves as you place the traps it is probably important to have a bit of extra energy if you want to guarantee that you can make it.

at 16 expertise you save another 2 energy off the Barbed trap and off the Dust Trap, so you end up with (3*9)+(4*4)+(4*4)+(4*5)+(2*2) = 83 energy, allowing you to complete this in 60 seconds on a pool of only 23 energy, or, probably more to the point, with some energy left over to trap them once you have lured them into the traps. It would seem that if you were trying for a 5th course of traps the 16 Expertise would be essential.

Edit: Attached graph of 14 vs 16 expertise energy pools with 41 starting energy; deploying 3 Dust traps and 4 Spike, Barbed and Flame in <60 seconds, assuming sufficient Wilderness Survival to maintain the 33% faster recharge (15 or 16 WS). Forgive the basic nature of the graph, tossed it off quickly.