Someone was asking me in game the merits of choosing blades or pierce as a ranger. I realized this is a subject I know little to nothing about. What is the general opinion here? What are the pros and cons of each?

Finally, for blades and for pierce, what is the best starting race to choose and the best way to spend starting points? I'd assume you'd want quickness either way, or does it increase as rangers level?

For a blades ranger - what race and how should you spend attribute points?

For a pierce ranger - what race and how should you spend attribute points?

Thanks!

There is a few main diffrences between Pierc and Blades for a ranger.

Pierc Pros:
- Damage is based on 50% Str/Dex and results in more damage stat compared to blades with any race.
- Str/Con Debuffs only are half effective on nerfing your melee dmg, compared to blades
- At lvl 25 Spec you gain access to an evade style called dimondback, which has a 5 sec stun, ,88 delve.
- Being Thrust Dmg, Scouts are 10% vulnrable to it

Blade Pros:
- Decent 2 hit style combo called Fire blade and Spectrum blade, which requires 39 Blades ( 30% ASD on Spectrum Blade, but uthgard has it set to 7% only )
- Being slash dmg, Infis armor is neu to your weapons, while SB are 10% vulnrable to your blades
- Access to a 4.2 Spd Mainhand Crafted Blade

______________________________________________________

Pierc Cons:
- Being Thrust dmg, your weapons will be 10% weaker vs Infi , Hunters, and SB.

Blade Cons:
- No access to evade styles, since they are based on parry and blocking, which means no access to an evade stun in blades, only from CD spec.
- Since blades are based on 100% str, Str/Con Debuffs are painful on your WS and damage, espicaly the assasins 118 str/con debuff.
- Since as we level, we will allwes have more str/dex @ 50% then str, so no matter what race you pick, youl not have as much damage stat as pierc.
- The Spectrum blade style has a ASD of 30% , but is nerfed to 7% and has been reported but will not be fixed for what ever reasons, taking away that styles real strengh.

Now for what race works best with each. For piercing you can go with Luri or celt and have the exactly same damage stat. Shar has less dex and put into con, so youl have less damage stat as shar, youl gain about 72 HP from 20 more con. For blades i would go with Celt if you plan on using bow at all, but if you are going to be full melee, shar could be a good choice with even more HP and a little less dex will lower evade, but not by enough to be noticable.

For starting stats, id recommend 10 str, 10 con, 10 dex. You could put some into Qui if your a celt or shar, because your end qui at 50 with 40 PF buffs will be 236 , but that 10 qui will only raise your swing speed by very little and i dont believe is worth it. If you plan on going full melee spec with blades, id pick celt or shar and 15 str, 10 con.

additional you dont evade all that much as non luri ranger and you still have acces to a 4 sec sidestun from 18 CD which you can use as an opener, by dancing around or by the enemy dancing around.

all in all, pierce wins out in overall base damage and speed, costs less endu, but get damped down due to armor and racial resists.
blade does less overall base damage, but grants bonus to most of your enemies and has acces to slower mainhand weapons while being weakend more from str debuffs.


in the end, its a matter of preferance and style :)

I think pierce comes out on top just because of Diamondback, other than that it's pretty close.

Well when it comes to evade chance. With 40 PF buffs, 10 str, con , dex for stating stats. The luri has a 26% chance to evade, Celt has a 25% chance to evade and the shar has a 24% chance to evade. Elf is about 26%. But vs a dual wielder, its cut in half, so you may not see much evades, unless your doing + to defense styles, you may see a few evades. Best to just straf and side stun with ice storm.

And of what i looked up, Pierc and Blades has about the same number of Vulrnable, Resistant, Neutral targets for dmg. But when it comes to vs assasins/stealther, blades has best dmg type, if your not str/con debuffed. But yes i also believe pierc is the best option for a ranger.

Edit...

To give you an idea of the stats of each race, here is what each race will have , with 40 PF ( 78 D/Q, 51 Str ) at lvl 50.

Luri
_________________________
Str = 191
Dex = 288
Qui = 256
HP = 1210
Blade Dmg Stat = 191 (STR)
Pierc Dmg Stat = 239 (STR/DEX)
Bow Dmg Stat = 288 (DEX)
Speed Factor = 40% Haste (from QUI)
Evade = 26%

Elf
_________________________
Str = 191
Dex = 283
Qui = 251
HP = 1210
Blade Dmg Stat = 191 (STR)
Pierc Dmg Stat = 237 (STR/DEX)
Bow Dmg Stat = 283 (DEX)
Speed Factor = 40% Haste (from QUI)
Evade = 26%

Celt
_________________________
Str = 211
Dex = 268
Qui = 236
HP = 1282
Blade Dmg Stat = 211 (STR)
Pierc Dmg Stat = 239 (STR/DEX)
Bow Dmg Stat = 268 (DEX)
Speed Factor = 37.2% Haste (from QUI)
Evade = 25%

Shar
_________________________
Str = 211
Dex = 258
Qui = 226
HP = 1354
Blade Dmg Stat = 211 (STR)
Pierc Dmg Stat = 234 (STR/DEX)
Bow Dmg Stat = 258 (DEX)
Speed Factor = 35.2% Haste (from QUI)
Evade = 24%

you could say, judging by stats alone, a luri pierce is the best and a blade shar is the worst ranger.


im blade shar^^
did pretty well so far, the str debuff doesnt reduce the damage all that much, but more as for pierce, true.
still, slash vulnerability vs pierce resitance can make a bigger difference in overall damage.

and of course, we dont have the archer class specific weapon lines, we have the same lines as tanks, hence, only pierce offers decent styles that dont need a block/parry as opener.

and slash is mostly out of endu after 10-12 styles.

you could say, blade shar is for straight up, bare knuckle frontload fighting and pierce luri is for evasive fighting and backstabing.

Anyone knows how much % the haste debuff effect of the lvl34 Piercing style on Uthgard is ?

Ronian wrote:Anyone knows how much % the haste debuff effect of the lvl34 Piercing style on Uthgard is ?

I think its also 7%, as many are on uthgard.

I think luri is best for melee pierc, hybrid pierc/bow and bad for blades. Celt is good for pierc/blades melee, hybrid pierc/blades/bow, and shar is best at blades melee spec, but not for hybrid or full bow.