I already know the cryo tree, I focus on spamming Bitter Riposte with Instant Tediore Shields and class mods that buff it even further…but I wanna be able to deal gun damage too, so I’m going Markswoman, but a lot of the skills…seem like they suck. Like whats point of bullet speed? I mean I get it, but without increased fire rate…? Or really, a skill for when i miss? or only get direct hits? with how much enemies bounce around, its hard to snipe as it is, so not sure. (though coupled with Cryo, its much easier). And then the final skill feels too…randomized to be reliable enough to waste a point on.
Stuff like that I’m confused on. As is, I’m tempted to just pour all my skill points into maxing out the middle cryo tree, but that leaves me vulnerable against bosses and cryo resistant enemies. help?
Markswoman has a lot of skills that buff raw gun damage and Crit damage. Combined with the multiplicative Cryo Buff from Avalanche, and Aurelia can be pretty damn lethal. If you are a decent shot, (Remember most Enemies Victims will be frozen) You can one shot badasses and take down bosses extremely quickly, Without needing to stack I Never Miss or Avalanche prior.
Also, if you stack elements on you’re Sniper with the capstone you can do insane damage. I’ve downed Iwajira in one burst from a Pitchfork like that.
Bullet Speed isn’t the best buff in the world, but the extra shots from that skill let you use Large Caliber more effectively.
i’m level 10 at the moment trying to decide which tree to focus on while leveling. I always keep 5 points in bitter riposte, but im debating between going down Cryo or just doing BR and then going down Markswoman or whatever the sniper tree is
Get Bitter Riposte, Duchess, then go down the sniping tree. It may not be so effective for mobbing, but you wont be complaining when you get to a boss that can’t be frozen.
Is this a discussion of the Markswoman skill or The Huntress skill tree?
If it’s mostly about The Huntress, well there are a lot of interesting combinations going on here. Just to answer some of your questions:
Bullet speed really helps with accuracy on moving targets and firing at long range. I really began noticing how effective it was when I was in the Shock Drop arena and enemies were jumping from the higher levels and I was landing critical hits at a ridiculously high rate with my sniper rifle. I don’t think I would have been nearly as accurate on a falling target without Markswoman, and even Duchess for that matter. While helpful with a lot of weapons, increasing fire rate isn’t particularly good for sniper rifles because it adds recoil and reduces accuracy. And if you have a skill like I Never Miss, it’s going to affect it. So bullet speed makes better sense when it comes to a skill tree dedicated to sniper rifles.
Now between the skills that activate after missing a shot, I think Warning Shot is far more practical than Wait For It. One of the challenges with Custom Loads (capstone) is that you have to fire on the proper element. I find that in some instances I need to fire a round off target to get the proper element then focus on the target. Warning Shot will be active. It’s also helpful when you need to swap weapons from a sniper rifle to one a bit better suited to close range.
Prudent Prudence has excellent synergy with Bitter Riposte and Winter’s Veil. Movement speed helps to create some space and the extra weapon damage and reload speed is almost always on running a Tediore shield.
Custom Loads is quite amazing actually. That bonus elemental damage is multiplicative so it’s factored in after all your gun damage and critical hit buffs. And you can match element type to enemy type for even greater damage. You can give any non-elemental sniper rifle an element so you benefit from Jakobs naturally high base damage and weapon accuracy. It always makes a cryo sniper extremely potent when you can add 30% Explosive damage onto a frozen target while gaining from Avalanche stacks.
The Huntress is not an easy tree by any means to maximize. It’s complex and dedicated for heavy use of sniper rifles. But if that’s one of the reasons why you’re playing Aurelia then you’ll learn to appreciate most of it’s skills as you gain experience with her.
Absolutely not. That wasn’t true for BL2 and it isn’t true for TPS. Aurelia has incredible potential because of the damage boosts from The Huntress along with the crowd control of Cold Money. And she gains bonus critical hit on frozen targets.
Aurelia seems to follow the tradition of giving the sniper class much less health regen than other classes. As if that weren’t bad enough, her action skill does not have very good freeze chance by itself, which, imo, is just not right. If an action skill that deals constant cryo damage cannot freeze a target within, say, 6 seconds, without Bitter Riposte, then something is very wrong. Such an action skill should eliminate the need to hold a Cryo gun at all, but this is sadly not the case.
On the other hand, as Cowthulu said, the Markswoman tree has skills that buff all gun damage, not just sniper damage. So, while mobbing, you’d be better off alternating between sniping and close combat, because in almost every map, there will be 2 or 3 enemies that bumrush you, and you need to be ready for that.
