Sniper Blizzard damage?

[Aethelgorn]

Ello,

With any luck, I'm about to be a sniper and I'm debating about whether to get strafe or blizzard first. I'm probably going to get strafe as I'm training at Hoodoos/Voodoos and it might let me 1hit them which would be good.

But anyway, my question is - just how much/little damage would 1 point in blizzard do? I'm guessing it will completely suck compared to Iron Arrow?

And the freeze will be basically a useless against Hoodoos - I would probably rather they didn't freeze so I can bunch them up and mob them with Iron Arrow.

Which sort of convinces me to go with Strafe, but I just wanted to know if anyone had any opinions on the matter?

Btw, I dont care about losing money by using strafe - Hoodoos give amazing money anyway so I wouldn't be surprised if I was still in profit using it...

Cheers guys,

Andy

[dacrow]

Use strafe. the point of blizz is that it freezes, it doesn't even work with criticals so its useless for damage.

[ElderDragon]

Strafe at lvl 1 will not be stronger than double shot. In fact, if you keep maxing strafe, it won't be stronger than DS till 73 - it'd take longer to kill anything until 73 and the training doesn't go up. Blizzard on the other hand mob freezes monsters, making them easy sniping for DS or iron arrow. It's damage sucks and it will alway suck, but it's completely irrelevant - the skill would get no worse where it not to do any damage at all and just auto-froze - it's meant to make things more manageable. Every ranger who's hit 8x and gone to squids wishes they had it.

If you need a build, try this:
1 blizzard
20~25 strafe
5~6 puppet
5 MB
25~30 arrow eruption
max strafe
max arrow eruption
15~20 golden eagle
10~15 puppet
1~10 thrust

I didn't list how much to add to each skill, but instead what you should have before you move on; I hope that makes easier to manage. This build basically takes you to squids at 8x, squid parties/gobi parties at 9x. At 10x, you could try vikings, squid, or gobis (all parties, though).

[Aethelgorn]

Strafe at lvl 1 will not be stronger than double shot. In fact, if you keep maxing strafe, it won't be stronger than DS till 73

Blizzard on the other hand mob freezes monsters, making them easy sniping for DS or iron arrow.

Ok thanks, I will use your build as a base and think about it. This is super confusing :-) Is the extra freeze time on 21 points of blizzard never worth it?

But yeah, 1 point in blizzard it is I guess. I hadn't realised 1 point in strafe was quite so underpowered. I guess it's when you see screenies of 4 crits that makes you think it's really powerful :-/

Cheers,

Andy

[ReGregitation]

Yes the extra freeze seconds is worth it. You don't need blizzard past 21. 21 is just for the 3 second freeze.

[Aethelgorn]

Yes the extra freeze seconds is worth it. You don't need blizzard past 21. 21 is just for the 3 second freeze.

Ok yup, I misunderstood Elder's build. I thought he meant 1 point and 1 point only in blizzard.

I think I've got a clear idea of what I want to end up with now anyway so thanks :-)

[ElderDragon]

Ok yup, I misunderstood Elder's build. I thought he meant 1 point and 1 point only in blizzard.

I think I've got a clear idea of what I want to end up with now anyway so thanks :-)

I meant to include that those points in eagle are interchangeable with blizzard - you need both eventually, but you can max blizzard at that point instead of eagle, it'll just make gobi's harder (the house doesn't freeze, but it does stun). In case no one knew, you need 15 eagle for the 4th job summon (mob freeze + no summoning rocks).

If strafe hits 4 criticals, it'll be stronger at lvl 1 than DS, but the probably of that happening is approximately 3%, not good odds in my book.