I may just have found a ranger farming build...

I have a lot of fun screenshots doing this with mergoyle wavebreakers!

I think you misunderstand. This build is meant for purely farm the avicara in thunderhead keep area with the chests. As I recall there are only melee and ranger guys there, a few blessed griffons that can be easily evaded. With whirling defense (always on) and throw dirt most of the time, you will be seldome hit. Perhaps you could bring aegis as well? I haven't checked the spammability of that skill yet. Healing breeze + healing touch or something should be enough to keep you alive.

And from your post, I don't think you understand that whirling defense IS your offensive skill. No traps. And with edge of extinction you should be able to kill quite effectively. I know a mo/w or e/mo could probably do it better, but I don't care. I'm not going to make a monk or ele, ascend it, buy gear and then cap all t3h 1337 skills just to farm for a bit of extra gold.


OK, just tested it. Pwned in like, 5 seconds from dual shot + ignite. It would seem that a healing seed is in order. Otherwise, this build SHOULD work. I powered through galrath with uber tanking abilities and like, 0 damage output to get refunds back.

Have you considered EoE, Zephyr, with whilring and barrage?

I'm not experienced with farming at all, have yet to do it, probably never will, but it sounds like that could work.

Edge of Extinction wouldn't be as effective if you were aiming to kill all the monsters at once. Namely with Barrage.

I misunderstood your post, but you need to be more clear what you're asking about. It appeared that it was only question about Whirling Defense as a farming tool.

Dual Shot + Ignite owns henchies there hardcore as well, and will do the same to you if you're the only target. And, as I've said, the 75% evade is hardly foolproof. You need some power regen to add to that, at a minimum. If you go for troll unguent, you're already in Wilderness Survival, and then traps make sense. If you're a R/Mo and you have access to healing, that might work too.

Healing Seed will not work- it's target Other ally. Healing Hands won't work either, for 2 reasons: It's elite (conflicts with Oath Shot) and it only triggers on physical attacks- no good vs ignite arrows.

Mending and healing breeze are possibilities, as is live vicariously. Unfortunately Healing doesn't have many good self heals. The best are Heal Area and Healing Touch- but Area wont work in a farming build and touch is only good with high divine favor.

Aegis is a poor choice at 15 energy and a roughly 8-9s duration with a 30s recharge. It's good if you have a party, because 15 energy to cover 8 people is a good tradeoff sometimes. But on a solo build, on a ranger's energy pool, I can't see that working out.

Prot spirit is bad because most of your damage comes in fast, small packets, isntead of slow, large packets. That is, however, the thing Shielding Hands excels at.

Good luck farming that one area. Here are a few possible suggetions.

Mending+Life Vicariously(+dual shot)
R/W with tactics and traps. (Use Victory is Mine + barbed/flame trap for self heals, find more stances to fill in the recharge on Whirling Defense) Watch Yourself and Healing Signet are possibilities if you want to keep Oath Shot + WD.

R/E with Expertise, WS, and Earth Magic.
Bring PBAOE attacks- crystal wave and aftershock (+ Whirlwhind?).
Armor of Earth will help with any damage that manages to sneak in, and the movement penalty wont matter. You'll still need some self-healing, so Troll Unguent is still probably necessary. While you're there, why not pick up a trap? (Noticing a trend?)

Farming builds usually require a ton of frontloaded offense, enough to nuke the threat into obvlivion before it becomes a threat, or highly durable, with good defense and sufficient offense. As you've seen, whirling defense is good defense, and OK offense, but Whirling Defense alone is not a build.

Edge of Extinction is nice, but not great. Even with high levels in beast mastery you'll only do 40ish damage per death, You still need to be able to get 3 or 4 monsters dead in order to set off the domino effect you're going for. Unless you have a way to take out a small group quickly, you're either dying before the monsters (current situation) or they're all dropping at roughly the same time- in which case EOE overloads, wiping out everything, However, if you were already able to whittle down a large pack without EOE, what do you even need it for?

EoE + traps

usually only a small group of monsters set off the traps. This means you get a chunk of 5 or 6 to set off the traps and they'll all die around the same time, which should be substantial enough to domino it up if you've been AoEing the rest of the group.