Random Arena build / your opinion

Hi there, after playing around with a couple of different builds for Random Arena, I have been quite successful with this support-build (17 points in ~8 hours / granted I was lucky with my teammates).

Whats your opinion on that? Do you have any suggessions to improve it?

Marksmannship 15
Expertise 12
Wilderness 8
Beast 5

Broadhead Arrow {E}
Pin Down
Apply Poison
Throw Dirt
Charm Animal
Frozen Soil
Troll
Res signet

Primary Targets are Casters. (although dazed is great on Assassins as well because shadow arts are spell based). Apply Poison + Pin Down + BHE. The Pet is not for damage - just for the extra Interrupts once the target is dazed. (I found that the pet is very helpful, because sadly enough, many teammates don´t stay on called targets in RA).

I choose BHE over concussion because with the right timing I found it much more reliable to daze targets.

Frozen soil - with the right timing - is the best Ranger skill for RA. I wouldn´t go without it anymore. ( it´s amazing to see how many people in RA still don´t know about FS and try to Res instead of attacking the Ghost first)

I wish I could trade Troll for something else but you never know if you have a monk in your Team. But then again, teams without a monk usually don´t last longer than 5 consecutive wins anyways.

Throw Dirt. I am not sure about it. Best thing about it is that you can protect your teammates as well. I thought about replacing Throw Dirt with Hunters shot for that extra condition - works great with Pin Down.

What do you think?

^Make expertise either 9 or 13, 12 isn't any better than 9 because of how the game rounds the bonus. With only 5 points in beast, I'd drop the pet, cause really without a more significant investment, it's a free blackout for the other team. If you are using BHA, I would look into bringing an IAS skill like flurry, frenzy or Tiger's fury. Depending on your secondary, I would bring 1.) Some form of enchant removal, or 2.) some form of hex removal. That will help your team out a ton, and make you a bit more useful.

yea drop the pet, its no use in pvp anyways unless youre 100% beastmaster or goin IWAY.



try hex/condition removal, or maby a second interrupt

Broadhead is really redundant. Learning to interupt is much more effective than wasting your elite. If they aren't casting who cares - dazed wouldn't help, if they are casting then interupt them.

Not too mention you can actually hit someone with it.

Thanks for your comments. Condition removal instead of the Pet is good (with all this blinding Mesmers & Ele´s running around lately). Expertise 9 does not work for me. You feel a difference compared to 12.

I still like BHE though. I was playing Interrupter with Punishing + concussion shoot ect. before Factions but I must say that it is harder to shut down a good monk with the 4 regular bow interrupts. So many monk skills have casting times of less then a second. The beauty with BHE is that I can apply Daze for sure early in the battle and have the Warrior, Assasin or other Ranger help interrupting. With concussion, because of the crucial timing, most of the time you need longer to get a monk dazed. And having a Monk dazed and shut down early into the battle is very valuable for the Team even if you consider the benefits of another Elite skill.

I never found much sucess with BHE, but if you run that build you will be very energy heavy. IMO with a good interupt setup, you are more useful and conserve more energy for other skills than relying on causing dazed. This may work well on monks tho.

BTW I was bored the other night and had alot of fun with this build.

Marks 16
Expertise 13

Maurauders shoot
Punishing shoot {E}
savage shoot
RtW
FW
FS

I love the opening of a battle. Maurauders + Punishing almost hit simultaneously and make up to 200+ damage on Casters. Followed by Savage (if Target is casting).

Quote:

the primary weakness I don't like about daze is that it's a condition. Sure daze will rock any caster's ass including monks... if they're not prepared for it. But how many boon prots don't carry CoP with them? I mean the moment they see daze on them, RoF->CoP and boom, no more daze and you just burn a bunch of energy putting it on them for nothing.

Having said that, I have thrown concussion into my build for alliance battles just for the shear fun of it :P

Quote:

Contemplation of Purity is a skill. ie. dazed has no imact upon it. You better hope that monk doesn't have prot spirit or else that dazed is lasting for ~2s.