My gear is crap, may as well say that upfront so that people understand that it's a given, but as I gear up my ranger I'd like some input. I see that auto attack is an insignificant part of our damage now (back to game after being gone for 2 years or so). I know that we're essentially all casters these days, I get that, but I was still hoping our auto attack would be somewhat meaningful. I've tried a couple of different types of ammo. I've tried Heartwood Broadhead and compared it to the older Compressed Void Essense. While both were garbage, the Essence ammo did more damage on a training dummy and had a 100% hit rate, whereas I had to reforge to higher accuracy to get the Broadheads to hit 100%. Even then, the Essence did more damage, about a million more average per hit (3 vs. 4 million on pure auto attack dummy parses). I'm not sure if this would be the case against heroic/raid mobs, if the level difference would affect hit rate and/or overall damage. Hit rate is what I see as the priority for auto attacks, since procs are far more of our DPS than auto attacks themselves. So if anyone has any info from raid fights as far as auto attacks and ammo, I'd appreciate it (gonna be a long time, if ever, until my ranger sees a raid but you never know). Have you tried Essences in raids and does it have a 100% hit rate without accuracy and strikethrough? Gonna have to rethink my gear and not bother with melee/range stats such as DPS. IIRC procs only go off of the primary auto attack anyway, in other words procs won't trigger off of each flurry, MA, or AE hit, correct? If so then I won't worry about those, either. It seems to be all about potency and double cast now.
You proc on AOE hit of your primary weapon (see below, MSA/quick shot are procs). You're right about it not proccing on Flurry/MA. Also most of our good procs require RANGED attack/CAs, so you should be on forced range attack and pretty much never melee. 100 strikethrough/accuracy but honestly dont care about dps/ma. DPS adds to your pet's auto attack damage (not ca) and its pretty negligible. Get your DC to 200% (your pet and ascensions DC, and DS is affected by it also)
Thanks, Sowy, good to know about the AE and that I can reforge out of the rest. However I have a question. Even on my main with a mythical cloak, a fabled belt with DC, the new Tome, and my cast speed capped at 1200, my DC is currently at 154%. Are there any other item slots that give DC?
I think the neck from the final shiny reward has DC or you can do the black pearl quest on fallen gate server and that will unlock a level 101 version on live I think that has DC.
Shiny Brass Stone as Dragonsnacks mentioned does give considerable DC. Also the three PG white adorns give a total of 21%, some green adornments give DC. It's a lot easier to get to 30 now with shinys (sell a krono, buy shiny) or if you have a guildie I'm sure they can help pl/quest.
