Burning Arrow/Glowing Gaze ranger

Hi there,

after a lot of barraging and reading about builds which use a fiery bow with conjure flame, I thought 'why not make one with more spikable abilities'.

I don't have Mark Of Rodgort yet, I'm planning on implementing it later.

Using a fiery bow, but you can set up the spirit [skill=text]Conflagration[/skill].


To start, the main skills of the build:
[skill]Burning Arrow[/skill][skill]Glowing Gaze[/skill][skill]Conjure Flame[/skill].

These 3 speak for themselves. You start by having Conjure Flame activated for extra dmg. You take a target, fire a burning arrow and immediately use Glowing Gaze on the same target.

Using 12 markmanship, and 11 fire magic, you do: +26dmg, burning for 4 seconds (BA) and 38 firedmg (GG), and on top of this, you get 7 energy.

Total cost of this attack-chain would be: 5 +5 -7 = 3 energy.
For a total of minimal 26 + 38 + (4x14=) 56 = 120 extra dmg (in about 4 seconds, of course without taking special fire-armor in consideration).

Adding [skill=text]Apply Poison[/skill] adds another 9x8 = 72 health loss (@ 4 Wilderness Survival), making the total dmg in 9 seconds up to 192. In the meanwhile of course you keep attacking, and repeating the chain of the first two skills, which keeps poison constantly and burning almost constantly up.

With then 3 skills left open, you can vary freely. I used 2 interrupt skills ([skill=text]Savage Shot[/skill] and [skill=text]Distracting shot[/skill]), a selfheal ([skill=text]Troll Unguent[/skill] and a defence ([skill=text]Whirling Defense[/skill]).

Making the following bar:
[skill]Burning Arrow[/skill][skill]Glowing Gaze[/skill][skill]Conjure Flame[/skill][skill]Apply Poison[/skill][skill]Savage Shot[/skill] [skill]Distracting shot[/skill][skill]Troll Unguent[/skill][skill]Whirling Defense[/skill].

I'm planning on (when i got the skill) testing it with replacing Distracting Shot for [skill=text]Mark of Rodgort[/skill], for even more damage output, but at a higher energy cost. This will add burning for 3 seconds (on the 11 fire magic) every shot.

Would like suggestions on makeing this build more efficient, but with the first 3 skills mentioned maintained.

My current complete build:

You would probably do more dmg with just 15 in Markmanship and with 13 in expertise you wouldn't have energy problems -_-.

If this is for PvP, then you really should carry a res. I`d suggest swapping out Conjure Flame. Sure, it goes with the build, but it is pretty dismal imo. Rangers are not really meant to be the main damage dealers.

Also, you should consider trying to increase your Wilderness Survival to buff Troll Unguent, and also to use Natural Stride.

And if this is for PvE......you should`nt be making a char to spike anyways.

It's actually not meant for PvP but for PvE. I like the idea of killing a single target asap without leaning on other players. I just like archers, so I needed to combine a dmgbuild with a ranger.

@Legendary Ultimatum:
I assume you mean by taking the whole firedmg out of the build?

you can safely assume your firedamage will be reduced by half quite often :/

maybe..
burning arrow
poison bite
feral lung
comfort animal
charm animal
read the wind/interupt/epidemic
stance/heal
res

the pet will do a similer amount of damage as conjure flame, probably more, plus its a meatshield
marks 14+
exptertese 8+
beast rest

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Agreed... you'd do more speccing purely ranger. Conjures are overrated and Glowing Gaze isn't worth using for 2 energy.

I guess you could always do Kindle/Conjure/MoR/Glowing though... if you really had to.

Conjures are not useful if you are using single attacks. Put them on and use Barrage (or Cyclone Axe, Hundred Blades etc.) and now you are getting an extra 50+ damage with each barrage (assuming you are firing at a group of enemies).

My own personal favorite Fire Ranger build involves:

Conjure Flame
Mark of Rodgort
Barrage
Meteor Shower or Tigers Fury (depending on situation and party)

I see little point in Glowing Gaze since a Ranger should have plenty of energy with Druids armor and enough in Experience to make skills really cheap (even in a build with high energy skills such as Meteor Shower/Mark of Rodgort).

An alternative is to scrap Barrage and Conjure Flame to equip Poison Arrow and Ignite Arrows instead. Cast Ignite Arrows, hex enemy with Mark of Rodgort and fire Poison Arrow. The exploding fire damage done by Ignite Arrows will trigger Burning and you will be poisoning as well. Unfortunately this is less of a spike and more of a degen build...

You like to bump eh?

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I'd forgotten that Barrage removes preparations and whilst I often make use of [skill]Slinter Weapon[/skill], I haven't tried conjure in months. Thank you for the reminder. Like Splinter it also has a relatively short period for invocation. Nevertheless, I have to say one of the problems I have with these kinds of builds is that inevitably I end up feeling I spend to much time setting myself up to do damage in the middle of melee.

It's subjective, of course. I would very much like to see a numerical comparison between, say, the OP's original build and simply maxing Marksmanship with 13 on Expertise, accounting for the cost of refreshing Conjure, etc.

Seems Good !!

With regard to Meteor Shower, my sense of it is that because of its long invocation time it's become pretty much useless except for a max'd Fast Casting Mesmer/Elementalist. But I haven't played an Elementalist in many months and have never equipped it on my Ranger, my primary character. If by some chance there is a reasonable strategy for it I wouldn't mind hearing about it.

From experience, Ranger/Spellcaster combos don't handle nearly as well as a regular Ranger/x build relying mostly on Ranger skills do.

.... ..... wow....


yeah, thats all I have to say :/

With the possible exception of Mark of Pain + Whirling Defense before the AoE flee :P

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