Which works best with a bow ranger - Ballista or Ranged attack Totem?

Hi all,

Just wondering which people feel works best with a bow ranger - Ballista or Ranged attack Totem?

Ballista is very slow but pierces and has a nice punch but never seems to hit! Using Ranged attack totem give a better spread of damage and actually seems to hit but does little damage really...

Is there any general advice which is best to use or gem combo's to bring the most out of them?

Cheers

Comparing Siege Ballista to RAT is sort of like comparing apples and Toyotas.

Siege Ballista is its own distinct skill. It does its specific thing and is tuned to do so. Despite what a lot of folks think, it doesn't necessarily bolt easily into a regular bow build. It's a low-speed, high-power shot (highest damage multipler of any bow skill, as I recall) that...well, works like a ballista. Tons of piercing because it fires small trees at the enemy, but takes a while to ramp up.

RAT, by itself, is just a support gem. How it compares to Siege Ballista is determined entirely by what you're turning into a totem using RAT. Are you going for something like Blast Rain totems? The 'Tactical Nuke' reverse-knockback Arrow Vortices that hoover enemies up into tightly-clumped groups getting exploded upon? Puncture totems, for whatever crazyballs reason? Barrage?

RAT turns whatever standard bow (or wand!) attack you're using into a totem. As such, you need to decide what you're hoping to RAT with before it can reasonably be compared to Siege Ballista.

If you want to use Siege Ballista vs mobs you need extra projectiles. Less than 4 or 5 projectiles dont really cut it in my experience. Otherwise its only somewhat useful for single target. With enough projectiles and enough totems it hits mobs just fine but is still slow.

Some food for thought... thanks for feedback guys!

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Zrevnur wrote:

If you want to use Siege Ballista vs mobs you need extra projectiles. Less than 4 or 5 projectiles dont really cut it in my experience. Otherwise its only somewhat useful for single target. With enough projectiles and enough totems it hits mobs just fine but is still slow.

If one is looking into a Siege Ballista build (and assuming we're not talking the twelve-totem Meme Ballista build), you'd be looking at Ancestral Bond, probably Skirmish for the nigh-free extra totem, and Rain of Splinters. Three Ballistas, three projectiles per ballista, total of nine fired per theoretical salvo. That should be fine for pack coverage. Play it with Ascendant Heirophant, put a Decoy Totem in your helm, and you can do three Ballistas and a Decoy to clump enemies up for the Ballistas to murder. Also gives you easy Power Charge generation, so you can do a critty build if you like. Ascendant also gives you Deadeye for an extra projectile if you want one (Asc. Deadeye and a +1 Skirmish w/Rain of Splinters is five projectiles per Ballista. That is perfectly adequate), Chieftain for some moderate totem buffs, Assassin if you want to try and double down on the critty build...

Ballista can work just fine if you build for it, but you do have to build for it. You can't really just splash a 4L Ballista in a standard bow build and expect it to do for your bow what a Warchief does for a melee build insofar as single-target booster. Iron Commander builds are super lulsy but not the only ones that can make Ballista workable.

...I kinda want to try this now, honestly...

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1453R wrote:

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Zrevnur wrote:

If you want to use Siege Ballista vs mobs you need extra projectiles. Less than 4 or 5 projectiles dont really cut it in my experience. Otherwise its only somewhat useful for single target. With enough projectiles and enough totems it hits mobs just fine but is still slow.

If one is looking into a Siege Ballista build (and assuming we're not talking the twelve-totem Meme Ballista build), you'd be looking at Ancestral Bond, probably Skirmish for the nigh-free extra totem, and Rain of Splinters. Three Ballistas, three projectiles per ballista, total of nine fired per theoretical salvo. That should be fine for pack coverage. Play it with Ascendant Heirophant, put a Decoy Totem in your helm, and you can do three Ballistas and a Decoy to clump enemies up for the Ballistas to murder. Also gives you easy Power Charge generation, so you can do a critty build if you like. Ascendant also gives you Deadeye for an extra projectile if you want one (Asc. Deadeye and a +1 Skirmish w/Rain of Splinters is five projectiles per Ballista. That is perfectly adequate), Chieftain for some moderate totem buffs, Assassin if you want to try and double down on the critty build...

Ballista can work just fine if you build for it, but you do have to build for it. You can't really just splash a 4L Ballista in a standard bow build and expect it to do for your bow what a Warchief does for a melee build insofar as single-target booster. Iron Commander builds are super lulsy but not the only ones that can make Ballista workable.

...I kinda want to try this now, honestly...

I did make a ballista build in harbringer(it died sadly as I was a tad bit unprepared). But it worked really well against mobs. I dont know why people use rain of splinters over LMP(I guess an additional support gem slot). I did almost exactly as you said..go Ancestral Mastery and then use iron commander and get as much dex as you can without sacrificing life. Note : 800 dex is plently. I also went Avatar of Fire + The signal Flare to get ONLY fire damage, and as I was near Ancestral Mastery, I managed to get loads of fire/elemental damage there. Its pretty fun later on, but clunky mid game, I'd level with something else

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atarekaze wrote:

I did make a ballista build in harbringer(it died sadly as I was a tad bit unprepared). But it worked really well against mobs. I dont know why people use rain of splinters over LMP(I guess an additional support gem slot). I did almost exactly as you said..go Ancestral Mastery and then use iron commander and get as much dex as you can without sacrificing life. Note : 800 dex is plently. I also went Avatar of Fire + The signal Flare to get ONLY fire damage, and as I was near Ancestral Mastery, I managed to get loads of fire/elemental damage there. Its pretty fun later on, but clunky mid game, I'd level with something else

LMP is a "Less" modifier, meaning it's a multiplier that bolts onto the back end of your damage calculation and takes a bit out of everything. Rain of Splinters is a "Reduced" modifier, which means all it does is negate 30-50% of your initial "Increased" modifier. Rain of Splinters is going to cost you vastly less damage penalty overall than LMP will.

Iron Commander is a weird build in that the actual bow itself, the Iron Commander in question, is super freaking weak. It deals something like a third or so of the base DPS of a more typical endgame-start bow, which means you need three times the totem count (or unusual scaling) just to pull even with other options. Given that you can easily reach three Ballistas with just Ancestral Bond + Skirmish, you'd have to find an additional 1200 Dexterity, get six additional totems, just to generally break even with a regular bow. Meme Ballistas is hilarious, and it can be surprisingly effective, but Iron Commander is not the budget option here by any means.

Ironically? Windripper could be an effective option for Scion variants, since Scion Totembuilds tend towards critty power charge stuff and Windripper's the best crit-based bow out there other than a billion-exalt Harbinger. You could do Death's Opus, but ~7% base crit is hard to work with, especially when you're nowhere near any of the usual bow crit nodes (since those are all basically in the opposite corner of the tree from the totem nodes. Ugh). Windripper is always touted as "THE ULTRA-EXPENSIVE MF-ER BOW", but in this case you don't need to 6L or even 5L it; get a 6L rare chest for cheap, get most of your damage from ACD and ALD, don't bother trying to get a set of also-billion-exalt MD gear built around Windripper, probably do fine.

Or do it on a different character, I suppose. I hear Berserker's good for literally everything because GGG hasn't brought the hammer down on Vaal Picnic yet. Mrrrf.