Tips for Ranger?

[Valeli]

So I just finished act 1 on normal, but that last fight was a bit tough. I'd have lost if I hadn't been able to port out to refill my potions (and after D3, that feels cheaty). The problem is that I found myself getting hit by either the freezing spikes or the hand every time I stopped to shoot. The freezing spikes were generally avoidable, but when they did freeze me I'd loose big chunks of health. (The second part of the fight was no problem).

I notice the same thing happened to me on Brutus, although his chain was a lot easier to avoid. Still, I'd have problems stopping to shoot without getting hit. So I'm sensing a pattern here that I need to work on if I want to avoid dying in the future. Any clue what I'm doing wrong just from the description?

For skills I mostly am using rain of arrows when I want to clear aoe stuff, and burning arrow as my higher damage single target spell. I have a support +cold damage and +cold time linked to burning arrow, and my quiver has cold on it so rain of arrows slows stuff a bit too.

I have some poison arrow available that I haven't really played with, and an ice arrow skill I haven't tried out yet. I tried split/multishot, but was fairly unimpressed. I prefer rain of arrows to that by a lot I think.

Edit: Also, for gear, am I going to want to branch out into other charachter's areas to pick up intelligence or strength soon? I'm noticing a very large ammount of gear is starting to become unequipable to me because it has int or str reqs of 30 or so, and I'm sitting pretty on like 14.... I've mostly just been picking up +dex talents along with +bow damage/speed/crit talents for now, since I'm fairly sure I won't end up regretting those.

Any other tips for someone who just picked this up?

[BaronScarpia]

I play a marauder, which gives me some "tankability". When that fails, I run and shot a poison arrow in whatever is chasing me and keeps running. They also deal damage to monster life even if energy shield is up (poison arrows are very good, I use them "unsupported" on act 3 cruel and they work).

With my ranger (which I don't like, since I have to pay attention for mana), I use bear trap a lot, to have more run to runs. Bear trap + poison arrow helps me a ton. (If you don't have bear trap, just create a new ranger and grab it, it's one of the first rewards. And OP). Fire trap is cool to, since it deals AoE, its OP-ish and burns targets sometimes.

Also, there's a 30 str and a 30 int node nearby some life nodes on ranger tree (into "shadow tree" direction). Maybe one big int node is enough for most of the cool stuff (some auras, etc.). As for life nodes, I really like some things on the duelist/ranger tree (diamond skin, the bow crit circle, life regen, etc.) The node with life and strenght can be very useful. It's nice to have some extra str. for support gems, totems, etc.

Another important thing is to focus on elemental damage or physical damage on arrows. If you like rain of arrows, you could try frenzy as an single target spell. If you like burning arrow (probably you should like ice shot or lightning arrow but... ), then you can use the "everyone-else-is-doing" lightning arrow + suports for AoE and elemental hit + supports for single targets. Basically, it dictates if you want to focus on +elemental damage or just pay attention to crits/attack speed and physical damage. If you are unsure, go for projectile damage, since it applies to both cases.

[DavidTheSlayer]

Agree with the above points pretty much what I do with BaronScarpia's first paragraph.

So far I'm in beginning of Act III. I'm using my own creation of an off-path ranger that uses totems but not the ancestral support bond keystone passive for support. I struggled as much as you Valeli. You'll find most act 1 mobs easy accept for the skeletons in the areas before the warden. Single target wise I use fire with my lucky 30% quality of items gem . Multi-target wise I'm using so far is, mutli-shot and split arrow which works very nicely just with raw damage. I've got a lot of dex but like you, not enough str and int, however if you head to the middle-right of the tree for the Ranger or down towards the Duelist, there are +str and int passives there I believe. These will keep ya good for at least 5-10 levels.

I'm not bothering with the pierce passive as I'm still experiementing once I get some skill support/totem gems. I would suggest you get decoy totem as whilst I've been quite lucky, it has saved my arse no end once cast where you can pick off bosses and mobs alike. Just rememeber it will drain your mana fast.

I don't use rain of arrows, but I do use ice shot if need be and my favourites so far, are puncture and posion arrow. By focusing on one target at a time for tough b**tards, I skirmish back a little to cleared areas so when I use decoy it doesn't attract other monsters. Then I use puncture and poison, puncture is for when they move towards me as it does loads more damage that way. Use fire arrow to strip their sheilds off or regular attack if they have sheilds (usually skeleton mages), and elemental resistance. This works awesomely against bears and big apes in act II. Multishot with split and multiple projectiles (even the lesser one) is awesome against the barbs in act II and particularly against the one where you have to decide which character to kill first, the melee one in that quest is quite hard to kill.

Lastly, act II, esp the pyramid is and tough, act III is worse than that, much harder, like die in 1-2 hit harder, so I would stack resistances, hp and evasion/armour which ever you choose. A quick silver flask is also damn helpful for running through crap after a crash from a full clear. Decent socketed bows will be your main concern from end of act II and start of act III as damage doesn't seem at powerful as some other weapons, maybe its just me though.

Hope this helps.

David

[fBSunny]

If you are playing on HC you really need to stack as much defense as you can. Get lots of hp on your items, it is the most important stat at low levels. Get resists where you can, they get very important in a2 and onward. I would also recommend at least considering getting Iron Reflexes, which will turn all of your evasion into armor. If you get lightning arrow+lesser multiple projectiles that does great AoE damage although it gets mana intensive. Just some thoughts.