Lhynn wrote on Aug 6
th, 2020 at 12:50pm:
Playing one right now, str. I do so very little damage compared to nukers, and because i have to be in melee i get squashed way too often by a stray arrow hitting my pinky toe.
What am i doing wrong? Or is that par for the course for this shit?
Tempest definately isnt good now because THF is just better. Tempest used to have the best melee AOE because of dance of death, then THF got strikethrough, except they deal more damage.
If you are at cap, your main issue is gear. End game content is all designed for people in full legendary gear with at least 2x set bonuses from ravenloft or sharn. Many people who talk about end game stats are doing it from the perspective of having almost all past lives and 100+ reaper AP, so the numbers might seem ridiculous to you, if you are new, you just have to work towards that goal slowly.
Aim for about 150 PRR first and enough reflex to no fail reflex saves with epic reflexes (should be a piece of cake if you are dex based). At minimum, try to get the silent avenger + adherent of the mists set bonuses if you can't get sharn set bonuses. You also want to make sure you stack as much CON and damage mitigation as possible.
At cap, you should have something like :
-20 or 25% concealment
-15% incorporeal
-Elusive target for additional 5% evade
-30% dodge
-Deflect arrows that can trigger every 2 seconds
The key is to have enough hp, PRR and damage mitigation so that when you do take a big hit, you survive long enough for someone to heal you.
If nobody is healing you, you are going to die, thats just how melee works which is why most people prefer to play ranged or casters. Nothing beats kiting a boss and taking 0 damage, or sitting on a safe spot. Meld is of course, a nice layer of defense, but you wont be able to use it for every wave.
Dont bother doing reaper levels that you cant handle, unless its your friends carrying you and they are fine with that. If you still need gear, focus on that first, do r1 for the first time bonus with a large party and subsequent farming runs on EE.
Throw some cheap melee power filis on your weapon, you dont want to waste rare filis in there since you wont be using it for long. Run in shadow dancer to remove sneak attack immunity.
If you just want to get your ranger lives out of the way, there are better options like Ranger 12/Rogue 6/Artificer 2 inquisitive. If you really want to do tempest because you have nightshard or something like that, at least use aasimar scourge to avoid the nightmare of leveling a tempest from level 1.
Also, dont expect to compete with nukers, the way they scale damage is completely different from melee/ranged, it is impossible to compete with them in kill speed until mid/high reaper. At anything below that, they will one shot an entire wave (or come close to it) before you can even get in melee range.