Ranperre's March 2021 Skill Power Index

[Celerity]

I'd love to mix BC with Warden, but no hands

Warden/bc is my main skin farming and low level farming build, it's why I said bc just for extra skin since you can use the mutations and the golem without hands.

[Melkhiresa]

I musr replay to this , i strongly do not agree with most of this , im not trying to put u down , but the devs have thought the classes through and they did great job , so many high damage builds ur ranking shit , and thats the point to master a class u need to spend long time with it , theres an old article about my hammer necro because it was to op necro is stil insanly strong by itself , my psych ment can solo elites and u rank psyc shit , my wolf animal handling can solo fae elites so many great classes to be used in the corect way and are verry powerful in the correct usage ,

I don't think anyone is trying to say they didn't think the classes through or succeeded in a lot of ways but there is no denying some skills are extremely antiquated comparatively to those people often rank in the overall top. I don't mean this as an attack but blanket statements of I can do x don't exactly provide relevance. What elite can you solo? every type of them? How long does it take? ect. Even regardless of that as pointed out even if said builds do solo things it does not equate to doing amazingly well in WT or other high end content which was partially the basis of this whole thing.


Since Unarmed keeps being brought up in general one can derive a lot from this game by just using wiki and comparing base damage between skills and mods that accompany the abilities. What you will notice with Unarmed is it comes with zero pure utility abilities and all some form of attack that is pure damage, damage + debuff or knockback. This already starts it off on a bad footing compared to most damage and tank like skills. Now when you take a look at it's abilities one by one some of them are just utterly bad and suffer from either horrible mods or a lack of mods as is. Some of this is alleviated in animal builds that get access to % increased trauma or added damage to kicks/crushing which make for the biggest attacks unarmed has going for it. Considering this the numbers still aren't impressive by other skill standards. It's worth noting unarmed does have a wider access to increased damage type taken debuffs and part of what makes this skill attractive even with it's downsides.

On the tank side of the spectrum you have to invest a TON of mods to benefit which makes it hard to also effectively build up any sort of damage given the previous. Sure your other pairing skill might bring it but then due to the nature of unarmed you are stuck with a bunch of weaker hitting attacks since you lack any ability diversity option. When you compare it to other tankier skills they have a much lower threshold in investment to power ratio and most of them provide a flat mitigation which unarmed is sorely lacking even if the % based things it has are very strong combined with other tank skills.

I'm not trying to dissuade anyone from going unarmed and at times in certain builds it can do well but there is a lot that could be improved in the skill and we just have to wait and see what the revamp brings.

[Proximus]

I've been doing Ice Magic and Priest well into the 60's as A Rabbit instead of using the Rabbit Skills. I can confirm that this build is both strong and has a great survivability. The only reason I'm using Rabbit is because I like roleplaying as one and also because of the fact that as an animal I can use Animal First Aid bombs which can be put on side bar and can also be used with regular First Aid. Plus, The rez for First Aid is nice with the rez from Priest as well as the Priest heals.

Also, I have Spider/Druid augmented really well to do high amounts of poison damage and thus in level 60 content, I rarely die and do a great deal of damage. Spider/Priest is also fun to play with the Animal First Aid Bomb concept and regular First Aid.

Keep in mind, the First Aid and Animal First Aid Bombs are instant healing as well as the main Priest ability I use.

[INXS]

To me this "ranking " seems based on group play mainly.

[Mikhaila]

Warden/bc is my main skin farming and low level farming build, it's why I said bc just for extra skin since you can use the mutations and the golem without hands.

Interesting. Not something I knew about

[Mikhaila]

To me this "ranking " seems based on group play mainly.

If you read through the first post, you can see that he's mainly talking about groups in WT and GK. The further you get from that, the fuzzier the analysis will get. The elites in those dungeons take more tanking, more dps, sometimes longer fights, and challenge you more with different damage and resistance types.

[Ranperre]

Why is Unarmed weak? Like I said, havent played seriously in a long time, but I don't remember Unamred being weak.

Whiel I agree that Lycna on its own may lack Aoe, but I don't think one should look at any skill in vaccum. Afterall, we are supposed to use 2 combat skills, so I think more fair comparision would be how well skill synergies with other skills.

For example, my favorit build, wolf/unamred has quite a few options for AOe. Bite and Barrage are given, but you can aslo use combso for aoe kick or cobra/mamba stike, or mod for aoe hip throw/body slam (gloves are not very mod-heavy in this build). Again, I dont know, I was never group payer, I mostly play solo, but I never felt useless in groups with my wolf.

There are inherent problems with evaluating skills individually, but I felt like this was easier than listing out 30 different skill combinations and comparing them. Damage-wise, how about this. Hammer, by itself, can go way of the hammer (+45% crushing) + seismic (2800-3k) + pound to slag (6k), both being aoe. It's going to be very difficult catching up to that on any unarmed build, where barrage/kicks are going for 3-4k at best after being boosted up, right? So in three buttons, hammer alone does what it would take 6-7 buttons (at best) for an unarmed build to do. Along the same vein, an unboosted fire breath does 2700 direct (vs 1700 barrage) plus a little over 900 from a dot. In other words, fire's nice attack does twice the damage of barrage. Mamba strike USED to be cool (massive mods), now it is not.

[Proximus]

great posts!!

[Mbaums]

INXS is correct there is a group bias in the ranking and that is intentional, as group-content is such a major part of PG.
I don't think the people posting being able to solo elites can efficiently solo them compared to a group, especially with the new HP numbers and thick armor. Being able to hold your own vs a troll until you get ~3 Monteros rages off or a lucky crit can't compare to a group that might manage 3-adds. It's just night and day.

What's not being shown is some of the skills are meant to be not intended for new players, like Battle Chem with it's required 50-alchemy unlock. So, it's balanced to be strong. Citan has that info, and hopefully this feedback helps put the skill's reality in line with the intention where needed (which is top secret infoz that we don't see).

[Mikhaila]

Read the first post about how he is ranking things. It's not based on how easy it is to solo. It's based on the group content in GK and WT. Most combos can solo to 80. I did it the first time with Unarmed and Psychology, not a really high damage skill set and by far one of the least powerful I've ever used. His power rankings are based on some assumptions, and soloing isn't really part of it.

Spider/Warden is a decent combo. Warden pairs well with any animal skillset, it's extremely good. I've run it with Fox, Unarmed, Mentalism, Psychology, Druid, and Deer. Works well with all of them. I like it best with Fox and Ment. Privacy Field over 2k makes soloing very easy.