Blood Dance Worth it?

I am currently using Blood Dance boots on my LA Ranger to help generate and maintain Frenzy charges (have 6, going for 7). I con't help but think that I could do better with a nice pair of rare boots with Movement speed, Life and Resists. Right now I have Frenzy as my single target with Culling Strike and PPAD. When Blood Dance does additional damage per Frenzy charge against low life, Low life is 35%? So at max charges I should get within Cull range (10%) more quickly. I am trying to think of a good reason to keep them.

Oh, at level 68, Life and resists are becoming a real issue. I am scratching at capped resists but every time I find a new piece of gear I have to re-cafloodle everything else to try to stay capped. I am <3k life and have grabbed (or am heading toward) every life node I can. Am I missing some hidden synergy or ditch the boots?

Wolf

If you don't mind using Frenzy every ten-fifteen seconds, you can drop BD no problem.

If that kind of gameplay is too annoying for you, other alternatives include:
- Poacher's Mark
- Blood Rage

Blood Dance does work really well with Blood Rage however, since it makes it easier to sustain charges without using Frenzy, and the regeneration negates the degen from Blood Rage.


It's really just a question of how easy you want your gameplay to be. You can make it so you barely ever need to touch your frenzy link, or you can make it so you pretty much have to keep tapping frenzy but you end up with somewhat better stats overall.

"

Vipermagi wrote:

"When Blood Dance does additional damage per Frenzy charge against low life, Low life is 35%? So at max charges I should get within Cull range (10%) more quickly."
35%, yes. The loss of attack speed tends to be bigger than the 36% Increased Damage (note: not Damage Taken) on your last shot or two. :P

The Blood Dance is a really neat pair of boots, but their main strength is offering Life Regen. Other than that, they don't have a whole lot going for them, really. Rares are more often than not the better option if you don't need the Life Regen for anything.

Everyone needs the life regen.

Another strength is that you don't need to use blood rage at all and thus you "gain" another 3.6% life regen.

However, the downside of low evasion and no additional life is fairly severe when you are a ranger/shadow and alread struggling to get near 6k hp. This is without mentioning the dps loss per frenzy charge.

Has anyone ever managed to make those boots do something useful even with the maximum amount of life regen you can generate with them? In my experience, a bigger life total and well rolled health potions are 10x MORE usefull than the healing from those boots. Even with 10% regen you need 7-8 seconds before you can take another boss hit and no one can spare that much time against a dangerous boss.

Life regen is profoundly useful as an extra layer of defense. IF you have access to legacy dancers, you would be hard pressed to find a better item to build around but required higher end gear to make up the resists.

The great part about blood dance is you can drop blood dance and get 4% life regen back.

Playing a life based archer w/o high life regen is suicidal.

Last night I tried running some maps first and looting after the clear. Once I got my charges up I only needed to use frenzy put the cull on some rares and the boss's. It was pretty handy for the charges to keep resetting. I did swap my quiver with extra flat phys for one with resists in order to get capped. The dps difference was really small. I might try losing them and going manual charges for a bit and see how that feels. I like the fast pace but it does feel a bit reckless. A built in speed bump might help survivability. Frankly, the speed maps were Blue Topical Island (mobs gain power charges and poison on hit) followed by Mountain Ledge (inhabited by skellies and Boss has extra area of effect). If either had really dangerous mobs the outcome probably would have been different.

BTW, Shiny new boots, not legacy.


Wolf

So I inspected your character. I would really suggest you read up on some Ranger Guides. You do not have to copy them but there is a ton of optimizing for both passives setup, item setup (even on a low budget) and gem setup.

Regarding your question on blood dance:

No. Do not use them.

Blood dance = No resist and HP in boot slot. This means you will have to make up for the lack of resists and hp in other item slots. So you will most likely use Rares with Resists instead of Uniques with great DPS stats like Rat's Nest (Or Starkonja Helmet for budget version).

Use blood rage (which also grants you 20% attack speed) for generating frenzy charges.

"

Frankenberry wrote:

So I inspected your character. I would really suggest you read up on some Ranger Guides. You do not have to copy them but there is a ton of optimizing for both passives setup, item setup (even on a low budget) and gem setup.

Regarding your question on blood dance:

No. Do not use them.

Blood dance = No resist and HP in boot slot. This means you will have to make up for the lack of resists and hp in other item slots. So you will most likely use Rares with Resists instead of Uniques with great DPS stats like Rat's Nest (Or Starkonja Helmet for budget version).

Use blood rage (which also grants you 20% attack speed) for generating frenzy charges.

You can easily cram every overused crit based unique into your build with careful planning and still use blood dance. There is no way any rare boot can min max harder than the life regen a legacy version gives.

Thing is that its simply cheaper and easier to go the route boot route.