Dual Physical Wand Ranger (6/14/13)

• Frenzy + Lesser/Greater Multiple Projectiles + Power Charge on Critical + Life Gain on Hit + Increased Critical Damage + Pierce or Added Fire Damage or Blind
• Frenzy + Power Charge on Critical + Increased Critical Damage + Added Fire Damage
• Grace + Purity + Hatred + Reduced Mana
• Projectile Weakness + Critical Weakness + Temporal Chains + Enfeeble
• Bear Trap + Added Fire Damage + Culling Strike
• Vitality + Reduced Mana

• Darkray Vectors helped this build out a good amount. The extra maximum Frenzy Charge is great, and at 8 of them you get 16% chance to dodge attacks (probably a great reason to get Acrobatics, hmmm...).
• Alpha's Howl is awesome. Put your linked up auras in this for, well, obvious reasons. Good thing it's pure evasion! Starkonja's Head is a competent alternative.
• Mana leech on gear is imperative, as Frenzy has quite the ridiculous mana cost.
• Accuracy Rating is very helpful. You want to hit your enemies, don't you? I mean sure, you have a ton of Dexterity and 16% increased accuracy rating, but it's likely not enough.
• Added physical damage from gear is extremely helpful, as wands have such little base physical damage in the first place. Glass cannons should consider Abyssus. =)
• Obviously you'll want a ton of evasion, life, resistances, and etc. Having unique items puts a lot of stress on what chest armor you have.

• Normal: Oak for +40 base maximum life.
• Cruel: Oak for +18% increased physical damage or kill all to get another life node on the tree.
• Merciless: Kraityn for +1 maximum Frenzy Charges.

"

iao wrote:

Hey guys, sorry for the lack of an update! I didn't think this would ever be responded to again. =p

The build is now better as a Duelist with this tree. You'll want to focus on evasion, but don't take Acrobatics-- this is so you can still use Granite Flasks effectively. Okay, maybe you can get Acrobatics, but it depends on what you want to sacrifice for it.

Eldritch Battery is not needed, as grabbing the two Mana Flows and Mind Drinker is sufficient.

At the moment I'd go with the following gem setup (supports ordered by importance):

• Frenzy + Lesser/Greater Multiple Projectiles + Power Charge on Critical + Life Gain on Hit + Increased Critical Damage + Pierce or Added Fire Damage or Blind
• Frenzy + Power Charge on Critical + Increased Critical Damage + Added Fire Damage
• Grace + Purity + Hatred + Reduced Mana
• Projectile Weakness + Critical Weakness + Temporal Chains + Enfeeble
• Bear Trap + Added Fire Damage + Culling Strike
• Vitality + Reduced Mana

Well I'm not sure about that last one, but it might be viable. Without mana on gear, and considering how much mana you'd have at level 90 with Intelligence requirements met, you'll have at least 912 mana. Oh and of course, get the highest quality Frenzy gems you can because the bonus is massive.

Notable gear choices:

• Darkray Vectors helped this build out a good amount. The extra maximum Frenzy Charge is great, and at 8 of them you get 16% chance to dodge attacks (probably a great reason to get Acrobatics, hmmm...).
• Alpha's Howl is awesome. Put your linked up auras in this for, well, obvious reasons. Good thing it's pure evasion! Starkonja's Head is a competent alternative.
• Mana leech on gear is imperative, as Frenzy has quite the ridiculous mana cost.
• Accuracy Rating is very helpful. You want to hit your enemies, don't you? I mean sure, you have a ton of Dexterity and 16% increased accuracy rating, but it's likely not enough.
• Added physical damage from gear is extremely helpful, as wands have such little base physical damage in the first place. Glass cannons should consider Abyssus. =)
• Obviously you'll want a ton of evasion, life, resistances, and etc. Having unique items puts a lot of stress on what chest armor you have.

Bandit Rewards:

• Normal: Oak for +40 base maximum life.
• Cruel: Oak for +18% increased physical damage or kill all to get another life node on the tree.
• Merciless: Kraityn for +1 maximum Frenzy Charges.

"

iao wrote:

I'm not using Chain, even though Point Blank is bugged with it and reassesses the distance between after each bounce. Having a high enough attack speed and some Pierce removes the need for Chain. Also, I like Point Blank a lot. With practice it's easy to make good use of it. Keep in mind the block, dodge, and evasion chances and that I can knock enemies back with Projectile Weakness. There's also Frost Wall, Freeze Mine, etc.

So let's take a look at the damage your wand would do in this build (considering if you have two, since this is a dual wielding build).

93-175, an average of 134 physical damage. +80% increased physical damage at 8 Frenzy Charges, +40% from the tree, 30% from Lesser Multiple Projectiles at level 16, so +150% altogether. That brings the average damage to 335. Frenzy bumps that to 368.5. Point Blank's bonus brings it to 552.75. Lesser Multiple Projectiles then brings it down to an average of 386 (rounded down from 386.925) per projectile.

Now let's take into account critical strikes. There's +235% increased critical strike chance from the tree and +200% from the 4 Power Charges, so +435% altogether. With your wand that'd bring you to 55.64% chance.

There's the 80% critical strike multiplier from the tree and +102% from Increased Critical Damage at level 16, so +182% altogether. That brings you to 423% critical strike multiplier; apply it to the average damage and you get 1632 (from 1632.78) damage. Apply a level 16 Added Fire Damage and you get 571 (from 571.2) Fire damage, and a level 16 Hatred for 375 (from 375.36), bringing you to 2578 damage per critical strike hit. When you're performing a critical strike more than half the time, that's pretty damn good.

Now let's find out how many attacks per second you'd have. +70% increased attack speed from the tree, +176% from a level 16 Frenzy with 20% quality and 8 Frenzy Charges, so +246% overall. That brings you to 4.498 attacks per second, and then 4.9478 with the dual wielding speed bonus, so pretty much 5 attacks per second.

The mana cost of Frenzy is tough, but I overcame it in Closed Beta with the previous iteration of this build and I think it's doable now. If anything it may be a good idea to use Thief's Torment for the Mana Gain on Hit, which would likely solve the problem completely. With it I could even remove Life Gain on Hit from the links and use Pierce to ensure 100% Pierce with Projectile Weakness and a good amount with Critical Weakness. With the links stated it'd be 55 mana cost for Frenzy, so 275 per second considering attack speed.

That's probably the main problem in this case, and I'll try to find an option available other than having to use Thief's Torment. There is the obvious-though-neglected Mana flasks, which can definitely fit in this build considering the taking of Alchemist, you'd just probably need two of them with the exact amount and duration needed. I have a level 45 character using this build in Anarchy so when I take time off my Onslaught character I'll try to level him up to do some more testing.

I don't think this build is any better than the other wand builds, it's just an alternative. I like making unique builds more than I like playing the crazy ones.