Curse

Vincaro · Sep 25, 2006, 03:52 PM // 15:52

This has been bothering me for some time... I keep running into people that think critical barragers are far better than a true barrager, I even had one claim that Critical hits were armor ignoring...

So here are the facts I found while researching on wiki. This is comparing my own Barrager build vs the Critical Barrager build posted on wiki.

First off, Base damage.

Approximate Damage = Raw Damage (15-28 or always 28 on CH) x Armor effect.

Base damage rating.
With bows and other attribute linked weapons the Effective DR is = to the Base DR + DR Bonus

and the Base DR = 5 x Rank in the attribute.
and Critical hits give a DR Bonus = 20

so with Marksmanship 15 my ranger has a Base DR of 75 and a Effective DR of 95 on CH

with Marks 11 by the wiki CB build the Base DR is only 55 and Effective DR of 75 on CH

The Armor Effect =2^((Effective DR - Effective AR)/40)

so taking a base AR of 100 (war normal vs physical) foes facing my ranger will have an Armor Effect of about .65 normal hits and .92 CH making my damage about 9.75-18.2 normal and 25.76 on CH

whereas against the Crit Barrage a foe will have a Armor Effect of about
.46 normal hits and .65 CH making their damage about 6.9-12.8 with a CH of 18.2

hmm it seems the CH damage of a Crit Barrager is only about equal to the max normal damage of a true barrager. But they get the CH way more often you say, lets look at that next.

first of all Crit Barragers get their bonus from their CS attribute and on the wiki build this is set at 14 so + 14% Chance then add in Critical eye and you have another 6% I beleive at 14 CS so the only other factor is once again Marksmanship.

by the wiki charts Crit Barrager Marks attribute of 11 gives 16.1% chance
so 16.1% + 14% +6% = 36.1% chance or a little over 1 out of 3 hits.

My Barrager on the otherhand gets 21.6% so a little over 1 out of 5 hits. so the Crit Barrager doesn't even get CH twice as often in fact it's only about 2/3 more often.

Now damage with the actual skills (Marks and Fav Winds).

at 11 marks Crit Barragers get a +12 bonus and the +6 from fav Winds so their damage is now 24.9-30.8 and 36.2 on CH

whereas my Barrager with 15 marks gets a +16 bonus from Barrage and +6 from Fav Winds so damage is now 31.75-40.2 and 47.76 on CH

Wait a second that makes the Crit Barrager's CH damage only a little above the average hit of a true Barrager...

So now one more factor. The bleading. Relatively speaking Bleading is a slow degen, but it does make up for the Crit Barragers lack of initial damage. About 6 health per second. So going with a flat bow with a refire of 2 sec, this is about 12 more damage per CH...

Good, except when you add in a True Barrager's ability to have another secondary perfession and the damage enhancement skills they add such as with my R/Rt that uses Brutal Weapon to add 11 more damage to every hit.

so my damage is now 42.75-51.2 and 58.76 on CH...

compared to the Crit Barrager's 36.9-42.8 and 48.2 on CH, being generous and adding the bleading damage of 12 in 2 seconds to every hit.

My conclusion, Crit Barrage is a decent build, but in the end It will never be equal to a true Barrager.

Yanman.be · Sep 25, 2006, 07:02 PM // 19:02

Yes! Triple post!

Barrage = PvE 99% of the time, and PvE doesn't need decent builds and mathematical comparisons of any kind, so you wasted some time.

Also, I think some of the numbers are waaaaay off!

Vincaro · Sep 25, 2006, 10:58 PM // 22:58

The numbers are correct by the information I found on Wiki as well as what I've seen myself, what's way off was the guy I ran into the other day who was claiming his Critical Barrager did more than double the damage of a regular Barrager because, as he claimed CHs were Armor ignoring, which is not and never has been true.

As for why I did this, I am really annoyed by people who claim superiority and don't have a clue what they're talking about.

Do a little research before you claim the numbers are off.

=XM= · Sep 26, 2006, 11:24 AM // 11:24

(1) Crit Barragers use 12 Marksmanship not 11. Don't trust guild wiki when it comes to build attribute values and such. They are very often wrong. Notice that they also include shadow refuge on there, which is not usually carried by crit barragers.

(2) At 14CS, Critical Eye gives 7% crit chance, not 6%.

(3) This gives a total crit chance of 17.4 + 14 + 7 = 38.4.
This is 1.8 times the crit rate of a 15 Marksmanship barrager. 1.8 isn't 2, you are right on this, but it's close enough.

(4) As you may know, a critical hit always uses the maximum damage of the weapon and has an effect equivalent to reducing AL by 20.

(5) The fastest you can fire barrage with any bow without an IAS is 2.2 seconds, not 2 seconds. Learn the mechanics before criticising people.

(6) A Crit Barrager on top of the armor-ignoring 6DPS from bleeding has 5 armor-ignoring damage from a vampiric bow string. A Barrager most commonly uses a zealous bow string because of energy concerns that do not affect a Crit Barrager. A Crit Barrager hitting 3 targets spends no energy on Barrage in the long term: -5(barrage cost) + 0.384(crit chance) * 4(energy per crit) *3(number of targets) + 0.45(energy regened by the 1 extra pip in 2.2 seconds) = +0.05.

Even with 2 targets you are perfectly fine. Here again you see how guildwiki doesn't include correct calculations, they cite the need to hit 3.5 enemies and recommend a zealous bow string. A zealous bow as a backup when you are down to a few enemies only is a good idea and using a spam skill like focused shot or needling shot is also nice then. But a vampiric string is much more effective most of the time when actually using Barrage.

(7) If you want to use Brutal Weapon continuously as in your example, you need to spend 10 energy for it every 15 seconds. With 3 base pips of regen and a zealous bow you regen 2*5 = 10 energy in 15 seconds. With 13 expertise, barrage costs 2E and thus you need to be hitting 3 targets at least to be able to use any other skills at all. If you have expertise lower than 13, your barrage costs 3E and you are breaking even on energy, while the crit barrager is still gaining full benefit from 3 pips of regen.

(8) A Barrager needs expertise to reduce the cost of barrage. Thus if you want a third attribute to boost damage you may have to drop some more points from marksmanship (14 marksmanship and 13 expertise allows 8 in a third attribute for some damage) further reducing your damage output and crit%. Especially if you want wilderness survival for Troll Unguent. That is the advantage of Critical Strikes. It provides both energy management and damage (higher crit% and sharpen daggers) in one attribute instead of the 2 attributes that Barrager needs; as well as help your healing which is a passive enchant costing 5E every 30 seconds compared to troll's 5E(@13 expertise) which only lasts 10 seconds and provides less healing in those 10 seconds than WoP.

If you want to compare an all out damage build with no healing (which requires 4 attributes for a barrager) a crit barrager can drop shadow arts and use other trees available to A/R: tiger's fury, winnowing, etc...

Use correct numbers and take energy into account and you will see that a crit barrager outputs more damage over time than a barrager. This effectiveness drops against higher level mobs and increases against lower level mobs (because crit% is affected by level difference). But it is still made up for by the fact that a crit barrager has 2 forms of armor ignoring damage.

Overall the two builds are very similar mindless button mashing things. I don't complain, since I have played both in different circumstances and that a crit barrager is particularly suited for the densely packed areas of cantha. But there are two things that assassins do better than rangers despite rangers desperately trying to catch up: using daggers and spamming barrage.

Jaesmyn · Sep 26, 2006, 03:32 PM // 15:32

I mostly agree with XM, except:

A shortbow has a firing rate of 2 seconds.

I'm tempted to do some math on this since I already have the spreadsheets set up. I might add that later. But since this is a build used primarily for PvE, it doesn't really warrant an extensive argument

seven · Sep 26, 2006, 03:53 PM // 15:53

having tried both,

just personally, i prefer ranger barragers in mid-to endgame pve.
the critical chances even at 12mark 13-16cs + crit eye still decays quite rapidly at targets lvl20+. (-50% chance every 5 levels above 20).

even if it is offset by having more crit chances with multiple targets in one skill, criticals are just hard to come by (with it the added effect of sharpen daggers,WoP, ect.) especially in places like raisu where lvl28's are common. even so, spamming barrage had not been a problem energy wise; perhaps aided by the 4pip regen. however, damage and effectivess of the critical barrager takes a drastic plunge down as crits, bleedings, and crit heals rarely activates in hi-end places like that.

Yanman.be · Sep 26, 2006, 04:51 PM // 16:51

I agree, that guy claiming crits ignore armour is sick, and should uninstall.

oles · Sep 26, 2006, 05:07 PM // 17:07

DR at Marks 15 is 66, not 75. Besides, why is your barrager using Marks 15? It should be 16, unless you are bringing beastmastery skills such as EoE.

The strength of a true ranger barrager vs. critical barrager is that the ranger only needs ones skill to do effective damage - Barrage.

Celab · Sep 26, 2006, 05:43 PM // 17:43

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jaesmyn

I mostly agree with XM, except:

A shortbow has a firing rate of 2 seconds.

I'm tempted to do some math on this since I already have the spreadsheets set up. I might add that later. But since this is a build used primarily for PvE, it doesn't really warrant an extensive argument

You forgot the recharge of the skill and the pulling of the string if you press it when its charged. Plus a flatbow is better IMO (since, in pve, if your shortbow range youll be pulling agro off the warrior, making your monks job harder)

Plus, whoever can't use a assassin propery should just delete the character and create a ranger and leave the assassin class so the good assassins can try atleast give itself a good rep.

=XM= · Sep 27, 2006, 01:11 PM // 13:11

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jaesmyn

I mostly agree with XM, except:

A shortbow has a firing rate of 2 seconds.

I'm tempted to do some math on this since I already have the spreadsheets set up. I might add that later. But since this is a build used primarily for PvE, it doesn't really warrant an extensive argument

The drawing animation for firing any bow is 1.2 seconds. So even though a shortbow/flatbow would have 0.8 seconds between each "drawing" (for a total refire time of 2 seconds), Barrage has a recharge of 1 second. Thus, for any bow firing faster than 2.2 seconds the Barrage refire rate is still 2.2(1.2 +1) seconds. Not a massive difference compared to a Longbow's 2.4 seconds to be fair. 2 seconds only over 10 Barrage volleys.

With the old Tiger's Fury at +33% IAS all the bows had the same Barrage refire rate iirc, making a Hornbow the best Barrage spamming tool under TF since it has the additional benefit of 10% AP compared to the other bows (also because of lag and reaction time issues that mean more missed Barrages/animation interruptions with flatbows and shortbows particularly under 33% IAS). I don't know what it's like with +25% now and cba calculating it.

I used a crit barrager after Boreas in Factions until the later areas with many lvl 24 and lvl 28 mobs where the effectiveness really falls. This was because I finished the game on my assassin in the first week before Assassin's Promise was capturable. With Assassin's Promise available early on, I fail to see why anyone would use a Crit Barrager except in some very specific places with only up to level 20 mobs. Using a Crit Barrager only because of the safety of distance when AP can allow you to use amazing defensive comboes from your secondary: Protective Spirit + Spirit Bond/Shielding Hands; permanent Dryder's Defenses etc...) is lazy imo.

Vincaro · Sep 27, 2006, 03:08 PM // 15:08

Quote:

Originally Posted by =XM=

(7) If you want to use Brutal Weapon continuously as in your example, you need to spend 10 energy for it every 15 seconds. With 3 base pips of regen and a zealous bow you regen 2*5 = 10 energy in 15 seconds. With 13 expertise, barrage costs 2E and thus you need to be hitting 3 targets at least to be able to use any other skills at all. If you have expertise lower than 13, your barrage costs 3E and you are breaking even on energy, while the crit barrager is still gaining full benefit from 3 pips of regen.

(8) A Barrager needs expertise to reduce the cost of barrage. Thus if you want a third attribute to boost damage you may have to drop some more points from marksmanship (14 marksmanship and 13 expertise allows 8 in a third attribute for some damage) further reducing your damage output and crit%. Especially if you want wilderness survival for Troll Unguent. That is the advantage of Critical Strikes. It provides both energy management and damage (higher crit% and sharpen daggers) in one attribute instead of the 2 attributes that Barrager needs; as well as help your healing which is a passive enchant costing 5E every 30 seconds compared to troll's 5E(@13 expertise) which only lasts 10 seconds and provides less healing in those 10 seconds than WoP.

Use correct numbers and take energy into account and you will see that a crit barrager outputs more damage over time than a barrager. This effectiveness drops against higher level mobs and increases against lower level mobs (because crit% is affected by level difference). But it is still made up for by the fact that a crit barrager has 2 forms of armor ignoring damage.

Overall the two builds are very similar mindless button mashing things. I don't complain, since I have played both in different circumstances and that a crit barrager is particularly suited for the densely packed areas of cantha. But there are two things that assassins do better than rangers despite rangers desperately trying to catch up: using daggers and spamming barrage.

I use only 10 expertise and only need to hit two targets with barrage to break even, even using brutal weapon. This is experience.

I only put enough into WS to get my Troll U to 7 regen, because of it's slow casting time Troll U isn't very good for in battle healing anyway as it is easily interupted and if you need it you'll probably die before you can use it. Better to have a defensive stance which most are tied to expertise, but in my case I have both.

Also you should consider that one of your precious armor ignoring damage, bleeding, only occurs with a CH. While it is about 1 in three hits vs lvl 20, that's still only about 2 per barrage on a full group. Whereas my +11 from Brutal weapon effects all every hit. You will eventually get them all bleading, but if the battle lasts that long, you're probably not doing very good.

Then there's your prep time, if you are using WoP, then you have two enchants to cast on yourself totaling 3 seconds of prep time (ignoring Fav Winds) every 30 seconds compared to my 2 seconds in 30 seconds. Also, as you should know enchants are easily removed, usually with painfull results, whereas my Brutal weapon can not be removed by anything but death.

One other factor I didn't mention is the Pathetic armor of the Assassin. Yes the base is 70 same as the ranger, but it does not have the standard +vs elemental that the ranger has which makes the ranger have better armor vs elemental (the majority of ranged damage) than even the average warrior.

I also have the added benifit of a pet aka meat shield, which you would have to sacrifice some of your damage or healing skills to have.

One last thing, with Rt as my secondary, I also have a reusable resurect skill always equiped.

icecoldholyroller · Oct 04, 2006, 02:44 AM // 02:44

Quote:

Originally Posted by oles

DR at Marks 15 is 66, not 75. Besides, why is your barrager using Marks 15? It should be 16, unless you are bringing beastmastery skills such as EoE.

The strength of a true ranger barrager vs. critical barrager is that the ranger only needs ones skill to do effective damage - Barrage.

I agree with him ^^^ plus a ranger has an advantage over an assassin, "experticise" its costing the assassin 5 energy per barrage, a ranger 3 so which is more efficient.

sgtclarity · Oct 05, 2006, 02:52 PM // 14:52

Quote:

Originally Posted by icecoldholyroller

I agree with him ^^^ plus a ranger has an advantage over an assassin, "experticise" its costing the assassin 5 energy per barrage, a ranger 3 so which is more efficient.

The point of a crit barrager is that the Assassin attribute 'Critical Strikes' gives you energy every time you make a critical hit....

Halfthought · Oct 05, 2006, 08:16 PM // 20:16

in the short term, a critical barrager does far more damage, but since in tombs/highend pve, the high enemy level reduces your critical hit chance as a result, it has the dps lower then a normal barrager

easyg · Oct 15, 2006, 08:05 AM // 08:05

There are some very faulty assumptions here...

Quote:

Originally Posted by =XM=

(6) A Crit Barrager on top of the armor-ignoring 6DPS from bleeding has 5 armor-ignoring damage from a vampiric bow string. A Barrager most commonly uses a zealous bow string because of energy concerns that do not affect a Crit Barrager.

Most barrage rangers use a zealous bowstring??!! Have you taken a poll of barrage rangers or something? My ranger is uses a vampric bowstring and I never have energy problems. How am I supposed to run out energy when it takes 2 energy to activate barrage? I can hit even one dude with barrage as quick as it recharges and always have full energy.

The fact is, it's the A/R that has the energy concerns, which is why you have to use Critical Eye. I can spam anything on my skillbar and my energy is always full. You can't.

Quote:

Originally Posted by =XM=

(8) A Barrager needs expertise to reduce the cost of barrage. Thus if you want a third attribute to boost damage you may have to drop some more points from marksmanship (14 marksmanship and 13 expertise allows 8 in a third attribute for some damage) further reducing your damage output and crit%.

This is amusing...but wrong. The best boost to damage that I've tested is Frenzy in a R/W build. The beauty of Frenzy as a ranger IAS is:

1) Instantaneous activation
2) Synergizes with Expertise
3) Duration is longer than recharge time
4) Takes 0 points in warrior attribute for full effect

Add it up, and it means always on IAS....for a cost of 2 energy every 8 seconds.

Quite a boost in DPS, and I still have Marksmanship 16 (12+3+1) and Expertise 13 (12+1).

Could say more, but I'm in a hurry.

A/R's...no offense, but you guys are using a seriously gimped build.

Yanman.be · Oct 15, 2006, 10:08 AM // 10:08

It's for those with no guts, and don't like to fight in the frontline ^^

Vincaro · Oct 16, 2006, 04:12 PM // 16:12

Quote:

Originally Posted by easyg

This is amusing...but wrong. The best boost to damage that I've tested is Frenzy in a R/W build. The beauty of Frenzy as a ranger IAS is:

1) Instantaneous activation
2) Synergizes with Expertise
3) Duration is longer than recharge time
4) Takes 0 points in warrior attribute for full effect

Add it up, and it means always on IAS....for a cost of 2 energy every 8 seconds.

Quite a boost in DPS, and I still have Marksmanship 16 (12+3+1) and Expertise 13 (12+1).

Could say more, but I'm in a hurry.

A/R's...no offense, but you guys are using a seriously gimped build.

I for one have made a nice A/R Build not using a bow, I've had a monk compliment me on it.

but besides that, what use is frenzy when as someone already stated there is a minimum time Barrage can be used: Other than making you take double damage... The Boost in attack speed is nulified by the recharge time of barrage. If you're Talking about going without Barrage... well this is the wrong thread.

Mr Pvper · Oct 19, 2006, 01:34 AM // 01:34

a ranger barrager does way more dmg than a critical barrager and has a better overall effect than a critical barrager.

1st, a ranger barrager has more marksmanship allowing it to do more dmg,+ barrage does like +17 dmg i think for a ranger while +13 for a assassin. 2nd, Rangers have expertise to lower the cost of skills and barrage to 2 energy, if ur not a noob and hopefully use 16marksmanship+13expertise. 3rd reason, Rangers can also use distract shot whenever they want for an interupt because it cost only 2 energy or perform a concussion shot in the event of a boss for around 12 energy i think, while sins have energy management problems. 4th reason, Sins have to get energy from barrage using zealous, and if the barrage isnt reliable or ur not lucky enough to land a critical, u have problems. 5th reason, rangers have access to defensive expertise stuff like throw dirt or whirling defense in an event of an emergency, while sins cant get any stance defense. 6th reason, rangers have better armor. 7th reason, rangers can use tigers fury or a fast atking stance to atk 33% faster to deal more dmg quicker yet assassins dont have the energy to do so. 8th reason, Rangers get an open secondary class for anything, like monk for rebirth. Even though assassins can do random bleeding, it does not make up for the dmg rangers do. More marksmanship will always achieve more dmg in the long run.

i Valinor · Oct 19, 2006, 02:30 AM // 02:30

first off i have and play a barrage ranger and sin. across the board i would but the ranger 1st for damage, although if im helping a guildmate i will take the sin for the bleeding and all the extra crits i get vs low AL monsters. sins get dark escape which IMOP is one of the best defensive stances in the game. as for bows i use the zel on my sin and either dragos flat or a vamp bow on the ranger, i have tried the vamp with the sin but i prefer the zel. really it comes down to a ranger is just that a ranged fighter a sin is a close ranger fighter trying to do the job of a ranged fighter. but in PVE i would a crit barrage sin before anyother sin.

narud · Oct 20, 2006, 04:15 AM // 04:15

Quote:

Originally Posted by easyg

A/R's...no offense, but you guys are using a seriously gimped build.

no offense, but u ever seen dagger rangers, same thing.

As in damage the sin would probably deal more, but they have to many things to depend on, rangers have more unconditional DPS.