[Archery] archery with vampiric embrace?

[legendsguy]

i figure i'm allowed to ask a dumb question. how come people don't do the sampire with archery instead and no parrying? i suppose you'd take more damage, but as an archer you ought to be able to shoot from a distance and take less damage.

so is it a viable template to throw necromancy on or am i missing something?

 

[Thunderz]

Iv tried this a couple of times on my bard archer [dropping the bard for necro] but its alot more work than a standard sampire. If you can spam moving shot [and do ok without LS], stay out of aoe's, stay out of teleport and field spell range it'll work ok.

But for instance dreadhorn, proxy, trav, grizzle and medusa your kinda limited for space and the moving shot issue taking LS's spot.

Thunderz

 

[Taylor]

i figure i'm allowed to ask a dumb question. how come people don't do the sampire with archery instead and no parrying? i suppose you'd take more damage, but as an archer you ought to be able to shoot from a distance and take less damage.

so is it a viable template to throw necromancy on or am i missing something?

Yes, it's a viable template. The reason you don't see this as often is because archery leeching was nerfed a while back, so you won't leech as well as a melee sampire.

If I were you, I'd aim for an ABC archer template with 99 necro instead of magic resist.

 

[legendsguy]

hmm... thunderz had me not wanting to try it, then syrus brought me back in. ok, i'll try it replacing resist spells for necro. if it works i'll let you know, if not imma pretend this conversation never happened

 

[Ender]

Should work fine, especially if you imbue 30 SSI and max mana leech onto a bow, then enhance with ash. Leech will still be kinda low, but eh.

 

[Argnak]

I used to run a vamp archer in Doom when you could use items to cast VE, but not to solo stuff. There were always lots of ppl there, anyways.
That char got me all Arties, most of them several times, and only died if i was drunk

I'm working now on a necro archer for champ spawns, but template is not yet set. The idea is to have a char capable of using wither to clear lesser spawn, and archery to deal with the big guys.

 

[legendsguy]

i'm trying to make a good imbued bow for this abc sampire, or whatever it would be called. how are these stats: repeating crossbow -- dam inc 50%, ssi 10%, hit life leech 34, hit lightning 50, hit mana leech 34. with 150 dex and 10% ssi, the repeater hits at 1.25. and apparently speed is an issue with imbuing so 34 is the cap for life and mana leech. what do you think?

 

[Connor_Graham]

Ditch the life leech for stamina leech. LL on weps, especially bows, is next to worthless. You might also want to go with HLD on your bow as well as on glasses to avoid strings of misses. I'd say HLA if it was a melee char, but the point of playing the archer is not to get hit. You might also want to go with something that hits a little bit harder than a repeater. The damage really isn't all that high on them.

 

[legendsguy]

-scratches head- i have no idea what kind of bow to make then, and imbuing will only go so far with the 500 weight and 5 properties (or should i say 3 since i have to use ssi and dam inc).

i need mana leech of course, and i assume hit lightning, so.. either hit stamina or HLD? i'm using the mace and shields if that makes a difference.

also if it's not a repeater i'll have to throw on a -lot- of ssi and even then unless i can enhance it without it breaking... well, even then, it won't be as fast as a repeater.

 

[Ender]

Actually if you want to have 0 damage increase, get a bow that's not exceptional. Then you can imbue SSI and 4 other properties. You just have 50 less points to work with.

 

[Connor_Graham]

-scratches head- i have no idea what kind of bow to make then, and imbuing will only go so far with the 500 weight and 5 properties (or should i say 3 since i have to use ssi and dam inc).

i need mana leech of course, and i assume hit lightning, so.. either hit stamina or HLD? i'm using the mace and shields if that makes a difference.

also if it's not a repeater i'll have to throw on a -lot- of ssi and even then unless i can enhance it without it breaking... well, even then, it won't be as fast as a repeater.

The mods I'd go with would be SSI, HML, HSL, and HLD. You might look at either composite bows or regular bows. Something to look at would be the 45-50 SSI invasion bows. They'd work nicely.

 

[legendsguy]

i just had my mind blown last night. i bought a cheap bow with hit life leech 50% to play around with and i wasn't gaining ANY LIFE!!!

so i went to uoguide and examined closely how the formulas for life and mana leech actually work and was flabbergasted by how little you actually gain. sure, it works for mana because you don't need much but life leech IS useless. i had absolutely no idea.

i noticed how hit stamina leech follows the old formula so it actually has use, but is stamina leech worth it? i do like hit lower defense, my shades have it at 30% of course. it's hard to remember the formulas of everything.. :> so, hit lower defense is good, but you'd not use hit lower attack?

also, what about hit lightning? maybe i'm crazy, but i always like to put lightning on things 'cause it sounds powerful.

 

[Taylor]

I have somewhat unpopular taste in bows. Instead of hml, I like to add hit lightning and hit velocity (in addition to ssi and a bit of di/hci). The added damage from the double hit spells can really add up.

 

[legendsguy]

i think i've hit upon the perfect bow. here's what i'm thinking:

repeating crossbow
dam inc 40%,
hit stamina leech 42%,
hit lower defense 42%,
hit mana leech 34%,
hit lightning 42%
---

and i will enhance it with ash afterward for 10% ssi, which will give me a 1.25 swing speed. the hit stamina leech ought to keep the speed up as well.

only problem is if the repeater breaks when enhancing, but other than the hit lightning the ingredients are cheap enough to try again if that happens.

any thoughts?

 

[Connor_Graham]

i just had my mind blown last night. i bought a cheap bow with hit life leech 50% to play around with and i wasn't gaining ANY LIFE!!!

so i went to uoguide and examined closely how the formulas for life and mana leech actually work and was flabbergasted by how little you actually gain. sure, it works for mana because you don't need much but life leech IS useless. i had absolutely no idea.

Lol, I wasn't lieing to ya.

Regarding your choice in bows, I still think the repeater is going to be too low on the damage scale to depend on for your healing, not to mention mana leech.

 

[Farsight]

The reason you want the harder hitting bows is that you'll leech back all of your mana with every shot. Against some opponents, you'll even leech back enough to cover things like divine fury, enemy of one and other more mana intensive spells. Sure you'll hit a bit slower, but you'll hit a LOT harder.

Case in point. I took a heavy crossbow (with HML, SSI and hit magic arrow) to do battle with a slasher of veils. A friend of mine took a night reaper (demon slayer repeater crossbow). I very handily out-damaged the night reaper friend. In the next one, we switched weapons so she had the heavy and I had the night reaper, and the heavy crossbow still won the "doing most damage over time" bet.

 

[legendsguy]

how's this sound for a bow: magical shortbow (it's deals the most damage and is still able to be shot at 1.25 speed with the 40% ssi imbuing cap, actually it only needs 20%).

dam inc 50,
hld 50,
hml 37,
hit stam 50,
ssi 20.

what i'll do is add ssi 10 and then enhance it with ash for the other 10% ssi. what do you think?

also, what if i replaced hld with balanced? since i'm trying to go for an archer sampire would i perhaps need the healing that chugging potions brings or is balanced silly to have, especially in pvm? thank you.

 

[Connor_Graham]

Magical shorts don't leech enough mana per shot to maintain a mana pool, and without testing one, I'd also say it's damage would be borderline as far as vamp life leech.

 

[legendsguy]

i give up. i have no idea what kind of bow i need. can you tell me exactly what i need and how fast i need to be shooting? thank you.

also... i got this bright idea to put 45 HCI on my suit so that i wouldn't need to use lightning strike, instead i'd just honor things and blast away. i'm sure there is a flaw in my reasoning, but what is it? with 45 HCI i don't need lightning strike and if that is the case i also don't need hit mana leech.. right?

i know that i read about something called 'critical hits' but surely that isn't enough of a reason, considering you gain perfection, etc. from honoring with bushido instead.

thank you.

also, here's my suit so far: all 70's, 75 for energy, dci 50 (so i can switch out the quiver of infinity), hci 45, dam inc 100. thoughts?

 

[Connor_Graham]

Critical hits ignore the armor of your target and are one of the biggest reasons to use Bushido and LS on an archer. For PvM I'd suggest composite bows and higher, keeping in mind that the harder you hit the more mana and life you leech. I use crossbows and heavy crossbows almost exclusively on my archer. Also, for PvM, DCI is a waste of a mod unless you plan on tanking, which you shouldn't be.

 

[dlwiii]

Did I hear correctly that if you have lightning on a weapon and use LS, you could possibly get two lightnings in a hit? That sounds like a good argument for lighting, or any other good spell add-on.

 

[Connor_Graham]

Hit Lightning and the Bushido spell Lightning Strike are nothing alike. LS give 50 HCI and a 20% chance at a critical strike at 120 skill, that's it.

 

[dlwiii]

Got it. I was confusing LS and Momentum strike. My bad.