A couple more questions from a freshly 60 HR

nowhere64

qs for the veterans:

1. As I get through the boons in fey/dread ring, it seems like I'm readily passing the soft caps/hard caps for certain stats. For example, i don't think I need 4k crit. So, I suppose I'll buy radiants and dump points in power. Here's the q: has anyone evaluated how much more damage power points actually yield? Do the damage ranges identified on your character/power sheet for specific encounters actually change as you raise and lower your power stats? And does power have DR at some high point? From some screen shots on the forum, it looks like veterans commonly have 5k-8k power. How much does that really help? 5%? 10%? 20%?

2. for single target fights, i've been going aimed shot/hindering shot/disruptive shot in quick succession. Is there a better combo for quicker and higher burst damage from range? In one such combo, I had 30k on aimed, and about 8 on the others. ( Of course, I read that CWs can get 40-100 k crits on ice spike.)


3. In the few zones I've run so far, I've been using marauders to jump to the boss when I get trash adds, then after hitting with fox and/or hindering strike, switching to range and jumping back out with marauders. This seems to get the adds to bunch up together again. Anyone with more experience than me know if that tactic actually works consistently?

elminster

1: Power converts to damage at about 20-1. For every point of damage it takes 20 points of power to increase. So the easiest way of answering this is that power is a good stat to stack, but only after you've reached your target values for ArPen, crit, and defense.

2: I find ranged is less about burst and more about sustained damage. I was just theory crafting this with a guildy last night, and while you can set yourself up to do absolutely massive damage on a single aimed shot, realistically it's just ridiculous to try. If you want to burst go either hybrid or combat, those two play into the melee side and get some decent spike damages. For Archery try to sustain and synergize.

- Keep Spilt the Sky active. This helps GWF by adding a slow effect to the monsters, boosting their damage.
- Watch for wizard singularities. If you drop Rain of Arrows on the skill. It has no target cap and if you launch it fast enough you can get the full salvo off
- Aimed Shot is your bread and butter. Unlike Ice Knife you can spam this, but any damage can interrupt it. Learn to set up ideal positioning, and if you do grab the attention of something make it die fast and get back to putting down the damage. You can put down 2-3 Aimed Shot to a wizard's one Ice Knife, so the damage evens out

3: Long as the tank is marking it should, but if not it can get messy. I prefer Forest Ghost for my threat dumps. I'll marauder in (or walk if I'm built for ranged encounters), let the monsters catch up, then use ghost to dump the threat on the tank. This also gives a nice animation right at the tank's feet telling him what I'm doing, so if he's not marking he knows to start.

Now that said you should really be able to handle trash adds yourself. Elites you should definitely pawn off on the tank, but weak monsters you should just kill and move on. Drop a triple Aimed Strike for the DoT, then Split Strike to burn it down. Or one of my personal favorites: Marauder onto the boss, drop RoA, then back up just enough to let the trash monster eat the AoE along side the boss.

nowhere64

elminster wrote: »

1: Power converts to damage at about 20-1. For every point of damage it takes 20 points of power to increase. So the easiest way of answering this is that power is a good stat to stack, but only after you've reached your target values for ArPen, crit, and defense.

2: I find ranged is less about burst and more about sustained damage. I was just theory crafting this with a guildy last night, and while you can set yourself up to do absolutely massive damage on a single aimed shot, realistically it's just ridiculous to try. If you want to burst go either hybrid or combat, those two play into the melee side and get some decent spike damages. For Archery try to sustain and synergize.

- Keep Spilt the Sky active. This helps GWF by adding a slow effect to the monsters, boosting their damage.
- Watch for wizard singularities. If you drop Rain of Arrows on the skill. It has no target cap and if you launch it fast enough you can get the full salvo off
- Aimed Shot is your bread and butter. Unlike Ice Knife you can spam this, but any damage can interrupt it. Learn to set up ideal positioning, and if you do grab the attention of something make it die fast and get back to putting down the damage. You can put down 2-3 Aimed Shot to a wizard's one Ice Knife, so the damage evens out

3: Long as the tank is marking it should, but if not it can get messy. I prefer Forest Ghost for my threat dumps. I'll marauder in (or walk if I'm built for ranged encounters), let the monsters catch up, then use ghost to dump the threat on the tank. This also gives a nice animation right at the tank's feet telling him what I'm doing, so if he's not marking he knows to start.

Now that said you should really be able to handle trash adds yourself. Elites you should definitely pawn off on the tank, but weak monsters you should just kill and move on. Drop a triple Aimed Strike for the DoT, then Split Strike to burn it down. Or one of my personal favorites: Marauder onto the boss, drop RoA, then back up just enough to let the trash monster eat the AoE along side the boss.

Thank you El. btw, what should I aim for in defense. Right now, with the ioun stone and the gear i've got, my stats are basically: 4200 pow, nearly 4k crit (too high), 2600 arp (too high), 1300 def, 1100 deflect, 900 reg, 1250 life steal. I'll get another 250 soon for regen from dread ring. My hps are pretty low, however.

elminster

HP really can't be helped. We don't get gear with it and slotting for it breaks other stats. It's easier to just accept the low pool and work around it.

Defence for PvE you want to be sitting around 1000 or 25% total reduction. That said 30% certainly doesn't hurt and helps make up for your hp pool. PvP you want nearly double that if you can manage it

Crit you only need around 3k or 35%. After that any extra points you happen to pick up is just bonus. If you can pull your Azure gems without dropping too low is do it and slot for power. Let Correcting Aim make up the difference

ArPen up to 20% doesn't hurt. Elites will have up to 20% reduction so you can safely sit on that without worry. If you want to PvP double it.

I'm not a huge fan of deflect. It takes a lot to make a difference and it's unreliable at best. I prefer stacking defense/regen/life steal instead. These are constant stats and don't rely on RNG.

daimyo3

Keep in mind that your final set should be the Dread Legion one, wich will give you plenty of lifesteal: even without any items or enchantments, I find myself with a huge 1600 Lifestealing stat, so you can pretty much ignore it altogether, as you will get plenty of it in the end-game.

Usually you just need around 3k crit, as previously stated, your ArPen will sit around 2400-2600 no matter what you do: all your sets and weapons will give you a ton of ArPen, so much like Lifestealing you do not need to put points on that either.
Your end-game power should be around 5-6k, more than that will usually mean you're dropping too much your Defense and Deflection skills, and the glass cannons builds are just inferior.

Try to get at least 1,5-2k of Defense, and 1k of Deflection: you got a very nice Dexterity bonus to your natural deflection chance, so even just 1k will give you at least 20% wich is quite strong. My actual HPs are 24-25k, so it's more or less the same amount of a non-tanky GWF.
You can completely trash Regeneration: you only need the miserable amount coming from your Raven Skull artifact, otherwise it's just a wate of points.