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(Guide) PVE Stormwarden pure DD build
After numerous bumps into people with lots of questions about "how to deal proper damage with a HR" I finally decided to spend some time on this one.
In fact I was quite sure that because nearly all our abilities are plain useless, not even a maimed flamingo would pick a wrong set of talent tree powers. I was... impressed... in some ways.
So yeah. A Hunter. We're supposed to shoot things.
First, a HR player must understand that HR class cannot outdps a CW or a GWF with the same or even better gear. Ever. The only way to outdamage those is to get them high.
Second, remember to utilize skill effects these two provide. Abuse the synergy with Black Hole as much as you can. Remember about GWF's slight knockback and carefully aim your RoA if you have one in your group. Use everything you have to maximize your damage output.
So lets get down to Power tree.
As you can see, we have little choice. Thorn Ward, Split the Sky/Commanding Shot, Rain of Arrows are the only set of abilities that can deal some competitive damage. Aimed Shot is the only single target At-will while Split Shot is the only AOE At-will we have. No alternatives possible. Sad but true.
This is how our Feat tree should look like:
Heroic:
Tier 1
5/5 Daily damage boost. Not a "must have" but we've got nothing else to pick.
3/3 Additional 3% critical chance. Nuff said.
3/3 Additional 9% max HP. Remember, dead damage dealer deals no damage.
Tier 2
1/5 Stamina regen 2% out of 10%. You'll have to put one point here because you have no choice.
0/3 6% threat reduction. A direct insult. A spit to our faces. Don't.
0/3 3% damage bonus after shifting stances. Not worth spending feat points.
Tier 3
3/3 +6% Encounter damage boost. A must.
0/5 +5% deflect severity in melee stance. Lolwut?
0/3 +3% deflection chance. Read above.
Tier 4
2/3 +4% out of 6% bonus to At-wills when you hit an enemy that doesn't target you. Believe me, it is a rare occasion. But two points are worth picking anyway, at least for initial Aimed Shot boost.
3/3 +6% flat bonus to DEX damage bonus.
0/5 +10% AP gain. Its... whimsical. Especially for 5 point cost. Especially with other Tier 4 pick choices.
Paragon:
Archery:
Tier 1
0/5 25% Stamina regeneration bonus. Notice that this is an option to put the free 5 points into.
5/5 10% critical severity bonus. This one is a must.
Tier 2
0/5 15% damage bonus to next melee encounter hit after your ranged encounter hits an enemy. Utterly useless, unless you're melee. Utterly useless even for melee builds.
5/5 5 second duration bonus for Split the Sky effect. Barely worth picking over 25% stamina regen boost back there at Tier 1 but remember: the higher uptime of StS is, the more damage you'll heal through via your Life steal stat when you're hit.
Tier 3
5/5 5% critical chance bonus upon every non-crit shot you throw out. Total effectiveness is quite low but remember? No alternative choices.
0/5 5% to proc weak roots upon ranged power hits. This is exactly what I called "no alternative".
Tier 4
5/5 Up to 20% damage bonus scaling with the distance from you to the enemy. Roughly 8-10% damage bonus for Valindra battle. This talent is a must.
5/5 0.5 seconds global cooldown rewind (including dailies) upon critical hit scored. Believe me, we crit a lot. And combined with Rapid Fire on Valindra it provides quite an immense effect.
Tier 5
1/1 Nuff said.
Combat:
...aaaand we're done.
Nature:
5/5 20% bonus to healing taken. Since I am not sure if this applies to your own Life steal, picking +25% stamina gain might be more optimal. Anyway, its a nice pick.
Boons. Boons are everyone's own choice, except for Tier 5 Dread Ring one. You will need an Endless consumption boon. Believe me, it is a lifesaver. It procs often enough to heal you to max HP with just one or two well-placed Split Shots.
Main stats are DEX and WIS. There's nothing to discuss here. Some people prefer STR over WIS but... they just need to try and do the math.
Gear-wise HRs should always aim for Power. Also ignoring defensive stats completely is not quite as bad idea as it looks: with our constant damage nerfs we rarely pull massive aggro and therefore have no use to facetank stuff for long. Shifting also keeps us alive pretty easily.
Do not stack Crit intentionally. Believe me, I've been through that once. Crit stat provides whimsical bonuses past 2.5k so its better to have more Power as flat damage bonus. Armor Penetration is also not with stacking over 2-2.5k, unless I missed some very important patch note.
Recovery is pretty much useless for HRs. Only melee builds USED to favor it over ARP. Don't bother with it, you'll get some base value of 1-2k anyway due to stupid set items design.
This is how high-end HR should look like:
Sadly, I am currently forced to wear 2 pieces of Corrupted ice. Its worse than even 2+2 Dread Legion/Grand Warden but we're literally forced to wear this failure of a set if we want to shoot things in Kessel's Retreat.
(Funny fact: Valindra's Tower requires 10500 base GS but you'll need a party of 13000 GS least to take her down. Kessel requires 12000 base GS AND 20% base Black ice resistance but you can pretty much faceroll it easier than Idris.)
My choice of artifacts is "maximum Power". Valindra's Crown provides perfect stats (300 Power + 300 Life steal) but it costs a lot and it also takes a lot of effort to refine it to perfection. Sphere of Black Ice is a poor choice for a HR, so don't follow me here. I bought it simply because I needed a small "snare" effect for sandbox PVP as well as maximum Life steal possible. Sigil of the Hunter grants Power (which is nice) and Recovery (which is shift) so don't bother refining it past Epic quality.
Remember: disregard all those fancy "black ice", "savage", "brutal" combo-enchantments. Believe me, nothing beats pure Power stacking. Yes, you'll gain slightly less GS per every enchantment, but it's worth it.
Major Enchantments are obvious: Soulforged and Vorpal. Nothing outperforms Vorpal. Nothing beats Soulforged. Just take it as granted.
Fill all Defense enchantment slots with Dark ones. They'll provide you with massive Lifesteal boost. Utility slots are utterly useless combat-wise, but you can gain some 5%-7% flat movespeed bonus by putting Dark enchantments there too.
Non-set item picks:
[Ancient Excorcist's Necklace of Blessings] (note the "excorcist's" typo when you look up AH)
+154 Power
+154 Crit
+154 ARP
+Offensive slot (Radiant, Power)
[Ancient Berserker's Ring of Cleaving]
+154 Power
+154 ARP
+154 Life steal
+Offensive slot (Radiant, Power)
[Ancient Berserker's Ring of Cleaving]
+154 Power
+154 ARP
+154 Life steal
+Offensive slot (Radiant, Power)
[Ancient Priest's Belt of Burning Light]
+616 HP
+154 ARP
+154 Life steal
+Offensive slot (Dark, Life steal)
The last one is questionable. You can try and find something that suits your needs better.
Speaking of companions: use augments only. Either Ioun stone or Cat. Cat provides cute falling damage mitigation bonus, Ioun stone grants slight stamina regen (the "Of Might" [green] one, not the "Allure" or "Black ice" ones). They grant permanent stat bonus from items applied to them which means that you'll be literally wearing an extra belt, ring and necklace. Believe me, its worth it. Eldrich runestone also grants further slight boost to HR's stats.
So there you go. Correct me anywhere if you deem yourself fit.
In fact I was quite sure that because nearly all our abilities are plain useless, not even a maimed flamingo would pick a wrong set of talent tree powers. I was... impressed... in some ways.
So yeah. A Hunter. We're supposed to shoot things.
First, a HR player must understand that HR class cannot outdps a CW or a GWF with the same or even better gear. Ever. The only way to outdamage those is to get them high.
Second, remember to utilize skill effects these two provide. Abuse the synergy with Black Hole as much as you can. Remember about GWF's slight knockback and carefully aim your RoA if you have one in your group. Use everything you have to maximize your damage output.
So lets get down to Power tree.
As you can see, we have little choice. Thorn Ward, Split the Sky/Commanding Shot, Rain of Arrows are the only set of abilities that can deal some competitive damage. Aimed Shot is the only single target At-will while Split Shot is the only AOE At-will we have. No alternatives possible. Sad but true.
This is how our Feat tree should look like:
Heroic:
Tier 1
5/5 Daily damage boost. Not a "must have" but we've got nothing else to pick.
3/3 Additional 3% critical chance. Nuff said.
3/3 Additional 9% max HP. Remember, dead damage dealer deals no damage.
Tier 2
1/5 Stamina regen 2% out of 10%. You'll have to put one point here because you have no choice.
0/3 6% threat reduction. A direct insult. A spit to our faces. Don't.
0/3 3% damage bonus after shifting stances. Not worth spending feat points.
Tier 3
3/3 +6% Encounter damage boost. A must.
0/5 +5% deflect severity in melee stance. Lolwut?
0/3 +3% deflection chance. Read above.
Tier 4
2/3 +4% out of 6% bonus to At-wills when you hit an enemy that doesn't target you. Believe me, it is a rare occasion. But two points are worth picking anyway, at least for initial Aimed Shot boost.
3/3 +6% flat bonus to DEX damage bonus.
0/5 +10% AP gain. Its... whimsical. Especially for 5 point cost. Especially with other Tier 4 pick choices.
Paragon:
Archery:
Tier 1
0/5 25% Stamina regeneration bonus. Notice that this is an option to put the free 5 points into.
5/5 10% critical severity bonus. This one is a must.
Tier 2
0/5 15% damage bonus to next melee encounter hit after your ranged encounter hits an enemy. Utterly useless, unless you're melee. Utterly useless even for melee builds.
5/5 5 second duration bonus for Split the Sky effect. Barely worth picking over 25% stamina regen boost back there at Tier 1 but remember: the higher uptime of StS is, the more damage you'll heal through via your Life steal stat when you're hit.
Tier 3
5/5 5% critical chance bonus upon every non-crit shot you throw out. Total effectiveness is quite low but remember? No alternative choices.
0/5 5% to proc weak roots upon ranged power hits. This is exactly what I called "no alternative".
Tier 4
5/5 Up to 20% damage bonus scaling with the distance from you to the enemy. Roughly 8-10% damage bonus for Valindra battle. This talent is a must.
5/5 0.5 seconds global cooldown rewind (including dailies) upon critical hit scored. Believe me, we crit a lot. And combined with Rapid Fire on Valindra it provides quite an immense effect.
Tier 5
1/1 Nuff said.
Combat:
...aaaand we're done.
Nature:
5/5 20% bonus to healing taken. Since I am not sure if this applies to your own Life steal, picking +25% stamina gain might be more optimal. Anyway, its a nice pick.
Boons. Boons are everyone's own choice, except for Tier 5 Dread Ring one. You will need an Endless consumption boon. Believe me, it is a lifesaver. It procs often enough to heal you to max HP with just one or two well-placed Split Shots.
Main stats are DEX and WIS. There's nothing to discuss here. Some people prefer STR over WIS but... they just need to try and do the math.
Gear-wise HRs should always aim for Power. Also ignoring defensive stats completely is not quite as bad idea as it looks: with our constant damage nerfs we rarely pull massive aggro and therefore have no use to facetank stuff for long. Shifting also keeps us alive pretty easily.
Do not stack Crit intentionally. Believe me, I've been through that once. Crit stat provides whimsical bonuses past 2.5k so its better to have more Power as flat damage bonus. Armor Penetration is also not with stacking over 2-2.5k, unless I missed some very important patch note.
Recovery is pretty much useless for HRs. Only melee builds USED to favor it over ARP. Don't bother with it, you'll get some base value of 1-2k anyway due to stupid set items design.
This is how high-end HR should look like:
Sadly, I am currently forced to wear 2 pieces of Corrupted ice. Its worse than even 2+2 Dread Legion/Grand Warden but we're literally forced to wear this failure of a set if we want to shoot things in Kessel's Retreat.
(Funny fact: Valindra's Tower requires 10500 base GS but you'll need a party of 13000 GS least to take her down. Kessel requires 12000 base GS AND 20% base Black ice resistance but you can pretty much faceroll it easier than Idris.)
My choice of artifacts is "maximum Power". Valindra's Crown provides perfect stats (300 Power + 300 Life steal) but it costs a lot and it also takes a lot of effort to refine it to perfection. Sphere of Black Ice is a poor choice for a HR, so don't follow me here. I bought it simply because I needed a small "snare" effect for sandbox PVP as well as maximum Life steal possible. Sigil of the Hunter grants Power (which is nice) and Recovery (which is shift) so don't bother refining it past Epic quality.
Remember: disregard all those fancy "black ice", "savage", "brutal" combo-enchantments. Believe me, nothing beats pure Power stacking. Yes, you'll gain slightly less GS per every enchantment, but it's worth it.
Major Enchantments are obvious: Soulforged and Vorpal. Nothing outperforms Vorpal. Nothing beats Soulforged. Just take it as granted.
Fill all Defense enchantment slots with Dark ones. They'll provide you with massive Lifesteal boost. Utility slots are utterly useless combat-wise, but you can gain some 5%-7% flat movespeed bonus by putting Dark enchantments there too.
Non-set item picks:
[Ancient Excorcist's Necklace of Blessings] (note the "excorcist's" typo when you look up AH)
+154 Power
+154 Crit
+154 ARP
+Offensive slot (Radiant, Power)
[Ancient Berserker's Ring of Cleaving]
+154 Power
+154 ARP
+154 Life steal
+Offensive slot (Radiant, Power)
[Ancient Berserker's Ring of Cleaving]
+154 Power
+154 ARP
+154 Life steal
+Offensive slot (Radiant, Power)
[Ancient Priest's Belt of Burning Light]
+616 HP
+154 ARP
+154 Life steal
+Offensive slot (Dark, Life steal)
The last one is questionable. You can try and find something that suits your needs better.
Speaking of companions: use augments only. Either Ioun stone or Cat. Cat provides cute falling damage mitigation bonus, Ioun stone grants slight stamina regen (the "Of Might" [green] one, not the "Allure" or "Black ice" ones). They grant permanent stat bonus from items applied to them which means that you'll be literally wearing an extra belt, ring and necklace. Believe me, its worth it. Eldrich runestone also grants further slight boost to HR's stats.
So there you go. Correct me anywhere if you deem yourself fit.
Mi-Ala Starbreeze : HR main. Best PVE HR out there, until someone proves me wrong.
I've threatened Ghostcrawler and got permabanned at Blizzard forums.
I went mad at PL "community" in SWTOR and got permabanned.
Believe me, you don't want to see the tickets I used to sent to CCP. I got permabanned from EVE.
I was infuriated by the amount of autists in League of Legends and got permabanned. Twice.
Cryptic, here I go.
Lo and behold.
I've threatened Ghostcrawler and got permabanned at Blizzard forums.
I went mad at PL "community" in SWTOR and got permabanned.
Believe me, you don't want to see the tickets I used to sent to CCP. I got permabanned from EVE.
I was infuriated by the amount of autists in League of Legends and got permabanned. Twice.
Cryptic, here I go.
Lo and behold.
Post edited by ontisz on
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Comments
In order to see the full scale pic: http://i.imgur.com/rlLKTQJ.png
I've threatened Ghostcrawler and got permabanned at Blizzard forums.
I went mad at PL "community" in SWTOR and got permabanned.
Believe me, you don't want to see the tickets I used to sent to CCP. I got permabanned from EVE.
I was infuriated by the amount of autists in League of Legends and got permabanned. Twice.
Cryptic, here I go.
Lo and behold.
This is pretty much what I would use IF I wasn't also running pvp. I go pve (dungeons etc) as ranged but adopt hybrid when in pvp. All your choices make sense but will the final DR boon make such a massive difference if you don't have much Lifesteal? I currently have the top boon in that list (forget the name) but I find it fairly useless. Maddening Rampage (or whatever its called) is awesome for melee but not sure how often it reaches 50 stacks on ranged.
The most important thing in life is to be yourself. Unless you can be Batman. Always be Batman.
(my guess is even with different jewellery you still have too much)
I stated that Seismic Shot is the only damaging daily power Archer HRs have. #2 can be slotted with either SS or FM.
T5DR Boon is awesome with any amount of LS that differs from zero. Its just that high enough LS value can heal myself from zero to full with just a single Split shot with one of AOE hits proccing that Boon.
There is no way for me to dump Crit or ARP any further. Sad but true. Back when I used 2+2 DL and GW setpieces I had to settle with approx. 3.5k ARP and still couldn't drop it. It was quite a nice addition to sandbox PVP AS oneshots though.
I will eventually consider buying another belt. Unfortunately, all belts out there have 2 defensive stat rolls out of 3.
I've threatened Ghostcrawler and got permabanned at Blizzard forums.
I went mad at PL "community" in SWTOR and got permabanned.
Believe me, you don't want to see the tickets I used to sent to CCP. I got permabanned from EVE.
I was infuriated by the amount of autists in League of Legends and got permabanned. Twice.
Cryptic, here I go.
Lo and behold.
I still run with Stormstep Action due to wearing the Royal Guard set. I find that Disruptive Shot works best with this as its CD is just 9.5 seconds, meaning I can almost always use it when off CD to proc Stormstep Action by delaying DS by just a second.
Yeah I think this is the problem most of us have - too much ArP for pve. Its not so much of an issue for my Combat HR only because I don't have the 450 ArP bonus from the BiS weapons - still running with Profound set = no bonus. Once I do get my hands on either VT or MC weapon set I will be swimming in ArP again.
I notice you stated that Recovery is pretty much useless for HR's - which in pve I agree esp if you have the 4-piece Royal Guard set, but for pvp less so - however, your rating is pretty high at 1839. Any reason for this?
Also I see you passed on all stamina gaining feats. I know this is pve and as ranged you may not need to dodge as much but do you ever run low on stamina?
The most important thing in life is to be yourself. Unless you can be Batman. Always be Batman.
Isn't the Diminish Return of lifesteal near 1500 or so? 17% ls must be nice tho :P
ps: you have a small error in your guide, you list your belt as having a offense slot, which isn't possible on ancient belts (you do list the effect correctly, life steal so it's clearly a typo)
Good point. I seem to recall the DR graph depicting that Regen and Lifesteal are at the lowest end of the spectrum (roughly 1300). Sure more will still provide greater incoming heals but less due to DR, no?
The most important thing in life is to be yourself. Unless you can be Batman. Always be Batman.
That is correct, but I had an option of picking extra ARP/Crit/Deflect over more Life steal. I went for the latter. Sue me >.>
I've threatened Ghostcrawler and got permabanned at Blizzard forums.
I went mad at PL "community" in SWTOR and got permabanned.
Believe me, you don't want to see the tickets I used to sent to CCP. I got permabanned from EVE.
I was infuriated by the amount of autists in League of Legends and got permabanned. Twice.
Cryptic, here I go.
Lo and behold.
The most important thing in life is to be yourself. Unless you can be Batman. Always be Batman.