Are Ranger traps worth it?

[Ludamec]

I probably should of asked this before I put one point into the tool mastery skill ( which I still dont know what to do with that). I'm assuming I need an additional point put into the trap skill before the tool mastery skill becomes active at all? How are traps compared to pumping up weak bullet..?
I've seen no mention of them at all...

Also does anyone know how much (if any) does each additional point into weak bullet increase duration, number of proc bullets, cooldown?

[Yurai]

Points in weak bullet do not increase duration, only number of bullets available per activation, and cooldown. With 10 points cooldown goes from 90 seconds to 60 seconds. Available bullets go up at set point intervalls (you get the second one at rank 3). Whether it's best to stay at rank 1 or go to rank 10 weak bullet is debateable, and there are people in both camps who think they get good mileage out of their choice.

As for traps, the only use I can see for them is CCing bosses, if that's even possible (and if the traps work on them). Normal mobs die too fast for traps to be much use.

[Ludamec]

oh ok, how is the damage on traps as a whole?

[Gardios]

Points in weak bullet do not increase duration, only number of bullets available per activation, and cooldown. With 10 points cooldown goes from 90 seconds to 60 seconds. Available bullets go up at set point intervalls (you get the second one at rank 3). Whether it's best to stay at rank 1 or go to rank 10 weak bullet is debateable, and there are people in both camps who think they get good mileage out of their choice.
Actually, CD starts at 120s and goes down to 90s when maxed. It's also worth mentioning that each level past 4 only decreases the CD by 2s (as opposed to 6s fore Lv 1 to 4) and that you get an additional bullet at Lv 3, 6 and 10.

Personally, I think getting it to level 10 isn't worth it because you don't get as much as you would get from other skills at higher levels.

[Rizen]

I haven't used traps yet, and probably won't any time soon unless a free skill reset is given. I am highly interested in this myself since I was a Protranser in PSU and fell in love with traps.

As for Weak Bullet, I personally gone mine to Lv 10 and I am very happy with it. I don't care so much about my personal damage versus over all damage. If you solo, then I can see why you would keep Weak Bullet at a low rank, but I think that keeping it at Lv 1 isn't even worth the investment and can be put else where.

Since I play more on the supportive side, I can keep Weak Bullet up pretty much indefinitely. Once you know how to use Sniper Shot properly, you can manage Weak Bullet's duration and CD while doing 1500~2000 a shot. One Point is also a very nice PA to use on a weakened spot.

But again, my opinion. To each their own. :)

[Yurai]

Gah, sorry, I meant 120 to 90. Not sure why I mentally subtracted 30 seconds. I wish XD

[MasterChuck]

Traps are definitely /not/ worth it.

[MAXrobo]

if they are the same as in the closed beta, then don't waist your time with them. they take a long time to set and you can do more damage by spending that time shooting.

[Hrith]

Traps are definitely /not/ worth it.If you could elaborate =/

What about stun grenades? I don't even know how they are thrown...

[Macman]

I tried a stun grenade in CBT and they didn't seem to work at all.

I'm going for jellen shot and weak shot on my build. I just hope jellen shot is effective.

[Kanore]

Rising Traps are fun for me! Though I kinda wish I went Weak Bullet instead of Bind Bullet.

If I remade a Ranger I'd probably get Weak Bullet and Rising Traps.

Traps really proved to save my ass a bunch of times in Desert. Those floating, Darkrai-looking enemies are annoying as hell to deal with when you're just using a Launcher or the lack-of-enough-damage-dealing Assault Rifle, so Traps helped lock them in place for me to blast 'em.

If Weak Bullet were the only thing worth getting in the Ranger tree then something is wrong with ST.

Usually there is something horribly wrong with ST but I'm on the ass-end of my honeymoon phase of PSO2 and it's still fun so I'll give them the benefit of the doubt.

[pikachief]

If weak bullet is the only thing worth gettin it makes my skill tree desicions much easier lol

[Randomness]

If weak bullet is the only thing worth gettin it makes my skill tree desicions much easier lol

Jellen shot was brutally effective in CB, haven't seen any reports of it from this though. Basically, the opposite of Weak Bullet. One reduces the enemy's defense to nothing, the other their offense.

I'm planning right now to make a toolbox build, with Jellen, Panic, and Weak. Jellen and Weak both for bosses, Panic to neutralize groups, or turn hard hitting enemies against others. (It's hilarious when you confuse an entire group of enemies, which I've done a few times with Gigrants - it greatly reduces the damage you take)

[Vashyron]

If you could elaborate =/

What about stun grenades? I don't even know how they are thrown...

I tried Stun Grenades in the 2nd Alpha, they are thrown in a arc (trajectory shown) then explode on impact and it instantly stunned stuff except bosses. I didn't try them in the CBT or OBT right now to know if they got nerfed, but I may put at least one point into it when I level up ranger.

The actual traps though I thought it was a waste due to the long set up time.

[Arande]

I've been wondering about this myself. I picked up poison trap and 1 point in custom, but apparently I can't poison bosses with this. I know you can poison bosses since I had a rifle with poison 1 on it, and it was ticking vs caderdagons for over a k a tick. Was hoping poison traps would do the same, and then some with custom trap. But apparently a lv 1 ability on a weapon completely trumps a skill you gotta specialize to get. IMO something is broken there D:

Either that or I just need more points in custom trap. If I need points in tool mastery, that's going to be a pain since that's another bunch of points to get to.

[Gardios]

I tried Stun Grenades in the 2nd Alpha, they are thrown in a arc (trajectory shown) then explode on impact and it instantly stunned stuff except bosses.

Welp, there goes my reason to get Stun Grenade. Maybe if later monsters are actually threatening to full parties...


Either that or I just need more points in custom trap. If I need points in tool mastery, that's going to be a pain since that's another bunch of points to get to.

Higher levels increase poison effect probability - although I have no idea if Lv 10 has a meaningful increase from Lv 1.

[Vashyron]

It may be able to stun bosses at higher level, though if anyone cares to test it by putting 10 points into stun grenade...

[ciroth]

Stun Grenades are Lobbed with hardly any delay, explodes on impact or if you threw it way too high, about 5-7 seconds later.

Traps takes a few seconds, which seems like ages when you are really close to a boss, to setup. If you don't get butt raped while setting up trap, then they have a decay timer. If nothing hits it OR if you don't trigger it, it will dissapear. Traps are better of setup before hand, but with decay rate.... limits its usefulness.

Knock up trap is nice, but waste of skill. Why? Rifle Shotgun PA does the same thing. Launcher Close Promixity Shot, or Knock up rocket does the same thing.

Poison trap also just takes too long to be useful. If you fighting in a large mob, everything dies before you can setup the trap.

Also, the cost of using traps and grenades are just horrific. If you spam stun nades and up traps, you probably looking at breaking event in money if you aren't running high level dungeons where everything is 150-200+ money drops.

BTW the good thing about multiple weak point shots is...
First shot you paint weak point
Save rest of the weak point shots by just using PA skills
Spam the full Auto PA skill (10-12 shots... for like 28 PP... so cheap)
Once it wears off, paint a new one, repeat. After 3 paints you are probbly already halfway down the cool down timer.

[Arande]

Just throwing this out there, have 3 points in custom trap at whatever 114% it shows. Seems my chance to poison caderdagons, or whatever the stretchy things are, has gone from like 1 in 10 to 1 in 3. Loveseeing ticks for 1250 a second on them, .... Soon ragne and ragen.... soon...

[Reia]

I have LV10 weak bullet and don't regret my choice (Always 3 HU 1 RA (Me) party). =3

[Kion]

Traps seem like they would be a nice bonus to have if they were an ability provided to the class anyways, and then maybe have some options to level them up. As of now though, being at the bottom of the skill tree as something you have to work towards to level up, and are worse than other skills you can learn for the same skill points otherwise makes them completely worthless.

[Miyoko]

I'm surprised nobody mentioned the usefulness of weak hit advance in this thread. Traps in CTB were really, really awful. Extremely hard to use and not very effective. I tried poison and never managed to tag anything with them, and a friend tried stun which didn't really seem to do a lot. Weak bullets are obviously handy and everyone knows this, but weak hit advance is severely underrated. At level 10 you get +25% weak spot damage, which means that if you're good at aiming, you're getting 25% damage on -every attack-. Certainly better than something that's only effective some of the time, I think.

But yes, I hope traps get a buff :(

[GoldenFalcon]

At level 10 you get +25% weak spot damage, which means that if you're good at aiming, you're getting 25% damage on -every attack-.

I'd like to point out that the Standing Shot skill gets +20% damage at 10/10 (which surprised me, since it is +5% at 5/10)

However, I've never seen someone with assault rifle stand still, and I've never seen people with launchers fire from the ground

[JeyKama]

Kyatadran is vulnerable to poison, since it's more of a sub-boss rather than a zone boss. It is pretty lolzy watching the 4k ticks (on a lv34 Kyata) when my rifle procs. Since Poison T Custom buffs the damage by up to 35% I'd have to know the base %damage per tick and what rank Poison the trap is.

[MelancholyWitch]

So it seems standing snipe would be the way to go.... if you're doing 45% more damage for just 1 snipe shot... you can stand still just for that moment and get very high hits, but I am still curious about the usefulness of other abilities is anyone who is planning on purchasing AC be willing to test Bind Bullet, and Stun Grenades? I love using rifles and I'm very undecided what to spend the rest of my points on, if Bind bullet and stun grenades are disappointments the best way to spend points would be to maximize your damage, and does ability affect the damage you do with snipe shot? probably worth getting that instead.

[JeyKama]

When you use Sneak Shot you are automatically crawling so unless someone's figured out how to stop it (which would be awesome, that part of the skill makes it near-unusable for me) so my money is that Standing Snipe would not be able to apply to it.

[dilakri87]

Don't bother with standing snipe. Ranger tree has got 2 weak hit / advanced.

Btw, nobody is leveling ranged atk?

[Ludamec]

I take it the skill tree will be upgraded eventually..? Seems like most of items on the tree are complete crap or take wayyy too many points to be considered worth using at all. Even still, a particular situation has to occur for that to be worth using

[kdrakari]

Don't bother with standing snipe. Ranger tree has got 2 weak hit / advanced.

Btw, nobody is leveling ranged atk?

A few reasons together:
1. RATK adds a numerical value, meaning its effectiveness declines as you level.
2. RATK requires additional points in RDEF, which means fewer points elsewhere.
3. Hitting weakpoints consistently is not that hard, so getting Weak Hit advance is also a fairly consistent increase in damage, as well as being a percentage so it's not adversely affected by increasing levels.

Basically, Weak Hit Advance is simply better for increasing your damage. The only reason to get RATK is to access skills in that branch of the tree, like Bind, Panic, and Jellen shots.

[Arika]

I m agree with the second post. Normal mobs died too fast to make use of traps.

So it is all about boss fight, and I never seen anybody really use trap yet. (Other than my own use in my alpha-test video to just testing it which I can tell that traps were worthless in alpha-test)

I hope traps become some sort of useful build up in this beta or in the future tho. People love protransfer on PSU.

[dilakri87]

A few reasons together:
1. RATK adds a numerical value, meaning its effectiveness declines as you level.
2. RATK requires additional points in RDEF, which means fewer points elsewhere.
3. Hitting weakpoints consistently is not that hard, so getting Weak Hit advance is also a fairly consistent increase in damage, as well as being a percentage so it's not adversely affected by increasing levels.

Basically, Weak Hit Advance is simply better for increasing your damage. The only reason to get RATK is to access skills in that branch of the tree, like Bind, Panic, and Jellen shots.

Thank you for that listing.

My concern about R-Atk is, as you said, learning higher level skills and most importantly, equiping higher tier weapons!
I just like to have a constant damage. I also noted, that not every enemy has weak spots. And if I use launchers, weak shot seems to be very ineffective.

R-Atk + Weak Bullet + Weak Shot, they all benefit from each other anyway.

[Hrith]

R-ATK is also good if you use rifles a lot, especially One Point, since low-damage attacks with numerous hits gain the most benefit from increased ATK.

[Dinosaur]

I'd like to point out that your accuracy doesn't drop during a neutral jump(not pressing WASD while jumping/jumping in place), so that might still proc standing snipe's passive since the game seems to register that as standing still. If it were to work like this, standing snipe would have launcher rangers' names all over it. I don't know for sure though so I want to confirm this somehow because Weak Hit advance 10 + Standing Snipe 10 for a 45% damage boost is HUGE.

[HandOfThornz]

Jellen shot was brutally effective in CB, haven't seen any reports of it from this though.


I have jellen shot at lvl10. It has been nerf'd a bit since CBT, but i need to spend more time with it on higher level enemies to give exact stats.
The effect appears to reduce boss (lvl31) attacks by 2/3's. The lasting time has also been reduced so you cannot keep a boss under the jellen effect consently.

Overall its not hugely reduced from CBT, but having this as my only skill at lvl10 could be a waste.
IF you do plan on getting this skill i would suggest aiming for lvl7+ as i started to notice more usefulness of this skill around lvl7-ish onwards.

[GoldenFalcon]

The percent listed on the Jellen Shot ability is deceptive

Since, even a 10% decrease in attack power can make the ratio between their attack and your defense a whole lot closer to 1:1

[dilakri87]

The percent listed on the Jellen Shot ability is deceptive

Since, even a 10% decrease in attack power can make the ratio between their attack and your defense a whole lot closer to 1:1

Yes that would be true.
But is it usefull for ranger? No imho.
Is it usefull for party? Maybe, most people rather want more dps than defensive strategies -> weak bullets

Wished this would have been zalure :P

[Hrith]

Defensive strategies are sounder than more DPS in this game. Try being a hunter against Vol Dragon.

[Hrith]

The impact visual effect is different when you hit a weak spot. Easy enough to tell =/

[ClothoBuer]

So it seems standing snipe would be the way to go.... if you're doing 45% more damage for just 1 snipe shot... you can stand still just for that moment and get very high hits, but I am still curious about the usefulness of other abilities is anyone who is planning on purchasing AC be willing to test Bind Bullet, and Stun Grenades? I love using rifles and I'm very undecided what to spend the rest of my points on, if Bind bullet and stun grenades are disappointments the best way to spend points would be to maximize your damage, and does ability affect the damage you do with snipe shot? probably worth getting that instead.

I actually made a point of it in my tree to go directly after Bind Bullet to see how it acts, what it affects, and how it affects them. With what testing I've done on it, I can honestly say that while it's an incredibly versatile ability outside of boss fights, the applications for it in this stage of the game are few. It essentially is nothing more than a triggered root, enemies can still act, but they can't move, making it quite useful for removing a mob with high damage, or trivializing an encounter with a highly mobile mob. As the game goes on I suspect more people will start investing in it as a survival tool when mob damage and abilities start getting to be tricky, but for the moment it's simply a nice ability to stash away for those times you just wanna get through quickly.

[kdrakari]

So Bind shot has no effect on bosses at all? What about Panic Shot?

[Sizustar]

So Bind shot has no effect on bosses at all? What about Panic Shot?

Only work on the Mob, no effect on Boss.

[Randomness]

So Bind shot has no effect on bosses at all? What about Panic Shot?

Oh god, it would be hilarious for Ragne's disc spam to wipe out all the minions running around.

[MelancholyWitch]

When you use Sneak Shot you are automatically crawling so unless someone's figured out how to stop it (which would be awesome, that part of the skill makes it near-unusable for me) so my money is that Standing Snipe would not be able to apply to it.

if you jump and sneak shot with the extra damage, you wont move at all the idea is that you are using sneak shot immediately instead of holding it down to get a clear shot, so I'm sure it still affects the sneak shot ability, so the question now I guess is if you are maxed out in weak shot then go for weak hit advance 2 instead of increasing your ability?


I actually made a point of it in my tree to go directly after Bind Bullet to see how it acts, what it affects, and how it affects them. With what testing I've done on it, I can honestly say that while it's an incredibly versatile ability outside of boss fights, the applications for it in this stage of the game are few. It essentially is nothing more than a triggered root, enemies can still act, but they can't move, making it quite useful for removing a mob with high damage, or trivializing an encounter with a highly mobile mob. As the game goes on I suspect more people will start investing in it as a survival tool when mob damage and abilities start getting to be tricky, but for the moment it's simply a nice ability to stash away for those times you just wanna get through quickly.

Hrmm so Bind Bullet could have its' uses I guess I just still think damage over runs it, when in multiparty areas, or even just an area with your party seems like large groups of mobs die anyways too quickly for any form of crowd control being needed, I just typically still use my rifle and shotgun blast them in the face, I just don't like launchers as much as our all-in-one rifle, my specific questions are is it like weak bullet where you get 4 at max lvl 10? that wouldn't be bad I suppose but still kinda only useful in situations, and how long does it actually last? if it's more of a permanent root or at least something that last longer than 5 seconds it will probably be worth the pick up especially if you get longer lasting root at max level.