Ranger solo

[Jimjam]

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Originally Posted by Darguth [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Anyone have any experience trying to fear kite bats/bugs in SolB and any tactics they might suggest in doing so?

Use bats zoneline. I'd fear them at the top and root them if they got too close to other bats. Others suggested refearing to change their direction.

You can calm animal to reduce chance of adds while breaking in. Hopefully someone will be keeping the nox PH down to make it extra safe. Fighting with sneak on can help too. Remember bugs can't be calmed or feared by you.

Was good xp with 47 ranger (no fungi, no epic.), but was kinda edgy. The level of the bats means xp starts to slow down by 54, which is compounded by the fact 54 is a hell level.

[fastboy21]

Originally Posted by Pyrion [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Rangers have dual wield, SKs don't. Dual wielding 2 weapons usually is better DPS than just one big 2 hander (if those 1 handers are any good). Ranger damage spells are also more damaging then the Sks + you get a weak damage shield. So all in all, you can kill mobs faster while being more squishy.

**best Trump voice** WRONG

Not only will a good two hander out parse most 1 hander setups (like...most meaning until you have your epics) you will take less damage from riposte and ds effects on mobs while meleeing.

[Aaramis]

Originally Posted by fastboy21 [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

**best Trump voice** WRONG

Not only will a good two hander out parse most 1 hander setups (like...most meaning until you have your epics) you will take less damage from riposte and ds effects on mobs while meleeing.

Splitting hairs here.
I use both 2h and dual-wield and found the results to be comparable.

2h will get less ripostes, true, but it's also more unreliable dps. Sometimes you take a nice chunk off the enemy's hps; sometimes you whiff and your dps goes down the toilet. Dual-wield is, in general, more reliable dps - if we're both at, say, 40% life, and it's a race down to 0, I'd generally stick with dual-wield as I know exactly how fast I can get an enemy down. With 2h, it's a bit of a crapshoot. But it's not a huge difference either way, really, assuming similar ratio weapons.

[jolanar]

Originally Posted by Aaramis [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Splitting hairs here.
I use both 2h and dual-wield and found the results to be comparable.

2h will get less ripostes, true, but it's also more unreliable dps. Sometimes you take a nice chunk off the enemy's hps; sometimes you whiff and your dps goes down the toilet. Dual-wield is, in general, more reliable dps - if we're both at, say, 40% life, and it's a race down to 0, I'd generally stick with dual-wield as I know exactly how fast I can get an enemy down. With 2h, it's a bit of a crapshoot. But it's not a huge difference either way, really, assuming similar ratio weapons.

It's going to greatly differ depending on what level you are. Due to skill caps and damage bonus, dual wield gets a lot better the higher you are. Up until the mid 40s, 2H is going to be much better, especially as a ranger that can cast spells between swings. Also, everything you said about being reliable is basically nonsense, there has never been an actual parse that backs up that statement.

[Aaramis]

Originally Posted by jolanar [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Also, everything you said about being reliable is basically nonsense, there has never been an actual parse that backs up that statement.

And I have absolutely no intention of parsing to satisfy the neckbeards of this game.
Take 5 minutes and melee down some mobs using 2h and then dual wield. The kill speed overall will be similar, but the dual wield will be more reliable in the *time required*. 2h has a bit of variance based on misses.

That's all I'm saying, and anyone who's played must have noticed this.

[Troxx]

Numbers don't lie.

You're wrong Aramis.

[Darguth]

Originally Posted by Troxx [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Numbers don't lie.

"They lie all the time. They lie when 72% of Americans say they're tired of a sex scandal, while all the while, newspaper circulation go through the roof for anyone featuring the story."

[fastboy21]

Originally Posted by Aaramis [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

And I have absolutely no intention of parsing to satisfy the neckbeards of this game.
Take 5 minutes and melee down some mobs using 2h and then dual wield. The kill speed overall will be similar, but the dual wield will be more reliable in the *time required*. 2h has a bit of variance based on misses.

That's all I'm saying, and anyone who's played must have noticed this.

On one hand, I know what you are saying and I can see why you feel intuitively from game experience that this is the case. And, it isn't entirely wrong. The more swings the larger the number of swings...the larger the number of swings per fight the more likely to get expected results. Slower 2-hand smaller the number of swings...the smaller number of swings per fight the more likely to get unexpected results. Yes, its true that the more you roll the dice the more your actual results will map to the predicted probability. Nonetheless...

On the other hand, objectively speaking, I know the parses from 2-handers vs 1-hander setups that I've done on every melee character I've rolled on p99. 2-handers are almost always better dps.

(statistically, I see where you are going: you could contrive a scenario where using 1-handers (even with a statistically lower dps) would create a smaller chance of losing the fight...like fighting a low hp mob that does lots of damage. You might smartly chose to do less damage statistically to get a smaller chance of critical failure using the 1-handers. However this would seem to me a very unusual scenario...and almost always, I'd still opt for the higher dps over a larger sample.)

I'm not sure why you have to call someone a neckbeard for turning their parser on to actually see the numbers.

Running a parser isn't a difficult thing to do; you run the program in the background and it collects log data and organizes it for you. Not sure what is so awful about that.

What makes more sense: trusting your intuition to answer a question or using the data you collect over days of gameplay using both setups on your character as your fight different mobs?

Back to the original question, the other advantage of using a good 2-hander (aside from the objectively higher dps it gives over most 1 hander set ups) is that you'll be able to cast between swings without losing nearly as much potential damage from melee.

[jolanar]

Originally Posted by Aaramis [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

And I have absolutely no intention of parsing to satisfy the neckbeards of this game.
Take 5 minutes and melee down some mobs using 2h and then dual wield. The kill speed overall will be similar, but the dual wield will be more reliable in the *time required*. 2h has a bit of variance based on misses.

That's all I'm saying, and anyone who's played must have noticed this.

Unless you have measured it then you are just making stuff up, treating it as fact, and insulting anyone who disagrees with you. Way to go.

[Kich867]

Originally Posted by Aaramis [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

And I have absolutely no intention of parsing to satisfy the neckbeards of this game.
Take 5 minutes and melee down some mobs using 2h and then dual wield. The kill speed overall will be similar, but the dual wield will be more reliable in the *time required*. 2h has a bit of variance based on misses.

That's all I'm saying, and anyone who's played must have noticed this.

This is very false. Dual wielding will always underperform against two-handers of equivalent ratios barring other circumstances like procs or something (and even then, really..). If your DW weapons are better than your two-hander, obviously you'll do more damage with them, but if they aren't you're doing a lot less damage.

There isn't any feeling to this, this is just really simple math stuff.. If you have two 1-handers and they're both 15/30 weapons. If you have a 2-hander and it's 30/30, even though additively they're the same ratios, 2-hander is substantially better.

You don't always hit with your offhand, even at level 60 with maxed out dual-wield skill your chance to trigger your offhand attack is like ~70% or something.

This is obviously napkin math, but in ~5 minutes with a 30 delay weapon you attack every 3 seconds, getting in 100 attacks. If you do 200 damage with your two-hander and 100 damage with your one-handers each..

200 * 100 = 20000 damage.
100 * 170 = 17000 damage. (accounting for the times dual-wield does not occur)

You can try and say things like misses affect a two-hander more, they don't. They affect them equally. You don't have a higher chance to hit while dual-wielding..

From the above numbers, if you had a 20% chance to miss:

200 * (100 * 0.8) = 16000 damage.
100 * (170 * 0.8) = 13600 damage.

There is no such thing as a variance based on misses, they both miss equally as often and the damage they put out is equally affected by misses. That's how percentages work.