Any N/R archers out there?

I've looked through all 9 pages of threads here and the only discussion of N/R that I saw was in regards to beating the Dop'.

I'm just curious if anyone would care to share any succesful combination of necro and ranger abilities other than in regards to playing a MM. I do play MM and I have read all of that stuff.

I am very interested in any decent mixes of bow skills and necro skills. I tried a few times put it seemed to be a pain in the but to spread the points enough to really combine both. Death, Blood, and maybe SR plus Marksmanship and Wilderness Survival... 5 attributes means a pretty thin mix.

Thanks in advance for any inputs.

i don't have any experience as a necro archer (who does? ) but i'd say u could go one necro attribut, probly some in soul reaping also (i guess that makes two), and marksmanship. or just use a bow that u dont meet the requirement for along with ws (instead of marks), to spread conditions or something. but yah i don't think u should go with 5 attributes and spread ur points out so much

I would like to hear some N/R archer builds too. I've played with a few but they weren't very good. Mainly using Apply Poison and then Viralunce to cause a nice set of conditions.

i cant think of how this would really be better than a r/n... soul reaping isnt really going to make up for expertise when dealing with bow attack/prep skills, and i dont see much point in using a bow without those skills

There's some curses that work well with a bow. Barbs and Mark of Pain come to mind - Couple those with Dual Shot perhaps.

Pin Down is a nice opener for Virulence.

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N/R vs R/N...

I do wish there was a good N/R build that didn't center around minions, but as soon as you go the bow route - you're better off having a different primary that can benefit you on the expensive bow skills.


The only off the cuff idea would be an undead pet master... Avoids the bow skills and pet attacks are fairly cheap. (and these are pure theorycraft)
Have to Have:Charm Animal Comfort Animal Any overflow of attribute points into Soul Reaping.

Condition Build - (Beast Mastery and Death Magic)Feral Lunge (Bleeding) Maiming Strike (Crippled) Scavenger Strike (hit harder with conditions) Throw Dirt (blind) Putrid Explosion {E}Virulence or Tainted Flesh (disease/poison/Weakness or Disease (and pet immune to disease) (You could also chain Signet of Agony and Plague Touch/Sending to spread bleeding)


Damage Build - (Beast Mastery and Curses)Predators Pounce Brutal Strike Melandru's Assault Barbs Price of Failure/Shadow of Fear/Weaken Armor {E}Feast of Corruption Hit as hard as you can... Might consider Mark of Pain, but the AoE affect would make it less effective.
You could also put some points in Blood Magic and use Order of Vampire.

Sounds good bobrath! I'm gonna have to try that out.

MAYBE if you're travelling with a MM the soul reaps could make up for the lack of expertise for a necro bow attacker. but really at best i see the necro breaking even with the ranger. it does not seem to give you any advantage over going ranger primary

I wouldn't even bother myself. If you plan on wielding a bow best move on to ranger primary.

Here's something I stumbed on a while back by accident. I at somepoint somewhere I capped Virulence while building my character. I didn't think twice about it until I was going full out MM. Maxed out Virulence does 16 seconds of Poison -4, Disease -4, and weakness. The catch is you have to put a condition on them first. Of course you have your normal MM spells but what I do differently is I put my points into Wilderness Survival. I put like 8 into it so I can get +7 troll ungent, also I then use barbed trap. You set the trap and lure the bate over it. You then use virulence on it. Now combined you have 1 enemy -3bleeding, -4poison, -4disease, as well as weakened for 16 seconds, so basicly -11 health degen for 16 seconds. The kickers are that the disease spreads to adjacent foes. I use this build through Tombs all the time. Then I enfeeble any other Grasps so they don't hit my minions as hard. I don't think people put enough value into enfeeble. Also if there is a ranger who is using a trap I can take Winnowing if needed or another pet. Healing spring heals for 39 every 2 seconds for 10 seconds for all nearby friendlies. Works well to help out healing other members as well. You really just have to see virulence in action but I'll never use life transfer again.

Troll Ungent
Healing Spring
Barbed Trap
Enfeeble
Virulence
Verata's Sacrifice
Bone Horror
Bone Fiend

max degen is -10. and while that build might work, its most certainly not an archer build....wrong thread?

Gee thanks I know, have you ever had so much degen that when you hit troll ungent you still have -7 arrows? It was a necro/ranger and just a suggestion didn't know there were forums nazis.

Thanks for all the replies...

It seems as if it was pretty much like I feared. A bit too many points to have to spread around to make it work.

I was sort of tinkering around with a build involving a few bow attacks but I just don't see it working well other than as a novelty. I'll mess with it some more tonight and post anything worthwhile that comes of my madness.

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No forum Nazi's here

I understand the intent... Many people had already said the bow thing was a wash so Good Karma just wanted to post an alternative idea. I appreciate the intentions there.

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Thanks again for all the inputs!

Nova-

I capped Barrage today and tried it in tombs with Ellsworth's Recurve Bow. I was actually doing pretty good damage. I would just use it until the first body dropped then I'd switch back to my staff and start casting. Also I took distracting shot with 2 intentions interrupt Meteor Shower and the siege attack, got them both several times. The downside is that I put 10 into marksmanship and put a super into soul reaping to keep up my energy so I was running about 400 life. With no way to heal myself I brought taste of death for emergencies. Long story short our monk and a b/p with winnowing left in round 2 and we made it all the way through with just a few deaths. Plus it was pretty fun to shoot the bow.

Necro regens energy faster than Ranger, and has access to Bloodstained Boots for corpse exploitation. Take Virulence, Plague Touch, and Putrid Explosion, then whatever you want from Marksmanship/Unlinked/Ressurection Signet (be sure to include Pin Down or Hunter's Shot, or both). Maybe Soul Feast as well. Decent spiking, corpse-denial, and insane degen from Virulence. Count on getting some help from a Monk though when you start taking heat, but don't worry too much about Warriors because Plague Touch + Virulence is going to turn the tables right quick on anyone who thinks to bleed or cripple you w/o condition removal.

Should look something like:
N/R
Max Marksmanship
High Death Magic
Dump to Soul Reaping (ideally you'll want about 6 or 7 here to ensure that you have enough energy to use Putrid/Soul Feast when the time comes)

Soul Feast
Putrid Explosion
Plague Touch
Virulence
Hunter's Shot
Pin Down
Read the Wind
Resurrection Signet

A couple benefits of having a Ranger Secondary come to mind...none of which involve markmanship skills.

Serpent's quickness:if for some reason you wanted skills to recharge quicker
Whirling Defense/ or lightning Reflexes: Might come in especially handy if you are running a close up and personal build, plague touch/or vamp touch.
Troll: for all of the sacraficing a necro does.
Pet/& rez pet: if for some reason you are using corpses...mmm wellls, minnions, putrid explosion.

Are these good enough reasons to have an R as a secondary? Probably not.

Too bad the pet's death blacks out your skill bar (and thus the skills to benefit from that death)...

A huge benefit is healing spring, works on minions and allies. When needed I can bring winnowing or Favorable winds, not all that high but more then enough for the recast. It's nice to be able to throw out a trap too, if ur sneaky enough you can spring minions and throw out a dust trap to blind the warriors. It is what you make of it.

If you're dead set on using a bow with your necromancer, let me suggest a variation on my E/R burninator build.

Unfortunately, it requires you ditching the /R as the goodies are in the Elementalist line, but it's certainly different.

My E/R uses a Poison Arrow + Mark of Rodgort + Conjure Flame + plinking with a fire string equipped bow. It's scarily effective versus single targets, they basically have 10 pips of degen as long as I feel like maintaining it.

So... you could go N/E with a fire-string bow. Throw up Conjure Flame for extra damage. Instead of Poison Arrow, use some other condition inflict, like say, Signet of Agony + Plague Sending. Cast Mark of Rodgort then plink them to set them on fire. Throw Virulence to really ruin their day.

Of course you could just as easily use another fire-based weapon, but hey, you wanted an Archer.

That's pretty cool degen this was sort of a joke of a build, something to do for that 7 seconds before the first body drops. Then you're really too busy casting minions to shoot.

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I got very aggrovated when I saw a n/*R capping in mineral with me he did say he was a WoP necro but I then latter found out he only have 1 well and it was degen and he had no arrow skills.. so I ask why go secondary ranger if your not going to use the skills , he replied bah! you suck as a monk you died twice... !! I just laughed and he left.

But I can see how N*/r can be good if you ranger degen lovers really need it but other than that I would stick with *R/ as base prof.

Here's a hint:

If you plan on using a bow and no bow attacks, get a Candy Cane Bow. 15-15 damage and no requirment. Hard part would be finding someone with it...

I think I might have an extra candy cane bow laying around. I thought they looked neat and bought two.

I've been playing a N/R for a long time and have avoided builds with the bow skills. I've always wanted to try a combo of Spinal Shivers and a bow with an Icy Bow String (Long or short depending on the situation). As soon as I find one, I'll let you know how it works. I thought it might be nice for interupts. Has anyone tried this? If you add Tiger's Fury or Serpent's Quickness this might be very interesting. Winter may make it unnecessary to even need an icy bow string. I'm just thinking outloud here.

Some of the "other skills" might be worth looking in too since you don't need to any points to make them effective. Debilitating Shot, Called Shot and the others there might be worth trying out.

I have to give credit to Maximumsquid on gwonline for this build. He just posted it.

Desolate Stalker

15 death magic
6 soul reaping
7 beastmastery
11 marksmenship

concussion shot
tiger's fury
hunter's shot
consume corpse
virulence {e}
pindown
energizing winds
res signet

You don't have to limit yourself to MM if you are a N/R. I'm always playing with my build. Here are a few spells that support my necro.

Energizing Wind for lowering the cost of spells (I can spam SS, suffering, wells and minions for low-cost). It's good to cast this at the beginning of a battle to get things rolling before you engage an enemy and right before the end of a battle to get a jump on making minions without having to worry about recharging energy. Soul reaping is good, but sometimes it's better to get the spells out there without having to wait for a corpse. You only need about 6 points in Wilderness Survival for this to be very affective. Adding points only effects the lifetime of the spirit, not the effectiveness of the spell. The minimum duration is 30 seconds with 0 in Wilderness Survival.

Troll Unguent is wonderful for offsetting blood sacrificing spells. I prefer it to Blood Renewal.

You can always use your pet too. I switch between Spiteful Spirit and Ferocious Strike for my elites.

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