I was thinking of halfkin with Adventurer or Maverick or Commando. Or is there a better race and heroic trait combo? i mainly want to pvp

With ranger as my main, i'd always go for adventurer as my trait. Ranger is designed to be a crit class, and the extra luck and crit dmg will be useful for all your p-dps. Maverick is more useful for tanks for evasion.
For race on the other hand, all of them have their pro's and con's. What a race lacks in passives, it makes up in racial skills. Halfkin's for example have a 6-second stun at their disposal, although their passive doesn't compare to say that of humans. Ursun's get attack speed and a knock back plus higher hp all-round. With the 72 skills out however, many might take human. With their passive, humans can have capped resistances which is a great bonus to survivability with all the magic spammers. Race can be a matter of preference, and its better if you decide it on the basis of all the classes you'll be playing, not just ranger, since unlike heroic trait they can't be changed.
^sorry for the wall of text

Adventurer is a good starting trait. Depending on your gear, you may decide to keep Adventurer or decide to use Commando. I have 87-90% Crit Rate (no buffs) and 2.96-3.00 Crit Dmg depending on my accessories with Commando, not Adventurer. My bow is even a cheap blue free quest one without any gems and the 1G basic enchant for Crit Rate, so I definitely can do better.

*stares at katashi's stats*
I know I said I hate ranged classes.. But you just made me want Ranger o.o

starstrike45 wrote:

*stares at katashi's stats* I know I said I hate ranged classes.. But you just made me want Ranger o.o

I recently improved a bit. My base Crit Rate is now about 98% base with the same lackluster blue bow. Since my bow is only +2 though, I only have 26k P-Atk (whereas other Rangers have over 40k).

o-o

*Works vociferously on my hunter*

I shall have.
I. Shall. Have.

Seems like a lot of people focus on getting 90-100 percent Crit rate on any DPS class. Is it possible that having say.... an 80 percent crit rate and then using a buff or Bard in your group give you 100 percent would actually optimize your dmg since you've have more of a chance to focus on P-DMG, Luck, +Crit Dmg, etc...

Also lets say you just leave it at 80-85 percent, wouldn't it be more advantageous to increase your base damage more since the damage that a crit actually does is based off of this? Perhaps we have some number crunchers among us or perhaps we have some people here who've tried both routes.

jamcoboston wrote:

Seems like a lot of people focus on getting 90-100 percent Crit rate on any DPS class. Is it possible that having say.... an 80 percent crit rate and then using a buff or Bard in your group give you 100 percent would actually optimize your dmg since you've have more of a chance to focus on P-DMG, Luck, +Crit Dmg, etc... Also lets say you just leave it at 80-85 percent, wouldn't it be more advantageous to increase your base damage more since the damage that a crit actually does is based off of this? Perhaps we have some number crunchers among us or perhaps we have some people here who've tried both routes.

Rangers have an awesome passive of 30% crit rate, making their crit rate easy to cap. It depends on your gear. For example, my ranger has a base 100% crit rate. Taking out BOTH crit rate certs and the luck cert, my crit rate drops to 87% >_>. This is using an awakened set with pretty good forts.

Other classes/races w/o crit rate passives aren't as lucky. Similar set up, my human BD/MA roughly only has 80% base crit rate compared to 100% from ranger.

Because you eventually want to hit 100% crit rate or at least 90%+, it is advisable to try and get the right set up to achieve that. What you said, however, is true. You'd have to consider other ways to raise crit rate to give room for other procs and resources. My base 80% is enough, and using war pots (5% crit rat), couple buff, shammy/cleric buffs, and king strike (attack and crit rate proc) are more than enough to get to 100%.

3.0 crit dmg is easy to get for some classes (particularly 1h DPS) though it depends on if you use unique weapons vs purple (some unique weapons have crit dmg while others dont), roll crit dmg on fort bonuses etc. Make sure to get a full set of crit dmg glyphs.

There's rarely a situation where you have to choose strictly between base dmg vs crits other than heroic traits. Better way of saying, both exists in the most efficient builds. Most of your p-attack comes from fortifying weapons and you have enough KP to get both crit rate KP and weapon KP. The harder side of DPS is sacrificing some damage output to be a bit more bulky. No point in being a DPS that steals aggro and can't take a hit xD.

^ +65 because it's exactly how I see it.


The thing for me is that I normally play solo and just want to speed through my Limited every day, so a Ranger with almost 100% base Crit Rate helps me do that the fastest (so I don't need to keep the buffs up - I forget to buff often). It's just really easy, and to be honest, I love looking at my stat page and seeing that 97%-100%.

I am using Commando trait and P-Atk/Triple Hit procs if that counts for anything since I have little need for Lck/Crit Rate procs for solo play. And when I'm in a party . . . well I die a lot, so in those situations, not counting on keeping Cleric/Shaman buffs can be marginally useful. If I'm in a safe position, then I can go ahead and swap out my Crit Rate certs temporarily, or if there's a Bard around.

I main Samurai, but I found out a few days ago that my Ranger + Katana is more effective on tough bosses than my Samurai is because Human Rangers can be bulky. +10 Elemental resist on top of perma-buffed +15 Elemental resist and 28/30 seconds for 4k Def when I throw Serenity into the mix. I know my bow sucks, but when I have a Katana on Ranger, that's when I really feel P-DPS is so versatile because of Atk Speed builds.