[Zoo]

I wanted to do more with Kitty, so of course I went into overkill mode and got all the pet related skills. [I had most of them already, actually ... somehow O_o]. 'Tas taken me a few weeks, but here's something.

Comments/suggestions are demanded.



1. Call of Haste
2. Keen Arrow
3. Poisonous Bite
4. Scavenger Strike
5. Heal as One
6. Whirling Defense
7. Charm Animal (of course )
8. Rebirth

15 Beast Mastery, 12 Expertise, 11 Marksmanship, 3 Protection prayers. 35 total energy.

Straightforward. Definitely helps to have the pet's panel open. Start with Call of Haste and keep it up. Call a target and use Poisonous Bite. Kitty's pretty good about going where I call, but sometimes I'll use the target lock if it's a particularly important target. Use Scavenger's Strike after the pet has poisoned the target. If the target had a lot of health still, Strike can be used more than once. Bite and Strike don't queue up -- using one before the pet uses a prior order cancels the first -- and using Strike before a condition is inflicted still does extra damage, but more damage is dealt to a conditioned target. You'll probably want to skip the Bite if the target already has a condition. Use Keen Arrow at will.

Before I modified it (such as removing the cap sig ), I was still able to get the second set of extra damage from Strike using Burning Arrow against the stone things in Arborstone, since apparently even ice is flammable. Kind of hard to use both that and HAO at once . Could perhaps switch out for areas with many non-fleshies anticipated.

I went with Call of Haste rather than Protection or Otyugh's Cry because Kitty was taking his time using his skills, and most of the time he was taking little damage or the monks kept him healthy (much more the former, I believe).

Energy doesn't seem to be an issue. I got worried a time or two when I got pretty low, but I never ran out. Probably a bit to do with recharge times. (Definitely won't be spamming with this.)

Speaking of recharge times, the time for Heal As One is a bit longer than I sometimes would like, which is a bit of a problem if the monks are particularly busy at that moment. Most of where I tested the monks would heal me before I got a chance to use it, or at the same time I activated it >_<. Still, I was dead very much less often because of it.

Weapon mods don't affect the pet-inflicted poison (not that I would have thought of testing that myself, but I found this stated in the wiki and I did confirm), so I went with my favorite bow of the moment, a Fiery Spiked Recurve Bow of Fortitude (req 10), which also happens to have a 13% "dance with death" inscription. Not sure whether this is the best choice or not *shrug*. Probably depends on the enemies?

So.... all I can think of now; already trying to fall asleep.

Oh, yeah, I know I have two superior runes .

[Goto]

To be honest I'm even more unfamiliar with pet-based Rangers than I am with Rangers in general, but I'll try not to display my ignorance too strongly. I admit it's refreshing to see people going with attribute lines and build types that don't seem to be particularly popular. I presume you can get away with the two sup runes because you'll be standing back a bit letting your pet do most of the work and soak up most of the damage?

As far as your own damage-dealing abilities go... Keen Arrow is reasonably energy-efficient, but I seem to remember reading that below about 13 Marksmanship, it averages out to being weaker than other skills like Power Shot, due to the lower critical hit rate. If you're on the verge of running out of energy, I guess taking something more expensive is out of the question. Overall the build seems interesting, probably reasonably effective but without testing it out for myself I can't really provide any useful judgement of that. Regardless, I'm going to throw a few ideas out there because otherwise my post is pretty redundant.

It strikes me that you could do something interesting if you dropped the res. You're mostly trying to augment the damage-dealing of an ally, and someone that is quite good at that is Rits. Now naturally you don't have the same energy supply as a Rit (and not too many attribute points to spare either), but there's probably a few interesting things that could be done with weapon spells. Something I quite liked the sound of was Sundering Weapon. It's cheap, the recharge isn't too bad and it'll provide you with another condition, Cracked Armor. It also won't need too many points to be fairly efficient. If you take the 3 points from Protection Prayers into Communing, you'd have 8 seconds of Cracked Armor. If you're able to take any points at all from one of your other attributes, you'd pretty much have enough to make good use of it. Cracked Armor is pretty good in its own right, but it would also allow you to use something like Body Shot as your bow attack. It has the same regular bonus damage as Keen Arrow, and coupled with Cracked Armor would provide you with a form of limited energy management, a gain of 6 energy each time you use it (at the attributes you listed, anyway).

Anyway, that's one possibility. You could also swap your pet attacks around depending on circumstance, but that's a fairly obvious one. Something like Bestial Pounce could be useful in areas with lots of casters with slow spells, or Melandru's Assault if there's significant mobbing and enchants (if you can afford it). If you were doing the Cracked armor weapon spell thing listed above, I guess you wouldn't absolutely need Poisonous Bite to trigger Scavenger Strike, so that might be able to be swapped for something based on the area you're planning to be in.


Another possibility is to try to increase your own damage in a more regular fashion by swapping in Read the Wind somewhere. This will give you a much faster and lower arc shot, somewhat defeating the purpose of using a Recurve bow. The bow type that benefits most from Read the Wind is the flatbow, since RtW actually sets the arc type to a constant, regardless of what bow you use. Quantified, I seem to remember that it makes a Recurve bow about twice as fast, but a flatbow about four times as fast as normal. You'd have the range of a longbow (to keep you out of harms way with your two sup runes) and the speed of a shortbow. I guess you could also try a hornbow for the armour penetration, of course.



Hmm.. That's all I can think of right now, it's pretty late. I'm not suggesting your build is incomplete or bad or anything, I just enjoy trying to find synergies between skills sometimes. You guys know a looot more about rangers than I do, so feel free to correct me if I've gotten stuff wrong, or missed something obvious.

[Zoo]

I admit it's refreshing to see people going with attribute lines and build types that don't seem to be particularly popular.

Yeah, not really happy with the few builds I've found in this area. Plus I wanted to try to come up with something myself, and since I rarely go without Kitty, seemed the obvious choice.

I presume you can get away with the two sup runes because you'll be standing back a bit letting your pet do most of the work and soak up most of the damage?

Actually I still tend to be in the middle of things, I know how to get the h/hs to go ahead of me but it's one more thing to deal with that can overwhelm me sometimes >_<. Have 400 health with the bow I mentioned, and a major vigor (which I could probably switch for a superior with a little more farming, but it's 9 more points, not sure if that's worth it?), though I don't know how that compares. Probably rely on the monks a bit much, which is so easy to do when they do such a good job most of the time >_<. Not always, but a lot of the problem is getting overwhelmed with more than one... or two... or three mobs, like when I'm being lazy trying to skirt past a mob, to get to the next one we'll have to fight, and hey look! There's a pop-up of Onis, so we have the onis, and the mobs on either side of us.

As far as your own damage-dealing abilities go [etc.]

I'll have to look into these things. I dunno if I was thinking completely straight last night , I kind of looked at what I had, went 'meh' and went to see what else there was >_<.

It strikes me that you could do something interesting if you dropped the res.

I just tend to not trust my heroes (especially when they're all dead, along with the henchies) when I have to retreat, and the dead people are pretty close to the enemies.

Something I quite liked the sound of was Sundering Weapon. [etc.]

That does sound interesting. This is why I asked for suggestions, 'cause I really don't know much about non-ranger skills, not having played other things much until recently .

If you were doing the Cracked armor weapon spell thing listed above, I guess you wouldn't absolutely need Poisonous Bite to trigger Scavenger Strike, so that might be able to be swapped for something based on the area you're planning to be in.

Yeah, all Strike needs is a condition, doesn't matter which. Would allow switching the Bite for something that deals extra damage. Although the poison is quite handy... except areas where most things can't be poisoned. Which would be a good place to switch that out.

Another possibility is to try to increase your own damage in a more regular fashion by swapping in Read the Wind somewhere. [stuff in the middle that is useful, but makes the quote box bigger] You'd have the range of a longbow (to keep you out of harms way with your two sup runes) and the speed of a shortbow.

I've gathered up quite a collection of bows and strings so trying different ones will be quite simple . I've tended to stick with a recurve for most things (though I always have a long and short on me too) because of the balance between range and speed.

I've never quite understood what armor penetration does (well, besides penetrate armor ), which could be because I've never thought to look it up .

I'm not suggesting your build is incomplete or bad or anything, I just enjoy trying to find synergies between skills sometimes.

I wouldn't have taken it that way, 'cause you didn't say anything to that effect, and I did ask . Which is why I asked .

So I guess I know what I'm going to do tonight , have a lot of things to try that I probably wouldn't have thought of myself.

*edit*
Now I understand armor penetration

[Goto]

Recurves are my favourite too, personally.

Speaking of which, I've probably got some inscriptions and mods that might be helpful to you, if you're using that bow you mentioned earlier. I know I've got some perfect martial inscriptions around, a perfect fort mod for a bow, and I might have some other bow mods to round that off. Let me know if you're interested and I'll take a look later, honestly I need to get rid of some of the stuff filling up my storage.

[Zoo]

I actually have a perfect fort, although it's on a bow I haven't decided to tear apart yet (probably 'cause it's silencing as well, good for going to make rotscale look like a pincushion -- I would be too busy not dying to count, but it's probably well into the low thousands...). The recurve I'm using has a +29 though . And I have at least one of every bowstring known to man now (those dead bows in HM Nebo Terrace have all kinds of cool stuff on them). I wouldn't mind seeing what you have though.


I got kind of sidetracked last night >_<. I couldn't figure out why I couldn't find some of the skills you mentioned (and why I hadn't heard of body shot), and thinking it really sucked that the skill trainer with all the skills is in a faction-controlled area. [Could be incorrect, but according to the wiki, apparently there are only two trainers in cantha with all the skills, one deep in luxon territory, and the other in an area that may or may not be in my favor. (I compared skill lists there to be 'sure'.)] Thing with the trainer doesn't really matter now, 'cause they're GW:EN skills .


Was meaning to try different skill combos, but got sidetracked testing bows. [The side of me that loves to experiment systematically elbowed it's way in....] Then after a few (rather disappointing) tests, I realized that my bows weren't really equivalent, so I made them so (or so I thought) and went out again. The recurve I switched to was being very disappointing, taking 3 times as long to take down the 60 armor as the other two. Try that a few times. Then I look at the stats again and see it's a req 12, and I'd rearranged my stats to test a modification to that build -- which I was on my way to do when I got distracted by the armors, so I'd lowered it to 9, which was fine for the other two.


I'll probably look it up in a minute, but I tried my forgotten flatbow on that master of enchantment, and it seemed to be about the same in energy regen as a non-zealous bow (and I know that the zealous bow takes away from normal regen... which implies that there's some advantage, at least under the right conditions), with Read the Wind. I didn't miss often or anything.

There's definite energy issues (hence that thought with the flatbow), especially throwing in non-ranger skills (was trying brutal weapon). Good thing with the lower cost skills with expertise, the cost is low enough with expertise to be able to use them pretty quickly. Just... one at a time. Think one thing with the original is I don't actually use all of those, or not often. And spirit shackles just sucks.


Didn't actually do anything else, so I'll be trying more things tonight, I think. (Unless I get sidetracked farming collectibles for the bows I want for testing >_<.)


*edits*
Ok, so that explains the lack of zealousness. I didn't realize how much I was going to learn from this O_o.

[Zoo]

Didn't do a lot with this last night, wanted to test the hornbow before I modded it.

I set up similar to this when I was collecting the azure remains for it though, so after I was done with the bow I changed things a little and tested it a bit.


1. Call of Haste
2. Needling Shot
3. Feral Lunge
4. Scavenger strike
5. Bestial Pounce
6. Read the Wind
7. Heal as One
8. Charm Animal

15 Beast Mastery, 13 Expertise and 9 Marksmanship

Similar to the first one, start with Call of Haste, Needling Shot, Feral Lunge, then I'll use Read The Wind if I remember it. I don't put it closer to the beginning because I'm extremely habituated to the second and third slots being attacks. Feral Lunge isn't as consistent as Poisonous Bite in causing a condition (bleeding in this case), but it seems to be more than made up for with the bonus damage (and if I hit it accidentally, which I tend to do a lot with Bite, it's not wasted energy), and when I have MoW with me the minions' Death Novae add the possibility of poison, and Sousuke adds some burning.

Scavenger Strike is obviously still used on targets with conditions, or if I could really use a little extra damage now, and the other skills are still recharging. I try to limit that since it costs 10 energy (well, 5 with that expertise, but that's still 1/7 of the possible available energy, where the 5s all cost 2).

Bestial Pounce adds a bit more damage at low cost, and it's nice to have it if I'm going to be somewhere with non-fleshies, since for the most part there won't be the conditional damage from Strike.

I only tested with the Ascalon Hornbow (which I put a 12% sundering string on... it's essentially the same as the unmodded bow by my limited testing, with or without RtW) and the forgotten flatbow, so I'll be wanting to try it with others. It seems to go better with the flatbow, at least in terms of energy, even without RtW (which is good since I forget to put it on when I'm in the middle of a real fight >_<). Seems it could be because the fight goes faster, given the higher refire rate and that the hornbow requires an enchantment for its bonus damage.

Then again, I ran around and tried to kill everything on the Isle of the Nameless, and I held out very long against the Master of Healing and Master of Enchantments (eventually I gave up, 'cause they didn't seem to ever run low on energy), and I did eventually manage to kill the Master of Spirits. Eventually managed to kill the Master of Survival too, wishing I had brought any sort of crippling skill. Kitty's pretty good with running targets, as long as I just follow and try to hit when I can. I tried running around the opposite way but he followed me instead of her even with target lock on. Killed almost everyone else.

So then I went to Unwaking Waters. I tried both bows and got similar results, with and without (mostly without 'cause I forget it >_<) RtW. We did pretty well (with the flatbow) until we got swarmed by about 20 foes, seemingly half of them being saltspray dragons and the other half Kraken Spawns. Then we all died.

Discovered one pretty big (I think) advantage to having pet attacks -- they work through binding chains. Apparently not through Pacifism >_<, but it's nice in an area where you're under binding chains a lot. (Which seems to be A LOT when one is in those areas.)

[Zoo]

I'm liking this one:



1. Call of Haste
2. Keen Arrow
3. Feral Lunge
4. Scavenger Strike
5. Bestial Pounce
6. Weaken Armor
7. Heal as One
8. Charm Animal

14 Beast Mastery, 13 Expertise, 9 Marksmanship, 6 Curses

Used this with a Rotwing recurve, low requirement and +5 energy (for a total of 40), although this doesn't seem to be energy intensive. But then it might seem so because the build it grew out of was extremely so.

Call of Haste, Keen Arrow, Feral Lunge. Weaken Armor on appropriate targets. Scavenger Strike on Conditioned targets. Bestial Pounce as needed.