HR High Crit Build [MOD 8]
tacobeast94
Member Posts: 66 Arc User
The HR is an overwhelmingly underrated class. Many consider the HR a little brother to the CW - unable to CC as well and doesn't do as much DPS. I'd like to shed a little light on a different (and potentially better) way to build a ranger.
Before I get ahead of myself and dive into the details of this build, I need to clarify a few things:
First off, I play on XBOX. Because of some differences between the two systems, I will detail my opinion for the best set-up as it relates to XBOX. Throughout the guide, I will note some differences I've heard from PC players were it's applicable.
Secondly, this build is primarily focused on dealing a ton of DPS. Everything else comes second, but don't worry he's no glass cannon. Also, this is a PVE build. The HR is great for PVP and I might make a PVP guide in the future but this build is strictly intended for PVE.
Lastly, everything in this guide is a reflection of a build I came up with. I'm not saying it's the best, but I sure do enjoy the DPS I can do. Use my guide as a foundation and feel free to experiment. I make only suggestions based on the path I took with my ranger. I am always open to new ideas so any thoughts or questions are always welcome.
Preface:
This build is essentially a Trapper that capitalizes on Critical Chance/Severity and bonus damage from Combat Advantage. I recommend you have an Item Level of at least 2,900 or 3,000 to be on the safe side. the end result of this build is a ranger that has about 182% critical severity.
Add a perfect vorpal and you're at 182% (ignore the 10% buff from a potion)
Race:
I went with Dragonborn for the 3% increase in Power and Critical Strike. If your only options are the default races then I would recommend going with either the Drow or Wood Elf so you can put the +2 into DEX and WIS.
Initial Stat Roll:
Dexterity and Wisdom are your best friend. Dexterity gives you a damage bonus while Wisdom gives you an increase in crit chance (which we will need later on).
My Initial Roll:
12 - STR
10 - CON
18 - DEX (16 + 2)
10 - INT
18 - WIS (16 + 2)
10 - CHA
Powers:
I have a decent amount of roll-over points from Mod 5, and if you don't have as many as me, then I would put the 4th points into Aspect of The Serpent, Cordon of Arrows/Plant Growth, Hindering Shot/Hindering Strike, and Constricting Arrow/Steel Breeze, in that order.
Power Rotations:
I will sometimes change my rotations depending on the situation. But my general purpose rotation for nasty DPS in dungeons is:
Hindering Shot/Hindering Strike, Cordon of Arrows/Plant Growth, and Constricting arrow/Steel Breeze. As for the passives I slot Aspect of the Serpent and Aspect of the Pack.
AOTS is a great buff and can be very powerful if you know how the stacks work. AOTP is a great buff for yourself as well as the rest of the party. A nifty quark to AOTP is that you can even use it when you are soloing content because as long as your companion is within 25 feet of you, you'll have permanent combat advantage regardless of placement (so long as you companion is not an augment). For the dailies, I use Seismic Shot and Forest Ghost. For my At-Wills, I use Careful Shot/Hunter's Teamwork and Rapid Shot/Rapid Strike.
If you're feeling squishy or having a hard time soloing stuff, I would swap out Cordon of Arrows/Plant Growth for Fox's Cunning/Fox's Shift and switch AOTP for Crushing Roots. This way, you get a free dodge from Cunning, you can't get hit wile in Shift's animation, and your Crushing Roots will prevent you from being hit as often. Also, we're going to get a nice benefit to our survivability from lifesteal once we do our feats.
For those interested in exactly how I have my powers mapped: (X) Hindering Shot/Hindering Strike, (Y) Cordon of Arrows/Plant Growth, (B) Constricting Arrow/Steel Breeze, (LT) Hunter's Teamwork/Careful Attack, (RT) Rapid Shot/Rapid Strike
How I order my powers is similar to katozee's, only I have Cordon and Plant Growth in the place of Fox's Cunning and Shift.
Starting with Ranged Stance: (Y) -> (B) -> (X) -> (RT/LT) -> (RB) -> (Y) -> (X) -> (B) -> (RT) -> (RB) and repeat
The above rotation allows the largest damage buff from AOTS to apply to Cordon and Plant Growth (our hardest hitting powers). The second largest damage buff from AOTS applies to our powers that apply Strong Grasping Roots.
For boss fights and single target DPS while in a group, your at-will has the power to do more damage than any other attack you have. Careful Attack allows you to mark an enemy and it is a DOT that procs every 1.5 seconds. The amount of damage that it deals depends on the amount of damage that has been done to the marked enemy in each of the 1.5 second intervals. So, in places like Tiamat and epic Demagorgon you'll see that bad boy go off for 1 to 2 million every second and a half. Something to keep in mind with Careful Attack is that it is affected by Aspect of the Serpent. You can take advantage of this and just hit the boss with Rapid Shot to quickly stack up AOTS from ranged stance and let Careful Attack get a nice damage buff. But it is a game of tug o' war. Also, if you notice that it didn't crit, just reapply it until it does and all DOTs will tick as well.
Feats:
This is the bread and butter of this build. Skirmisher's Gambit from the Combat Paragon increases your critical severity by 50% but your critical chance is reduced by 10%. The Hunter Ranger is the only class with a feat like this and it is extremely powerful. Combine this feat with a Perfect Vorpal and you will be at about 200% critical severity. Since we lost 10% crit chance, we're going to need to make up for that, but it's very easily doable.
Boons:
Sharandar
Dark Fey Hunter - You gain 400 Power
Fey Precision - You gain 400 Critical Strike
Elven Haste - You gain AP 3% faster
Elven Ferocity - When striking a foe you have a chance to deal up to 20000 Arcane damage. (60s Internal Cooldown)
Elven Fury - When you kill a foe you gain 135 Power for 45 seconds. This buff stacks up to 30 times. Trash mobs make this stack fairly quickly and gives an overall 4,050 extra power when all 30 are applied.
Conjurer's Gambit - You gain 250 Critical Strike and 250 Movement.
Evoker's Thirst - You gain 400 Life Steal
Illusion Shimmer - You gain 3% deflection chance (you can swap for Forbidden Piercing for the 3% resistance ignored, I have an Axe Beak so i don't need armor pen)
Shadowtouch - When dealing damage you have a chance to deal 20000 Necrotic damage over a few (4) seconds. After this effect ends the target receives 25% less healing from spells for 10 seconds.
Rampaging Madness - When you deal damage you gain a stack of "Madness". When you reach 50 stacks of "Madness" you gain 4000 Power, 4000 Life Steal, and 4000 Regeneration. 10 seconds after gaining this bonus your stacks are reset. You may only gain one stack of "Madness" per second.
Encroaching Tactics - You gain 400 Combat Advantage Bonus
Refreshing Chill - You gain 400 Stamina/Guard Gain
Sleet Skills - You gain 2% Crit Severity
Cool Resolve- You gain up to 2000 Power based on how much Stamina or Guard you are missing. Works well with Refreshing Chill
Winter's Bounty- Chance to gain bonus 10% Action Points when killing a target. (you could also swap for Avalanche if you want to, I just don't see it as a huge damage booster)
Primordial Might - You gain 400 Power and 1600 Maximum Hit Points
Primordial Focus - You gain 400 Critical Strike and 1600 Maximum Hit Points
Drow Ambush Tactics - Combat Advantage damage bonus is increased by 10%
Dwarven Stamina - You now regain Stamina 5% faster
Abyssal Strikes - Gain +10% Damage versus Demons
Dragon's Claws - Grants 400 Power
Dragon's Gaze - Grants 400 Critical Strike
Dragonscale Defense - Grants 400 Defense (can swap for Draconic Armorbreaker and get 400 armor pen, but I have an axe beak so no need for me)
Dragon's Greed - Grants 400 Life Steal Rating
Dragon's Fury - Grants 5/6.5/8% increased Critical Severity
The only boon I can't suggest with certainty is the Guild Boon. You might be in a guild that has different boons than me and that could be a good or a bad thing. I have my offense boon set to Power while my defense boon is set to defense. For those interested, I use the XP boon from utility and my guild doesn't have any PVP boon unlocked.
Comments
Enchantments:
Weapon Enchantment - Perfect Vorpal (which brings us up to 182% crit severity)
Armor Enchantment - Trans Elven or Negation (I prefer Elven)
Offense Slots - stack Azure or Brutal enchantments
Defense Slots - Dark enchantments
Utility - your preference (I like Fey Blessings)
Summoned Companion:
Augments are ancient news. High ranking bonding runestones and a fast proccing companion is the way to go for all DPS classes. I use the mercenary, which can be obtained from the Heirloom pack in the ZEN market. Also, once you get the Heirloom pack, all of your characters can pick it up from the Reward Claims Agent in the enclave. Why the Mercenary? He has 3 offense slots you can slot all rank 12 Bondings into.
You might wonder why I would upgrade the bondings past Perfect (rank 10) since the percent of companion stats you receive remains the same. My answer plain and simply is that the game is wrong. After rank 10, the percentage goes up but the tooltip doesn't update with the higher levels. Rank 11 Bonding Stones give you 80% of your companion's stats while a rank 12 gives you a whopping 95% of your companion's stats. So, when the mercenary procs three companions gift (which he does all the damn time) it's like you running around with 3 Ioun Stones.
Honorable mentions for the summoned companion go to the Young Yeti, Air Archon, and Zhentarim Warlock.
But Taco, the Zhentarim Warlock is so much better!
Possibly, but only if you play on PC. PC has the Sword Coast and with it all of the cool companion only equipment pieces that would give that Warlock everything it needs to be a great buddy. However, on XBOX we don't have the shiny and sparkly companion talismans that PC does. As a result, the rings and belts available to our Mercenary are far superior to the lacklustre talismans in the AH.
For those who need to see to believe, I have a little before and after for the companions gifts from my Mercenary with two Rank 12 Bonding and one rank 11 Bonding. Keep in mind, my Mercenary is only rare. I'll get him legendary one day.
Before:
After:
Active Companions:
Blink Dog for increased combat advantage damage (5% at epic)
Intellect Devourer for increased combat advantage damage (5% at epic)
Fire Archon for increased damage against targets with less than 50% Hit Points by +7%
Air Archon for the increased damage against enemies not at full health (5% at epic)
I intentionally do not have the Erinyes of Belial in here. This is a high crit build, but more crit is not always the answer. When we were doing our feats, the 50% increase was definitely the way to go. However, we can get more out of the Fire Archon's bonus than we can out of a 10% increase in crit severity. Feel free to swap the two out and see which one you like better. thank Kerupt for mentioning that
The Aspect of the Pack gives us permanent combat advantage. Because of this, we can really get a big damage increase from running the Blink Dog and Intellect Devourer as opposed to the other Archons.
Artifacts:
Lantern of Revelation
+1,000 Critical Strike
+1,000 Armor Penetration
+600 Combat Advantage
Thayan Book of the Dead
+1,000 Critical Strike
+1,000 Armor Penetration
+600 Action Point Gain
Sigil of the Controller
+1,000 Power
+1,000 Critical Strike
+600 Control Resist
Lostmauth's Horn of Blasting
+1,000 Power
+1,000 Armor Penetration
+600 Control Bonus
Gear:
I'm currently using the Dragonflight Raid Hood, Dragonflight Raid Gaiters, Elven Assault Coat, and Elven Assault Bracers. Get the Lostmauth set for the neck and belt (extra damage every time you crit). I'll probably switch some stuff out for the Umbral gear once my guild unlocks it. As for the rings I'm currently wearing the Ring of Rising Precision +4 and Ring of Brutality +4. My companion is wearing the Ring of Rising Power +4, Ring of Brutality +4, and the Dragonflight Assault Belt. For my artifact main and off hand I have the Twisted set
Artifact Main Hand/Off Hand Powers:
For the main hand use Hunter's Teamwork/Careful Attack or Rapid Shot/Rapid Strike. I use Careful Attack because that does an insane amount of damage on boss fights. My off hand has Aspect of the Pack and Combat Advantage Bonus.
I know you get up to 20k Crit with procs of Gift and I`m not sure what your chance would be then. But for a 50% Crit chance for instance a Perfect Vorpol would only increase overall damage output by 17%, at 75% Crit chance it gives around a 22% damage increase.
Crit Severity has diminishing returns and you might be able to get more damage with a higher Crit Chance and a lower Severity maybe... Unless you can get an incredibly high Crit Chance and Severity.
I may try out your build in the future though as I love to see how others play a HR
Have you thought about trying out Longstrider's Shot into your build? It is a huge boost and ever since I changed and equipped it I have never looked back.
Alts :
Storm (SW70), Edge (TR70), AD Farm (CW70), Grunt (GF70), Rosa (DC70), AD AD AD (GWF70), Your Mum (OP70)
Member of Q-Snipe
So initially for me I get an 8.5% increase in damage. That includes the loss of 10% crit chance. If I get my 10% crit chance back(i have plenty of room for upgrades still) then it ends up being a 17% increase.
Conversely if I had stayed with my old build, and increased crit chance by 10% I would gain 5.7%. I do lose serpent's bite, however gambit is constant while bite loses/gains stacks.
Other thoughts, you can use cordon and longstriders in your rotation. Does anyone know what the actual damage buff % is that longtrider's provides for the party?
SoonerGM - HR Trapper
Haven - Righteous Cleric
Ethereal Justice - OP Paladin
Then I'd lose the one of the two powers that have Strong Grasping Roots. Just doesn't seem worth it to me.
That'd actually be a nice bit of info.
SoonerGM - HR Trapper
Haven - Righteous Cleric
Ethereal Justice - OP Paladin
"You can calculate the damage yourself based on your crit chance and crit severity. I appreciate you taking the time to write up a guide and offer it up to the community. Thank you. That being said, my concern with your build is twofold.
(1) You're dumping 17.5% crit chance down the drain, which procs fewer lostmauth's vengeance bonuses. This figure derives from the flat tax of 10% crit chance from Skirmisher's Gambit and variable tax of 7.5% from Serpent's bite. In addition, you're also flushing 15% bonus damage from Serpent's bite on what could be your first, and most damaging, encounter in your melee and ranged rotation.
(2) Diminishing returns on your crit severity. At a 100% crit chance, your best case scenario, you're looking at a percentage increase in damage of just 20.6% by increasing your critical severity from 142% to 192%:
10,000 * (1+(1 * 1.92)) = 29,200
Versus
10,000 * (1+(1 * 1.42)) = 24,200
= 20.6%
Assuming your character is endgame, I'll grant you an approximate 75% crit chance after removing the 10% from Skirmisher's Gambit (25,000 crit strike stat=62.5%, 16% from ability score, 3% from Weapon Mastery, and the base 5%). This would result in an 18% percentage increase in damage moving from 142% to 192% crit severity:
10,000 * (1+(0.75 * 1.92)) = 24,400
Versus
10,000 * (1+(0.75 * 1.42)) = 20,650
= 18.2%
(Lostmauth's Vengeance not included.)"
Alts :
Storm (SW70), Edge (TR70), AD Farm (CW70), Grunt (GF70), Rosa (DC70), AD AD AD (GWF70), Your Mum (OP70)
Member of Q-Snipe
Furthermore, Lostmauth is a bit over-rated... Which would you rather, a 10% raise when you are making minimum wage or 10% raise when you are making $100 an hour? 10% is not proportional when you are talking about a massive difference in numbers. Don't get me wrong, I love the extra damage Lostmauth gives me, but you have to keep in mind the proportional damage it provides.
So the real question comes down to, what is your play style? Are you wanting to do sick damage in dungeons and normal daily encounters or are you wanting to solo 10 man HEs? If your game is all about soloing 10man HEs in IWD, then this build isn't for you...
As for the lost CS... you can make up a lot of the CS, if not all of it fairly easily without sacrificing power...you sacrifice your LS by using double slotted offense rings. CS caps at 100%, you can achieve 95-100% on this build easily by end game if you use Companion's Gift...
Regardless, the equations don't make sense to me...they focus on a microaspect of the game...to calculate true dps, you need an equation that looks like this:
Equation: (# non crit shots * base damage) + (# crit shots * (base damage + (base damage * CSev)) + (# crit shots * Lostmauth Bonus)...as you have to take into account crit vs non crit and you have to factor in time. We aren't doing 1 shot kills here...
So, using the above equation...here's the total DPS numbers: 1000 shots Base Damage of 20k (for sake of argument, using this number as it seems accurate) Lostmauth bonus damage of 8k (lower end of my average and seems accurate)
Scenario 1: 80% Crit, 150% CSev Total Damage: 50,400,000 damage
Scenario 2: 70% Crit, 200% CSev Total Damage: 53,600,000
I've run both builds, I can say that I do significantly more damage with the high CSev, but my survivability sucks. In groups, my numbers are sick... My other build, I could solo 5 man HEs without using potions and 10man HEs with some potions. This build, I can do some HE's without potions but need potions on others and 10 man HEs are virtually impossible (not talking SH HEs, those are insanely simple, I'm talking IWD HEs).
The Legendary Outlaws
Preferences:
PvE and PvP - Pathfinder Combat
Neverwinter Toons:
Archael 70 HR
Stajans 70 GF
Member of Timed Out
I have been running it a fair bit lately and the last couple of times there were a few members of Denial in there. Including a couple of GWF's,1 was 4200 IL and the other 3000 I think, I was only 4mil in damage in 2nd on DPS on those runs, Wrex and Alpha I believe but I do not know if they were their better ones though.
I keep running with HR's a lot in Edemo PUG's and none of them seem to come near my DPS what-ever their IL. I`d be interested to see end results... I only have Perfect Bondings though on my Merc which would be the only difference I think, other than DPS between builds.
Alts :
Storm (SW70), Edge (TR70), AD Farm (CW70), Grunt (GF70), Rosa (DC70), AD AD AD (GWF70), Your Mum (OP70)
Member of Q-Snipe
Will be fun, I`m not online until tonight but if you want to shoot me a FR my gamertag is my user name on here.
Alts :
Storm (SW70), Edge (TR70), AD Farm (CW70), Grunt (GF70), Rosa (DC70), AD AD AD (GWF70), Your Mum (OP70)
Member of Q-Snipe
I have been playing with damages a lot for different encounters and I didn't stick with longstrider over cordon either. cordon /plant growth does seem to be the hardest hitting thing in the bag to me.
A couple of Edemo runs with his Guild were great, although they were so good I did not really get many shots off before enemies were dying ha ha so I mainly Longstrider Shot at good times to speed them all up etc.
All in all I thought his build looked great, I am totally undecided if it does indeed do more damage. I came away with the conclusion it is impossible to test DPS alongside another HR. For instance I was boosting his damage and speed nearly every rotation but as his build does not utilise this I do not get a benefit in return. The same would go for Boar Hide, Oak Skin, Fox's Cunning Build's etc etc, they would unfairly benefit the other HR... Especially Longstriders as I have seen some people comment it is a 40% damage boost not 20% (not tested that myself yet though).
I think probably the only way to test true DPS would be a timed run against something, or multiple things really and come away with an average time to beat. But that would require everyone being honest and putting in time to run something multiple times which could get boring. The other thing is equipment levels, my IL was higher than his but all his Runes were better, plus Twisted Set I have not got yet or Rank 12 Bondings (mine are perfect)... So another true test of builds would have to have the same Runes and Bondings etc
Anyhoo I would deffo give his build a go purely as its a different way of playing and clearly does a lot of damage. I also think maybe once his Crit is higher (I worked up when buffed he gets 65%-70% Crit) it would be a lot more effective as well. As for higher DPS than other builds, the Guide does not claim to be or do this anyway it is a High Crit Severity build and does that job very well.
Alts :
Storm (SW70), Edge (TR70), AD Farm (CW70), Grunt (GF70), Rosa (DC70), AD AD AD (GWF70), Your Mum (OP70)
Member of Q-Snipe
when trying to tell how good my DPS out put is now compared to before I definitely have noticed that if you're in a good group you never have a chance to get many shots off before the targets are dead. lol. it's got to the point when I look around and see 4k, 3.2k 3.6 k, i'm like ok. not even gonna bother looking at the leaderboard. LOL
also good points about playing along side other HR's. I bet that was part of my comparison envy before too. I am have been running a high buff debuff build. I often get more heals than anyone else outside the healer if there is one. I regularly get 2.5 mil in heals. it would be nice if they had a buff debuff leader board (different than heals) to compare that aspect class by class.
I got a third coal ward last night I need one more and one more lesser vorpal and I think I could start upgrading to a perfect vorpal. I am tempted to try that build. or a modified version of it at some point in the future.
SoonerGM - HR Trapper
Haven - Righteous Cleric
Ethereal Justice - OP Paladin
I don't have pure vorpal yet and I don't have all the crit artis. I only have one crit arti. with my pet rising crit ring and my own crit ring I think I'm at about 46% crit chance and I only have greater bonding.
I also think I'm still slow on my rotations. and I'm not using my wheel optimally yet.
i'm not sure my crit is high enough to make this really worth while. the other build was working better for me even though I don't have the rotations dialed in yet. but I might come back to this build when I build up more crit. crit was what I was already working on.
SoonerGM - HR Trapper
Haven - Righteous Cleric
Ethereal Justice - OP Paladin
I went back to the specs I had before. (I had like 8 respec tokens. down to 4 now but I can play around with builds if they sound interesting. LOL)
http://xboxdvr.com/gamer/wdj40/screenshot/3977896
http://xboxdvr.com/gamer/wdj40/screenshot/3977897
Also I would not recommend dropping Thorned Roots, think of all those Control Immune enemies (even if its ok temp immunity) that you are loosing 250% damage on.
Alts :
Storm (SW70), Edge (TR70), AD Farm (CW70), Grunt (GF70), Rosa (DC70), AD AD AD (GWF70), Your Mum (OP70)
Member of Q-Snipe
SoonerGM - HR Trapper
Haven - Righteous Cleric
Ethereal Justice - OP Paladin
I did make another change, I swapped my Ranger sigil for the Trickster sigil (crit/deflection) so that may be the catalyst for increased survival.
I did scramble my boon choices a bit too and it is paying off. I might have had the wrong set selected to start with. I have not compared what I have with what this build shares. I just made the feature change and winged the rest.
.. Teucer (HR) / Maximus Decimus (DC) .. GT: ApexDemon