Talk to the Hand! - A ranged Shadow Warrior build

[Numerii 1]

Currently level 77, finished Gold at 58, 19% campaign cleared on Platinum.

 

Disclaimer: At this time I have not taken this build to niob so waste your time at your own risk! I will update this guide whenever I deem it necessary as I progress. If the build ultimately fails I will take down this guide or revise it to reflect the new build. With all that said however, I've deleted and remade this build 3 times now to get to this point so I'm very confident that it is a good build. My last two builds might have worked out as well, I just didn't feel that they could go from 1-200 without dying is all, fundamentally they were sound but lacking just a little bit more than I would have liked to have seen. I took both of those builds to the end of gold(one was 58, the other 56) with 0 deaths. I just didn't want to spend any more time on them once I decided to revise the core builds.

 

Now, this has allowed me to amass quite a chest full of gear to pass down, I also have a Bargaining toon(currently only 42 but able to flip +2 and occasionally +3 to all skills jewelry) so most of my experience with this build is slightly skewered because of this. However it's nothing really big, the gear is a couple of set pieces and the lowest stuff I had was like two pieces at level 20, most of it was 35+ so in those early stages I only had the benefit of +12 to all skills going on with some gold Enhance runes. So while it was a bit overpowered due to my "grandfathering" I don't think that anyone new would have too many issues running this build from the start. I would highly advise that you consider a Bargaining character to level up alongside it though because that skill can make your character, and any characters you make after it, so beastly that it is more than worth the time invested in leveling up a toon solely for the purpose of enhancing your enjoyment of other characters. Just try to funnel as much cash to that toon as you can, even if it means buying junk from a merchant and then using that bargaining character to sell it back at a fraction of the cost.

 

 

 

Ok on to the meat of this thread:

 

As I said in my disclaimer at the top, this is the 3rd iteration of this build. It is a ranged Shadow Warrior build, vastly different from the summoner builds you will have likely seen by now.

 

Here are the things I wanted to accomplish with this build:

 

1. No summons at all. I hate their AI and did not like the thought of 70% of my character was tied to the limits of that AI

2. Lots of offensive as well as defensive potential. I didn't want a glass cannon but I also didn't want to sit their wailing on bosses for days looking like some EQ boss raid.

3. A build that featured Spectral Hand as its cornerstone Combat Art.

 

What you can expect from this build:

 

1. No summons.

2. Great boss damage as well as the ability to wipe large packs out quickly.

3. Strong surivability.

4. A ranged playstyle.

 

So I started with running a perma-stealthed ranged weapon-based Spectral Hand with Demonic Blow, Scything Sweep and Frenzied Rampage for crowds which just wasn't very fun to me and was kind of awkward in my opinion. Deleted in Gold at 56.

 

I then went to a Spectral Hand/melee build using a 2h hafted weapon and Demonic Blow and Frenzied Rampage for crowds...and running Grim Resilience and Reflective Emanation to allow me to survive unstealthed. This just turned out to be entirely too many skills spread out trying to cover it all and ultimately faltering in Gold to the point I knew it wouldn't make it to Niob. Octagolamus was ripping me up a bit harder than I was comfortable with seeing and the orc champs were starting to take a bit longer to kill and hitting harder than I would have liked. I didn't die on this guy but it was too close too many times. Deleted in Gold at 58.

 

This time around I can already feel that this build has the single target and crowd damage I want along with the survivability while being a fun and challenging build...while still being strong enough to make it through to the end. I've been pushing this one as much as possible to ensure it's a good build. I went straight for Gar'Colossus on him, killed the Wild Boar at 12 on the way without having to use a potion, he was dead within 20 seconds. Got to Gar at 13 and again, did not need to pot. It did take me 30-40 seconds to down him which I will accept at that level considering he took a bit to finally throw a rock so my first bone tower was just hacking away at his shield for its full duration. He died shortly after dropping the second tower. Right after that I took it to Holos. I wiped the undead on the road heading east out of Thylysium quite easily and I got to Holos at 15. Used one potion on him and he was down at the same time the bone tower was finished.

 

This build is a boss-killer from the start make no mistakes about that. Quaff a potion any time your health drops and you'll still find yourself with more and more potions every time you look while allowing zero chance for anything to strip your survival bonus. By 75 you'll probably find that only necessary on rare occasions and usually due to pushing the limits of this build just to know where that limit lies.

 

Skills

 

Level 2: Astral Lord Focus (75)

 

Cuts down on your regen time for Spectral Hand and will allow you to eat more runes.

 

Level 3: Astral Lord Lore (75)

 

Increases the damage, crit chance and casting speed of Spectral Hand.

 

Level 5: Combat Discipline (75)

 

Increases your Combat Art damage with every point and for our two combos it will knock off some of the regen time.

 

Level 8: Ancient Magic (75)

 

Increases the damage of Skeletal Fortification. Not sure if the reduction in spell resistance of your opponents matters much to this build, either way it comes with mastery regardless, the increased damage is more than enough to warrant this skill in the build.

 

Level 12: Armor Lore (75)

 

Put points here as you feel you need them. I like to keep it high enough that I can wear armor 5-10 levels above me at a minimum and that's how I decide how many points to go into each level. Using lots of +all skills jewelry in your gear should make this very easy to accomplish so it can probably stay at 1 point until you're ready to master it if you have that option.

 

Level 18: Combat Reflexes (75)

 

This basically replaces Reflective Emanation in our build(which by the way will be running with 0 buffs from 1-200). It might not be as good as a fully modded RE with lots of runes read but it also doesn't slap a regen penalty on us so it's a very nice compromise. It also reduces the chance to receive a crit from melee hits, helping smooth out your damage taken. Anybody that's ever been in the orc champ cave knows that at times those guys spike your health so bad that some characters don't have time to respond and we all know what happens then.

 

Level 25: Shield Lore (75)

 

Now this skill can be changed out if you like. I took it to add some survivability to the build. I had quite a few nice shields gathered up from my other characters who did not use shields in their builds and I wanted to make a build that would finally use a 1h/shield combo. If you don't have a Blacksmith character yet and play on PC then you might consider using this slot for it. If you want to get even more damage out of this build consider Hafted Weapons and rocking a beefy 2h hafted weapon. Research has been done that shows the increase in chance to hit by this skill(Hafted Weapons) does benefit Spectral Hand so you could get by with less -opponent chance to evade in your gear and of course it unlocks the hafted weapons modifiers you'll find on most hafted weapons. So decide if you would like defense, utility or offense now or just skip down and put this off for level 60 if you're still not sure.

 

Level 35: Constitution (75)

 

This is the level where I start to farm the orc champion cave for 5-10 levels of quick xp before slogging through the rest of the campaign and, as anyone who's ever been in that cave can tell you, these guys hit HARD. Now is a great time to boost your HP. You should also consider adding 2 points to this skill every level so you can master it at 75.

 

Level 50: Toughness (75)

 

Some nice damage mitigation here. Every points add a set amount of armor to all your armor types, meaning physical and all 4 forms of elemental damage. 15-20 armor for all 5 of those types every point really adds up in the long run. Furthermore, it grants a flat percentage reduction in damage taken. At 200 points you'll get nearly a 20% reduction in damage taken off of every single form of damage you might take...after the fact that this skill beefs up your first line of defense(your actual defense value for the form of damage incoming) and is a good place to consider putting some extra points later on if +skills isn't getting it to 200.

 

 

Level 65: Spell Resistance (75)

 

This is where we make up for not having Grim Resilience. Increases spell resistance(as the name implies, duh), reduces the chance to take a crit from spells(supposedly all Combat Arts are considered spells in this regard, if so then this skill is simply amazing) and at mastery it provides a reduction to detrimental effects.

 

 

***Once every skill is mastered then you can start distributing points as you see fit. You will have 161 points to play with. My suggestion is to hold onto these points until you "know" you need to spend them in a given skill or you could just shoot for +100 to all skills in your gear and then get 6 of these skills to 100 hard points with 11 left over for a 7th skill. My 4 choices to leave at 75 would be Ancient Magic, Armor Lore, Shield Lore and Constitution.

 

In my opinion though it's going to be based more on your gear than anything and you're better off saving those points until you're pretty much at a stopping point with your character and then tweaking your skills as a final touch to the build before you put it into semi-retirement.

 

 

 

Attributes

 

I did a 50/50 split between Vitality and Intelligence. Every level put one point into Vitality, once you start getting more points each level put those extra points into Intelligence. This will give you a nice boost to your HP from 1-50 and then from 50-200 you'll continue boosting your HP while increasing your damage and spell intensity.

 

Edit: At times, dependent on gear and playstyle, you might opt to put those extra points into Stamina. This will allow you to eat more runes for Spectral Hand. Skeletal Fortification should hardly matter, with Focus mod you're going to be hard pressed to get its cooldown past its duration. You might opt to go with Stamina from 50 on with your extra points and only put points into Intelligence later in the game. Some things you simply need to decide for yourself based on your specific character.

 

 

 

Combos

 

1. Skeletal Fortification. Usually shaves about a second off the cooldown, not much but worth it.

 

2. Augmenting Guidon, Rousing Command. I use this as my boss-killer combo, opening up the fight by laying them down after the bone tower pops up and usually getting the kill before they run their full duration. I don't know if the boost to attack value helps or not but the defense value boost from Augmenting Guidon will at the very least. Keep these two Combat Arts at max level, they won't be very high with this build so you won't need many runes.

 

 

 

Combat Arts

 

 

 

Astral Lord

 

Spectral Hand: Clout, Intent, Double Attack. More damage, more crits, and a chance to double that more damage and more crits on occasion and one-shot some champions, enough said. Actually enough said about the mods, I would like to talk about Spectral Hand though since it is the Combat Art that this build is built around. Now this is the best info I could get on it, just going by my own research as well as other people's research...if you find something wrong or debateable plus speak up, there is so much wrong info being spread about this game because one person says something does work while another swears it doesn't and a lot of the time you just make a decision in which one you're going to believe based simply upon who delivered the stronger argument and what you can go into the game and test yourself:

 

1. Spectral Hand is a weapon-based attack. The damage is increased by your weapon's base damage. It is also increased by Intelligence, Astral Lord Lore, Combat Discipline and finally items that increase physical damage(this can be confirmed by equipping a % physical damage increase ring and looking at the tooltip for Spectral Hand).

2. Tactics Lore does nothing for Spectral Hand.

3. Your chance to hit is determined by your Attack Rating. This one is questionable but it seems to be somewhat true according to this thread by Tarnsman:

 

http://forum.sacredeng.ascaron-net.com/sho...ad.php?p=601985

 

I'm a bit pessimistic about the data since he only used a 10 swing window in which to determine his results but since I play on Xbox 360 and have no access to premade level 200 characters this is all I have to go by.

 

(With that said though, -% chance for opponent to evade on your gear is a much easier way to reduce the number of misses you might see instead of taking two skills(referring to Speed Lore and Hafted Weapons as per Tarnsman's thread) that are of very little benefit to this build and/or dumping points into Strength or any other way you could think of for raising your attack rating. -40% chance for opponent to evade is more than enough for this build and can be accomplished with about 4 pieces of jewelry at level 25 and it costs even less at higher levels. If I didn't have a +skill amulet laying around I would slap this stat into those gold sockets and only sacrifice three sockets in my gear to wipe away misses.)

 

4. Spectral Hand deals its damage in the form of whatever element you have runed to your weapon. Once again this is confirmed by looking at the tooltip for the spell. If you have no element runed to your weapon it will be full yellow(meaning 100% physical), adding a 50% fire will make it half yellow/half red. You get the point now I'm sure. This is a huge boon for this build because it allows you to change your elemental damage at any time assuming you either have extra weapons slotted with different elements or you have access to a walking blacksmith(which may very well be, you). I prefer to walk around with two weapons slotted, one with fire and the other with magic with fire being on my strongest and most used weapon. This seems to work really well for most of the game.

 

5. Regeneration per Hit works with Spectral Hand. Thanks to Chattius for bringing this to my attention. I've had a chance to play with it a bit and from my early testings it works kind of like this:

 

As we already know, your casting speed is "sped up" by Astral Lord Lore. My casting speed atm(level 71) with 34 soft points and around +43 to all skills is around .1 to .2 seconds I would say. It's pretty fast but there's still a noticeable animation(at high levels this thing should be almost a blur). I socketed a .6 regen per hit ring into a piece of my gear giving me a .7 sec regen per hit. My SH regen time is 1.3 seconds. So I hit my SH button at "T minus 1.3 seconds" if you will. At 1.1 seconds or so the casting animation is finished and the hit registers. Regen per hit of .7 secs then subtracts from that 1.1 seconds giving me a .4 second regen. Now I take that .4 second regen and add my casting speed of .1 to .2 seconds giving me a regen of .5 to .6 seconds for my Spectral Hand. Now this is simply my personal observations on it but this seems to be the way it works. For me this .5 to .6 second regen is perfect and in the future I'll probably try to balance my runes read in such a way as to keep this regen as I come across higher amounts of regen per hit. I recommend only one ring, amulet or socket being devoted to this stat.

 

 

Only eat runes for this Combat Art when you are absolutely sure you can afford the hit to your regen. You should be shooting for somewhere from .6 sec to 1.0 sec regen depending on your personal preference and how much you like to spam your button. Thanks to World of Warcraft and their Global Cooldown system I look like a crackhead beating his carpet so hard that hopefully that crumb of a rock that he dropped will bounce up off the ground out of hiding, so I shoot for .6 sec. Just keep it somewhere in between those two times until you know what you're most comfortable with.

 

Now, back to the rest of my Combat Art choices:

 

Skeletal Fortification: Focus, Arcane Power, Scatter Shot. Ice Shards or Arcane Power are purely up to the player, some bosses will have resistances to one or even both elements so sometimes you picked the wrong one and sometimes you picked the right one, either way it won't make or break the build. Focus is huge for this build. This mod will allow you to keep this Combat Art at max level allowed without penalty and still be under the 20 second cooldown line you're going to draw for yourself. Remember that in a combo with Combat Discipline you're going to shave another second or so off the cooldown so always check your cooldown based upon what the tooltip says for the combo, not the tooltip for the actual Combat Art. This Combat Art is pure pain when you drop it. This is what you drop when you want to kill champions, crowds and bosses. SF combined with SH will wipe out crowds very quickly and bosses are a joke. To give some perspective at 24 I have this at level 23 and it does 1.2-1.4k damage at a .8 second firing rating and two projectiles(which seems to only work when there are more than one(1) enemies so sometimes it's not 100% on bosses but it wrecks crowds extremely well. My Spectral Hand is only at 1.1 sec regen and does about half as much damage. At 12 it practically was my damage whenever I dropped it. Spectral Hand will win in the end due to scaling, cooldown and maneuverability but at low levels the bone tower really rips through stuff in comparison and really never does become lackluster.

 

Shadow Veil: Creep, Nimble, Sinister Pact. My "AFK" button lol. Seriously though, I have kids and a life and sometimes I just need to go afk right at that second and throwing a fully modded, max level Shadow Veil up ensures that so long as stuff doesn't walk right up on top of me I'm about as safe as you can be while being afk. Just don't afk for too long and don't blame me if you die, exit out of the game next time you lazy sod! Now I took Nimble for the silver mod simply so at those lower levels before I was able to max my movement rate I could put this on as a buff and just run through the swamp without having to fight. I hate the swamp that much that I intentionally blow through it only stopping to do what needs to be done to further the campaign quest. Obviously it is a completely worthless mod later on but then so is Fade since I don't play stealthed with this build. You could grab Fade here and turn this into a perma-stealthed build if you wanted to and it will work just like it does for those summoner builds that utilize it. I just found that playstyle really boring but to each his own.

 

 

 

Gameplay

 

Quite simple really, spam Spectral Hand at everything! Drop Skeletal Fortification whenever you find yourself in the middle of a large pack whether by design or happenchance and keep the bone tower up for bosses.

 

This is basically it in a nutshell. Keep It Simple, Stupid if you're familiar with the acronym. Something I should have considered myself apparently.

Edited November 6, 2009 by Numerii

[x Zeus x 0]

I hope this build works for you in Niob. You are for sure pushing your limits with no buffs. GR and RE are just to godly to not have. Since you wont be in the shadows full time GR pumped up would save you from taking any major critical spell hits. RE would work to reflect the physical damage your going to take which is going to be alot. Which would free up Combat Reflex and Spell Resistance (which is not needed) 90% of damage done is physical.

 

I am running a level 123 Shadow Summoner "Tomb Raider" in Niob and am glad I have my three skeletons along with what ever I raise.

 

I can tell you this when I seen "Range" in your description I was stoked thinking it was a range build (2H gun).

 

Good Luck

[Numerii 1]

I hope this build works for you in Niob. You are for sure pushing your limits with no buffs. GR and RE are just to godly to not have. Since you wont be in the shadows full time GR pumped up would save you from taking any major critical spell hits. RE would work to reflect the physical damage your going to take which is going to be alot. Which would free up Combat Reflex and Spell Resistance (which is not needed) 90% of damage done is physical.

 

I am running a level 123 Shadow Summoner "Tomb Raider" in Niob and am glad I have my three skeletons along with what ever I raise.

 

I can tell you this when I seen "Range" in your description I was stoked thinking it was a range build (2H gun).

 

Good Luck

 

You could run with both buffs if you wanted to. You'd have to change the build obviously to make it happen. The only reason I dropped the thought of it was how difficult it was becoming to boost those two buffs while keeping my regen time down on not only Spectral Hand but Skeletal Fortification as well. I was also devoting all of my attribute points to Stamina in order to help combat the regen penalties I was suffering.

 

Now consider that in order to run those two buffs you have to take 3 skills(DW Focus, MC Focus and Concentration). I simply took those 3 skills out of the build and used Combat Reflexes, Spell Resistance and Shield Lore to replace them. I also was able to free up my attribute points to go into Vitality instead of Stamina. Combat Reflexes closely mirrors the avoidance you would get from Reflective Emanation, Spell Resistance closely mirrors the magical mitigation you would get from Grim Resilience. Putting points into Vitality gives you the HP you lose from not running GR. None of these things cost me in regen penalty. Plus I had a free skill slot by making this change and so I have the added defense value and after mastery some added close combat block by picking up Shield Lore.

 

So far I've got the build I posted at 51 in Gold. As soon as I hit 50 I took him to the orc champ cave and without any buffs this character is actually taking their hits much smoother and he's still killing them very fast since I have SF on a 13 sec cooldown(meaning it's available every time I reset the cave). All of my own apprehensions of running with no buffs have practically disappeared already.

[Numerii 1]

Not sure how to delete a post, if a mod could please assist here. I simply added this to the OP, thereby making this reply irrelevant

Edited November 3, 2009 by Numerii

[chattius 2,526]

I think spectra hand behaves a bit like magic coup from the elf. So its attack speed is from the magical lore, its damage is from magical lore, your weapon and the attribute fitting to your weapon. Its hit chance is from a weapon hit, so jewelry with enemy can't evade helps a lot. Also in the AddOn, not sure for consoles, Regeneration per Hit is working on it. So if you have a regeneration per hit of 2 seconds, your spectral hand regenerates in 3 seconds, a successful hit will speed up your regeneration per 2 seconds.

[Numerii 1]

I think spectra hand behaves a bit like magic coup from the elf. So its attack speed is from the magical lore, its damage is from magical lore, your weapon and the attribute fitting to your weapon. Its hit chance is from a weapon hit, so jewelry with enemy can't evade helps a lot. Also in the AddOn, not sure for consoles, Regeneration per Hit is working on it. So if you have a regeneration per hit of 2 seconds, your spectral hand regenerates in 3 seconds, a successful hit will speed up your regeneration per 2 seconds.

 

Interesting, I'll have to gather up some RPH jewelry and test it. You're right about how the spell actually works though. It's very much the same way that Seraphims' Archangel Wrath works. I have one based on Soldat's Celestial Technobabe build and while it is a fun build I had a lot of issues with AW, particularly the way it can always miss if the target has any form of elevational difference. From playing a DW Shadow Warrior I would occasionally use Spectral Hand for those times where I was rooted and it just never misses simply because the spell "hits" right where the target is standing. So I wanted to try to bring the same type of playstyle of Soldat's Seraphim to the Shadow Warrior.

 

Anyway, back to the RPH. If this does indeed work then I will likely start to make room for it in my sockets/gear around 75-100 I think. I'm also interested in whether or not the double attack of the gold mod works as two hits as far as RPH is concerned. My guess is that it indeed does and if so that's like adding a form of regeneration time cut in half in some ways lol.

[claudius 104]

If I recall tactics lore DOES increase SH damage. It doesn't affect crit and % damage but it does affect the BASE that SH works with. Maybe the tooltip was wrong? Also sword/axe lore increases the chance that the hand hits.

Edited November 2, 2009 by claudius

[Numerii 1]

If I recall tactics lore DOES increase SH damage. It doesn't affect crit and % damage but it does affect the BASE that SH works with. Maybe the tooltip was wrong? Also sword/axe lore increases the chance that the hand hits.

 

As per the thread I linked in the original OP which so far has been the only empirical evidence I've seen on what does and does not affect SH:

 

Now I have read on the boards that skills like tactics lore, speed lore, and ancient magic helps your spectral hand damage. Here is what I found...

 

Damage Results with 0 Tactics weapon damage 196 - 247

1. 618

2. 687

3. 624

4. 602

5. 712

 

Damage Results with 75 Tactics weapon damage 550 - 695

1. 624

2. 744

3. 597

4. 590

5. 687

 

Damage Results with 75 Tactics/75 Speed Lore weapon damage 550 - 695

1. 689

2. 680

3. 683

4. 602

5. 635

 

I then did 200 Tactics Lore and 200 Speed Lore and the results were the same. I did notice that I hit more often with the increase in attack rating from the speed lore. I also did not see an increase in criticals with 200 Tactics Lore.I then threw 75 into ancient magic and the results were the same, no increase in damage. So far none of the above had any affect on Spectral Hands damage.

Edited November 3, 2009 by Numerii

[claudius 104]

I'm just saying if you hit F and look how much damage spectral hand does that with more tactics lore the tooltip says you are doing more damage. What were this tester doing? Why 5 data points and why is there a spread from 1000 to 5000 damage:) 5 different enemy types? I'm just telling you what the tooltip says when you hit F. Also a bigger weapon does more damage. 2 handed hammers do the most though shield lore is a good skill too.

 

Liked reading your build, don't get me wrong and I give you credit for making it and not dying. I just died twice today with my Temple Guardian But I'm just telling you what I saw on my tooltip.

[Numerii 1]

I'm just saying if you hit F and look how much damage spectral hand does that with more tactics lore the tooltip says you are doing more damage. What were this tester doing? Why 5 data points and why is there a spread from 1000 to 5000 damage:) 5 different enemy types? I'm just telling you what the tooltip says when you hit F. Also a bigger weapon does more damage. 2 handed hammers do the most though shield lore is a good skill too.

 

Liked reading your build, don't get me wrong and I give you credit for making it and not dying. I just died twice today with my Temple Guardian But I'm just telling you what I saw on my tooltip.

 

lol I see what you mean now. That's simply an error in copy/paste. It's not 1000-5000, it's number 1 to number 5. I'll edit it and put some spaces in there to make it easier to read.

[Numerii 1]

Ok so I came across two +0.6 sec RPH rings so I decided to try them out. Now my Spectral Hand is at level 18(1 rune read) with a regen of 1.4 seconds.

 

First of all, equipping both rings gave me a 1.2 sec regen per hit so either this stat has no diminishing returns, the diminishing returns are really low or it has a threshold before diminishing returns kicks in. As I come across higher amounts of it hopefully I'll be able to tell which of the three possibilities is most likely to be true.

 

Secondly those 1.2 seconds basically turned my Spectral Hand into a machine gun. SH is basically a ranged instant attack and your casting speed is about the only thing that keeps it from hitting the very moment you hit the button. Sure enough though, soon as it hit my regen was gone. That .2 sec gap between my real regen and the regen I benefitted from with RPH was very close to my attack animation so I'm going to have to look for that "sweet spot" as my Lore skill increases though I'm guessing it's going to lie between .1 and .2 seconds.

 

From this point on I'm probably going to reserve one socket for this stat and then base my SH regen off of that. One could go so far as to intentionally raise their regen pretty high and then compensate with more RPH but I don't think that would fit my playstyle as well, I'm already tapped with -opponent chance to hit, deathblow(yay consoles!) and +all skills.

 

One socket or a ring/ammy is definitely worth it though as this could, in the future, allow me to eat a lot more runes.

[Numerii 1]

Ok, can't edit the original post so...

 

Currently 84, just finished Platinum.

[claudius 104]

Just curious what platform and patch you are playing? I am on PC 1.43 and I have had no success in the RPH mod.

[Numerii 1]

Everyone says the console version is pre-2.43 or so. I've only been playing for about a month now and I've never played the PC version so I really wouldn't know what patch we're playing.

[Numerii 1]

After further review this build could be changed to be used as a true ranged build. I apologize to anyone who was mislead by the title of the OP, my MMO background used the term "ranged" to refer to any class that attacked from range whether it be a caster or an archer so to speak.

 

The build I propose to do so would make it very avoidance heavy. I prefer mitigation in my builds which is why I'm using the original build. Just keep in mind that with this ranged build you might take some big hits occasionally but you should also have more than enough avoidance to react to that damage in all but the rarest of situations.

 

Basically you would take out Shield Lore and use Malevolent Champion Focus in its place. You would then run Reflective Emanation as your only buff modding it for Backlash, Antimagic and whichever gold mod suits your playstyle. Also mod Frenzied Rampage for Double Attack, Double Strike and I would suggest Vampire for the gold mod. Combo FR with Scything Sweep, keep the regen on that combo low and use it in conjunction with Skeletal Fortification for killing crowds.

 

Finally, use regen per hit in your gear setup to help make up for the added regen on using Reflective Emanation. I really don't think you need to keep it at max level, I would suggest just leaving at level 1 for most of the game as this build will still be very defensive.

 

With all that said this is the build I propose:

 

2 - Astral Lord Focus

3 - Astral Lord Lore

5 - Combat Discipline

8 - Malevolent Champion Focus

12 - Armor Lore

18 - Constitution

25 - Toughness

35 - Spell Resistance

50 - Combat Reflexes

65 - Ancient Magic

 

It would play very much the same way as my original build I posted. I'm still playing that original build, I like it, there's absolutely nothing wrong with it. I'm just giving another option for anyone who would like to turn it into a build that utilized ranged weapons. The only difference between the two builds is as I said substituting Shield Lore with MCF and then taking Combat Reflexes and Ancient Magic later in the build. RE will easily replace the avoidance of Combat Reflexes in the earlier levels and after playing my original build I've realized that even now at 88 I've yet to put any points in Ancient Magic. If you're using +skills in your sockets/jewelry you might consider taking it earlier but otherwise getting both Combat Discipline and Astral Lord Lore to mastery will benefit Spectral Hand and Skeletal Fortification while Ancient Magic will only benefit SF.

 

Master Astral Lord Focus and Constitution by 75.

 

Every level devote one point to either Astral Lord Lore or Combat Discipline so that by 75 they are both in the 30s. This will ensure that Spectral Hand is gaining in damage every level while increasing its casting speed every other level while Frenzied Rampage and Scything Sweep are gaining damage every other level.

 

Put 31 hard points into Malevolent Champion Focus so you can mod RE and FR, leave Ancient Magic at 1 point until you're ready to master it and then distribute any extra points to the other skills evenly so that your defense is gaining a little bit of everything. After 75 get all of your defensive skills(minus Constitution which should already be mastered) to 20 hard points then start mastering skills one by one.

Edited November 8, 2009 by Numerii

[chattius 2,526]

As I wrote before:

To my knowledge reg per hit behaves in the consoles as in the AddOn, even the patch level of the consoles is something pre 2.43. So I guess not working reg per hit was a bug which never affected the comsole versions, because of different autotargeting whatever.

 

So I say again, if you write ideas, tips, guides, mention your platform and patch level. It help to prevent a lot of misunderstandings.

[Numerii 1]

As I wrote before:

To my knowledge reg per hit behaves in the consoles as in the AddOn, even the patch level of the consoles is something pre 2.43. So I guess not working reg per hit was a bug which never affected the comsole versions, because of different autotargeting whatever.

 

So I say again, if you write ideas, tips, guides, mention your platform and patch level. It help to prevent a lot of misunderstandings.

 

Or one could just look at the info listed right under my name and see that my platform is listed as Xbox 360.

[Rusto 0]

Thought I'd never persist with any character but Inquisitor, but after playing coop with a summoning astral build the class started to appeal to me. Thus I found this Spectral Hand build and it intrigued me.

 

So far I'm LOVING it =) I've decided to compromise by taking Grim Resiliance, as with silver mod it reduces regen penalty. Also I sometimes use Nether Allegiance on boss fights. Getting this build to work takes some perseverance, it seems like a lacklustra Combat Art at first but once you get the regen times under control with some RPH(I'm on 360 version too), its fantastic. Its like *point* 'DIE!' *point* 'DIE!' *point* 'DIE!' *point* 'DIE!'

 

Also note that Ive not used a shopper and started on silver. To manage up to level 25 ish I've had to alternate it with scything/demonic to compensate for regen times, DW focus came in handy here. For boss/tough fights I have augment guidon and SF combo'd(both 20s ish regen), and rousing command seperately.

 

Hopefully will report back soon with a positive update hehe

[Numerii 1]

Thought I'd never persist with any character but Inquisitor, but after playing coop with a summoning astral build the class started to appeal to me. Thus I found this Spectral Hand build and it intrigued me.

 

So far I'm LOVING it =) I've decided to compromise by taking Grim Resiliance, as with silver mod it reduces regen penalty. Also I sometimes use Nether Allegiance on boss fights. Getting this build to work takes some perseverance, it seems like a lacklustra Combat Art at first but once you get the regen times under control with some RPH(I'm on 360 version too), its fantastic. Its like *point* 'DIE!' *point* 'DIE!' *point* 'DIE!' *point* 'DIE!'

 

Also note that Ive not used a shopper and started on silver. To manage up to level 25 ish I've had to alternate it with scything/demonic to compensate for regen times, DW focus came in handy here. For boss/tough fights I have augment guidon and SF combo'd(both 20s ish regen), and rousing command seperately.

 

Hopefully will report back soon with a positive update hehe

 

Cool, hope you have as much fun with it as I do.

 

Feel free to change it however you like, the one thing most people don't understand about guides is that they are just that, guides.

 

I made this build to be very defensive, probably moreso than most people would want. I will tell you from experience that SH cast from a 1h starts to become somewhat lackluster. At level 104 currently I'm hitting for 5k with it at a .8 sec regen. I don't have Combat Discipline mastered yet and my weapon is slightly outdated(level 110 Officer's Sabre, I could be using 125 if I was lucky to have one drop).

 

The real damage in this build comes from Skeletal Fortification. I keep it in a seperate combo all by itself so that nothing else could possibly give it a higher regen. It has always done more damage than SH, currently it does 6900 damage on a .9 sec firing rate and of course two bolts any time there is more than 1 target available. Once I get both Combat Discipline and Ancient Magic mastered it will really pack a punch. I still chew through bosses' health pretty well, especially once I've got all of my bone towers down and hit deathblow range the screen gets littered with 10000+ damage numbers.

 

So far I've got it down to a 9.7 sec regen and when you factor in regen per hit and concentration potions I have been able to keep 3 of these down at one time with a 4th one half the time(meaning that the 4th tower is down for a few seconds before the first one runs its duration). So keep an eye on what Augmenting Guidon is doing to your combo regen and consider seperating them. Like I said before, SF is really huge for this build, it's just not mobile therefore can never be the main Combat Art of a build. However, bosses don't move and you can round up regular enemies so it can be used almost all of the time to full effect.

 

If you really want damage though, try out that Tower of Power build I put up. It seriously hits hard and the SF regen doesn't suffer from pushback in that build so even though you're running both buffs you'll still be able to eventually get 3-4 towers down. Also since you're using a 2h ranged weapon you can set the main Combat Art attacks at 5 sec regen which allows you to eat a lot more runes and you get better returns from regen per hit.

 

It will never achieve the levels of defense I'm going for in this build. This build is meant to eat punches for breakfast while still putting out respectable damage.

 

The other build is meant to put stuff on its back before it puts you on yours. It still offers more than enough defense due to the two buffs and it is very easy to play even from the start. It will simply require you to quaff some health potions at times when hits get past Reflective Emanation.

[Numerii 1]

Also, I'm currently gathering up everything I think I need to make videos. I've never made a video before and of course trying to make one off of a console is even more of a challenge but I believe I've finally found the right equipment to produce an acceptable level of quality while staying within a working dad's budget. Hopefully I should have one ready to showcase both builds in the next week or two.

[Rusto 0]

Nice one, would be great to see.

 

Thanks also for the advice, one of the things I love about this game is all the many hard choices to make every single level haha. No deaths yet *fingers crossed*, if this character does die... I may just try out something along the lines of your tower build =)

[Rusto 0]

I have one very(for me ) important question regarding attack rating.

 

You chose not to include any lore skills that improve attack rating, I'm following this and using many 'reduction in enemy chance to evade' rings in sockets to get by this. Due to my reliance on RPH will I still be able to get away with this at higher levels? How will it scale? I dont want to get to level 190 and find I have to socket enemy chance to evade rings in every socket...

[Spunky 16]

Remember that not by choosing a Weapon Lore you also get the attack speed penalty, so you may need to socket attack speed jewelries also.

 

And by not taking the Lore you will need to socket casting speed jewelries as the Combat Execution Speed depends on the Weapon Lore attack speed bonus.

[Rusto 0]

I'm pretty sure its astral lore that mainly affects execution speed, so its only hit that is an issue.

[Spunky 16]

My bad, I was thinking of Shadow Warrior's without Astral Lore.