Honestly, ranger/monk or ranger/elementalist?

seeyouspacec0wboy

A lot of people have told me to roll monk as a sub because of the healing spells, although it seems like with healing henchman there is no point to this. Elementalist sounds like itd be a fun sub, ultimate dps, but also I wouldnt know whether to spam ranger attacks or elementalist spells haha. Any insight?

Gennadios

It's really irrelevant since later on in the game you can unlock all the secondary classes for your char and switch between them at will.

 

Personally my ranger went out as an ele only because I needed to unlock as many elemental skills for heroes and I wanted to pick those skills up as quest rewards (Yes, I'm one of those people that doesn't simply bypass early proph skills)

 

IMO, Monk secondaries on a ranger are useless because ranger defensive stances combined with Troll Ungent are all the healing you're really going to need defense wise. Also, heals are only to be taken for your own use, the only worthwhile party healers are Monks and Ritualists. Other classes taking party healing skills are just wasting everyone elseses time.

Ele would make a good secondary just for the conjure skill line (Conjure Flame, Frost, Lightning,) If you have a bow that deals fire damage you'll do up to 15 extra damage for a minute, well worth it. Just don't expect to be flinging fireballs or metors, Elementalists are only effective because they have access to insane energy pools that can go up to 100. As a ranger with only 30 or so energy, stick with bow attacks.

tr3nt00n

Take what I say with a tiney grain of salt, because I played GvG for like 4 years, not pve, but anyway...

 

Do not use elementalist spells as a ranger except maybe conjure frost/flame/ice. The spells are way too energy intensive for DPS. Things like enchantments, with long durations, can work. And if you get Barrage (elite) you can spread that extra damage from Conjure X all around.

With the monk there are a couple skills, souch as Mend Touch, that actually work with the Ranger's Expertise because they are "touch skills" not "spells". In the extremely rare occasions that I did pve, I found that it was nice to carry around a monk resurrection spell (as opposed to a res signet), because you dont want your healer henchment to stop healing and res people.

I'm not really sure what ranger builds are popular now-days, but I think trap rangers have always been pretty good when farming, but not really worth it for missions.

In the expansion campaigns there are more and more opportunities for interrupts, so if you have a good reaction time it can be very helpful to bring an interrupt. You can interrupt the boss's big damage ability, or his heal, or even sometimes a res, etc.

 

And lastly, why not try both? You can switch your secondary class between elementalist and monk and see which one works better for you. (if you don't know how to do this, just ask people in-game).

 

EDIT: He posted while I was writing. I mostly agree with him, don't take monk healing spells and expect to heal your party.