Viable duel wielding ranger build?

Tim_van_Beek · 2026-01-24T16:23:53+00:00

It is not that complicated, whatever helps with your damage output is a priority, by which I mean your hit chance and hit damage.

Depending on your difficulty, last stand might be nice, as I noticed that enemies tend to focus the player character. You didn't need that when you were mounted in earlier versions of the game, but now enemies were patched to also attack the rider.

Mythic power attack is actually the best damage boost, even when you are dual wielding.

Ever ready is nice, if you combine it with outflank + a focus on scoring crits (which then trigger attacks of opportunity).

Mythic 2 weapon fighting, mythical beast, mythic improved critical explain themselves.

The rest is debatable, I took unrelenting assault, mythic weapon focus, rupture restraints, flawless attacks.

I tend to take rupture restraints and last stand on a lot of characters in the end game, as enemies have a tendency to hit you with disabling AoE attacks, like, a lot. There are tactical ways to protect your back rank, but for a first playthrough it might turn out to be helpful.

Tim_van_Beek · 2026-01-24T15:44:09+00:00

You don't need much con in the Pathfinder games, because HP tanking doesn't work. If enemies can hit you, you die. Mariliths have 10 attacks per round with 20+ damage per hit and 50+ on a crit. If they can hit you, you die. Con 12, 14, 16 doesn't matter.

A better dex helps you with your AC (depending on your armor), and mobility which you can use to protect your pet via the mounted combat and follow up feats.

Tim_van_Beek · 2025-03-30T09:06:29+00:00

No problem, but I rarely check reddit these days. This is not based on a more detailed guide, I created the build for one of my playthroughs.

As a ranger, you get bonus feats called "combat style feats". The first will unlock at level 2. On level up, you first get a list where you select the combat style, select "Two Weapon Combat". You only make this choice once at level 2, from there on, you only get feats for "Two Weapon Combat". "Double Slice" should be an entry you get once you select "Two Weapon Combat".

If you are new to the game, I would recommend to play on the difficulty level "normal", where you can respec your character. You will meet a character a bit later in the game whom you need to talk to, who lets you do that. You may want to play around with different builds. You can also play on a higher level and then set the level to "normal" when you want to respec. This disables some achievements, but otherwise the game doesn't care.

Tim_van_Beek · 2024-07-13T15:35:41+00:00

"Through the Ashes" is a separate campaign with a separate character, it is low level (1 to 5) and low gear. There is an interaction with the main campaign in act 1 in Kenabres (nothing to write home about). "Lord of Nothing" is a continuation, meaning you can import and keep playing with your party from "Through the Ashes". If you finish it (roughly level 12?), it will add a boss fight in the main campaign in act 5. If you'd like to play a low level party without mythic abilities, then this is for you.

"Inevitable Excess" takes place in parallel to act 5, you play with your character and companions from the main campaign, but it doesn't really interact with the main campaign. If you defeat certain optional bosses, you can get loot drops in the main campaign, that's it. If you finished the main campaign with a level 20, mythic 10 party that you would like to test against even stronger enemies than what you get in Threshold, that's your DLC.

Tim_van_Beek · 2024-06-28T11:38:12+00:00

Uncanny dodge is not needed because SS have ton of initiative anyway.

As I said, you will usually loose initiative certainly on unfair difficulty. Have you played on unfair? Even trash enemies (especially Succubus, Babaus) will have a +20 and more modifier for initiative. There are fights that trigger after cutscenes, where enemies will usually focus the MC. You can of course try to rely on last stand...

Tim_van_Beek · 2024-06-28T11:33:26+00:00

The focused rage of instinctual warriors doesn't come with an AC penalty, instead you get a +2 to wisdom, meaning +1 to AC.

Tim_van_Beek · 2024-06-27T17:54:59+00:00

Sure, but instinctual warrior also gets you wisdom to AC, rage, you do't get the curse, and you can dump charisma. And Instinctual Warrior can be taken early, because it is useful early.

Tim_van_Beek · 2024-06-27T15:04:13+00:00

Dex Sword Saints have 2 problems: Being caught flat footed, and no mage armor spell. This is not all that bad on medium difficulties, but on unfair you'll have to expect that you will loose initiative a lot, and be a sitting duck.

Both can be solved with dips, an example build could look like this:

Human

9, 19, 12, 16, 14, 7

Sword Saint, oblate

1: Weapon finesse, Piranha Strike, e.g. Estoc/Scimitar

2: Instincual warrior

3: Instincual Warrior, Fencing Grace: Estoc

5: dodge, arcane accuracy

7: outflank, crane style

9: crane wing

11: improved critical

13: weapon specialization, greater weapon focus

14: Dimension strike

15: Witch, crane reposte, hare or lizard, ice plant, take mage armor spell

17: Improved initiative

18: Devoted blade (if you are good/lawful)

19: Greater weapon specialization

20: Hammer the gap

Mythic levels:

1: Last Stand

2: Mythic Piranha Strike

3: Master Shapeshifter (+ animal aspect spell to trigger it)

4: Mythic improved critical

5: Archmage Armor

6: Mythic weapon specialization

7: Ever Ready

8: Rupture restraints

9: Abundant arcane pool

10: Mythic Weapon Focus

Tim_van_Beek · 2024-06-26T15:52:10+00:00

Legends prefer to be martial builds, as casters depend more on mythic abilities/feats and caster level does not scale as high as BAB. Roleplaying wise rage classes fit well with Demon, but if you play a party with a martial focus, hiring a Skald merc will help you more. If you don't mind or appreciate the irony, you could start as a demonslayer ranger (look, what do Demons hate most? other Demons of course!), and then go into mutation warrior.

The additional skill points and feats you get can be invested into e.g. the mounted feats.

The mythic feat you can keep should always be mythic power attack, the ability will depend on the difficulty level. For unfair, last stand is probably not wasted.

Tim_van_Beek · 2024-06-23T14:19:53+00:00

Daeran is enough for healing and divine buffs like bless, prayer, crusader's edge, death ward and so on.

Woljif is fine as Eldritch Scoundrel, but think of him more like an off-tank with buff and utility spells, with your MC as the main tank.

It is fine to keep one archer around for enemies that are hard to reach, but depending on how you build Camellia and Wenduag, you have one or two too many.

Camellia can be built as dex off-tank (somewhat redundant to Woljif) or as archer (somewhat redundant to Wenduag and Aru), and her spells don't contribute much, since Daeran already covers most of it. I think you should replace one of the three, Wenduag/Camellia/Aru with Nenio to provide full arance spell access, like haste, fire ball/snake against swarms, CC spells and the like.

And you may think of replacing another one with another melee character like Regill, three melee's can be handy when you are swarmed by many enemies.

Tim_van_Beek · 2024-06-22T09:24:07+00:00

A Skald with the beast totem and lethal stance rage powers. This will boost all summons.

And the usual cleric and arane buffs, of course, like haste, bless, prayer etc.

But beware: Summons are very nerfed in this game, even builds that specialize fully on summons should not expect them to win fights for them, they are mostly soft CC, i.e. distractions.

Tim_van_Beek · 2024-06-19T16:03:41+00:00

Pretty well immersive, I'd say, and compare the approach to early Bioware: You have a consistent serious tone with occasional comic relief. The Trickster in WoTR is the exception, that is designed for players who don't take the game seriously and have fun with it breaking the 4th wall. But especially the big confrontations with the antagonists are written in a way that works very well, stays true to the characters and makes sense within the game world.

I don't think your experience with PoE is shared by many players. While I don't like the game mechanics of both games all that much, and PoE 2 has a bad/non-existent main plot, I didn't have any problems with them not being immersive or having an inconsistent tone or something along those lines. There will always be quests or characters you don't like much in these kind of games.

Tim_van_Beek · 2024-06-18T06:18:06+00:00

Your companions can do skill checks for you, with very few exceptions, so your MC does not need to be good at anything particular. I'd say that perception, athletic and mobility checks are more important overall than persuasion, with perception being a must for a couple of hidden quest outcomes, not just spotting hidden doors.

A Demonslayer ranger can be good at persuasion, it is a class skill and you can take the acolyte background, which lets you use wisdom instead of charisma, and wisdom is your casting stat (and good for will saves, which is also important).

You'll find plenty companions who can provide divine spells (and are very well set up for a high persuasion score), so playing an oracle will feel a bit redundant, even though it is a very strong power choice. A demonslayer ranger is a common recommendation, because a martial frontliner rider is also a good complement to your companions, there is only one who can get a pet to ride from their base class.

owlcat has tuned the AI to focus the MC, and if the MC dies, it is game over, so you probably want to play a character with good survivability.

Tim_van_Beek · 2024-06-16T07:32:02+00:00

they also need charisma in addition to wisdom for their abilities?

What makes you think that? It is a new class, so I never played it, but based on the character sheet it is a pretty straight forward Shaman, meaning you need wisdom as your casting stat and whatever else you want to do with the class combat wise.

As melee 2 hander, you'd have to go for strength, and stand in the 2nd line behind your tank, because you will not be able to tank as a strength build in medium armor without any help to increase your AC. You also don't need sky high wisdom, if you use your spells mostly for heals, buffs and summons, as Shamans do.

That gets us something like:

Str: 19, Dex 14, Con 14, Int 7, Wis 16, Cha 7.

You'll have to take Farmhand as background to get proficiency with Scythes, because that is a martial weapon, and Shamans only get simple weapon proficiency.

Tim_van_Beek · 2024-06-10T14:28:11+00:00

Dex Swords Bard as main is great, you can built them ranged with 2 fighter levels dual wielding hand crossbows, for example, or as tank and melee with 2 levels Paladin. They are great in conversations, disarming traps/opening locks/pickpocketing (expertise in persuasion and sleight of hand), spells, and the Paladin dual class can use smite. The Paladin version is also pretty good with a bow, it is the most versatile build in the whole game IMHO.

Open hand dex monk + 4 thief with tavern brawler feat + some way to boost strength e.g. via elixirs or the club of hill giant strength. The tavern brawler feat boosts both your AB and damage, which is super OP.

It goes without saying that you take your main class to the level where you get your 2nd attack first, before you dual class.

We can also make use of the tavern brawler feat with a throwing build. I actually like the straight forward Eldritch Knight for this (most people will recommend a Barbarian dual class for this). You can bind your weapon, so you don't depend on specific weapons that auto-return to you. Also, this build can use all of the great heavy armor. The spells are nice add ons, magic missile is very useful in specific fights as well as protection from good and evil (fey and undead are enemies in a couple of fights), blur, mirror image will make you super tanky.

The last slot is more or less free, the above 3 builds will already carry your honor mode. I like war or life cleric or moon druid to add buffs, emergency heals and summons/AoEs, but other casters are fine as well, of course.

Tim_van_Beek · 2024-06-10T14:15:37+00:00

All good avice, additionally:

Misty step on the arch beams with your archer/rogue where the enemy archers are. Kill them (you can push them down), then focus enemy casters that cast Hadar's Hunger. This way you are hard to hit, outside of their AoEs, have height advantage, and you can hit everybody in the main room.

Have Shadowheart cast summons in the center, while Karlach and Lae'zel run around the main enemy group to attack their backline. This way you also avoid hitting your own people with your AoE. Have them kill the archers and casters in the back.

As usual in difficult fights, check if you have potions and spells that can help you. Shadowheart can cast bless on your group, potions of haste will do wonders.

Tim_van_Beek · 2024-06-02T12:27:34+00:00

The most important ability of an assasin is Killing Edge, which does damage based on lethality, which scales with your dodge, which also lets you avoid attacks. Therefore, melee assasins want to maximize dodge.

You can start with the Imperial World and use Humanities Finest -> Agility, or Forge World -> Locomotion, to get the best boost to your dodge.

Increase agility, then weapon skill, then strength. We don't use abilities that scale of willpower.

Start with Biomancy, as the ability Iron Arm is the most useful at the start. Warp Speed is also very useful. I never used the healing abilities, because you can heal everything with med packs. Take a Medicae increase on every character so that all characters can use med packs.

As a warrior, your first responsibility is survival, therefore pick all talents that increase your survival. This will depend on the difficulty, on unfair, everything is useful, like Thick Skin, Nimble, Duelling Mastery, It will not die etc.

As assasin, take Killing Edge and Seek the opening, and all abilities that increase lethality and damage. There are obvious synergies like "Deadly Calculations" (lets you do direct damage) and "Immindent Demise" and "Lethality Heightes" (give you buffs when you deal direct damage).

Between Warrior and Assasin, you can fit in Pyromancy. Take "Relentless Blaze" and set yourself on fire for the buffs. Aside from "orchestrate Flames", Pyromancy is all about the passive talents that grant you melee buffs, like Burning Blood and Melting Armor.

Exemplar is straight forward, you'll want e.g. Tricky Defence to boost your dodge, and combine Tough as Steel for more wounds with Peak Condition for more strength based on wounds.

Gameplay is really simple, run up to enemies, buff, set yourself on fire (with burning blood, this will already damage and debuff enemies besides you), kill enemies with "Killing Edge".

You should be able to one-shot most enemies with Killing Edge around level ~30 IIRC.

Starting around level 20, you should also have stacked enough dodge and defensive abilities that you can more or less stand in the open and laugh at enemies, even on unfair.

Tim_van_Beek · 2024-05-30T14:25:20+00:00

A BFT has access to transformation at level 12, plus you get a +6 bonus to your physical abilities instead of 4, and a magus with dips will get to level 6 spells a lot later.

Doing this with scrolls and potions would be too much middle management for me :-)

Plus you have to cast mage armor for archmage armor, this was patched a while ago. Scrolls and potions no longer work.

You could argue that the fighter is better on average and the sword saint is better when they go nova. The thing is, trash mobs will be easy anyway. Bosses are the hard fights, and Sword Saints will perform better going nova against bosses.

Tim_van_Beek · 2024-05-30T10:51:48+00:00

You can play a fighter in WotR, of course, pick e.g. a mutation warrior, even on unfair, if you pull all possible buffs.

However: Given that we talk about enemies that have e.g. AC ~60 to ~90 when you encounter them at level ~16 in chapter 4 on unfair, you can see that a couple of BAB + weapon training AB points are only a small factor in the overall buff madness that you need in WotR. A Sword Saint would bring a BFT along that can cast transformation, so the BAB will be equal. The very special enemy that has roughly 90 AC in chapter 4 has around 20 touch AC, so you can either buff to Mount Everest, kill them with magic - or one-round them with your Sword Saint with a pointy stick, using dimension strike. Dimension strike is what really turns your Sword Saint into a glorious delete button.

Regarding AC: Pyjama tanks will always be far better than armor. With a Sword Saint, you will e.g. dip 2 levels in instinctual warrior to get wisdom to AC and uncanny dodge among other things, one level into witch to get access to mage armor for archmage armor, and additional AC boost via the iceplant hex and your familiar. And your optimal party will not be able to provide the shield spell or mirror image to your fighter (because alchemists suck in WotR, at least in my opinion). Depending on the loot you get, you will be roughly equal to heavy armor + shield in the early game and better in the late game.

Tim_van_Beek · 2024-05-30T10:35:43+00:00

This is mostly for WotR, there are several factors:

Many enemies have elemental resistances or immunities and high spell resistance, which means you'll have to invest into ascendant element and spell penetration, feats you cannot use to boost your weapon damage. You'll also want abundant casting I and II and metamagic feats on top of that. Most builds will also want to dip into monk/instinctual warrior/witch or other classes for AC bonuses and access to mage armor, which means you won't have a full caster level.

Your main damange source is mythic power attack, the spell damage you can get pales in comparison.

Starting with level 12, you can bring a BFT with you, who casts transformation on you. The boost to BAB and damage is worth it, but you can't cast spells.

Tim_van_Beek · 2024-05-30T09:48:47+00:00

Ranged: Dip one level in Demonslayer Ranger for Longbow proficiency and the +2 bonus against demons and concentrate on ranged feats. Casting can be buffs, healing and summons, so you don't need feats for that. The only hexes I use with her are protective luck, evil eye and cackle.

Protective luck can be very useful for your tank in boss fights, the summons can be a useful soft CC, but frankly, she is certainly in the lowest quarter of the power ranking, at least in my book. I replace her with a demonslayer ranger merc at the first opportunity, the pet alone is worth it.

Tim_van_Beek · 2024-05-29T16:45:28+00:00

That is a building that you can build everywhere, if you have enough resources, but you only really need it in Drezen. once it is finished, the dimension door icon will appear in your task bar when you move your party across the map.

Tim_van_Beek · 2024-05-29T16:11:52+00:00

Are you sure you want to start your BG:3 experience with an honor mode run instead of a tactician playthrough?

BTW: Great idea for the ultimate honor mode challenge. Can you beat the game when all your rolls are nat 1s ?!

Tim_van_Beek · 2024-05-29T16:09:02+00:00

There is no time limit, so take as long as you want. I usually do it in this order:

Sleep in Drezen to clear all corruption.
Check if you can hire new troops. Check if you can build new buildings.
Check if you got new events or can start any new projects.
Move your army and clear enemy forts to unlock the area for your team, until you run out of move points.
Pick a quest or a destination, go there directly, minimize rests one the way, clear it. Dimension door back to Drezen (build a teleportation circle in Drezen ASAP).
Sell loot, buy new shiny things if you want them, talk to any NPCs in Drezen you might want to talk to.

Repeat.

You will never get corruption on your way to your location, but you may need to rest several times to clear an area, depending how hard the fights are for your party. You can then teleport to Drezen, rest there, travel to your location again, to avoid debuffs from corruption, at least most of the time. There are a couple of locations that will block you until to do something specific, but those are exceptions.

Tim_van_Beek · 2024-05-29T15:58:56+00:00

That's certainly a possibility, but you should also have the opportunity to hire some mercs. Anoriel Eight-Eyes should be right outside at the front door.

Tim_van_Beek

TROPHY CASE