Dark Hunting Ground: Lategame Ranger-Hermit Strafe Build

This Ranger-Hermit Build uses the Dancer’s Costume Relic to transform the Ranger skill Scattering into Strafe. Strafe is an area and projectile skill that continuously attacks x enemies in range, where x is your projectile count. Through scaling its area, it can easily hit the entire arena and basically farm small arenas without input. To go further, we use the Automation Slate on Strafe and both other skills to permanently have everything firing (I wasn’t able to use my other skills manually, while Strafe was automated, which might be a bug).
Strafe provides some defense as we use Frozen and Knock Back slates. Overall, this is clearly a glass-cannon type of build in the late game, where we mostly hope to kill the enemies before they can act. The dodge, resistances and life we got, seems to fall off later on without further investment.
Our second skill is the standard ranger skill Shot. It provides us with buffs like Fury, Focus, Infusion and Barrier. It also inflicts Elemental Ailments like Shock, Ignite and Chill.
Lastly, we use the standard ranger skill Roll. Its use is optional depending on the Abyssal Eyes used and can provide better Infusion uptime. Unfortunately, we can’t use it manually to dodge, but only for more buffs.

As buffs we utilize:

• Haste: Skill speed and Movement speed
  Damage and Armor Break Limit through Items and Core Talents
• Focus: Crit Chance and Crit Damage
  Projectile Damage through Core Talent
• Fury: More Damage
• Infusion: Mana Regeneration

As debuffs for enemies we utilize:

• Armor Break: Reduces Normal Resistance
• Frozen: Can’t move or attack
• Shock: More Damage taken
• Chill: Reduces Skill Speed and Movement Speed

The Ranger skill tree provides damage, mana and life on hit, some dodge, more projectiles and most importantly Focus buffs. It grants us the ability to generate Focus when using a projectile or movement skill.

The Hermit skill tree provides damage, some life, crit, penetration on crit and most importantly Haste and Armor Break buffs. It grants us the ability to generate Haste on Hit.

For our Core Talent, we specialize further in buffs and debuffs.
The Ranger Core Talent provides maximum Focus, more Focus on Hit, Projectile damage per Focus and the change that Focus isn’t lost on Crit. In exchange, we lose 50% Focus base effect, but having ~20 Focus with less effect permanently is far better than having 1-3 with better effect on every hit. Also, we scale the effect back up through items.
The Hermit Core Talent grants Crit Damage per Armor Break and maximum Armor break per Haste. As we scale Haste, Armour Break and Crit, both of these Talents get better and better.

For our Relics we go for Dancer’s Costume, Wing Blade, Body Crushing Blade, Collapse, Star Chaser, Limit Principle, Syringe and Crazy Mask.
As Affixes, we focus mainly on Maximum Haste, Armor Break Effect, Focus Effect, Fury Effect. Secondary Maximum Fury, Maximum Focus, % Normal damage, % Area Damage, % Projectile Damage work too. I rolled 2 Relics defensively: 1 to cap my Resistances and 1 with Maximum Resistances (which might not be worth alone as we are still too squishy). Also, many Relics fill the last Affix with Maximum Life or Dodge. More on that in the crafting section.

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The Relic the build works around. It changes the Scattering Skill into Strafe and provides some dodge. Also, the only Relic I rolled without Maximum Haste, which might have been a mistake.

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As we scale Haste, we get a lot of Movement Speed, which makes Wing Blade provide a huge amount of damage. The first time I equipped it, my damage got tripled.

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Our Focus buff will eventually give us over 100% crit, which enables 40% Defense Penetration permanently, despite the downside.

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As we use Scattering and Shot from the Ranger pathway anyway, equipping Roll as third (if we actually use it or not doesn’t matter) will make this Relic grant 40% more Damage, which is hard to beat.

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Following the automation theme of the build, why not automate the flask as well. Our life and mana recovery is far better through life and mana on hit anyway and we make sure to have the flask buffs permanently.

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Through the Knock Back Slate, we keep our distance to most enemies, which giving us a huge damage multiplier.

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We only get the 8 Maximum Fury, as we don’t use a Melee Skill. We generate Fury in another way and don’t get the drawback of losing life on skill use. This is at least 16% more damage from fury, more with Fury effect on items.

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Same as the last Relic, we don’t get the melee skill effect, but we scale so much Armor Break, that it should be decent nonetheless.

• Knock Back: Knocks enemies away. Defensive tool, but also damage through Star Chaser Relic.
• Frozen: Freezes enemies and gives us a time window to kill, before they can attack us.
• Armor Break: Applies Armor Break, one of our main damage scaling options.
• Fast: Just more Skill speed. More hits, more Armor Break, more DPS.
• Enlarge: Increases Area of the skill. Useful to hit entire arena.
• Automatic: Strafe will be active constantly, if mana doesn’t run out.
• Barrage: More Projectile Damage. The other effects don’t work with Strafe.

All Slates are crafted like this.
Primary Skill power and flat Normal Damage.
Secondary % Normal Damage, % Area Damage or % Projectile Damage.
Might be better to drop Skill power for all 3 % Affixes, as it’s just 40 base normal damage.

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• Automatic: Shots constantly.
• Armor break: More Armor break. Might be useless as Strafe hits so much faster.
• Heal: Heals a huge amount every 4 sec. Might save you, after getting a big hit.
• Infusion: Give Infusion buff. Assure that mana doesn’t run out, when no enemies are around.
• Fury: Generates Fury stacks.
• Barrier: Grants Barrier. 50% Damage reduction on next hit taken.
• Locking: Aims for nearest enemy.

The Slates don’t need much crafting. The only thing I got is % Chance to apply Elemental Ailments and at least 1 Lightning damage and 1 Cold Damage to be able to apply Shock and Chill.

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You don’t need any Slates here, if you don’t use the Nimble Hunter Abyssal Eye.
If you do, use Release on Hit or Automatic as you can’t use the skill manually. Also, another Infusion Slate can provide better uptime on Infusion. All other buffs have perfect uptime with Shot alone.
The Slates don’t need to be crafted.

Using the Syringe Relic, we can take as much Offense and Defense on our Flask as we want, because Mana and Life Recovery are disabled.
I would recommend taking the buff that increases Flask effect at the cost of duration. The Relic makes the Flask permanent, so we only get the upside without the downside.
I took Damage, Skill Speed and Movement Speed (also Damage through Wing Blade). You could also take Dodge, Damage reduction or Block. I wouldn’t take Crit, as we have enough.

There isn’t much to think about here. Almost all Bonuses I took are the only things that work.
In the second row, you could drop Shock effect for Mana per second, if you don’t have Infusion or want to replace it for something else in the Shot setup.
The Destruction Corpse Buff is a lot of DPS if you use the automated Roll setup, even if it’s not perfect 3 Cross uptime. Otherwise, you only have 1 Cross for 50% of the Time (between Shot uses).
Before getting Abyssal Eyes and good items, the Furious Thunder boss might give more DPS.

In the end I took full Ailment Immunity and shared the rest between Normal Damage, Area Damage and Projectile Damage.
Early on it’s useful to get some Resistances, if not capped yet. Same for Dodge.
Mana per second is another alternative for the Infusion buff.

Now to the end game part of the build. After crafting my gear and being able to farm some Abyssal Eyes consistently, I started some testing.
Without any Eyes, I had around 5 Billion DPS. Then I tried every Abyssal Eye Buff isolate as its 3 Point Form. The DPS increases are estimate after 10 sec on the dummy with roughly the same distance (Star Chaser Relic). Take those numbers with a grain of salt, because I don’t understand some completely like Shaman and Observer, which on paper should be less. Also, some would get stronger in Combination, e.g. Shaman buffs Dancer through more Movement Speed or Sniper buffs Deadly Killer through Focus effect.

For damage, I got the following list from best to worse:

1. Armour Breaker 3: ~4.5x DPS
2. Shaman 3: ~4x DPS (3 big more Multipliers that all scale our damage)
3. Dancer 3: ~4x DPS (Probably even better with other Movement Speed Eye like Shaman)
4. Nimble Hunter 3: ~3x DPS (Needs the automated Roll, gives 32% dodge)
5. Destroyer 3: ~2.5x DPS (Lots of Area effect -> might scale Star Chaser further)
6. Multi-Shooter 3: ~1.7x DPS (Pierce stacks not shown, but work -> ~2.3x DPS after 3 min)
7. Deadly Killer 3: ~1.7x DPS (Not enough Crit Chance for full effect)
8. Observer 3: ~1.5x DPS (Needs Infusion)
9. Sniper 2: ~1.4x DPS (Only need 2 Points as we don’t use charged skills)
10. Vexer 3: ~1.4x DPS (Apparently Automated Strafe can’t consume Fury through Fury Release)
11. Sharpshooter 3: ~1,25x DPS (Strafe has bad range and I guess no Projectile Speed stat)
12. Flesh Pagoda 3: ~1.25x DPS (Only had 4700 HP, but 1.25x seems wrong, should be 1.47x)
13. Clockwork 2: ~1.2x DPS (Only 1 and 2 give Damage, 3 could free Automation Slate for something better)

Honorable Mentions:
Elemental Follower 3 could be good, but I didn’t have the Gear with Resistance to test it fairly.
Summoner 3 should give 1.6x DPS with 3 Shaman Golems.

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I went for the Top 5 eventually and it boosted my DPS by around 1000 times. Some other Combination could be better and for AFK farming Nimble Hunter is useless as you probably have to deactivate the automated Roll or you won’t hit the entire arena consistently.

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Some considerations for Defense:

• Flesh Pagoda 1 (2 and 3 shouldn’t give more tankiness as you can’t heal over 50% HP)
• Iron Warrior (1 good 2 good, 3 might be really good with normal damage reduction on Relics)
• Elemental Follower (1 or 2, 3 is only damage)
• Shield Guard (Probably need more Investment into Block)
• Shaman 1 (10 % damage reduction)
• Mind’s Eye Warrior (We can only use the dodge, not the melee damage)
• Observer 3 (Only 3 is defensive, Revive on Death on 30sec Cooldown, if you have Infusion)
• Soulmaster 3 (Might give 25% damage reduction, if it works with immortal Shaman Golems)

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The other Buffs like Spellcaster, Collector, Trapper, Elementalist, Mana Scholar, Butcher, Toxin Master, Assassin, Flame Avatar, Arsonist and Necromancer should be useless with the current version of the build.

To farm items I mostly used the Small Square Map or the Small Circle Map. Both can be bought at the Merchant.
Early on, I focused mainly on Progress Gained by killing Common Monster to farm Scent faster.
The rest I filled randomly with the highest Rarity Cores I had.

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Later I decided to go for 2x Reward Upgrade Core, 2x Double Elite Core and 2x Group Expand. All roughly crafted like above. This results in a good mix of Group Size and Progress Gained to get to Elites fast. Then we have 80% Chance for double Elite, 50% for them to be enhanced and around 4x more items dropped by Elites. Also, we have 17% to upgrade the rarity of dropped items.
Make sure to active auto-disassemble once you got all items you need or your inventory will be full quickly.
Once I had Strafe with a bit area of effect crafted on my gear, I could go AFK in the middle of the arena. Pick the difficulty that you are safe in over the highest one, if you want to go for a longer farm.

Worth to mention: I didn’t AFK farm for hours to get enough resources for the build. Around 100 min was way more than needed, even without the well crafted Cores.

This assumes you already got a good amount of Void Crystals. Don’t try to make perfect 4 Affix legendary items before that. One or two good mods per items should be enough to get you in a comfortable position to farm all of them easily.
With enough Void Crystals (white to orange) the only problem can occur on rolling the forth Affix with the other 3 locked, because this uses Spirit (small blue rectangles above). Spirit can be restored, but the cost of red Void Crystals doubles every time.

The Relics were the easiest to get to full legendary Affixes using a little trick around the Maximum Haste Affix.
I used the auto crafting to spam roll for this Affix alone. Most of the time it took less than 1000 tries (once it took over 7000). Lock it.
Now we roll for the next 2 Affixes in any rarity they exist in. Lock it when you hit one and roll for the second. These 2 Affixes should preferably be rarer (have fewer rarities, I don’t know if the Affixes have different chances in the same rarity). For example, I rolled for Armor Break effect, Focus effect and Fury effect as those only have epic and legendary Rarity.
Now with 3 Locks comes the only moment, where we need Spirit and hope. Search for any useful Affix you are willing to take. For example, I filled many items with life or dodge, which are easier to hit, because they have 4 rarities.
If you got the last Affix, you should now have an item with 4 right Affixes, but probably not 4x legendary rarity. Now we get to use the Haste Affix trick. As this Affix only has 1 Rarity, it can’t change on Refine and we don’t need to lock it. Now just spam roll for the legendary version of the remaining 3 and lock if you hit one. As we have at most 2 Locks with this method, we never need Spirit.
After hitting all 4 legendary Affixes, you can reroll all their values to the max with the Carve option. Once again, you don’t have to lock the Haste Affix.
And now we got our perfect legendary Relic.

A bit harder to hit 4 legendary Affixes, but still doable.
I rolled for Skill Power first. Locked it. Then for flat Normal Damage. Locked it. And then I tried to fill the rest with % Area Damage, % Projectile Damage or % Normal Damage. At least for the last Affix make sure to roll for all rarities of the wanted Affixes, because Refining to legendary needs far less Spirit than rolling the legendary rarity directly.
This time we unfortunately can’t rely on the Haste Affix for spirit-free Refining and have to hope we hit legendary before the Restore cost for Spirit gets too high.
For the Carving part, we can use the fact that Skill Power only has one value and doesn’t have to be locked, which makes getting perfect values quite safe again.

I never felt like spending more than 128 red Void Crystal to restore.
At this point there are a few options, if you can comfortably farm bosses at any orange difficulty.
At that difficulty, the bosses have a Chance (depending on Skulls) to spawn an extra crafting item in the arena. The Eternal Frost Eye Boss can drop the option to restore full Spirit for an item (means 10-20% Chance for 15 Spirit). If you got stuck before getting the 4 right Affixes, I would recommend this option.
If you already have the 4 Affixes, but got stuck at Refining, you can also try the option of the Chaos Avatar (20%-40% Chance). It gives the option to 50/50 upgrade or downgrade a selected mod and has 3 tries per drop.

Overall, it might be best to start over, if you have the same Relic again and enough Void Crystals.

I didn’t use it much yet after hitting Destruction twice. Feel free to gamble for even better items. Only Corruption, which downgrades an Affix can make your item worse. The Destruction leaves the item still usable and can be reverted with the crafting drop of the Nirvana Wings Boss.
Currently, it’s not needed to clear the entire game. But if you want to push for Endless Abyss High Scores, this might be interesting.

I can’t remember at which difficulty the Dancer’s Costume Relic (and other Relics) gets unlocked, but I think it wasn’t before purple difficulty.

Before that, I played the Shot Skill as Main Damage. Focusing on Normal Damage to use Armor Break early on. Multiple Projections Slate until I got more Projectiles from the Ranger skill tree. Pure Slate for more Normal Damage (can proc Shock/Chill/Ignite with other spell). Barrage for bosses. Heal, Fast, Crit Damage and Crit Rate Slates should also be unlocked earlier.

As the second skill, I used Scattering with Knock Back and Frozen Slate.
As the third, Roll for manual dodge, mostly on Bosses.

First, I put all skill points into the Ranger skill tree and took more Dodge and Projectile Damage nodes compared to the late game tree. At 50 Points overall, you could respec to the shown Ranger tree and put 20 points into the Hermit tree for all Haste notes and the first Core Talent.

For Relics I took Ordinary Faith (make sure to equip another Relic of fitting rarity to activate the effect, it also should count for itself), Limit Principle, Star Chaser and/or Threat Chain and Mana Devourer (before you get the Mana on Hit node from Ranger tree).

The progression in this game is so smooth, that it doesn’t really matter much early on.

Good luck, have fun!