HR High Crit Build [MOD 8] by tacobeast94
Taco
DISCLAIMER: MUST BE OVER 3k IL TO RIDE THIS RIDE
I will update this guide periodically as it isn’t entirely complete. I originally posted it over on the arc site and the formatting didn’t transfer over very well.
The HR is an overwhelmingly underrated class. Many consider the HR a little brother to the CW – unable to CC as well and doesn’t do as much DPS. I’d like to shed a little light on a different (and potentially better) way to build a ranger.
Before I get ahead of myself and dive into the details of this build, I need to clarify a few things:
First off, I play on XBOX. Because of some differences between the two systems, I will detail my opinion for the best set-up as it relates to XBOX. Throughout the guide, I will note some differences I’ve heard from PC players where it’s applicable.
Secondly, this build is primarily focused on dealing a ton of DPS. Everything else comes second, but don’t worry he’s no glass cannon. Also, this is a PVE build. The HR is great for PVP and I might make a PVP guide in the future but this build is strictly intended for PVE.
Lastly, everything in this guide is a reflection of a build I came up with. I’m not saying it’s the best, but I sure do enjoy the DPS I can do. Use my guide as a foundation and feel free to experiment. I make only suggestions based on the path I took with my ranger. I am always open to new ideas so any thoughts or questions are always welcome.
Anyone looking for a guild, I’m a member of The Legendary Outlaws and we’re always looking for great players to join us.
Preface
This build is essentially a Trapper that capitalizes on Critical Chance/Severity and bonus damage from Combat Advantage. I recommend you have an Item Level of at least 3,000 before you go respeccing just be on the safe side. A “traditional” trapper would be considered mature into his build with an item level of 3000. That is not the case with this one. At 3000 you will just barely be learning to crawl. Patience will pay off as this is an end game build. The result of this build is a ranger that has about 192% critical severity and is an overall DPS machine.
Sneak Peek
Add a Perfect Vorpal and you’re at 192% (ignore the 10% buff from a potion)
Race
I went with Dragonborn for the 3% increase in Power and Critical Strike. If your only options are the default races then I would recommend going with either the Drow or Wood Elf so you can put the +2 into DEX and WIS.
Initial Stat Roll
Dexterity and Wisdom are your best friend. Dexterity gives you a damage bonus while Wisdom gives you an increase in crit chance (which we are going to need later on).
12 – STR
10 – CON
18 – DEX (16 + 2)
10 – INT
18 – WIS (16 + 2)
10 – CHA
Powers
I have a decent amount of roll-over points from Mod 5, and if you don’t have as many as me, then I would put the 4th points into Aspect of The Serpent, Cordon of Arrows/Plant Growth, Hindering Shot/Hindering Strike, and Constricting Arrow/Steel Breeze, in that order.
Power Rotations
I’ll sometimes change my rotation in certain situations but my general purpose rotation for DPS in dungeons is Hindering Shot/Hindering Strike, Cordon of Arrows/Plant Growth, and Constricting arrow/Steel Breeze. As for the passives I slot Aspect of the Serpent and Aspect of the Pack while I have Rapid Shot/Rapid Strike and Hunter’s Teamwork/Careful Attack for my at-wills. Finally, I use Seismic Shot and Forest Ghost for my dailies.
AotS is a great buff and can be very powerful if you know how the stacks work. AotP is something we can take advantage of and it adds an excellent boost in DPS for the rest of the party. A nifty quark to AotP is that you can even use it when you are soloing content because as long as your companion is within 25 feet of you, you’ll have permanent combat advantage regardless of placement (so long as you companion is not an augment).
If you’re feeling squishy or having a hard time soloing stuff, I would swap out Cordon of Arrows/Plant Growth for Fox’s Cunning/Fox’s Shift and switch AotP for Crushing Roots. This way, you get a free dodge from Cunning, you can’t get hit wile in Shift’s animation, and your Crushing Roots will prevent you from being hit as often. Also, we’re going to get a nice benefit to our survivability from lifesteal once we do our feats.
For those interested in exactly how I have my powers mapped: (X) Hindering Shot/Hindering Strike, (Y) Cordon of Arrows/Plant Growth, (B) Constricting Arrow/Steel Breeze, (LT) Hunter’s Teamwork/Careful Attack, (RT) Rapid Shot/Rapid Strike
How I order my powers is similar to katozee’s, only I have Cordon and Plant Growth in the place of Fox’s Cunning and Shift.
Starting with Ranged Stance: (Y) -> (B) -> (X) -> (RT/LT) -> (RB) -> (Y) -> (X) -> (B) -> (RT) -> (RB) and repeat
The above rotation allows the largest damage buff from AotS to apply to Cordon and Plant Growth (our hardest hitting powers). The second largest damage buff from AotS applies to our powers that apply Strong Grasping Roots.
For boss fights and single target DPS while in a group, your at-will has the power to do more damage than any other attack you have. Careful Attack allows you to mark an enemy and it is a DOT that procs every 1.5 seconds. The amount of damage that it deals depends on the amount of damage that has been done to the marked enemy in each of the 1.5 second intervals. So, in places like Tiamat and epic Demagorgon you’ll see that bad boy go off for 1 to 2 million every second and a half. Something to keep in mind with Careful Attack is that it is affected by Aspect of the Serpent. You can take advantage of this and just hit the boss with Rapid Shot to quickly stack up AotS from ranged stance and let Careful Attack get a nice damage buff. But it is a game of tug o’ war. Also, if you notice that it didn’t crit, just reapply it until it does and all DOTs will tick as well.
Feats
This is the bread and butter of this build. Skirmisher’s Gambit from the Combat Paragon increases your critical severity by 50% but your critical chance is reduced by 10%. The Hunter Ranger is the only class with a feat like this and it is extremely powerful. Combine this feat with a Perfect Vorpal and you will be at about 192% critical severity. Since we lost 10% crit chance, we’re going to need to make up for that, but it’s very easily doable.
Heroic Feats
Paragon Feats
Trapper Feats
For the many players who haven’t deviated at all from the Trapper tree, I’ll offer a bit of reasoning behind abandoning a few beloved feats. First off, Ancient Roots: why would we need the longer duration for roots? We don’t have cooldowns to begin with so we are constantly reapplying the roots.
Secondly, let’s go over Serpent’s Bite. The biggest argument you will hear in opposition to this build is Serpent’s Bite vs Skirmisher’s Gambit. To shorten my point I’ll just go ahead and say it: Skirmisher’s Gambit yields more damage than Serpent’s Bite. Below is a link to a spreadsheet my buddy Ney made comparing Serpent’s Bite and Skirmisher’s Gambit.
Click Here to check out the spreadsheet
Combat Feats
Boons
I dont have the last two boons for Tyranny of Dragons, but when (more like if) I get them, I’ll put them into Dragon’s Thirst for the increased lifesteal. The 3% lifesteal we’re missing out on won’t make a noticeable difference in the long run. On top of that, the Earth Archon gives us a damage boost when we’re at full health so that life steal will help us stay at full life.
The only boon I can’t suggest with certainty is the Guild Boon. You might be in a guild that has different boons than me and that could be a good or a bad thing. I have my offense boon set to Power while my defense boon is set to defense. I’d say power is better than armor penetration if you have it available and are already at 60% resistance ignored. For those interested, I use the XP boon from utility and my guild doesn’t have any PVP boon unlocked.
Enchantments
Weapon Enchantment – Perfect Vorpal (this is what brings you up to 192% crit severity)
Armor Enchantment – Trans Elven or Negation (personally I like the Elven)
Offense Slots – Azure or Brutal enchantments
Defense Slots – Dark enchantments
Utility – your preference (I use Fey Blessings)
Summoned Companion
Augments are ancient news. High ranking bonding runestones and a fast proccing companion is the way to go for all DPS classes. I use the mercenary, which can be obtained from the Heirloom pack in the ZEN market. Also, once you get the Heirloom pack, all of your characters can pick it up from the Reward Claims Agent in the enclave. Why the Mercenary? He has 3 offense slots you can slot all rank 12 Bondings into.
You might wonder why I would upgrade the bondings past Perfect (rank 10) since the percent of companion stats you receive remains the same. My answer plain and simply is that the game is wrong. After rank 10, the percentage goes up but the tooltip doesn’t update with the higher levels. Rank 11 Bonding Stones give you 80% of your companion’s stats while a rank 12 gives you a whopping 95% of your companion’s stats. So, when the mercenary procs three companions gift (which he does all the damn time) it’s like you running around with 3 Ioun Stones.
Honorable mentions for the summoned companion go to the Young Yeti, Air Archon, and Zhentarim Warlock.
But Taco, the Zhentarim Warlock is so much better!
Possibly, but only if you play on PC. PC has the Sword Coast and with it all of the cool companion only equipment pieces that would give that Warlock everything it needs to be a great buddy. However, on XBOX we don’t have the shiny and sparkly companion talismans that PC does. As a result, the rings and belts available to our Mercenary are far superior to the lacklustre talismans in the AH.
For those who need to see to believe, I have a little before and after for the companions gifts from my Mercenary with two Rank 12 Bonding and one rank 11 Bonding. Keep in mind, my Mercenary is only rare. I’ll get him legendary one day.
Active Companions
Fire Archon for 7% increased damage (at epic) against targets with less than 50% health. This is going to really be evident at major boss fights where they’re dbelow half health for a bit of time and their health accounts for a lot of damage in dungeons
Earth Archon for 6% increased damage against targets while you’re at full health. There are alternatives and feel free to swap this one out, but whenever you’re running in a group you’re usually going to be at full health thanks to a paladin, healer, and even your lifesteal
Erinyes of Belial for 10% increase in crit severity
Air Archon for the increased damage against enemies not at full health (5% at epic)
You might wonder why I;m going with the Erinyes of Belial. So without it, we’re at 182% crit severity. Increasing that by 10% to bring it up to 192% will actually yield us a 3.6% increase in damage (when our crit chance is at 90%).
AotP gives us permanent combat advantage. Because of this, we can get a consistent damage increase from running the Blink Dog and Intellect Devourer which give you 5% combat advantage damage each at epic. So, feel free to experiment. At the moment, My setup is what I’ve listed.
Artifacts
Lantern of Revelation
+1,000 Critical Strike
+1,000 Armor Penetration
+600 Combat Advantage
Thayan Book of the Dead
+1,000 Critical Strike
+1,000 Armor Penetration
+600 Action Point Gain
Sigil of the Controller
+1,000 Power
+1,000 Critical Strike
+600 Control Resist
Lostmauth’s Horn of Blasting
+1,000 Power
+1,000 Armor Penetration
+600 Control Bonus
Another artifact worth mentioning is the wheel of elements. It’s good to use in the active artifact slot so you can pop it, get the fire buff, and deal an additional 30% damage. Personally, I prefer the Lantern as it’s a damage buff for the entire party.
Gear
I’m currently using the Dragonflight Raid Hood, Dragonflight Raid Gaiters, Elven Assault Coat, and Elven Assault Bracers. Get the Lostmauth set for the neck and belt (extra damage every time you crit). I’ll probably switch some stuff out for the Umbral gear once my guild unlocks it. As for the rings I’m currently wearing the Ring of Rising Precision +4 and Ring of Brutality +4. My companion is wearing the Ring of Rising Power +4, Ring of Brutality +4, and the Dragonflight Assault Belt. For my artifact main and off hand I have the Twisted set.
Artifact Main Hand/Off Hand Powers
For the main hand use Hunter’s Teamwork/Careful Attack or Rapid Shot/Rapid Strike. I use Careful Attack because that does an insane amount of damage on boss fights. My off hand has Aspect of the Pack and Combat Advantage Bonus.
How did you get your base crit severity up to 182%? I just tried your feat and boon respec and only got to 132% with perfect vorpal. my item level is 3227 and still so low?
My Crit Severity is at 192%. Are you missing the epic Erinyes of Belial as an active companion? That’ll get you up to 142% on your stat sheet. Also, the vorpal doesn’t show up on your stat sheet, so you have to add 50% to whatever you see.
afaik It’s not possible to get a crit severity above 142% without the SH boon. And that’s with vorpal added into the calculation. I’m a PC player so I don’t know if this is true or not, but maybe Vorpal is shown on the Char sheet on xbox? Base crit sev is 75% without vorpal, boons, and companions.
Please, read the guide before asking questions.
Did u make any changes after they fix the loatmauth set?
Can you make a video of this ?
I don’t have the sort of capture software to make a video guide. If I get a lot of feedback that a video would be helpful I may consider it, but I believe my guide is pretty straight forward.
Awesome guide and build, Taco. I’ve been playing HR since the beginning of the game. Never been much on the builds on here for HR’s because of the lack of XBOX builds on here or that they are outdated and I’ve tried them already. I am definitely gonna try this since I have everything basically even with yours. I lack the merc and the bonding runestones but only because of lack of want to. I’ll give this a try but just by the numbers, i’m already liking it.
Rand Do’Urden: 3275 HR
Really nice build. I have been playing exclusive Trapper Tree for a while now and was sorely tempted to try your Feat build. The only thing that put me off is that I have nowhere near a 3,000 IL and when I looked at the spreadsheet that Fey did and it looks as though its reporting a total damage LOSS of 0.38% using Skirmishers Gambit instead of Serpents Bite.
Total Damage reported:
SB = 137,676,250
SG = 137,200,000
If the whole point of your build is to do more burst DPS from Crits then overall it looks as though they are almost even.
A 3000 traditional trapper is fairly mature into the build. At 3k IL you’re more like a baby in this build. You’ll notice that once your crit chance is at 70% skirmishers gambit is the way to go. Your math may be off.
Overall awesome build, my only concern would be your feats page and outing those feats into AP gain. (Readied stance & extra action). Where I can see ap gain to be slightly more effective than movement speed when switching stances, the 6% hit point loss from doing just 1/3 toughness concerns me. I just seem to notice that after maybe 2 full cycles my daily is available without those feats.
Alternate note that might be useful: armor, have you considered including the dusk helm and boots for their ability when running with a group. The 2 parts of the set do as follows: regen 2%(up to 2000) hp every 3 sec (1 piece set)
2 of set: +5k hp, +1k power, +1k def
The dusk set would be a good alternative to the +2k hp from the dragon flight set (when running in groups)
Is there a way you can show this build in action? I just want to see how well the build fits into my playstyle and how much of an impact it makes on the team
I think you can use Blue dragon’s heart instead of Thayan Book of the Dead because too much armor penetration is not usefull if you use dread enchant. And more Recovery is not bad (sometimes the cooldown can be a problem) and combat advantage is helpfull with aspect of the pack because I found we have enought gain of PA.
Just bookmarked, Good stuff. What’s the best way to build to 4k. I’m a 2200 so far
love it man, i have IL 2900, and now out dps GWF my lvl or even a few hundred higher then me, best i’ve seen, i might go baack and change the feat for more hit points, and maybe just maybe throw a few into scoundrel training, but for now will leave as is. i have experamented with the archer tree this way and i think it was ok, but this is best way to go, feels good to be useful again, also i do use blinding arrow instead of constricting and seems pretty great, try it still haven’t decided if the numbers add up or not
thanks bud
your fan
Klew
Been running SW since I’ve been playing…do you think a switch to pathfinder is worth it?
Definitely! The pathfinder paragon has an at-will called careful attack that’s pretty powerful. Give it a shot, it’s worth playing around with at the very least.
What do you think about the Imperial set for wisdom bonus?
I follow your build, it’s amazing
Right now the lostmauth set is BiS without a doubt. This is especially true for hunter rangers since lostmauth’s vengeance is affected by crit severity. Now that Arc has announced they’ll be nerfing the lostmauth set, I’m considering alternatives. I won’t be able to say if another set will outperform it until
Lostmauth gets nerfed
We get the Maze engine
The new artifact set comes out
But I’ll definitely have fun finding it all out 🙂
If I don’t have 3k gear score would it still be affective
The main reason I suggest you be over 3k is because you need a substantial amount of crit strike in order for this build to be effective. You take a 10% reduction in crit chance from skirmishers gambit and unless you have a ton of crit, it’s gonna hurt.
I’m 3100 atm with rank 10 Azures in every available offense slot (no legendary gear so don’t have extra slots yet) and i have 50% crit chance.
Your opinion on lethander set opinion ?
I wonder why most of the Hunter Ranger guides authors forget to describe their weapon set.
I have been playing SW since I started too, I’m thinking I’m going to try this build out to the tee. I have to get my IL up more first but, is definitely like to add you on xbox and learn some things from you. Add me if you would, my gamer tag is l l3randon l
What about using a dread weapons enchantment instead of a perfect vorpal?
Now that the Dread enchant is out, it’s definitely the way to go. You lose out on DPS with careful attack and seismic shot, but what you gain for your encounters is with it IMO.
I agree, now with what you said about hunters careful attack scoring over a million on bosses like Demo and Tiamat, is it worth the trade out on the dread for the vorpal? is it worth having both? Or does the dread do better. I’m running foxes cunning and not using any at wills. Am I missing out by not using careful attack?
See, now we’re getting into a really grey area. Careful attack is a situational power that’s very powerful by itself. I usually only use it on enemies that have a ton of health (mainly bosses). The more people that attack your marked target, the more damage you’re going to do. This is why tiamat, stronghold dragons, and demo are great places to use it.
However, our main source of dps is our encounters. That being said, the dread is going to be easy more beneficial than the vorpal for almost everything, the exceptions being what I mentioned earlier. So, personally I’d go with the dread and use careful attack on bosses.
Awesome thanks for getting back to me, I’ll keep going with my Dread enchantment. BTW if you ever see me in game I’m [email protected] if you need someone to run with. I have a guardian fighter and a Cleric too.
Hey, I really enjoy running a trapper, wanted to thank you for this guide, and ask what you think about running lathander set instead of lostmauth.
As far as I know, the lostmauth is still BiS if your goal is DPS despite the nerf. At least for our class, that is.
I don’t understand why perfect vorpal why not trans vorpal?
Hey, I just want to thank you for this detalied guide, when I repec my charather, and took all the powers, boons and feats from the guide, and learned the power rotation, battles has became much easier, and I dont die so much anymore. Thanks! Keep on with the good work 🙂
Thank you for making this. It’s awesome! Wondering if the OP is gonna to get edited with the suggestions included/ added? IE dread vs vorpal.
Oh! And the elemental evil boons.
What does the RB stand for in the roation? Sorry I’m new to the game and must have missed the translation.
RB is right bumper above right trigger. To switch to blades to bow.
Ok so from what I’m understanding about the Lostmauths set nerf is that it gives you a bonus as weapon damage. It doesn’t seem like much. My question is would it be better to go with a greater belt of wisdom or dexterity? Is the orcus set worth getting at all?
Nothing new for mod 10 or did you stop playing?
Hi taco was wondering if u made changes to the new mod or u kept it same