Critical barrager - no thanks

Recently, well, for the last few months really, I've been noticing a plethora of critical barrage A/R's in all the Canthan mission outposts.

Personally, I'm not at all convinced of it's usefulness when compared with other professions. I'm not arguing that it isn't better in most hands than other assassin builds. A bad tanking assassin drags down the whole party by overburdening the team's monks. A critical barrager, on the other hands, remains in the back, putting less stress on his team's healers, while liberally spreading around barrage damage and conditions.

He can be useful when there's nobody else available.

However, there usually is somebody else available: and generally, I'll take an ele, necro, extra warrior, monk, or anything over the critical barrage assassin. It's just logical.

Consider the following:

1) A critical barrager is a damage dealer almost exclusively. He may have some interrupts but, his main function is to deal damage. He doesn't heal the party, he has no team buffs, or debuffs, and he doesn't tank. All he does is deal damage.

2) Because the critical barrage assassin is a ranged damage dealer exclusively, his potential contribution to a team's success can be evaluated very simply by comparing his damage output against that of other ranged damage dealers available for any particular mission.

Say you have to decide between an SS necro and a crit barrage for the last space in your group. Well this is a very easy choice to make. Whichever one does more damage is the one you want.

However, when I really started to think about it, I began to relaize that there isn't any profession that specializes in doing ranged damage that can't vastly outperform the crit barrager in cranking out damage on multiple enemies. E/Me, E/Mo, R/N, R/Rt, N/R, N/E...whatever else you want to insert, they unload a ton of damage, often armour ignoring. Also, all of these popular combinations have their own methods of energy management, and these tend to be somewhat better than the assassin's meager energy gain on a critical in. And finally, since the crit barrage lacks any versatility, I can't help but feel that this is a very inferior build.

Mass bleeding is pretty nice, it's -3 degen, also bare in mind critical hits occur more often then with barrage rangers too, as critical strikes primary att increases it by a flat rate, it means against higher level creatures it is more likely to be a critical than a typical barrage ranger.

There isn't an increase attack speed boost, leaving it worse off compared to a barrage ranger groups with order of pain, but I think it's pretty good, able to deal damage and inflict conditions putting extra strain on the enemy monks

Put it this way, an assassin barrager is better vs higher armour targets than a typical barrage ranger due to bleeding. The damage is AOE, not all ranged builds are aoe damage.

Quote: Originally Posted by Scourgey

Becuase if he went N/R to use Mark of Pain and a bow... he'd be an idiot. Scattering of agro should be left to Cynn and her Firestorm. Mark of Pain can just as easily be called onto a target to let an Assassin w/ Locusts Fury + Flurry to double strike the crap out of it.

Quote: Originally Posted by easyg

also, they have built in e-management with critical strikes. basically, they'll never run out of energy if there are targets to shoot at.

I just made a crit barrager. Not too impressed. Prefer my daggers. But still, works like a charm.

They're great consistent AoE damage.

My pve A/R fared very poorly against single targets, since I'm more prone to running out of energy, and damage is very poor without lots of energy investment. But really can't complain about the damage output when there's tons of mobs around.

Also, an SS N is the most damaging aoe build in pve hands down. They'd be given priority over pretty much any other pure-damage class (non-utility classes excluded).

Quote: Originally Posted by Hollerith

All good points made above. There are better damage dealers than a Critical Barrage Assassin. The reason I played it was twofold. First, getting into PUGs to finish the game was much easier. Second, solo henching quests is much easier, IMHO, as an Archer than as a dagger wielder. That being said, my Ranger is a much better Ranger!

What remains useful advice to all assassins who intend to use henchmen for PvE is to carry a simple no-attrib longbow for pulling, and for standing safely at range while the henchmen aggro the mob.

Out alone with the henchmen, it is also possible to combine with the no attrib or low attrib longbow a pet in a mini-beastmaster build, using Assassin's Promise to recharge skills and get an energy boost. This is not as good as Ranger expertise, but it is a fair approximation.

Clearly, daggers are the Assassin's primary weapon. That is what the class was designed for.

It really is kind of silly comparing a critical barrager to any other class than a ranger. In your first post talk about taking an ele or ss or warrior over them. Well hell, the same can be said about any profession. Do a comparison of the role being played not other professions, otherwise you are just making a "assassins aren't as useful as x" thread. Because in your post you could probably just replace the word assassin everywhere with ranger and post this in the ranger forum.

Now the real question should be "Why should I take a critical barrager over a barraging ranger"

Ok, IMO and from my testing of both Ranger and Assassin Barrage builds I have concluded that my sin with 12 marks and 15-16 crits does a almost constant 2x the damage that my Ranger does with 15 marks. And that isnt factoring in the bleeding.

But that really is about all the sin is good for when using a bow. His other attacks are about equal to a ranger but w/o expertise you just cant keep your energy up enough to do what a ranger can.

And who says sins cant interrupt? Your interrupts wont do much damage, but who cares they still do their job.

And the real sad part is how hard it is to get a group for ne mission with any Assassin build. And a Ranger with the same skills and less damage is ALWAYS going to be first choice over a Crit/Barrager.

So to anyone thinking of going with this build it can be VERY rewarding......if you can get into a group.

Use a zealous string and w00t for energy.

I use a customized Vamp 15^ flatbow, Energy is not a problem if you using critical eye and have more than one target. However my short bow is zealous.

And again im not saying that a sin is a better ranger than a ranger, just a better barrager.

Quote: Originally Posted by Magnum Delux

Im sure it does favor the ranger for a conjure build, but I only tested it with standard bows. Plus some things dont take that elemental damge as well as others, but they all take criticals the same. Again not to mention the -3 from bleeding.

Quote: Originally Posted by easyg With 15 in Critical Strikes and Critical Eye on, your chance of landing a critical hit is + 15% + 6% (or +21%). So roughly one in five. The numbers are a bit skewed on this. Your actual critical hit percentage for an Assassin/Ranger with 12 marks and 16 critical strikes (not sure why we'd be looking at non-max attributes for the purpose of damage comparison), would be 17.4% (12 marksmanship) + 16% (critical strikes) + 6% (critical eye) for a total of 39.4%. Comparing that to a Barrage ranger with 16 Marksmanship (22.9% critical hit chance) and you have a 72% higher chance of scoring a critical hit as an Assassin vs a Ranger.

Quote:

Originally Posted by easyg Is that really going to be more damage than a fire barrager ranger with 10 in Fire Magic? Conjure flame gives +11 fire damage on all five monsters or +55 (again not factoring in the armor). Compare it this way. Let's say an engagement lasts 15 seconds. A target bleeding for 15 seconds takes an additional 90 armor ignoring damage (-3 degen x 2 life per second/pip of degen x 15 seconds). Consider with each barrage in your previous example of 5 enemies, 2 of those will begin bleeding. In my opinion a better comparison would be vs. a R/Mo using Judge's Insight. The bonus damage from the armor penetration + lack of resistance to holy damage make an Insight barrager more damaging than the R/E. That is neither here nor there and the topic of another discussion. The main point that we're looking at here is whether the Critical Barrager (A/R) is a valuable damage asset to have in your team. In my opinion it is. Without trying to make the topic into a giant peeing contest of what profession does the most damage it is suffice to say that the Critical Barrager should not be overlooked.

Why leave it at a meaningless number - 72% higher chance of scoring a critical hit - and not take it all the way if you've calculated the critical hit chance

Ok, for the assasin the chance of getting a critical hit is PCa = 39.4% and for the ranger it is PCr = 22.9%.

Both can use a max damage 15-28 +15% customized +20% bow (not a horn bow). At 12 marks this does 21.5*1.15*1.2 = 30 damage on average, at 16 marks this is 21.5*1.15*1.2*1.15 = 34 damage on average.

A critical hit scores max damage at -20EAL, or 1.41 times the damage. For the sin this becomes: 28*1.15*1.2*1.41 = 54, the ranger scores 28*1.15*1.2*1.41*1.15=63.

The assasin scores a critical 39.4* of the time, the total base arrowdamage then is (39.4*54 + 60.6*30) / 100 = 39.5
The ranger scores a critical 22.9% of the time, the total base arrowdamage then is (22.9*63 + 77.1*34) / 100= 40.6

That is pretty close, close enough for rounding errors to play a significant role.

Barrage adds some damage too, at 12 marks this is 13 damage, and 17 damage at 16 marks. Otoh, the Assasin has a good chance to inflict Bleeding, 6 HP/sec, similar to a Conjure X damage bonus.

The ranger has some attribute points left (for WS or a Conjure X), while the assasin has invested 12 points in marks and in critical hits, but Way of Perfection could mean a lot of selfhealing.

Note: If you'd want to be precise, rounding becomes tricky. I've used the average between 15-28 = 21.5 and multiplied that. However, the game rolls a number in the range 15-28, multiplies that with the bonusses and modifiers and rounds that to the nearest integer. For each of the sperate rolls this should be calculated and the averaged.

Thanks for doing the additional math Amy. I fully admit I was looking at the figures for damage calculation and I was kinda overwhelmed. I figured making the point about how the damage between the two was similar enough would be sufficient evidence to show that Critical Barragers were viable damage dealers, compared to regular Barrage rangers.

While the Critical Barrager has invested virtually all of his attribute points in Critical Strikes and Marksmanship he doesn't lose alot of utility. He can still use ranger interrupts effectively, self heal with Shadow Refuge and Way of Perfection, and use Critical Defenses and Caltrops to get himself or teamates out of a jam.

Actually, what Amy's numbers show is the that a A/R crit barrager will do less damage than a R/*. It's kinda burried in her discussion but after showing that the "base arrow damage" for both professions is roughly the same, Amy adds:

Quote: Barrage adds some damage too, at 12 marks this is 13 damage, and 17 damage at 16 marks Can the extra damage from the skill barrage be added to the base arrow damage? If so:

Critical Barrage: 39.5 + 12 = 51.5
Barrage Ranger: 40.6 + 17 = 57.6

That's signifcant right? Especially considering Barrage's AOE, which compounds any advantage in damage by the number of enemies struck.

I guess the point of this all is to say that a Crit Barrager isn't totally useless, but it hardly answers the question why someone would want one over a solid Ranger primary build.