Need help with an evasion/dodge/split arrow ranger

if you have a problem with melee bosses and are looking for a way to make up for the lack of block you can either add blind to an attack and blind them, or throw in a smoke mine/increased duration to keep them in the dark. this will reduce their accuracy by 75% effectively making your dodge and evasion MUCH more useful. add in enfeeble to reduce their accuracy a max 95% (only 5% chance to hit) and now they will NOT hit you, ever.

consider 40% dodge and 50% evasion, alone you have a 70% chance to avoid damage, meaning a 30% chance to get hit. as soon as you reduce their accuracy by 75% (blind) you effectively have an 87% chance to avoid getting hit. reduce accuracy further to 95% and now you'll only get hit 3% of the time (97% chance to avoid).

melee bosses are no longer an issue if they can even catch you anyway. if your movement speed is low thats where smoke mine plays a dual role of usefulness.

Just gonna state the obvious but for Evasion to work well, you need a lot more Life to absorb the occasional hits. 4.5k Life would be the minimum to go upwards of 73-74 maps if possible :)

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feyith wrote:

How's this? Since you said you don't use Frenzy, I rerouted your tree to pick up all of the things you mentioned plus a nearby +8 all resists/Evasion node. No reason to wait 10 levels. :)

Spoiler

https://www.pathofexile.com/passive-skill-tree/AAAAAgIAAF4EfgW1CC4V8BmOGdUZ_hsBIXYi6iP2JP0wcTB8MfoyATKUMww51DpCOlhKfUt4UUdW-lpIX-FnoGskb_J0QXb3d9d_An8rhs6HGYd2jX2Nv5UFlembJpuNoJ-hpKbgp9Sqf6q4r-uxMLIZxKLGosqpzerPetN-1CPVANaK2cbcFd2o4dvnVOjW7YPuDu967_DwQvzF_sj_3n11_rq745u1GYr7CfbaGo8Pq21stUhte1VLJpWMNud0YeK29xEvh9sWv_PqcFLrY5ma

It's kind of an upside-down version of my tree. Have you tried Puncture for those melee bosses? Since you're investing so much toward crit, how would you feel about a CoC build? Also, you can just manually dodge spells by moving your character out of the way. That's what I do instead of Phase Acrobatics. 5 free points! :)

What…the. I didn't think that would work so well. It has less +phys dmg nodes but more dps according to poebuilder, as well as more life. I’d only lose 2-3% evasion, which is ok, and there’s a bunch of good nodes up north to build into when I level up more. Thanks, I think I’ll give it a try.

My CoC and eth knives gems weren’t high level so when I tried that a while ago it really only added lacklustre damage. With more crit chance and those gems levelled I’ll give it another shot.

Phase acro is just 1 point really, the 4 points before (only) add 10% dodge, but isn’t that worth it? Also, spells can be a huge problem so I kinda like to dodge those for 30% :)

Tried puncture, does huge damage, but I prefer barrage for normal mapping. I think I’ll switch barrage for puncture for some bosses though, sometimes it’s obviously better.

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JunKx wrote:

if you have a problem with melee bosses and are looking for a way to make up for the lack of block you can either add blind to an attack and blind them, or throw in a smoke mine/increased duration to keep them in the dark. this will reduce their accuracy by 75% effectively making your dodge and evasion MUCH more useful. add in enfeeble to reduce their accuracy a max 95% (only 5% chance to hit) and now they will NOT hit you, ever.

melee bosses are no longer an issue if they can even catch you anyway. if your movement speed is low thats where smoke mine plays a dual role of usefulness.

I should probably rely more on blind and smoke, yeah. I had blind on my barrage for a while but when I started to have 66 maps on farm status I switched to more dps and forgot about blind when I got to more difficult maps. Smokes don’t last long, but I didn’t think of increased duration on it, that’d certainly help with keeping it up.

And melee bosses that actually walk and don’t have a means to close distance are easy. But a lot of melee exiles have some sort of jump-ability, other melee bosses pull you towards them with a claw ability, some hamper your movement with ice/traps, and that sort of stuff can be pretty tricky. Also, I'm not sure, but do some bosses/exiles have Resolute Technique? Because with some I get hit silly often even with Grace on.

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linkstatic wrote:

Just gonna state the obvious but for Evasion to work well, you need a lot more Life to absorb the occasional hits. 4.5k Life would be the minimum to go upwards of 73-74 maps if possible :)

4.5k a minimum ? Good grief. I can reach that with some upgrades but higher will be difficult. I’m really attached to my dps, but would I be better off if I’d sacrifice dps for health at that point? I’ve got a nice 4L helmet stashed away with the same evasion as my Rat’s Nest (around 720) but with 85 life and resists. I’m just really hesitant to give up dps though; there’s a great difference in dps where I can either explode whites/blues before they reach me, or have to kite packs, and that changes a lot in clearing speed.

well im not 100% sure as bow user without block, but i was rolling around with 3100 hp melee no problem in up to 73 maps (i've never gotten a map higher lvl) so take ppls idea of hp levels with a grain of salt

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Fleve wrote:

4.5k a minimum ? Good grief. I can reach that with some upgrades but higher will be difficult. I’m really attached to my dps, but would I be better off if I’d sacrifice dps for health at that point?

It's all a play style choice, which is the beauty of this game. For the record, I have modified my tree so many times. In the end, I've found I survive way better going full on YOLO mode with 2K life and ES and clearing things before they can hit me vs. trading DPS for more defense. So far it's working up to 75 maps (haven't died in the 3 levels since my last respec). Haven't tried higher yet only because I'm 82 and people are kinda snotty about level requirements on free maps.

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feyith wrote:

It's all a play style choice, which is the beauty of this game. For the record, I have modified my tree so many times. In the end, I've found I survive way better going full on YOLO mode with 2K life and ES and clearing things before they can hit me vs. trading DPS for more defense. So far it's working up to 75 maps (haven't died in the 3 levels since my last respec). Haven't tried higher yet only because I'm 82 and people are kinda snotty about level requirements on free maps.

I don't need to be mean, but soloing 75+ maps and surviving reliably is going to be impossible with a bow based build with 2k life.

I am even a little surprised you made it thorough low and mid 70s. I would guess you do a lot more grouping than solo.

And to Fleeve - part of the reason it's often better to go up through Shadow instead of over towards Scion is because it is better for both DPS and HP.

Build using the same amount of points as yours

Look how many more HP that gets from tree while also adding a lot of IAS, crit and crit multi. If I swapped my helm for a Rat's nest I'd still have over 5k HP. Have you watched Sam's videos? He isn't exactly struggling for clear speed, and he can take on all bosses. The goal should be both clear speed and survivability, not one or the other. And you started this thread because of survivability issues - we're trying to help.

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Asidra wrote:

I don't need to be mean, but soloing 75+ maps and surviving reliably is going to be impossible with a bow based build with 2k life.

I am even a little surprised you made it thorough low and mid 70s. I would guess you do a lot more grouping than solo.

I don't need to be mean either, but IMO if you're dying repeatedly with more than 4K life (which is what I have with 2K life and ES), you are doing something very wrong.

Scroll up. The tree I linked Fleve is the same as yours (except I pathed through Heart of the Oak and Charisma). I have done plenty of experimenting, trying to find a good balance and was just sharing what personally works best for me, since he asked if those life numbers are a strict requirement. (Clearly not.)

I misunderstood - I thought you had a total sum of 2k with life and ES. 4k is very different.

Oh! I might have phrased that wrong. I can see why you would be like "wut?" XD

Thanks everyone, I've re-geared and respecced and it's clearly helping. My ranger survives better AND deals more damage now that I've specced into the shadow area and picked a different amulet. Here's the current build:



There are some nodes in there that might be temporary (Thief's craft, some eva/life nodes) until I have enough free points to spec into a notable passive node. I would love to get Mind Drinker, Bloodthirst and Influence to finish it off.

The only difference (other than the Heart of Oak connection) my current build has compared to yours, Asidra, is that yours has progressed 5 points further up the shadow area (crit node, int, int, life%, life% nodes) because I used those 5 points to spec into Charisma instead. I really wanted to see and try whether I'd like a dual aura (hatred/grace) setup, and it's just 5 points I can easily unspec. So far I'm loving it but it has its drawbacks. Yesterday I spend the day fixing the problems I had created with losing 8% life leech from the amulet, and having far less mana because of two aura's I'd love to keep running.

I really, really didn't want to replace my +fire dmg gem on my split arrow with a life leech/gain on hit gem, the dps loss is outrageous (almost 600 on the tooltip). So the only way around was to get life leech on other gear. I replaced Meginord's Girdle with a Wurm's Molt I still had stashed away (2% life/mana leech), bought some gloves with better resists and 1% life leech, which allowed me to switch to a different quiver with less resists but +2% life leech and 1% mana leech, for a total of 5% life leech and 3% mana leech. For single target tanking I replaced the rarity gem on my barrage with a life leech gem, which currently makes for a total of 12% leech on barrage. I lost a bit of dps like this as well (Meginord's gets me an extra 100 life, 200 dps) but it's better than losing the fire gem . Once I spec into Mind Drinker I'll ditch the Wurm's for a better belt.

I tried 1% mana leech from only the quiver, but with only 107 mana left after the aura reservations that just didn't cut it. It worked as long as I was hitting 3-4 enemies or more, but being able to spam your main attack is just vital. With 2-3% mana leech I can keep spamming split arrow indefinitely as long as I'm hitting at least 2 enemies, any less and I'm better off using barrage anyway. 12% life leech on barrage is amazing and with more life, enfeeble and smoke mines, melee bosses have become a lot less troublesome.

Currently I'm sitting at 4k hp, but once I replace the Wurm's that's 4250, and if I notice that's still not enough I'll ditch the Rat's Nest for an arguably better helmet I've got stashed to make for a total of 4500. I found a nice quiver with good dps but no resists (6-12 phys; 20% ele; 7-16 fire dmg; 33% crit multi; +86 life, and some other stuff), that covers the dps loss from ditching the Nest, I'd just have to get some better resist gear first.