Theorycraft: Point-Blank Bow Tank
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Had to use that title since Charan gave it some personal praise. ^w^
Anyway, for a long time now I've been wanting to make a "shotgun" tank. A build that uses heavy armor and a bow, focusing on the Point Blank keystone and perhaps Blood Magic. Probably investing into split arrow and pierce or something. The skill sets aren't set in stone at all yet but then neither are a number of other factors. The real conundrum I keep running into is which class to use for it. It's obviously a toss up between Marauder and Duelist. The Duelist would have a better time of harnessing bows in general, being in a much better spot to gather dexterity, whereas the Marauder can tank better in general from his innate strength bonus. This is why I post this in general. Because I can't really go for either class forum and hope to get any real feedback, to say nothing of the undecided class in the first place. So I come to you, testers, asking for a hand in this. I've been dying to make this up for a while now but not being able to really set up a plan for it is curbing my progress with the idea. Any input whatsoever is appreciated, be it for skills, gear, passive tree layouts, anything at all. I'd like to have a bunch of solid ideas to cobble together into a sound build. Maybe even get it featured in BotW at some point. Last edited by Ishiga25 on Nov 5, 2012, 9:52:40 AM
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If you use PB don't use pierce.
This is a build i came up with the Duelist (remember 212 dex is min. to wear the higher lvl bow) Use Mana to stack auras and put a blood magic gem on your attack skill, so you can use a haste-hatred-determination (+ reduced mana) on mana, and grace(and maybe wrath and anger too) on hps with blood magic. The skill setup maybe fire arrow or split arrow( I want to see split arrow+gmp+chaos damage+added fire damage+faster attacks+life leech and see how much damage it deals with point blank) Use a ranged totem too, like explosive arrow+increase area+gmp+totem Gear focus on being tanky on gear(movement speed not necessary, uniques not necessary just be really tanky) and a normal bow with damage, ias etc. | |
" See I don't understand why I keep getting told that. I understand that enemies further back will take less damage but why would I not want to be shooting through crowds? Am I missing something about pierce that like completely ruins this logic? Do the initial close range targets not take as much damage? " I planned for 212 Dex because I have intentions of running with Chin Sol come end game. That innate point blank effect it has stacks with the keystone if I recall correctly. Plus the knock-back will only add to the survivability. If not, oh well, a good phys, damage bow will work out too. " Not gonna lie, I hate the blood magic support gem. That doubled cost really makes me cringe unless I'm playing with a ridiculous HP pool. But in this case I can at least see what it's like on a character such as this. FOR SCIENCE! " See, that's not precisely what I'm aiming for. I'm going for burst damage more than speed. yes I do intend to try and use faster bows but in the end, I'm actually shooting for stronger, slower ones. Shotguns aren't fast after all, they're powerful. Still this is all good input and I appreciate it. :) | |
" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WOoUVeyaY_8 long range- anti tanks sniper rifles are slow not shotguns :D and PB does like nullify the damage after the close-range really it dosnt even hurt the normal mobs Last edited by kadrek91 on Nov 5, 2012, 10:48:48 AM
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" Well ok, point about speed. Still it's not really going to be TOP priority. They may not be that slow but they certainly aren't pistol-quick. Also, I didn't know that about PB. Thanks for the heads up there. Would ANY range extension effect cause this? Like fork or chain? There's gotta be some way to get shots to travel around a crowd. | |
" You can try lighting arrow to hit crows, or yea use pierce just to hit crows in close range but thats hit, nothing more, then the damage scales to 0. Maybe faster projectiles makes the arrow go faster and for longer range, so the PB does some damage more some more range | |
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I got a build in legacy with a similar idea at level 73. Only I went with evasion and elemental ranger route. I use Lightning arrow for crowds and Elemental hit for single targets. Point blank damage reduction is not as bad as people think and pierce from projectile weakness does help quite a bit. Don't know about Fork or Chain but lightning arrow was interacting weirdly with Point blank - additional targets weren't affected by point blank. Don't know if this has changed.
About attack speed - I would suggest getting at least some because slow attack leaves you vulnerable to interrupts. With Chin Sol it also gives you lots of knockback which does help keep stuff at bay. | |
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How do Chain and Fork interact with point blank? If the distance traveled for damage increase/decrease with point black is taken from the point where it split/chained (rather then from where you shot the initial projectile) they should work well with point blank. Definitely worth testing or asking one of the devs about.
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I made have a legacy PB Rain of Arrows Duelist. Only made it to lvl 62, which is the highest level out of all my characters.
However, it was a pretty fun build. I opted to use stun with the Broadstroke Quiver on top of some other stun mods to permastun groups with the enhanced close damage. |
