I agree with everything that Moon said, except the 40 bow. going from 35 bow to 40 bow you will see zero to VERY minimal dmg. Penetrating arrow 2 is not worth the points either. It almost never works since it only woks on non self cast bladeturn, only has a very small chance of working, and lvl 1 is like 25% dmg, lvl 2 is like 50%, and lvl 3 is 75%. It is really not worth it to go above 35 bow unless you go to 45 bow for rapid fire 2 and volley 2. If you have some extra points laying around and you are 4L1-4L9 you may go 36 bow just so your at composoite 50, but never anything higher.

Also, on one side note, raising cd also raises the (+) dmg you see from doing styles. So when performing your lvl 18 side stun you will see a higher dmg + from style bonus the higher your cd is. So if you use alot of pierce styles then you want a fairly high spec in pierce, but if you use cd styles then higher cd is very nice.

RonELuvv wrote:I agree with everything that Moon said, except the 40 bow. going from 35 bow to 40 bow you will see zero to VERY minimal dmg. Penetrating arrow 2 is not worth the points either. It almost never works since it only woks on non self cast bladeturn, only has a very small chance of working, and lvl 1 is like 25% dmg, lvl 2 is like 50%, and lvl 3 is 75%. It is really not worth it to go above 35 bow unless you go to 45 bow for rapid fire 2 and volley 2. If you have some extra points laying around and you are 4L1-4L9 you may go 36 bow just so your at composoite 50, but never anything higher.

Also, on one side note, raising cd also raises the (+) dmg you see from doing styles. So when performing your lvl 18 side stun you will see a higher dmg + from style bonus the higher your cd is. So if you use alot of pierce styles then you want a fairly high spec in pierce, but if you use cd styles then higher cd is very nice.

That's completely right. I wasn't sure about how much boost you would get with bow. I do have some guildmates that are 50 bow and they report doing some really high damage on their crit shots on lvl 50 targets than I could never come close to with 35 bow spec. It could be that the benefit really is only in the crit shot ability, while having only a small benefit on normal shots. I wouldn't recommend 50 bow spec, even though a few folks do it. They almost always end up changing to Hybrid after a few months when they realize just how often they end up in melee, and I suspect those in my guild will probably respec soon.

roger

I didnt autotrain so when I look at my final spec, I cant really figure out which way I should go in order to get CD to 29.

I've got 40 PF, 33 stealth, 34 pierce, 27 CD, 35 bow.....

If you want to go 29 CD its probably easiest to drop pierce to 32. Rest is much more important. You will experience a bit more variance in base damage, but 50 weapon is not as important as it is on live since it is not used for defense calculation. Even my 25 pierce ranger hits pretty constant.

Downside is there is no real good choice for anytime style at that spec. Hurricane without Solar flare probably eats too much endu, you would probably best use bumblebee (pierce taunt), but at 32 pierce you won't hit that hard compared to 39+ pierce.

Maybe you would be better off using 18 CD, 39 pierce and use the copperhead/corbas bite chain after the sidestun. That's something you have to find out yourself.

You got to find out yourself what suits you best, and respec if it doesnt work out.

The thing about the CD line is that it really starts to shine at higher levels, e.g. for anytime combo hurricane/solar flare or especially for the 3-style sidechain with supernova doing amazing damage. But 50 CD is only an option for mid/highRR full-melee rangers, not for lowRR hybrids

Albsforlunch wrote:I didnt autotrain so when I look at my final spec, I cant really figure out which way I should go in order to get CD to 29.

I've got 40 PF, 33 stealth, 34 pierce, 27 CD, 35 bow.....

Well, problem #1 is you didn't autotrain. Not much you can do about that except re-roll. I would simply not worry about CD going to 29 and just get it as high as possible. The black widdow, sidewinder, asp bite pierce chain is probably your best melee option as backup styles to diamondback.

Your effective stealth needs to be between 48-51, so over time with higher RR you can lower your stealth spec as needed and put the points in CD.

Moondragon1 wrote:The black widdow, sidewinder, asp bite pierce chain is probably your best melee option as backup styles to diamondback.

I agree for PvM, I disagree for RvR. The 3-style chain is only worth dmg/endu wise if you pull off all 3 styles (which you will rarely be able to do in RvR). Otherwise, taunt just outdamages it.

I agree with Shade on that. On live, as well as early on here, I used to use the 3 style pierce chain, but the endurance cost is just to high in RvR since you are only going to get all 3 syles off maybe once every 3 or 4 attempts. Bumblebee or Squall would be a much better option since the end usage is not nearly as much.

@ Albsforlunch- Hey, I also did not autor train, and I was able to get to 29 cd. I was not able to do this till I got up to 6L0, but it is doable. At 6L0 I dropped Path down to 36 to get 29 cd. At 7L0 I raised Path back up to 40 and dropped stealth down to composite 49 to keep cd up to 29. It will be possible for you to do it, but probably not until higher RR's UNLESS you do what Shade said and drop you base weapon down a bunch. Really, it all depends on your play style. Without Auto Training my current spec is:

40 Path
35 Bow
33 Pierce
29 Cd
32 Stealth

That is at RR7L+ so I have +17 to all. I really like this spec, but will be glad when I hit 8L0 so my stealth will be back up to 50. For every point (composite) under 50 you are there is a small chance you can become uncovered when performing normal or rapid fire shots. Nothing worse then when you are pulling back to shoot an assasin and you come unstealthed.

35 bow
35 stealth
36 blade
35 cd
31 path

Even if Spectrum Blade is not so effective, I like this RR5+ spec

35 Bow
19 CD
39 Blades (with Pierce can lower to 36 and get some more CD)
35 Stealth
40 Path

RR7+

35 Bow
33 Stealth
34 Pierce
29 CD to get Tempest
40 Path

What u think?

I gonna try

35 Stealth
35 Bow
16 Path
27 Blades
50 CD

But I need to make some adjustments to my SC so gonna take some time

Bladespec is imo not really effective. You neither have nice positionals nore any counter styles. How do you wanna make any melee damage.
I like 50 CD - either I can strafe 2 side chains and I win, or I die spaming taunt hehe

RonELuvv wrote: [...]

40 Path
35 Bow
33 Pierce
29 Cd
32 Stealth

That is at RR7L+ so I have +17 to all.

What anytime style u using with this spec? Squall or pierc? Did u do some testings?

Celteen wrote:I gonna try

35 Stealth
35 Bow
16 Path
27 Blades
50 CD

But I need to make some adjustments to my SC so gonna take some time

Bladespec is imo not really effective. You neither have nice positionals nore any counter styles. How do you wanna make any melee damage.
I like 50 CD - either I can strafe 2 side chains and I win, or I die spaming taunt hehe

I don't want to appear like the classic 'know it all' of the situation, but, have you ever heard that base damage of CD does not come from total points of CD iteself, but from the total points of either pierce or blade?
That way you gonna do a 27+bonus damage, even if you have 50 CD. If you already know that, and therefore is a willing choice, forget my post

On Uthgard this spec should work pretty good. You will see more variance in basedmg, but the high GR styles from CD, combined with the high CD spec should give such a good style damage that the variance in base damage will not be a big issue.
As is known, defense penetration doesn't come into play here on Uth.

shade wrote:On Uthgard this spec should work pretty good. You will see more variance in basedmg, but the high GR styles from CD, combined with the high CD spec should give such a good style damage that the variance in base damage will not be a big issue.
As is known, defense penetration doesn't come into play here on Uth.

There is no variance in base dmg on Uthgard with low weapon spec with 50 CD and only using CD styles, i have tested myself and the only differance is like 2 higher in average dmg for every 5 spec points, also the dmg range was raised by 2 points.
I tested 27+17 pierce against 32+17 pierce barely saw any difference at all.

I am 25+18 blades and 50 + 18 CD and hit SB´s for 200-240 in dmg. Having 44+ in CD and taking blade/pierce anything higher then ~42-43 compisite spec is a waste of spec points on Uthgard.

Same as Stealth, u only need 48 in total stealth if u are mos3 or higher.