help with melandru's arrows pvp ranger build

I recently decided to attempt a melandru's arrows team pvp build, and I came up with this:
r/mo
1. melandru's arrows
2. judge's insight
3. tiger's fury
4. dual shot
5. penetrating shot
6. pin down
7. fav. winds
8. rez signet

Is there a way to increase its damage dealing capabilities, like switching to necro for weaken armor or something? Also, I would like to be able to sustain high damage for around 5 seconds, if it is possible ... and currently, this build's attributes are spread out ... what would be a good way to fix this?

You can add conjure flame or judge's insight.

There's no easy solution to this problem.
If you want to be in 4 different attribute lines, the attributes start to look ugly.

If you want another damage boost, you need to split into a 4th attribute line.
You didn't list your attributes, but from the skills given you're in Expertise, Markmanship, and Wilderness Survival.

Your best bet for a damage boost would be Tiger's Fury- the increased attack rate will help your burst and sustained damage tremendously. The good news is that it's a ranger attribute, so you can use runes to affect it.

If you want ANOTHER damage buff on top of that, you need something like Judge's Insight, Conjure Element, or a necro debuff. Of the three, necro is the worst choice because of cast times and easy, available hex removal. (Cast times just get worse under Nature's Renewal too- you're literally going to stand around for 5s casting, another 2 applying Melandru's, and THEN you can start attacking).

Nature's Renewal will hurt your enchantment-based buffs as well, but you should be able to get some use out of them, but you just wont be able to rely on it. In my eyes it's not worth stretching into a 5th attribute line for an enchantment whose duration you can't control.

However, I'm glad it's hard to stack buffs- when Rangers could easily stack a prep, an enchantment, tiger's fury, and spam attack skills with no problems under expertise, they were too powerful, and their damage was toned down accordingly. Now you can still attempt the same, but without multiple superior runes it'll be very hard to get results anywhere near the same effectivenes.

I think he's already using Tiger's Fury... so that may become 5 attribute paths instead of 4.

Yeah, running both TF and JI will leave you with serious mana problems. I'd seriously suggest ditching /Mo and going with a more useful secondary like Mes or Ele if you want to keep using TF. Also, fav. winds is a waste unless you're running a specialized team build. I'd swap it out with frozen soil, which is much more useful in PVP.

Personally, I run:

12 Marks (11+1)
10 Wilderness (9+1)
14 Expertise (10+4)
4 Beast Mastery (4...+1, but it doesn't factor in)

yes, I'm aware that there are better ways to spread my attribute points.

Melandru's Arrows {E}
Penetrating Attack
Distracting Shot
Tiger's Fury
Pin Down
Rez. Signent

and 2 open slots, depending on the situation. Most Casters will go down to Melandru's Arrows/Tiger's Fury/Penetrating Attack quickly enough.

If you really need another damage boost you might try taking both Penetrating Attack and Point Blank Shot and alternating them, since that won't spread your attributes any further.

Dual shot is a better damage buff than point blank when you're using Melandru's arrows. The bonus for Melandru's gets added twice, and that can add up to some seriously wicked damage, better than whatever conjure can do.

I'm fairly sure that Dual Shot adds the +24 to each arrow and then subtracts 25% from the total.

Hmmm .. why point blank shot, which halves the arrow's range? why not something else like determined shot, power shot, or hunter's shot? And even if the bonus from melandru's is reduced, it's still going to have like +16, right? Also, why is favorable winds a waste?

When using MElandrus and Dual shot vs casters i often get numbers like -59, -52 . Too bad psn arrow wasn't elite melandrus and psn arrow would be nice.

Melandru's Arrows is soooo sexy

I came up with a build that was Ranger/Necro:

Melandru's Arrows
Any two bow attacks you like
Serpent's Quickness
Desecrate Enchantments
Rend Enchantments
Enfeebling Blood.
Anything Else you think works here

Only catch is: not everyone spams enchantments, and if you find a team that doesn't, you've become next to useless.

Or, you could skip the bow attacks and take Tiger's Fury and put your extra Marksmanship points over to Beast Mastery.

Why would you have Rend on your Melandru's arrow build? They seem contradictory to each other. If you wanted to screw mass stacked enchants, bring nature's renewal, you're a ranger primary!

How about something like:
R/W
Expertise 10+4
Marksmanship 11+1
Wilderness Survival 10+1
1 unused point

1. Melandru's Arrows
2. Pin Down
3. Frenzy
4. Penetrating Attack
5. Dual Shot
6. Distracting Shot
7. Whirling Defenses
8. Rez Signet

How well will this build work in pvp? Also, should I drop one of the bow attacks for something like frozen soil?

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Frenzy is nice and spammable but i think if you can afford 4 pts in BM Tigers fury is better. Frenzy causes you to talke double damage, which may be ok if using flatbow/longbow since you can fire outside of your argo circle, but if you get closer using Frenzy you can go down quick.

hmmm .. so maybe a tweaked version would look like:
Expertise 10+4
Marksmanship 11+1
Wilderness Survival 9+1
Beast Mastery 4

1. Melandru's Arrows
2. Pin Down
3. Tiger's Fury
4. Penetrating Attack
5. Distracting Shot/Something Else?
6. Whirling Defenses
7. Frozen Soil
8. Rez Signet

Is there a point to switching distracting shot with something like fertile season, predatory season, QZ (to screw over the other team), or primal echoes?

This is one of the variations of my Melandru's Arrows build. R/W btw.

1. Frenzy
2. Melandru's Arrows [E]
3. Dual Shot
4. Penetrating Attack
5. Favorable Winds
6. Point-Blank Shot
7. Power Shot
8. Rez Signet

Prep Melandru's, Favourable Winds, hit Frenzy and spam skills.

May run into mana problems SOMETIMES, but not too much.

EDIT: I also run a more damaging build that uses 10 second Tiger's Fury.

3 stats pumped to near max is quite versatile and is probably the recommended build...

10+2 & 10+1 primary stats, 11 secondary stat.

I don't see 4 stats being all that bad, it's 5 stats that I think would be problematic.

10+2, 9+1, 7+1 primary stat, 10 secondary stat.

so you've got 2 viable builds with high potential output:

12/11/11 or 12/10/10/8

I'm all for the 4 stat build because it adds a nice edge of unpredictability and can cover your weaknesses accordingly. I never go past 12 due to issues regarding my hp. I don't care what anyone says, when you get killed by bleeding, it's quite embarrasing not having the hp to live past that...

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Only 60 damage at most from melandrus/dual shot? wow i wouldn't be impressed either, but my shots are usually around 80-100 especially on elemenatalists or monks. The highest i can remeber was 59 & 56 from a melandru/dual shot combo, which is pretty good combined with the bleeding. Of course your damage will suck when used against someone without enchantments. I've only been playing a few months, but horn bows have always been rumored to have 10% penetration bonus, I haven't heard of anyone finding this false, just people confirming it from their own testing, so i assume it's true.

I <3 Melandru's Arrows. It packs a huge punch to those who have enchantments on them, especially casters.

I found a build that's made around Melandru's Arrows on a different forum, but I'm not sure if I'm allowed to link to it since I think it's a competing website. The person's name who came up with this build is Advalorem, incase he reads this forum too. I like this build quite a lot and have had loads of fun with it in the random arena as well as the team arena. Here's a modified version of it below, tailored to my liking (to be honest the only thing changed is Pin Down for Dual Shot and the attribute points):


Pure Ranger
Expertise: 12 (10 + 1 + 1 [Hunter's Mask])
Wilderness Survival: 10 (8 + 2)
Marksmanship: 15 (12 + 3)

Precision Shot
Dual Shot
Distracting Shot
Melandru's Arrows {E}
Whirling Defense
Troll Unguent
Frozen Soil
Resurrection Signet


I wasn't too sure about Precision Shot since it can be disrupted if you're hit, but I was amazed at how often I was actually able to use it since the release time (or cast time) isn't that long. I was using it as if it were my main bow attack instead of a moderate attack skill. The other thing that sort of bugged me was not having Pin Down after using it for so long. It was odd not being able to pin a runner down or someone dodging arrows, but I figured I can live without it so Dual Shot or Penetrating Attack can take it's place. The last thing I was worried about was the 12 Expertise that I chose (the original build had him using 9) along with the superior rune and major rune, but it actually tends to work out quite well since I have a superior vigor rune and Druid's armor. The health I'm at is 405 and I don't often run out of mana unless I'm hitting Precision Shot and Dual Shot constantly.

I use three collector's bows with this build. The first is the Flatbow model that does +15% damage while enchanted, the second is the Short Bow model that does +15% damage while health is > 50% modded with a bow grip of defense (armor +5), and the last one is the same as the latter but I put an Ebon bow string on it. I use the one with the Ebon string on it the most, then switch to the other ones that deal piercing damage when necessary.

I've died quite a bit, but Melandru's Arrows is fun nonetheless and you do more than you're share of damage if you happen to run across that poor sap with an enchantment on him.

[Edit]:
I forgot to add: I've heard that the Horn Bow does indeed have extra armor penetration because of it's slow refire rate (2.7), but, if this is true, does it only apply to the Horn Bow or does the Shadow Bow as well as all the other 2.7 refire rate bows have the 10% armor penetration too? Can someone reading this thread confirm this or point us to another forum / thread that has information on this? Thanks.

I'm assuming that Shadow bow would also have the 10% since every other stat on it mimics the Horn bow. I'm not sure i would take out dual shot since you can often do over 100 damage to a caster or monk.

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tiger
debilitating
pindown
distracting
melandru arrow
dual shot
penetrating shot
res sig

swap what you dont like for what ever

yeah vs casters and some monks, depending on what enchantments you can often do melandrus/daul shot damage of around 100 combined. The highest i remember was a dual shot with two numbers of 59 & 56 .

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I thought Melandru's would be added after the reduction (yeah-I'm probably wrong ), but either way, you'd need Conjure or something on it to do near 100 dmg.

Figure it however you want but i often get dual shots with damage of at least 50 for each arrow which is 100 damage. Maybe they are critical hits, but they are fairly often then.