Having trouble with Dominus in cruel - - ranger

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kolyaboo wrote:

Thanks. I would make a new character but I don't play solo with this one, I play with a friend that's a witch and making a new character would be an inconvenience. I'd like to smarten this one up instead. If I ever make another ranger, I'll learn from this one. I can run MoM because of an aura that the witch runs. I never play solo with this character so that's not an issue.

I got past Dominus easily just a few minutes ago due to other people's auras, as you can see, this character can't run any aura.

I don't mind regretting some of the points; I have quite a few of the orbs and haven't used any of the character's respecs.

Considering using barrage and ice arrow as the main attacks, what would be the best allocation of the points in the tree to support the skills and what would be good support gems?

If you want to figure out what you are doing, then go to the Ranger forum and find a character build that you want to use.

If you are going to run behind stronger players, you will never figure out how to play your character. If these people are such good buds of yours, why aren't they helping you?

My first toon was also a bow Ranger, and she grew up using Ice Shot cause in D2 I often froze enemies for safety when soloing. Ideally, you'd max your crit chance as criting is what causes the baddies to freeze; otherwise they are simply slowed. To max your crit chance, it's best to get a different bow eventually as the "increased critical strike chance" works on the base crit chance of the bow. So having "100% increased" on a 5% bow leads to a total of 10% crit chance, but if the bow had 7.5% then you'd reach 15%.

I played Ice Shot ranger for group play as frankly freeze rangers aren't really that common. But later I switched to Lightning Arrow as I purposely leveled up about 4 bow gems at the same time. I then learned why LA bowman are so popular--they do clear much faster as the lightning shocks (if you crit) apply a damage multiplier so are even better in groups than Ice Shot for fast clearing. That said, play Ice Shot as it's fun, regardless of LA being more efficient.

I used LMP on Ice Shot, and did the same for LA. I also added Chain for LA. So these two skills were both AOE skills for me. Like most bowman, I used Frenzy for single monster DPS. You should then choose the +Frenzy nodes if you past them. I have not used Barrage, but most likely Frenzy is still better.

In terms of skill tree, first get more life, you can worry about damage later. You're right by Thick Skin get that, and you're close to several other Life sets. After getting more life, then you can increase your damage. I presume you'll spec out of the melee modes you chose at the start, I'd also dump the Chaos damage/resist ones. If you go crit then finish the Pressure Points set and ideally reach Lethality towards the end. Don't rush there though as you ought to change your bow to maximize a crit build, and as you seem self-found that might be tough. The Deadly Draw set are nice for both straight damage and crit.

Lastly, you're close to Iron Reflexes and already using Grace. I found that increased my survivability using cheap gear a lot. Otherwise you'll need to go high evasion gear, plus likely getting some special nodes like Acrobatics. There are lots of bowman who go high evasion and not the armour approach of Iron Reflexes, but that tends I think to require better gear. My L79 ranger's gear was in total around 20+ Chaos in Domination, so a pretty cheap build. In regular pub groups she can map up to around 69/70 comfortably, which is not very high but OK for a cheap build

GL

Thanks! I got the thick skin and more life nodes and finished pressure points. The more life is helping. I'm now in A2 of Merciless and havent croaked yet! :)