Giantman Level 42 ranger returning to lands after 15 years, skill advice?

[bramblepot]

Hi All,

Returning to the game after stopping in 97. Man a lot has changed. I'm trying to redo my skill allocations. I'm thinking open archery ranger. I'm still in my free skill reallocation window but deadline is closing in and I;m trying to figure out what is the optimal placement and I figured I'd come to the veterans.

Any advice/feedback would be much appreciated. If you want to know how I chose x1 or x2 in a specific skill category, the answer is hell if I know.

Thanks guys!

Thanks for the feedback on lnet as well, Jeril, I don;t know why everyone makes fun of you, only 30% of what I have heard so far seems to be true.

Stats: Normal (Bonus) ... Enhanced (Bonus)
Strength (STR): 74 (27) ... 74 (27)
Constitution (CON): 56 (13) ... 56 (13)
Dexterity (DEX): 100 (20) ... 100 (20)
Agility (AGL): 81 (10) ... 81 (10)
Discipline (DIS): 83 (16) ... 83 (16)
Aura (AUR): 96 (18) ... 96 (18)
Logic (LOG): 47 (-6) ... 47 (-6)
Intuition (INT): 100 (25) ... 100 (25)
Wisdom (WIS): 83 (16) ... 83 (16)
Influence (INF): 98 (29) ... 98 (29)

Skills:
Skill Name | Current Current
| Bonus Ranks
Armor Use..........................| 186 86
Combat Maneuvers...................| 50 10
Ranged Weapons.....................| 188 88
Ambush.............................| 188 88
Physical Fitness...................| 142 42
Dodging............................| 142 42
Harness Power......................| 142 42
Spirit Mana Control................| 90 20
Perception.........................| 188 88
Climbing...........................| 96 22
Swimming...........................| 96 22

Spell Lists
Minor Spiritual....................| 3

Spell Lists
Ranger.............................| 40

[Mettler]

On Stats:

Your logic stat/bonus made me wince. If you have a fixstat available I would drop DEX way lower and pick up Logic, because Dex will grow very quickly for you and Logic is important for exp absorption. As a giant your CON will also grow pretty quickly but influence is not as important, so I might suggest taking a little bit away from INF and adding a bit more to CON. My eyeball estimate is that you will not hit 100 CON at cap at your current rate.

On Skills:

What kind of armor are you using that you need/want 86 ranks? If you are in brig you can scale your ranks down to 30 and put those PTPs into something else -- a couple ranks of MoC, magic item use, arcane symbols, bringing SMC up to 24 ranks for 102 bonus (full share) etc.

I note you have zero first aid and survival. If you never want to skin anything and don't use herbs (or don't mind long herb RT) I guess that is OK, but those skills are extremely cheap to 1x each and are helpful in many situations.

Although not necessarily that critical I would also suggest raising up CM just a bit to pick up a couple ranks of disarm and maybe also cdefense. At your level I imagine you will start seeing more and more maneuvers thrown against you. I also don't know how you will survive bandit bounties unless you are spell tanked like a boss.

I am impressed that you've managed to double Ambush, which is giving you 12 additional ranged AS right now. But ambush does not assist with aiming at your target from the open, only from hiding. If you find yourself wishing you had more points, you could let Ambush slide back to 1x or 1.5x. At 1.5x ambush you would only lose approximately 6 AS, and zero ability to hit a target in the eye from the open.

My two silvers.

[Whirlin]

You have 3 options for setting stats: Growth, TPs, and mid-tier... Grab the latest version of the Tsoran trainer spreadsheet, and you can play around with stat allocations. You can either start with your main stats high and maximize TP per level... Set stats to max out at 100, and make earlier on a bit more difficult, or aim for key stats to max out around 40-60 range, and eventually plan on fixstating into max stats.

On Skills, Agreed that you should take another look at the armor use tables. Figure out what you want and go for that.

First aid and Survival are cheap, and rangers have innate bonuses towards the checks that utilize them (except herb time... but that's kinda dependent on which society you go with). Plus, more silvers from skins and whatnot... but completely unnecessary from an AS/DS perspective.

Definitely stick with 2x ambush. I wouldn't lose AS for anything.

SMC is entirely up to you. 20 ranks is fine, 25 ranks is better... 25 ranks unlocks multi-cast for buffs... which is just a nice-to-have if you decide to get to 24 ranks for the max share... may as well take it 1 rank further.

Dodging and Physical need to be raised by 1-2 ranks I think to get them to a full 1x. Harness Power should be @ level, which is 1x-2 ranks. Can always pre-train a rank in harness power though if the rank nets you additional mana recovery.

I'd use Combat maneuvers as a point dump. You don't need anymore Armor Use, you don't need anymore SMC, all you REALLY need to be training in each level is:
2x Ranged, 1x Dodge, 1x Spell, 2x Perception, 2x Ambush, 1x Phyiscal, 1x Harness Power.
With the additional points, you can dump them into climbing/swimming up to 50 ranks and check the boxes on those, or CMAN for defenses. (mfire sucks)

[bramblepot]

Thanks for the feedback so far guys. This has been very helpful so far. I have 4 stat fixes left so I'll make some changes. It looks like common consensus is to lower dex and con but raise logic. I've been using the online stat cruncher with optimal set for 75 but honestly it's been confusing as hell. I lowered armor train to 70 to squeeze into hauberk which seems like a good fit (open archery, spells would be mostly prep in nature). I admit it bothered me to not have any survival or first aid, if the adjustments you guys recommend frees some tp up, I'll look into upping those. I was a little confused on cman. It seemed like the only things I would really look into is cunning defense and disarm as preventative measures? Maybe two ranks in each of those?

Thanks again For the feedback, I've forgotten how deep this game goes.

[bramblepot]

OK, updated stat and skills. 3 stat changes remaining. I used the Tsoran 4.2.9 spreadsheet and got what I am guessing are more optimized stats. I have to say though, man it hurts to lose out on a bunch of TP. I had to drop 2 spell research ranks. I kept 70 ranks of armor use to squeeze into hauberk.

Lvl 42 (Current)
STR 81
CON 83
DEX 87
AGL 81
DIS 83
AUR 79
LOG 83
INT 81
WIS 79
INF 67

Skills:
Skill Name | Current Current
| Bonus Ranks
Armor Use..........................| 170 70
Combat Maneuvers...................| 50 10
Ranged Weapons.....................| 188 88
Ambush.............................| 188 88
Physical Fitness...................| 143 43
Dodging............................| 143 43
Harness Power......................| 142 42
Spirit Mana Control................| 90 20
Perception.........................| 188 88
Climbing...........................| 96 22
Swimming...........................| 96 22

Spell Lists
Minor Spiritual....................| 1

Spell Lists
Ranger.............................| 40



On the plus side, according to the spreadsheet,

lvl 60 80 100
------------------------
STR 90 96 100
CON 89 95 100
DEX 93 99 100
AGL 86 91 95
DIS 88 93 98
AUR 83 87 91
LOG 87 91 94
INT 87 93 100
WIS 85 91 98
INF 70 73 76

[Catts]

Screw ambush and get 120 =P

Cmans are great for bandits...having the skill helps you defend against it. I was told disarm was a good choice but sometimes I really wish I had shield bash because it friggen hurts more than any of the others. But apparently you're gonna wanna have disarm for the Old City or something

I think if you're in aug chain, having 640 + 120 + 1x cmans and all the giantman strength means you can pluck away 3 sec shots on a longbow, which is sexy.

I also love having the spiritual tree...resistances and other utility spells. I honeslty dont find I need a ton more AS, except sometimes on grizzled mobs, but then I can cast 117 anyway...+ 607, 610. I guess it's a preference but keep it in mind.

With scripts out there like ;helpfolks , having 108 is really handy , too.