Improvement.

I'm looking to add a little more umph to my ranger when fighting the ever so resilient monks.

Currently I am running 16 marks, 13 exp, 4 Beast. +5 Lifesteal bow.

With:

Punishing shot
Penetrating shot
Dual shot
Whirling defense
Tiger's fury
Rez signet
Favorable winds
Read the wind

I am looking for ways to improve my damage output or any other improvement that can be done(I am still fairly new to GW so I might have missed something). Feel free to pick away.

That's actually not a bad build.

Penetrating and Dual are the two big bow attacks for damage, and you have those already. You also have a prep in there, and while not the best damage prep, its the only one that fits with your attribute point distribution. TF with 4 in BM is also quite good. Also have Rez Sig and a defensive skill.

I'd switch to 15 Marks and 14 Expertise. 14 Exp will make all your 10 energy skills cost 4 instead of 5, meaning you can use them much more aggressively.

You don't mention what style of bow you are using. This is a significant factor for archers in GW (and completely irrelevant to all other weapon types). Since you are using Read the Wind, you want a Flatbow.

The two skills I'm not sure about are Punishing Shot and Favorable Winds. The arrowspeed bonus on FW is rather pointless if you are running Read the Wind, so it's just +6 damage. And I'm still not sold on Punishing being worth your elite slot unless you are running Ranger Spike, but it's not bad.

The two skills I'd look at for replacing one or both of those (if you want to stick with just Ranger skills and are focused on Monk-killing) are Debilitating Shot and Concussion Shot. Debilitating essentially wipes out 3 pips of energy regen, and Concussion can make it very hard to cast spells. I'll admit Concussion is hard to land on a Monk with all their quick spells, but it's huge if you do pick one off.

Thanks for replying. Up until yesterday I was using a short bow with a zealous mod to attempt to get a little more energy regen, also it seemed to do more damage then horn( which is what was suggested to me for use) on a target dummy in the same time period, this probably having something to do with FW and RTW having a flat bonus to all arrows instead of having a smaller bonus for faster attacking bows. I am open to other options though.

I'm fond of punishing shot, it seems to hit harder then my other shots and almost instantly to boot, so far it has worked wonders for me.

I use favorable winds as a fire and forget sort of a buff, it comes in handy when I don't have time to recast RTW but I also don't need that last arrow to stray that would have finished the person off, and I can't argue with +6 damage no matter how minor it is.

I'm not sure what prep I would use over RTW, i've looked them over and nothing caught my eye, but like I said I'm new so I probably missed something obvious.

Keep them coming

Quote: Originally Posted by Crimm

depending on where you're pvping, most monks will use a healing/protection chain. the best way to drop them is to interrupt one of the spells. fortunately, most monks will spam those spells, so you can simply fire an interrupt right in the middle of it. if you can, try to distracting shot their RoF. most monks will fold like tissue paper when you do.