Ranger/who cares, I don't use it anyway
Marksmanship 14 (11 base +3 superior rune)
Beast Mastery 13 (11 base +1 rune +1 mask)
Expertise 9 (8 base +1 rune)
Wilderness Survival 4 (3 base +1 rune)
Health +41 (Major Vigor rune)
Droknar's Forge Druid Armor
Skills:
Penetrating Attack
Precision Shot
Tiger's Fury
Ferocious Strike (elite)
Feral Lunge
Troll Ungent
Comfort Animal
Charm Animal
The 3 points in WS were mainly because I couldn't put them anywhere else, but having a +5 regen on TU is better than the base +3. Having an expertise of 9 seemed optimal for me, my 5 energy skills cost 3, and 10 energy skills cost 6, I couldn't really justify the AP to raise it to 13 for the next significant drop.
Some of the skills are variable. I will sometimes swap my attack skills (PA and PS) for others, such as Savage Shot for interrupting, etc, depending on what task I need to accomplish. I like Feral Lunge for the low energy cost and bleeding damage, it's always nice to watch an enemy's health start dropping suddenly. Troll Ungent is very optional, depending on if there's a competent healer in the group, and on how busy they're likely to get healing others. If I can keep myself going in some tight situations, one less person for the healer to worry about, but if it's not going to be that much extra stress, I'll grab something else. Other skills I'm likely to use, Favorable Winds for one, it's done well for me, but I generally only use it when alone or with a couple rl friends, since mission groups never seem to want to slow down long enough for me to cast it. Also, I've toyed with Symbiotic Bond, but I've seen a few threads claiming it is broken, and I've noticed that when used, there is no icon to indicate if it's active, so until that issue is cleared up, I'll probably avoid it.
Now for the meat of the build: Ferocious Strike and Tiger's Fury. Spamming FS nets me 6 energy (9 energy-3 to use skill), so when I use it right, I hardly ever run out. Yes, TF disables nonattack skills for 5 seconds, so what? FS has an 8 second recharge, and FL is 10 seconds. It's all about timing. I activate TF when I first attack a target, joined with my attack skills. During this time, my pet is still closing the distance to the target, so no real time loss there. By the time my pet reaches the target, I can hit FS for some energy, followed by FL to bleed my prey, at the same time continuing my bow attacks - that's one thing I love about the build, damage from two sources at once. As energy permits, I follow FS and FL with another TF, get it right and there's no downtime on my skills. I keep comfort animal handy so I can keep my little energy mine going, and res him if needed. However, even if my pet is taken out, between TF and two attack skills, I'm not exactly helpess. Definetely less effective, but not helpless.
Is this build "perfect"? No, but it's fun to play. I'd welcome any intelligent and thoughtful suggestions to improve it. By that I mean that I'd rather not hear something like "dude, pets suck, drop the beast and get WS up for traps" or "poison arrows own so much more than bleeding." I could read these comments on hundreds of other posts, I'm only looking for suggestions that relate specifically to the idea behind this build: a combination of both bow and pet skills. Also, I don't need ideas for a secondary class, the charcter is a ranger, plain and simple. If I could have avoided taking a secondary out of presear, I would have, it's not who my character is. I hate having to spell this out, but you wouldn't believes some of the responses I've gotten to other posts!
One area I'm debating about is my attribute levels. I read Ensign's treatise on Game Mechanics (excellent job by the way, thanks so much for the insight), and I'm trying to balance the idea that weapon attributes above 12 give only marginal improvements. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm assuming that a pet's base damage is affected like a weapon, and damage from pet attack skills is affected the same as weapon skills. By this argument, it's not very beneficial for me to have either marksmanship or beastmastery above 12, at least not for terms of damage dealt. I'm thinking of lowering marksman to 12 and bumping up beastmastery since it would improve the energy I get from FS, lengthen bleed time on FL, and improve healing from comfort animal. I'd have to see what kind of returns I get for the attribute level, but 16 is a possibility. I could have it a little lower and use a few points to raise WS and bring along healing spring in place of TU. Just some ideas.
Anyway, I didn't mean to get that longwinded, but if you have any comments or suggestions on this build, please post them. Is there anyone else out there who plays something like this, or am I just weird? Whatever your opinions, thanks for taking the time to consider my ideas, and to all my fellow rangers out there, Happy Hunting
