Dual Physical Wand Ranger (6/14/13)

Indeed, that's precisely the reason why Chain/Fork works so well with this build. However, I feel it inevitable that the Chain/Fork + Point Blank calculation will be changed. I have a feeling it'll use the distance measurements between the character and the enemy hit with the initial projectile of Point Blank to calculate the base damage for the bouncing projectiles. However, it would only use Point Blank's damage decrease, not the increase. I guess I should leave that thought for another discussion thread, though.

I just tested it out and with 3 Power Charges, the Increased Critical Strike Chance nodes on the current version of the tree route (0.3), and my 8% Critical Strike Chance wand, I get to 41.2%. With the fourth Power Charge it should be increased to 45.2%, so nearly half the time projectiles hit I get a critical strike. Without any Power Charges, I'm sitting at 29.2%.

And yes, I have to agree with the intelligence requirement weakness. It can be pretty annoying trying to find the right items to enable you to use others you'd like to. When Open Beta comes around I plan to use a cookie cutter ranger build until I get enough currency items to either switch to this build if a passive skill tree reset occurs or make a new character entirely with a few equipment sets already bought.

I love this build, and I myself play mainly an elecannon wander, but I have one question:

Why Point Blank?

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spaph wrote:

I love this build, and I myself play mainly an elecannon wander, but I have one question:

Why Point Blank?

Thank you! There are three reasons why:

1) With the 23% block chance of the build (Dervish's 8% and the inherent 15%) and a good amount of life and armor makes so that the character's defense isn't problematic enough to need to stay far away from enemies.

2) Point Blank synergizes extremely well with Chain because of the way its bouncing projectile damage is calculated, as stated earlier in the thread. vankeris explained this further here.

3) With practice, one can make so that the character is almost always close enough to make benefit of the damage increase, but just far enough to manually avoid attacks by enemies. Over time Point Blank's downside doesn't even show its face enough to be significant.

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iao wrote:

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spaph wrote:

I love this build, and I myself play mainly an elecannon wander, but I have one question:

Why Point Blank?

Thank you! There are three reasons why:

1) With the 23% block chance of the build (Dervish's 8% and the inherent 15%) and a good amount of life and armor makes so that the character's defense isn't problematic enough to need to stay far away from enemies.

2) Point Blank synergizes extremely well with Chain because of the way its bouncing projectile damage is calculated, as stated earlier in the thread. vankeris explained this further here.

3) With practice, one can make so that the character is almost always close enough to make benefit of the damage increase, but just far enough to manually avoid attacks by enemies. Over time Point Blank's downside doesn't even show its face enough to be significant.

Thanks! You didn't go into much detail in the main post as to why you chose a very underrated (IMO) keystone; I just wanted to clarify. :)

Heh, true. I'll update the first post with information as to why I chose certain keystones.

By the way, I added an evasion version of the skill tree route yesterday if anyone doesn't wish to use Iron Reflexes.

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iao wrote:

Heh, true. I'll update the first post with information as to why I chose certain keystones.

By the way, I added an evasion version of the skill tree route yesterday if anyone doesn't wish to use Iron Reflexes.

If the build didn't have sufficient block, I'd be quite scared to use IR, as I've always felt Grace + pure Armor is a lot better for damage mitigation and stun evasion, especially if you grab IR but not US. The way you have it now, a heavy hitting rare with a haste aura or frenzy charges is still gonna stunlock you, but the only way it would hit you in the first place is poor play. Skill wins! xD

That is true; such an enemy does create quite the problem in some cases. However, when I do encounter one, I usually walk far away, lay down a straight line of Bear Traps, pop a Diamond Flask, and unload on the ravenous thing. And if he's got his buddies with him, I just pick them off with some kite and chained Frenzy alternation. I suppose you're right, this build is much more about skillful play than it is automation! Hahaha

I'm actually heavily considering ridding of Iron Reflexes once I get a much better set of gear to attempt the full evasion + dual wield block version of this build for kicks. I suspect I may be able to reach around 3500 life if I play my cards right, which should be enough for the way this character is played. Actually, I really don't know that; I haven't played too many ranged characters in my day.

As for this thread, the first post has been updated with additional information. I'm also going to write some criticism regarding the positive and negative aspects of the build and maybe do some comparison between other popular builds.

What is your crit strike chance, multiplier, and dps at this point? I'm curious because I went DW Shadow, Power Siphon with a focus on elemental, CI, BloodRage for IAS. While the scaling isn't 100% effective, I might add in some physical wand passives in the node near CI and/or ditch elemental and go for physical. Wanted to get an idea of how your dps is faring.

One more thought - consider culling strike instead of faster projectiles support. At high gem levels attack speed decrease is 2-3% and a few % more damage than faster projectiles. Especially for your single target frenzy culling high hp monsters should get better results.

And thanks by the way for sharing this - I finally got around to get going with my elemental version of this :)

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TRICKS wrote:

What is your crit strike chance, multiplier, and dps at this point? I'm curious because I went DW Shadow, Power Siphon with a focus on elemental, CI, BloodRage for IAS. While the scaling isn't 100% effective, I might add in some physical wand passives in the node near CI and/or ditch elemental and go for physical. Wanted to get an idea of how your dps is faring.

To those also wishing to know this information, once I get better equipment I'll make a full damage assessment so that you all can get a better idea of how well this build does. It shouldn't be long from now.

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vankeris wrote:

One more thought - consider culling strike instead of faster projectiles support. At high gem levels attack speed decrease is 2-3% and a few % more damage than faster projectiles. Especially for your single target frenzy culling high hp monsters should get better results.

And thanks by the way for sharing this - I finally got around to get going with my elemental version of this :)

No problem! :D

When it comes to Culling Strike as a replacement for Faster Projectiles for the single-target Frenzy, I was considering it at a point but I think I'm just going to stick with the current idea. The increased damage difference is miniscule, and I'd would rather switch to Power Siphon at the 10% mark so that I can get a Power Charge from it anyways.