Passive Skills for Rangers

Greetings,

I'm a new player and I've decided to play the ranger class. My main questions right now are about the gem system.

- How many green, red, blue gems should I be using/stacking/leveling up? I'm really enjoying the Rain of arrows gem that I just obtained, but I've also been leveling up poison arrow and a couple others.

- Should I only be leveling one or two green gem skills?

- What should I be sticking in the red and blue gem slots?

- Should I even bother dealing with the red and blue parts of the passive skill tree?

You should level as many gems as you have slots in your gear; they'll gain the same ammount of experience whether you have 30 or 1.

There's a couple of red and blue gems that are very nice for archers. Weapon elemental damage, life leech, life gain on hit and anger are some of the strength ones. Good intelligence ones include Enfeeble, Purity, Wrath.

There's great passives in the strength and intelligence parts of the tree. It really depends on your build though.

Don't worry too much about what build you want to do yet, just play through Normal and figure out what skills you like. You can make a new character and plan something out much more easily once you know what you wanna do!

if you like rain of arrow (it works with projectile support gemms and passiv nodes etc)
you could look for those support gems

-red
life on hit
lifeleech
iron grip (adds 1%physical dmg for 5 every 5 str you have,only worth it with kinda like 150str+ and a good pysical bow)
weapon elemental dmg (only worth it when you have much elemental dmg from auras or your weapon)
blood magic (you pay with life instead of mana for your skill,you shouldnt use it below skill level 10 and with good lifereg)

-green
faster attacks
manaleech (only if yo have manaproblems,leech is caped depending on your maximum mana)

-blue
concentrated effec (reduceses the area of rain of arrows but multiolicates your dmg with 1,xx depending on its level)
inc area of effect


there are more support gems that work with rain of arrows,but those are all the "important" ones

rain of arrows would be your main aoe skill
you should pick up 1 defensive (enfeeble/temporal chains) and one offensive (elemental weakness ,projectile weakness etc)
and one singgeltarget skill (frenzy,beartrap,elemtal hit etc) depending on which one you like

Great advice from both previous posters. The only thing I would add is get a Decoy Totem gem (red). Lay down a decoy totem and kill the mobs when they swarm the totem. Also, Raise Zombie and/or Summon Skeletons make for great meat shields / mob distractions.

Thanks very much for all the feedback! I appreciate it!

"

ArthurPlaysExile wrote:

Greetings,

I'm a new player and I've decided to play the ranger class. My main questions right now are about the gem system.

- How many green, red, blue gems should I be using/stacking/leveling up? I'm really enjoying the Rain of arrows gem that I just obtained, but I've also been leveling up poison arrow and a couple others.

- Should I only be leveling one or two green gem skills?

- What should I be sticking in the red and blue gem slots?

- Should I even bother dealing with the red and blue parts of the passive skill tree?

Level up all skill that you plan to use. Especially spells or spell-like skills like Explosive arrow - they SUCK if dont match your level. Some skills arent worth leveling up (for example, Whirling Blades, or Poison Arrow, if you want to use it for direct chaos damage).

For leveling, you probably want to put Clarity (aura) into blue slot. Combined with some mana-regen gear, it helps to manage skill manacost far more effectively, than mana leech (gem or gear), because while leveling, your damage isnt enough for consistent mana leech.

Rain of Arrows provides good damage and is effective against close targets, so i advice to take Point Blank keystone for it. Split Arrow hits larger area, but deals less damage.

Awesome information, MortalKombat3! Thank you! I am actually leveling up poison arrow as well as Rain of Arrows. I'll definitely grab point blank as soon as I get to it.

please also be prepared unless following a guide to fuck it up. Its part of the process of learning. :P

Add me on your friends list character name Bapes and I'll give you a bunch of ranger gear if you're interested. Assuming you're on standard now and not hardcore. I have a bunch of bows and other things that I used to use. Also I have some skill gems you might want.

I'm not on the US side of the world though, so timing might be a problem, but if you see me on just send me a msg.

"

ArthurPlaysExile wrote:

Awesome information, MortalKombat3! Thank you! I am actually leveling up poison arrow as well as Rain of Arrows. I'll definitely grab point blank as soon as I get to it.

Poison arrow increases manacost drastically with levels (from 6 mana on lvl1 up to 30+ mana on higher levels). So, if you want to use it for direct damage (not poison cloud), dont level it (better just have 2 versions).