So as most of you will have seen, toothpick wrote a be all end all rogue dps guide and after all the requests that i recieved for it, i have finally got around to writing an end game ranger dps guide.
Disclaimers:
This guide is specifically for end game outlining the ideal builds and gear. If you are after a more broad guide then legendzz has a great ranger guide that you can find here:http://celtic-heroes.com/forum/viewtopi ... 50&t=85338
There are parts of this that are copied from toothpick simply because it is the exact same in many aspects when it comes to ranger and rogue dps. I have talked with him and he has allowed it because of the similarities between the 2 classes. You can have a look at his rogue guide here: http://celtic-heroes.com/forum/viewtopi ... 51&t=95290
This is a guide for people who can pay total attention to one toon and are willing to gear swap and go all out at bosses. This is the best possible dps build and gear available to the class and any alterations to this are dps losses, not gains. This guide is a result of countless hours testing builds and skills and theorising and debating between some of the best players in the game across many different servers.
There are going to be things in here that can help the casual players however it is directed more towards hardcore players who want to be the best.
ARMOR: Full Doch Gul *for now* - The new BT helms are amazingly strong however currently they remove the DG aura even tho their description says they keep your edl and dg aura...once VR fixes this problem BT helms will replace dg helm as the best in slot helm. edit[/] helms been fixed. Now keep dg aura
WEAPON: mainhand - Edl bow is the strongest weapon on Mord, Necro, Gelebron and whenever you are not hasted. On average the divine proc hits around 2500 damage and averaged out across the 20 autos (5% proc chance) we can assume that it essentially adds 125 divine damage onto each auto. On bosses with enormous resistances to physical and elemental damage this proc is the main reason that it is better than a gelebron bow. Attack speed is another factor as faster attacks means more hits and more divine damage across the course of a raid. On bosses with lower resistances where the pure damage of a gelebron bow is less resisted, the gele bow surpasses edl. Void and shadow bows are better when hasted on Dl and Edl (solar at 185 and 195 edls, lunar at 205 and 210 edls) and Proteus because they have lower resistances across the board, which lets the weapons damage catch up to the unresisted procs of edl. This guide does not focus on legacies but even a dark gele bow is superior to edl on all legacies with the exception of garanak that is weak to divine damage, edl bow is superior there. BT has incredibly low elemental resistances (looking like around X/3 atm) along with insanely high physical (likely equal to necro). For this reason the huge elemental damage on gelebron bows boost damage by a lot as well as the albeit heavily but higher physical damage and the boost to skills and stat points. For this reason a void bow is superior to edl and a shadow bow is around equal to edl, I am slightly leaning towards a shadow bow personally with the exception of the celestial bow. Lacks the attack and I would prefer edl over it.
Offhand - the best offhand is the sharpshot quiver from corrupted gardens. Crit skills is more effective than crit strike and the direct damage boosts are currently unbalanced. The ss boost is much stronger than the ls boost. Also the skill on the ls quiver is bugged. It adds 0 dexterity whilst the ss quiver skill adds 500.
NECKLACE: Runic Ammy of Valour is still arguably the best overall. Even with the addition of BT ammies. Runic ammy is hands down superior to a royal Bt ammy and on par with an imperial. The only improvement is a godly BT ammy. Elemental damage trumps physical damage and that is something that the BT ammy is seriously lacking in. Hopefully VR listens to its player base and lowers the stat points and adds elemental damage in place of them so we can move on from an old lvl 200 lux ammy but I wouldn’t hold my breath for anything in the near future. Attack is also a must have. The only other viable end game ammy that comes close is stargem stormcaller ammy. On 205 and 210 Edl Stargem Ammy is stronger because of their low resistance to cold damage and extremely high fire resists so the 120 cold + physical damage from strength bonus overtakes the heat from runic. Skain and Garanak sets are over rated and inferior for the most part. Bloodthorn set is the only one that is worth using at Hrung and Mord.
CHARM SLOT: 100 Poison Sunfire charm on hrung and mord. 100 Ice for 205 and 210 edls, 100 fire for 185 and 195 edls. BT drops some amazing charms with huge stat point and attack boosts. Again, the sharpshot and longshot damage adds are unbalanced and the ss charm is much stronger. However the ls charm is still amazing. The ss charm adds dex while the ls charm adds str. I also rather the dex boost and find it to be more effective. These charms are the best on necro, gele and prot. Currently I am unsure whether these charms or sunfire damage charms are better at BT. Emberdrake charms are officially outdated with the addition of the new cd rings from BT and the shorter, 15 second featherdraw skill.
When using the feather draw quiver and you do want to use a ember cd charm, a godly cd charm is a must. Anything lower is simply not good enough as the you need 25% cd reduction in order to get a second cast in during the skill.
BRACELETS: if you are not running with BT gear yet which many servers are not at the point of farming loot yet, 2 dex str attack prot braces, 1 and 1 gele cruel barbs, and or 2 cruel barbs braces are all options. My preference is 1 and 1. With lower attack, barbs braces are beaten by prot attacks but in DG with top gear you have ample attack to where damage boost is more important. Around 10k unlixed attack mark is where you want to begin to prioritise damage adds over attack adds.
If however you are lucky enough that your server is regularly downing BT I highly recommend swapping to 2 barbs braces. There is the obvious addition of elemental damage, which BT is very weak to, but something else to note is that the loot is EXTREMELY STAT HEAVY. The godly misc alone adds 1000 stat points. Then you have helm and rings as well as dg and any other stat boost gear and suddenly you are very heavily stat plateaued. This means that you can drop the prot braces as you can more than compensate for the stat and attack loss in other areas. The skill points are also nice in helping you to cut down the amount of swaps needed.
RINGS: Reaper ring, godly anointed ring with 2 godly oblivion (bow) rings used to be the strongest ring combo in the game. However times have changed. Now the perfect rings are: 3 BT sharpshot bow rings and an anointed ring. No reaper. Reapers have been great for many years however it is finally time to move on. These new rings are simply too good to pass up on. A godly ring adds 400 stat points, 1500 bow ability and direct ss damage. HUGE. Whilst you may still have higher attack using a reaper, there comes a time when you have enough attack and need to find other more efficient ways to boost dps. As for deciding between a ss ring and ls ring, again, the skill damage boosts are unbalanced heavily in ss favour.
If you do not know how to cd swap or are feeling lazy the new cd fings from BT are quite nice. They add stats attack and add 5% higher cd to a necro brace of equal tier. If you do know how to cd swap then I don’t recommend using them. Otherwise, there are some great rings that drop. I know how to cd swap gear however won’t be showing you if you ask so please don’t.
Reaper ring is still among the most sought after and strongest rings in the game. 15% attack is still huge and greatly under estimated by many. If you can’t get your hands on a few new bow rings then I heavily advise keeping your reaper until you do get the new rings. As for the anointed, it adds a health and energy boost, something that doch armour is greatly lacking but more importantly it adds divine damage. For reference an average ranger may hit around 600 on gelebron. A godly anointed ring adds 100 unresisted divine damage which before fluctuations brings that average 600 auto to a much stronger 700 auto. This may not sound like much but over the course of a 15 minute raid is game changing.
PET:With the addition of the druids new dps offhand, the magic dragon can officially be called the best dps pet for an end game ranger. The druids offhand has a built in magic lure that stacks with a mages regular magic lure. This means that magic damage is more effective than fire or ice. Unlured poison dragon is the strongest and that still dominates in carrow and at hrung but once lures are present the other elements overtake it. Like has been the case since the dragons release, ice dragon is still the best on summoning floor and fire dragon better on the low edls.
BATTLEMOUNT: This will be short. Unless your clan always has a crush lure or you have no spare space on your hotbars to add the skill then the wolf is the best battlemount by far. If your clan has mages who spec crush lure (idk why they would) then by all means get a horse. Likewise, if the skill is not a factor then the str and dex on the horse will be more effective than the dex focus of the wolf. Keep clear of any other mount.
BUILD: In Doch Gul with all godly gear, you want at a minimum 4k health but 5k is ideal for Gelebron in full DG, it’s enough to survive any aoe where you are not affected by chaos runes (a ranger should be standing behind the tank on the steps so that you are not hit by as many aoe as the rogues). Idealy you want to have a druid casting their book skill on you but if you cant then just take the occasional deaths. Just be careful when casting quiver skill when affected by rune as if you die with it active you miss out on the remaining duration.
At BT I run 4K health however I always combo so actually run 6-7k health technically. This seems to be plenty for the raid and as long as your not autoing cloaks or get unlucky with toxic clouds during the last 30% don’t tend to die much at all.
After adding enough vit to hit that 5k this is what i recommend doing. With your remaining points if you dont have DG or BT armour and gear yet then you want to favour dexterity. Idealy a 75/25 dex/str ratio. This is because you are more reliant on attack from dexterity as you lack the huge boosts of these gears. If you do however have them then you can keep that same 75/25 ratio but i find a 50/50 ratio to be much more effective.
SKILLS:
In order of most dps gained as of right now, it goes:
1 Sharpshot - you cast it a ton and it doesn’t mess with any auto attacks
2 Steady aim - one of the best buffs in the game. A 50/50 steady aim adds around 750 attack and 350 damage its the perfect combination of attack and damage boost
3 Double shot - the most consistent skill, it takes 1.5 seconds to cast and never misses with a 15s cooldown, guarantees a gain of 60% of one auto attack every cast (One auto hasted is 1.12s)
4 Longshot - The highest dps gain per single cast. There are however many issues with this skill, the biggest being evasions. It misses WAY too often and every miss is a loss in dps. The pin is also a big issue when killing a boss with bolas from lack or tanks or raging often. Depends a lot on server and the level of their dps and tank availability. Needs to be made unavoidable like sneaky to become more viable.
5 Sharpen weapons - Is a great skill and well worth casting. Adds good damage and has an aoe meaning it can add up to 8x the stated page damage. Its best if you can get another ranger casting it on you rather than casting it yourself.
6 Barbed shot - Huge energy drain. Is an ok skill without being great. Loses 2 autos from casting but has an overall small dps gain thanks to the dot. Has the impact damage of an auto as well as 5 tic damage hits. Assuming the boss is lured it can hit up to 400 per tic on edl and around 200 on proteus. Around 100-150 on mord, gele and necro. This skill needs one of a few things to happen to make it more viable. Show it the same love that was shown to rend, rework the casting time and animation or change the dot damage type to bleeding or poison. Is a semi viable skill if only 1-2 use barbed shot but any more and its just impractical.
SWAPS: Swapping gear brings your dps output to another level, it’s one of the things that separates the good players from the best players.
Swap Gear:
Sharpshot: Mordris brace (necro cd brace is better) and Gelebron ring.
Longshot: Osan longshot amulet (this is where it helps to be using runic ammy. You dont lose any extra ammy skill like stargem has) and gele longshot ring.
Barbed shot: As of now there are very few ways to get more than 5 points to barbed shot. To my knowledge mord has no rings that add to barbed shot so you must rely on an aggy ring or brace or a gele cruel barbs brace. The latter option is ideal.
Steady aim: Find the highest tier proteus steady aim ring that you can. Adds skill points as well as dexterity which boost the effectiveness of the buff.
Sharpen weapons: Swap on your highest tier proteus ring along with your osan ammy, the huge dex and ranged ability make your sharpen weaps a lot stronger.
Double shot: Swap a Cold damage hrung Ring for every cast at 205 and 210 edl, heat ring at 185 and 195 edl and a venom ring at hrung and mord. You could also swap a shadow/void gele bow each cast. I wouldn’t worry about swapping a dark bow as the damage gain isn’t enough to make up for the potential loss of divine proc.
Regarding sharpshot, double shot and longshot, there are ways to apply the 30% cooldown reductions you get from Necro braces to their casts without having them on full time, making them up to 30% stronger (30% more casts is equal to 30% more damage). Not that i am encouraging to abuse this however. I have not used this cd bug in a long time. Like i said before, if you know how to do this then that is fine. If you don’t know then don’t bother asking. I wont be telling you.
A common misconception among players is that rangers are the strongest dps class at end game. In some ways that is true but on pure damage a rogue will have us covered on most bosses. We only really have the advantage on Proteus and Gelebron because of the time that rogues spend running and on xtals. What usually tends to skew the kills in a rangers favour is that we have the much better offhand skill.
Hopefully some of you can use this guide to further your toons and your dps at raids and increase your clans productivity at raids. To many of you hopefully now you can even take it right up to those top dps on your own servers.
Ventius
Edited: added aggy barbed shot ring to swaps
Gardens update!gardens has been out for a few months now and we are starting to see some of the amazing loot to be won from this crazy raid. Whilst I have not yet completed the ideal builds and gear with the addition of BT gear I can start to update what I do know in regards to the new gear and setups! Will be updated as I continue to find out more
Ranger end game dps guide
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Last edited by Ventius on Fri Sep 28, 2018 9:36 pm, edited 9 times in total.
Arawn
Ventius - level 227 ranger of dawn
Epona
Ventius - level 222 noob ranger of Enigma
Belenus
Ventius - level 163 druid
RIP badabing
Your newest blue name who has dreams to one day be purple
Ventius - level 227 ranger of dawn
Epona
Ventius - level 222 noob ranger of Enigma
Belenus
Ventius - level 163 druid
RIP badabing
Your newest blue name who has dreams to one day be purple