Talk:Guide to defeating Magni the Bison/Archive 2

Archive 1

Archived
I don't think I broke anything... --Toraen 02:00, 20 August 2008 (UTC)

Ranger build attributes
I'm kind of inclined to revert Toraen's change to the attributes listed on the ranger build, but figured I'd look for an explanation here first. Against M. Bison, the changes make the build unambigously worse. The extra point in expertise does nothing for you, as neither of the skills linked to expertise are used in that battle. It doesn't save any energy, as the 14th point in expertise only affects 10 and 25 energy skills, neither of which are used in that battle.

Losing the point in marksmanship, on the other hand, can really hurt. 11 was already low; unless you're higher than 12, each additional point taken out of marksmanship docks you more than 8% of your base damage. Since it's mostly vanilla bow attacks that kill M. Bison, this can make the battle take quite a bit longer.

But what really hurts is losing duration on Pin Down and Hunter's Shot, the two skills that you use. You want to keep M. Bison perpetually crippled so he can't hit you, and bleeding to cancel his health regeneration. At only 10 marksmanship, you're using 9 energy every 11 seconds for those, which uses up most of your energy regeneration. At 11 marksmanship, it's the same 9 energy used, but now only every 12 seconds. That leaves quite a bit more leeway for error, whether to use other skills to heal if you mess up, refresh crippled before it wears off, or whatever.

There's also the issue of peculiar specialty gear. Crippling bowstrings are pretty much worthless in nearly all PvE, with this battle being the only exception that I can think of. I think my ranger had about 6 different bowstrings that I used for PvE (counting all the elemental types as only one), but not a crippling one, because it wasn't nearly as commonly useful as the others. While one could make up for the loss of crippling duration with such a bowstring, assuming that players have it is a bad idea.

Getting to 14 expertise also takes specialty gear that a lot of players won't have. Either you'd need a major or superior attribute rune or expertise headgear. I usually used 9 expertise; for pve purposes, a ranger usually can't justify more than that unless using only expertise and marksmanship, some gimmick farming build, or relying heavily on a secondary profession and not using a bow at all. Incidentally, the previous 13-11-11 attributes listed have the same requirements, but someone could easily drop drop wilderness survival to 10 without much harm.

Is there some earlier opponent where the additional point in expertise makes a big difference? When I did this on my ranger (albeit on a different build; pin down wasn't viable for M. Bison at the time, as its duration was too short), the opponents that were the most troublesome were those that were strong enough healers as to be a pain to kill. I'd think that gimping your damage with reduced marksmanship would make those harder, not easier. Quizzical 06:10, 20 August 2008 (UTC)