Second mastery for Bow hunter (legend.difficulty)

[alonson]

Hello there! I heard what bow hunter builds are pretty weak on legendary (especially against undead enemies) due to new scatter shot mechanic, but I still want to roll a bow character so I need help with choosing the best possible mastery for it.

1) Nature - wolfes / hp / damage boost
2) Earth - good tank / fire buff / defensive stance
3) Spirit - good tank / Spirit Ward (adds damage to undead)
4) Rogue - not sure about this one, cuz it rely on bleed damage

Thanks in advance!

[Atomic Kid]

depends on what you want..
ranger:allows you to use call of the hunt way more often (esp with cooldown reductions) way more hp, 2x debuffs, strength of the pack is +90% damage...and regrowth heals for 3k hp with under 1 sec cooldown....needs + to all skills cause nature has skills that have a ton of skillpoints to max that just adding pts to skills costs a lot...getting more then +4 to all skills makes ranger amazing saving on skill points...prob has the best endgame potential esp once you can keep up call of the hunt indefinitely..has skillpoint problems if you cannot get above +4 all skills, his potential is very tied to your gear, hes not very good with lower then +4 all skills but above +4 esp something like +6-8 you can max quite a lot of skills esp from nature doing a ton of damge, maxing all pets, and other things..you dont have to go petmaster with this build and just use wolves for their buff and nymph for her shield on you and not for their dps..

earth: gives good phys damge from earth enchantment...earth spells are boosted by str, and gives aoe stun with fragmenation from volcanic orb, and a decent pet (not as good as liche though)...prob one of the weaker choices imo but it does work...esp since the spells are about half fire/half phys so its not as good as you think and cordy gets shredded by pierce attacks sadly hes tanky but arrows are his undoing...i seen it work but the other choices are more efficent imo...eruption wrecks though up to late epic due to it doing a ton of phys damage boosted by str but it falls off in legendary but that stacking with bow shooting should still hurt a lot but not solely be the only thing you have to use to kill things but addiional damage...

sprit: much better pet then earth with liche who tanks much better and does more dps esp with maxed wrath shell and life stealing, outsider does insane dps when it matters during boss fights, when you are forced into spear in some fights due to enemy having high avoid projectiles deathchill reduces enemy combat capalitites and even bow sprit user can use death chill if the enemy is getting too close...also the best undead killer in the game due to the buff that allows you to kill them and reduce dps vs them which helps a lot since you cannot life steal from undead...constructs might give you trouble

rouge: does insane bleed damage, to the point where a bleed+pierce build is possible...i seen a ton of builds focus on those 2 with heavy investment in dex...can easily hit 15-20k on the stat screen..is a glass cannon so you die really fast if you make a mistake but kill back really fast..you can even try out a throwing brigid build it works just as well as a bow brigid esp since you can use rouges move that sharpens his blade to push his pierce conversion more in your favor allowing you to negate str, but you should have a spear on 2nd weapon swap if enemy has high avoid projectile chance...also lethal strike does insane damage regardless of weapon you use it with

hunting does give summon decoy so if you are having trouble, bringing that in regardless of your other mastery esp in legendary where its hp and stats are boosted helps a ton and you can have 3x of them but bosses usually ignore those but it helps in reg mobs...and maxed study prey helps hunting+whatever to maintain good dps even if enemy is resistant to parts of his dps pool and the addon to study prey helps if you want more dps source resists reduced...

[Dakota]

Spirit is generally best in melee for physical based builds due to deathchill aura, a bow hunter likely wouldn't get much use out of it and the only value would be from spirit ward making you cut through undead easily.

However you can just have a weapon that does bonus damage to undead as a secondary to swap to in such cases.

Rogue is pretty insanely powerful when it comes to boosting damage up. I find that poison damage far outweighs whatever bleeding damage can come up with and is more consistent along with also confusing enemies, slowing enemies, and making them easy to deal with. Once you've gotten past getting the poison boosts you can go ahead and spend points on the bleed damage to boost your damage up even further. There is also great synchronization with hunting as they both deal in piercing and bleeding damage often and hunting has some good buffs to bleeding damage if you would like to take that path.

[alonson]

Originally posted by Atomic Kid:

depends on what you want..

Thank you very much for detailed description of masteries. Looks like nature is the way to go for me. But what's about making this build more pet oriented? Can wolves with nymph clean stuff by themselves, if i'll equip a lot of "+ minion damage items?".

Originally posted by ///><Ж_ɆĐǤɆŁØɌĐ_Ж><\\\:

Rogue is pretty insanely powerful when it comes to boosting damage up.

Thank you too for the answer. This rogue path sounds really sweet in terms of damage, wanna try it on second playthrough.

[Dakota]

Originally posted by alonsen:

Originally posted by Atomic Kid:

depends on what you want..

Thank you very much for detailed description of masteries. Looks like nature is the way to go for me. But what's about making this build more pet oriented? Can wolves with nymph clean stuff by themselves, if i'll equip a lot of "+ minion damage items?".

Originally posted by ///><Ж_ɆĐǤɆŁØɌĐ_Ж><\\\:

Rogue is pretty insanely powerful when it comes to boosting damage up.

Thank you too for the answer. This rogue path sounds really sweet in terms of damage, wanna try it on second playthrough.

If you start up a rogue playthrough I recommend for normal mode to start with rogue first and just put one point into the mastery then max out poison, then move to the next level, get a point in calculated strike, then max out the next poison upgrade, and then go on from there maxing out poison when you can. In my playthough I had 2k DPS by the start of act 2, most bosses would die in one hit if I let the DoT work. The only things to worry about were constructs and ghosts which are pretty durable against poison and physical damages.

EDIT: also I point most of my points in Dex while strength is only there so I can equip some armors as I go up. Generally had more Dex than strength, really durable due to not bring crit. Also started with throwing weapons then moved to bows after I had sufficiently high attack speed since I prefered range and I never used the shield anyway since people would die before they touch me, the bow would let me hit archers before they could shoot me, making me even more durable.

[Atomic Kid]

ranger generally has wolves no matter what cause +90% phys damage is something you cannot give up really...so ya in esscene you have to use pets if you go ranger, you prob have to level regrowth or they will die a lot again this costs a ton of skill points so + to all skills at a very high number is worth it....

i usually priotize maxing survival instinct cause +80% damage abosrb saves them a lot, they take massive dps until 33% hp and then become super tanks and their dps goes through the roof...then you heal them back up with regrowth and then 6 sec after their hp goes above 33% they turn off surival instict...nymph has bad ai and dies realyl fast but if you take her due to excess points due to a very high + to all skills, her shield helps keep you alive and she shoots aoe arrows and recieves the wolves buff and i guess she benefits from call of the hunt since shes pierce damage..with high level refresh even 1 pt with +6-8 setting it to 7-9 that alone can keep call of the hunt off cooldown all the time...

like said above brigid does so much damage that its almost a different game, it does lose a lot of dps vs undead but shreads constructs (due to rogues passive) you want a lot of dex to boost bleeding,pierce, and poison damage so your str will be pretty low so you'll prob be in all dex based gear and not be as tanky due to the better str based stuff needing 500+ str which you might not even reach. though if enemy isnt immune to poison and bleeding it does crazy high damage and undead can still be killed with study prey and the pierce part of your dps..

[Dakota]

Originally posted by Atomic Kid:

ranger generally has wolves no matter what cause +90% phys damage is something you cannot give up really...so ya in esscene you have to use pets if you go ranger, you prob have to level regrowth or they will die a lot again this costs a ton of skill points so + to all skills at a very high number is worth it....

i usually priotize maxing survival instinct cause +80% damage abosrb saves them a lot, they take massive dps until 33% hp and then become super tanks and their dps goes through the roof...then you heal them back up with regrowth and then 6 sec after their hp goes above 33% they turn off surival instict...nymph has bad ai and dies realyl fast but if you take her due to excess points due to a very high + to all skills, her shield helps keep you alive and she shoots aoe arrows and recieves the wolves buff and i guess she benefits from call of the hunt since shes pierce damage..with high level refresh even 1 pt with +6-8 setting it to 7-9 that alone can keep call of the hunt off cooldown all the time...

like said above brigid does so much damage that its almost a different game, it does lose a lot of dps vs undead but shreads constructs (due to rogues passive) you want a lot of dex to boost bleeding,pierce, and poison damage so your str will be pretty low so you'll prob be in all dex based gear and not be as tanky due to the better str based stuff needing 500+ str which you might not even reach. though if enemy isnt immune to poison and bleeding it does crazy high damage and undead can still be killed with study prey and the pierce part of your dps..

Undead aren't even totally immune to poison damage. I notice them taking approximately 20% damage from poison, so if you have super massive damage you'll still cut through undead units pretty easily as long as they aren't ghosts, which are 100% immune. I think -# resists also cut this down a bit, will have to test to be sure though.

[Atomic Kid]

ya they have posion absorb so you cannot lower it via plague but their pierce resists and phys resists can be lowered by study prey...seeing how you can just stack 2 debuffs on really hard enemies ontop of all that dps buffing, ranger does a ton of dps and gives amazing surviviabity...and with proper use of refresh you can keep call of the hunt up forever so you will do a lot of pierce damage and fire your bow like a machine gun..

edit: and you still can use plague cause that lowers their dps vs you and your pets and lowers phys resist and rangers usaully want more str then brigids as you prob want to be able to equip spears too esp since ranger have much better survivibility esp if your plague is 100% maxed and you have very high skill levels in most skills..the best gloves in the game for them is a stonebinders cuffs with top tier mods and socketed with whatever you need though getting a good roll on it is extremely hard so usually a good runner up is gloves of the necrolord for resists and +1 all skills

[HumpyDumpyNZ]

I know this is an old thread but I've come back to the game via the mobile version of TQ this time. My query is still the same as the OP, however the Mobile version of TQ seems to be "Vanilla" or post-ScatterShot changes where the damage is still piercing. If we are to consider TQ mobile Hunter as Vanilla, what then would be a good complimentary class? (No expansion classes available for the mobile version)

[sarcastic_godot]

Misconception it the OP: Brigand doesn't really rely on bleed - poison is at least just as important. The Bleed synergy is just the icing on the cake, Blade Honing only works with wielded blades (incl. spear) and thrown weapons (which you might not have at all in the mobile version)

Envenom Weapon is awesome, and Mandrake makes it a strong defense skill... ...baddies start attacking their invisible Frenemies while you watch them die.

The only issue I have with ranged Brigand is that certain undead are really slow going. Otherwise an awesome class, great for boss farming. Traps are better than Monster Lure to distract baddies - though they quickly drop aggro once you attack them. Even works nicely after the Scatter Shot nerf. Unless you're up against bloodless poison-immune ghosts or skeletons, then you need your Study Prey / Flush Out to effectively decimate them.

[Terotrous]

Virtually any second mastery is viable. Offense / Defense might be a bit questionable (they tend to have better synergy with spear hunter), but Storm, Dream, and Rune also definitely present some interesting options. With specific gear you can make pretty much anything work, though.

[Mabi]

Originally posted by Dakota:

Spirit is generally best in melee for physical based builds due to deathchill aura, a bow hunter likely wouldn't get much use out of it and the only value would be from spirit ward making you cut through undead easily.

However you can just have a weapon that does bonus damage to undead as a secondary to swap to in such cases.

Rogue is pretty insanely powerful when it comes to boosting damage up. I find that poison damage far outweighs whatever bleeding damage can come up with and is more consistent along with also confusing enemies, slowing enemies, and making them easy to deal with. Once you've gotten past getting the poison boosts you can go ahead and spend points on the bleed damage to boost your damage up even further. There is also great synchronization with hunting as they both deal in piercing and bleeding damage often and hunting has some good buffs to bleeding damage if you would like to take that path.

yet mage build still use deathchill aura smh, dont go assuming that its for melee only just because 1 skill is okayish in melee,

[Dakota]

Originally posted by Vovi:

Originally posted by Dakota:

Spirit is generally best in melee for physical based builds due to deathchill aura, a bow hunter likely wouldn't get much use out of it and the only value would be from spirit ward making you cut through undead easily.

However you can just have a weapon that does bonus damage to undead as a secondary to swap to in such cases.

Rogue is pretty insanely powerful when it comes to boosting damage up. I find that poison damage far outweighs whatever bleeding damage can come up with and is more consistent along with also confusing enemies, slowing enemies, and making them easy to deal with. Once you've gotten past getting the poison boosts you can go ahead and spend points on the bleed damage to boost your damage up even further. There is also great synchronization with hunting as they both deal in piercing and bleeding damage often and hunting has some good buffs to bleeding damage if you would like to take that path.

yet mage build still use deathchill aura smh, dont go assuming that its for melee only just because 1 skill is okayish in melee,

It gets decent use in mage builds because ternion attack is effectively a shotgun blast and is effectively a melee ranged attack if you're getting best use out of it. Hunters going for bow have extreme range and would be making very little use of deathchill aura. Why go with deathchill that's only going to be used in extremely rare cases where enemies get up to you and you decide not to kite them when you could go with many other skills that benefit you much more such as flush out or the hunting tree's passive that gives more damage to beastmen and other bonuses.

Also as mentioned in my post, why not just go rogue, you'll get more boost to bleeding damage out of that and other boosts to the damage you're already dealing than with whatever the necrosis upgrade of deathchill gives.

[sarcastic_godot]

Originally posted by Vovi:

yet mage build still use deathchill aura smh, dont go assuming that its for melee only just because 1 skill is okayish in melee,

Deathchill + Ravages of Time is the key here. Slow + reduction of enemy damage makes life wearing squishy-cloth a lot easier...

Also, as mentioned above, Ternion rocks. The closer you are to the target, the more it rocks. Triple hits really rock.


There's a completely different thing, however, that might make Bow/Throw Hunter + Spirit superbly attractive, and which I want to try out soon:

Soul Drain, the Mastery Rank 40 extension of the pretty meh base skill Life Drain, is a real nuke. MaxLvl+4 => 66% ReduceEnemyHealth. With a pretty decent range and AoE. Preceded by Study Prey/Flush Out, and then followed by an arrow or knife or shuriken or whatever you hurl at the baddies... ....and a single Scatter Shot proc wipes out the whole bunch.

This probably won't help the thread-resurrector, though, because the mobile version probably does not yet have the Rank 40 skills...