Ranger
Bow Build
Want to be able to shroud yourself in the shadows? To shoot fast, hit hard, and heal whilst you do it? The Ranger build might be for you. A great build for early PvP and the perfect way to level up your bow mastery in any area. This build is designed to be usable at any ping, as most of the effects used are targeted.
This is a great starter build, boasting high single target damage, with good AOE clearing potential for PvE. The Ranger build not only offers you sustain to keep in the fight, and stay healthy fighting mobs, but the option to turn invisible at a moments notice, to escape mob aggro, or the attention of other players. A great way to get out of trouble quickly, is to start your wanderlust skill before disappearing with the hellion hood, before rushing out of stealth at high speed to escape to safety.
Multishot: This is a great spell for keeping melee attackers at bay, or interrupting enemy spell casts or channels. It also does damage in an area, making it great for clearing through mobs in dungeons. You may want to change this to poison arrows when fighting other ranged opponents.
Explosive Arrows: This is a perfect pairing with the Enchanted quiver main spell of the bow. It adds area of effect damage to all your attacks, which also works with multishot, again really helping with clearing mobs. In PvP make sure you stack up your enchanted quiver to pierce your opponent before activating explosive arrows to really maximize the damage.
Enchanted Quiver: A spell adding bonus damage and attack speed to your auto attacks. Upon reaching 6 stacks you will pierce any opponents you hit with your auto attacks, increasing their damage taken. Not only will this increase your Explosive arrow damage, as mentioned above, but also your multishot damage, and any damage from allies.
Equipment abilities
Hellion hood
Your bow abilities are purgeable, as is your mercenary jacket. To stay safe from fiend cowls the Hellion Hood allows you to continue to deal damage, whilst shrouded by a purple cloud, turning you invisible, and silencing any opponents within it.
Mercenary jacket
A great choice to keep you healthy when trading damage with your opponent. To maximize its use, once you have lost at least 30% of your health, make sure your W and E spells are active, then activate your Jacket before popping the Hellion Hood to disappear into stealth.
Soldier boots
Wanderlust gives you a great escape, or lengthy chase potential. Should you wish, you could also run the rejuvenating sprint to help with your sustain should you prefer it in PvP or need it in PvE. Dodge roll can also be a good options in cases where you need to dodge burst damage or mob spells.
Cape
Standard cape is fine just for the energy regain. If you have the money and want to improve dungeon clear times you can opt to wear a Thetford Cape.
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Passives
Your main aim is to do as much damage as possible, whilst staying as tanky as possible to keep you in the fight. For this reason you want the “balanced mind” passive on leather, and “toughness” passive on plate items. “Piercing arrows” will help you deal more damage, adding a resistance reduction to your auto attacks.
Beef Stew
The bow offers you high attack speed, and the ability to pierce an opponent so they take more damage. Increasing your damage with stew allows you to really lay on the damage to those pierced opponents.
Resistance potion
The bow is a great offensive weapon, but a little lacking in the defense side. The hellion hood can help you avoid damage, but in those cases where you already have something nasty cast on you, the resistance potion can help mitigate damage taken.
Strengths
- Very good in PvE
- Good in PvP
- Very high damage even at low tier
- Easy for new players to learn
- High ping friendly
- Cheap
Counters
- Counters
- Cultist cowl
- Quarterstaffs
- Highly mobile builds