[Cspace]

I realize the importance of builds. The skills you bring with your character dictate a lot of what you can physically do, so it's best to choose skills that work together and aren't too spread out. I'm all for playing with the numbers to maximize the effectiveness of your skills... But what is your character, merely a set of skills?

The one element that I feel is missing from the build paradigm is how one plays his/her character.

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I'll use R/W as an example since that's what I've played the most.

Often I receive questions and criticism about where I put my attributes. Specifically, why do I put points in both swords as well as marksmanship? The reason is how I play the character, and I see attributes as a balancing element. When doing this, my skills tend to work for both a sword as well as a bow. How can they be used differently?

You'll thank yourself for having marksmanship when...

• Your target is either unreachable or running away.
• You want to attack a ranged enemy without getting others' aggro.
• You're fighting something while the group is at a range, it dies, and you need to take out that spellcaster-harassing mob that is a five-second run from you.

You'll thank yourself for having a melee weapon when...

• You need a faster weapon speed to take someone out (more rolls to get through blocking or avoidance to apply poison, or something else of that sort).
• Mobs are grouped closely together near the group.
• You want to cause a finger wiggler anxiety in a PvP battle.
• You're needed to fulfill the role of a tank.

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Putting eight points into swords instead of boosting wilderness survival or beast mastery by one or two points seems worth it to me. Yeah, my poison may otherwise be able to last a second or two longer, or my pet may get a few more HP per heal, but how much is that worth? An already high attribute requires a ton of points for that small boost... And some skills will show absolutely no change. The numbers will look a little better for one who calculates a build, but how much better does it play?

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Maybe I'm easy-going, but I just feel that there's too much focus on numbers. The skills are very important. The attributes are also important. However, I feel that if a skill has sufficient points to be effective, you won't be killing yourself to put points elsewhere if you have a reason... Even if those points are allocated for reasons unrelated to the skills themselves. You'll often regret bringing the wrong skills, but you probably won't die because you didn't up some stat from 10 to 11.


I don't really see GW as a card game with skills for cards, but as a game where other things can come into play that can't be linked with the Ctrl button. The attribute paradigm is what causes me trouble, but I'm sure other similar factors get to those who play other classes as well. Perhaps one's choice of runes, one's choice of weapon, an unusual focus on a secondary class, or an unusual tactic.

I guess the reason I bring this up is because I'm wondering what everyone truly thinks, and what exactly is important in a build?

[Rylkan]

I tend to look for a chain of effects. Example I will bring up nuking. People like burning, heck, who wouldn't, it's a nice -7 degen from one status effect, sounds great. So if I wanted to use burning, I would think "What causes burning" and maybe there is a core skill in my bar. If this skill requires something else to activate it, the example being Mark of Rodgort and a fire damage attack, then I think, which move does this requirement best for my purposes. It could be that it gives you a certain effect or extra damage, whatever you may decide on.

Then I look at the effectiveness. Like now I will use Mark of Rodgot and mention R/E. Rangers may not be as bad at energy regen as Paragons and Warriors, but we dont have many skills or weapons that support much in the way for energy. So from there I might decide, do I try to find a way to make it cost effective, as well as making sure it cannot be blocked, overcome easily, etc.

Then I think of numbers. Which is why builds I post tend to say that people should play with the numbers. I try to place as much as I can in my stats because admittedly, as a ranger, usually I am going for damage output. But sometimes, like apply poison which is a great example, I say, the effect is still good at low levels, and throw it in. It depends on the skill itself.

[Goto]

While I recognize that playing style will always be a more important factor than stats, in the planning phase of a build I find it's more important to consider the mathematics of attribute points and skills heavily. Teamwork is usually based around individuals doing their own job as best they can, so that as a whole your team can eliminate many of its weaknesses even if individuals aren't balanced. If everyone in the party tries to fulfill several roles simultaneously you end up watering down all those roles to the point where they're no longer as effective. An elementalist can't be expected to nuke with any decent power and stay self-sufficient in terms of healing and protection. They might be able to alleviate the pressure of a dedicated healer slightly, but that should be remain secondary to their job. Flexibility is good, but shouldn't come at the expense of substance. If you can counter situations using an extra skill or two, fine. If you're having to pump almost a third of your attribute points (level 10) just for a 'what if' that will not serve you at all the rest of the time, to me that seems an inefficient waste of potential. The sad truth is that in high-level areas an attribute level of 9 or 10 in the stats you're most relying on is not going to be sufficient to be competent for most builds.

When I'm designing a build, I will usually find a particular concept or skill synergy I want to build it around. An example would be an anti-melee Assassin build I came up with a while ago. I decided I wanted to maintain Critical Defenses permanently by increasing the critical hit ratio. So that involved Dagger Mastery and Crit Strikes as the primary attributes, with Shadow Arts as secondary to provide some survivability.
The next step is to determine what skills complement the basic idea of it within the attribute lines I'm already utilizing, so as to not water down the basic concept. I always try to make use of the attributes that I'm pumping significant amounts of points into, rather than just having them as a one-off for a skill I particularly want to take along. Making use of what I've already got, basically.

I think a lot of how a person plays can be determined by which class they learnt the game as. I like to do things directly and I like damage-dealing builds, because I was a hammer warrior. I've noticed a tendency among Ranger players to try to accomplish everything within a single build, and to spread out points fairly broadly. Ranger skills do tend to be seperated so that it sometimes becomes necessary to spread points between a number of attributes, but that's a strategy that for most other classes leads to a weak build, and usually a quick death. If 5 or 6 of your skills are based on a single attribute and gain power substantially per level invested in it (e.g. most pure spellcasting builds) then a single point or two in the higher levels can make a huge difference to your effectiveness. For a MM necro it might be an extra level or two to every single minion you create, meaning higher armour ratings and DPS. Nukers can suddenly kill tough enemies in significantly less spells, saving energy. Same with Monks or Mesmers, every spell has to count for as much as possible because they don't have the capacity to keep things up indefinitely. This is kind of rambling on quite a lot without covering a lot of ground, so I think I'll shut up now. I guess I'm just saying that for most builds it's best to find a purpose that can be achieved utilizing 2-3 attributes (sometimes with a few points pumped into a 4th, but it really depends on situation and your secondary class) and build around that, and manage to live without that one skil you love from a completely unrelated area.

[Neraphym]

Choosing skills and attributes is one of the greatest ways to learn about economics. High attributes are critically necessary in some cases, whereas in others, they are damaging.

Of all the different roles, none benefits from high attributes like a MM does. As Goto said, it can make a huge difference for them. That's why I give my MM's 16 Death magic and a Ghials (a real Ghials on my Necro, a perfect moded knock-off on my Master of Whispers). In cases like these, the marginal cost of the attribute points is definitely worth it.

In the case of more Physical classes, the marginal costs of adding more attributes becomes meaningless. Because 75 HP is more valuable than 2 extra points in a category, few of them use Superior Runes.

Lastly, we need to consider skills. Not all skills increase evenly in effectiveness when gaining attribute points. For example, the fire magic skills, Immolate. With 10 points in fire magic, immolate does 45 damage and sets targets on fire for 2 seconds. Adding 1 attribute point allows you to do 3 extra damage. In this case, you just wasted an attribute point (provided you lack other fire skills that would benefit). Alternatively, if you added another atrribute point, this time you'd gain 3 more damage and an extra second of burning (which is 14 damage). When dealing with skills like these, you need to make sure you have attributes above a certain level to get the full benefit of the spell. Sometimes, such levels will actually be at the cap of 16 points.

[Cspace]

I'd think that it probably affects each profession differently. The spellcasters probably need to calculate their builds a lot more than a fighter, since they rely more heavily on their skills to get the job done. A fighter seems more split between weapon damage and skills since they're needed for both.

Warriors, rangers, paragons, dervishes, and assassins all have weapon attributes. For me at least, I'd consider their weapon attributes to be the most important for one's primary profession unless a build requires otherwise. The skills are also very important, as with any profession, but in the case of these professions I'd consider them as supplementary since many are linked to a weapon striking a target.

Warriors, dervishes, and assassins will tend to have a different feel than a ranger or paragon when it comes to this. Depending on the skills, some which could potentially work for any weapon, I would think that maybe a need would arise to use a secondary weapon of the opposite type (ranged or melee). If the skills aren't that sensitive to the attributes, and if the skills will work for any weapon, maybe enough points to use a secondary weapon could be spared... Something like eight so you can find a perfect weapon to use, while your primary weapon gets something like 12 (taking runes and armor into account).

Just another way to see things I guess. I wouldn't always do this... In fact, unless for PvP or a group has a need for a tank, I am usually either 100% ranger or I have a finger wigglin' secondary. Goto's right about focusing for the vast majority of effective builds, but I figured that I would explain how I sometimes do things as a ranger. It probably won't work for everyone, maybe it can be incorporated into another build, but we're all fairly open about builds so I thought I'd contribute an idea to discuss.

Thanks for the feedback

[Goto]

To take for a moment the specific example we were talking about the other day, of putting points into both Swordsmanship and Marksmanship for flexibility. Your build had no bow attacks and only 1 sword attack (Hundred Blades). While Hundred Blades is a Swordsmanship skill, it is essentially unlinked as it functions the same no matter your level. Now I'm not debating that being able to switch weapon at will is a useful thing, and for the sake of this post I'm not worried about whether it's cost effective. In this particular situation it doesn't seem necessary. From what I could see your build was designed to be able to survive multiple physical enemies (preferably warriors) using stances, and use Hundred Blades to poison them all using Apply Poison. Alternatively you could poison foes from a distance. That's quite a useful strategy, but your rank in your weapon attributes had no effect on the actual spreading of poison. Those points are only going to good use if the natural damage you're inflicting is worth the points, the poison damage is happening regardless. Your targets were going to mostly be Warriors and Rangers, and we were in Hard Mode THK so they'd all have ridiculously high armour ratings. Jade Armors and Bows on hard mode are hardly touched by physical attacks, it was the poison that was making our job easier.

It would have been just as effective to run in there with a 0 in Swordsmanship and Hundred Bladed them that way. You might be doing a 0 in damage instead of a couple of points but considered next to the effectiveness of the poison or the fact that you're keeping strong melee fighters away from our squishies, such a minor variation in damage is essentially nonexistent. a base 10 in Marksmanship and a 8 in Swordsmanship together make up 98 attribute points. Considering you had a few spare points (5 or so, from what I saw) pumped into rank 1 or 2 levels of Axe, Hammer or Tactics then that makes over half your attribute points pretty much unused. Admittedly it's probably not a good idea to go in with neither attribute as then you're completely at the mercy of anything that poison won't work on well. Having significant points in both weapons so that you could properly wield them might be unnecessary though, you could probably get by with just the bow, while still using a sword which reverts down to base damage.

It's not that uncommon a tactic really. IWs use swords with no skill in them, since the damage doesn't come from the physical attacks itself. I've seen Assassin builds using daggers for energy regen without having enough Dagger Mastery to cause significant damage, and of course I've used a req 13 staff on my D/A runner so that I got the extra energy and mods. It could even be compared to the fact that any half-competent player that is used to soloing with henchies will always carry a longbow in their inventory regardless of their profession.

Also this isn't strictly relevant, but just something I should probably point out...

You'll thank yourself for having marksmanship when...

* Your target is either unreachable or running away.
* You want to attack a ranged enemy without getting others' aggro.

Be very careful about this one if you're going to take a pet with you everywhere you go. You may suddenly be a ranged fighter, but if your pet runs down and aggros everything nearby you're back at square one.

[Spikeout]

i think the torch and anni are missing factors

[Goto]

You've lost me.

[Cspace]

Well, when it comes to THK and taking out the Jade Bows and Jade Armors, poison would have no effect. I swapped Hundred Blades for Wild Blow since the last part is the most difficult, and I'd rather be set to take on the Jade mobs than the earlier mobs that the group could more easily handle. I still brought poison, but couldn't spare a slot for Hundred Blades so I took Escape as my other elite to help with avoiding their attacks (to replace another avoidance skill). I also brought the Rez Signet.

I switched my stats around to favor swords and tactics for that particular mission (and I zeroed Marksmanship), and I guess it turned out alright since we finished it. I'm not sure that I'd use that build again, and will probably create a more warrior-centered build for when we need an extra tank.

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However, I still see the other build as fine for most things. The 10 Marksmanship was actually 12 due to armor and a rune, and losing all of Marksmanship to favor Swords would just bring Swords from 8 to 12. So I'd either have 12 Marksmanship and 8 Swords, or 12 Swords and 2 Marksmanship. For the way I play, and due to Butch, I usually consider bows to be more useful than a melee weapon... So unless I'm going as a tank, I almost always have Marksmanship as my highest attribute.

When it came to the extra points in Tactics and Axes, I think that was just two or three. I stuck them in a stat instead of leaving them unassigned, but they were just points I couldn't fit anywhere else. I wouldn't have actually brought skills that relied on those attributes.

As for the other stats, I consider Beast Mastery to be second to Marksmanship and Wilderness Survival to be third to Marksmanship. Both are usually 10 or 11 due to runes (I have one for each ranger attribute). When I have a need for avoidance I usually switch Wilderness Survival for Expertise, or if the abilities are defensive and aren't sensitive to attributes, I split the difference so Wilderness Survival is at the lowest threshold for a good tick of Troll Unguent.

I try to balance the attributes between versatility and what is required for the skills I'm bringing. If I need to fill a specific role I'll focus on that, but otherwise I'll try to determine how effective my skills will have to be for what we're about to do. If the skills are good enough, I find another place to put the remaining points if I could potentially bring a supplementary ability (such as Well of Blood) or weapon (such as swords). I see versatility as a strength if the skills are effective together.

I'm not sure that I'd say the same if my primary class weren't Ranger, but it just seems that the skills I bring aren't usually very hungry for points, at least for the ways in which I use them.

Be very careful about this one if you're going to take a pet with you everywhere you go. You may suddenly be a ranged fighter, but if your pet runs down and aggros everything nearby you're back at square one.

Indeed.

Just have to remember to set the pet to not attack anything until the mob is close enough. I learned that the hard way.