Elven Composite Longbow & Serpent Arrow

[Valeria]

Created a new archer with the intent of using poison arrows via Serpent Arrow coming off an Elven Composite Longbow. My skills are high enough now in applicable areas, but I've never seen a Serpent Arrow secondary move and I very rarely see a Force Arrow primary move. I'm using a nice Elven Longbow with 35% Velocity, but have tried various other Elven Composite Longbows with no luck generating primary or secondary moves with any of these ECLs. Trying to figure out what I'm doing wrong. Using EC with PvM. Have read every post/article I cna find on the subject and can't figure this one out.
Stats:
Resist 120
Anat 116 (need 4 more)
Archery 113 (need 7 more)
Tactics 106 (need 14 more)
Poison 100
Magery 80
Eval 60

 

[Xris]

Created a new archer with the intent of using poison arrows via Serpent Arrow coming off an Elven Composite Longbow. My skills are high enough now in applicable areas, but I've never seen a Serpent Arrow secondary move and I very rarely see a Force Arrow primary move. I'm using a nice Elven Longbow with 35% Velocity, but have tried various other Elven Composite Longbows with no luck generating primary or secondary moves with any of these ECLs. Trying to figure out what I'm doing wrong. Using EC with PvM. Have read every post/article I cna find on the subject and can't figure this one out.
Stats:
Resist 120
Anat 116 (need 4 more)
Archery 113 (need 7 more)
Tactics 106 (need 14 more)
Poison 100
Magery 80
Eval 60

You dont generate special, you pick which one you want to use. Make a macro to use primary or secondary ability, or drag the icons out and click them. Is this what you were asking?

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[Valeria]

Xris, thanks, that's exactly the missing piece of the puzzle I needed. It's not passive, it's an active attack. Didn't previously figure that out.

Preciate it!

 

[Xris]

Xris, thanks, that's exactly the missing piece of the puzzle I needed. It's not passive, it's an active attack. Didn't previously figure that out.

Preciate it!

No problem, may I ask why you have mage and eval on archer? Bushido or ninja compliment archery more. The problem with mage and eval is your going to need a great spell channeling bow, plus you need max stam/dex, and high intel/mana inc/ mana regen, 100 lrc and max lmc.

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[Valeria]

Have not used Bushido or Ninja before so I don't know about them nor how they compliment archery. Will have to research that. But currently I like the 80 Magery and 60 Eval as explained below. Interested to hear your opinion of my strategy vs. Bushido/Ninja ability build strategy.

My thinking was to use Magery for getting around and basic spells (invis, heal, recall/gate). Don't need more than 80. 80 Magery is not meant to directly compliment any offensive or defensive situation, rather just navigation and general use abilities.

I dumped my remaining points (60) into Eval for a small amount of Westling/melee defense. So 60 Eval + 120 Anat + 20 = 200 / 2 = 100 Wrestling/melee defense. Source: Evaluating Intelligence - UOGuide, the Ultima Online Encyclopedia

 

[Corwyn]

No problem, may I ask why you have mage and eval on archer? Bushido or ninja compliment archery more. The problem with mage and eval is your going to need a great spell channeling bow, plus you need max stam/dex, and high intel/mana inc/ mana regen, 100 lrc and max lmc.

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If it's to get around via recall, I'd swap magery out with chivalry and use sacred journey. Chivarly also has a few other spells that work nicely with archery.

 

[Xris]

If it's to get around via recall, I'd swap magery out with chivalry and use sacred journey. Chivarly also has a few other spells that work nicely with archery.

I agree, I'd replace mage and eval with bush and chiv. Chiv has recall, heal, cure, remove curse, divine fury, dispel evil plus some others. Bush is great, honor target for more dmg, evasion, confidence, all great for melee

Edit: you dont need spell channeling for chiv or bush, big advantage. Plus you dont need lrc. ABC archer is name of build, lots of write ups on it.

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[Valeria]

Wow... you don't need SC for Chivalry or Bushido... didn't know that!

And not needing 100LRC on my suit frees up a ton of space for other stuff. Will max out my HPR at 18. Might go with some RPD or DCI.

Probably should still keep 40LMC on my suit thought, right?

Stats:
125 STR
125 DEX (including +5)
35 INT (including +25)

 

[Xris]

Wow... you don't need SC for Chivalry or Bushido... didn't know that!

And not needing 100LRC on my suit frees up a ton of space for other stuff. Will max out my HPR at 18. Might go with some RPD or DCI.

Probably should still keep 40LMC on my suit thought, right?

Stats:
125 STR
125 DEX (including +5)
35 INT (including +25)

Yes to lmc (you can get even higher by using studded leather and bone armor). I also suggest you read about damage increase and damage modifier (they are 2 different things), I believe theres a write up in warrior forum (these are key to maximizing damage). Also you want high SSI, and I believe around 200 stam for archers (to maximize your swing speed). If you cant fit this all in a suit then chiv compliments very well (spells to increase swing speed, DI etc). You can use faster casting with chiv as well to reduce spell casting time. Even if you cant get everything up to max, the ABC archer is very effective and fun to play.

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[Draza]

Bush will help lower the cost of speacials(aim for 300+ between weapon skill, poison, and bish), you could drop resist and take healing(trap box to get out of paralyze).

So many options for decent templates. My expirience with the speacials, i wasnt happy for pvm use, and for pvp you need to toss in mortal and bleed/splinter to interupt heal attempts. Not as useful as i thought it woukd be

 

[Xris]

Bush will help lower the cost of speacials(aim for 300+ between weapon skill, poison, and bish), you could drop resist and take healing(trap box to get out of paralyze).

So many options for decent templates. My expirience with the speacials, i wasnt happy for pvm use, and for pvp you need to toss in mortal and bleed/splinter to interupt heal attempts. Not as useful as i thought it woukd be

Armor ignore is a great special in pvm and pvp

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[Valeria]

Based on your feedback, (thanks by the way!!), I've altered this char to be more like the ABC Archer. I've got 220 skill points built into defense but for my solo play style if fits me right now. Will likely wind up tweaking these numbers a bit. Could only fit 140 skill points into Bushido and Chivalry which I'm hoping will be enough cause I don't want to drop anything else down before I take this char on a solid test drive hunting PvM.

Skills:
Archery 120
Anatomy 120
Tactics 120
Resist 120 (defense)
Poison 100 (defense)
Bushido 55
Chivalry 85

Your opinion on these stats please.

Obviously Resist & Poison could be reduced to increase Bushido and Chivalry, but GM Poison was so tough to get I don't want to discard it too quickly. Plus when I am poisoned the strength and duration are both minimal... so much so that with a little HPR on my suit I rarely drop 10 heath points and regain it quickly without having to cast or heal. So far the Resist & Poison combo has proven to be a nice defensive setup although 220 points is a lot.

Bushido is not high enough to reach the 300+ "specials" benefit (currently 275).

Recommendations on places to hunt with an Archer?

 

[Xris]

Based on your feedback, (thanks by the way!!), I've altered this char to be more like the ABC Archer. I've got 220 skill points built into defense but for my solo play style if fits me right now. Will likely wind up tweaking these numbers a bit. Could only fit 140 skill points into Bushido and Chivalry which I'm hoping will be enough cause I don't want to drop anything else down before I take this char on a solid test drive hunting PvM.

Skills:
Archery 120
Anatomy 120
Tactics 120
Resist 120 (defense)
Poison 100 (defense)
Bushido 55
Chivalry 85

Your opinion on these stats please.

Obviously Resist & Poison could be reduced to increase Bushido and Chivalry, but GM Poison was so tough to get I don't want to discard it too quickly. Plus when I am poisoned the strength and duration are both minimal... so much so that with a little HPR on my suit I rarely drop 10 heath points and regain it quickly without having to cast or heal. So far the Resist & Poison combo has proven to be a nice defensive setup although 220 points is a lot.

Bushido is not high enough to reach the 300+ "specials" benefit (currently 275).

Recommendations on places to hunt with an Archer?

Poison is not great in pvm. I have it on none of my pvm chars. Most bosses have high poison resist or can cure it, plus it doesn't do enough damage. I'd put those points into bush and chiv

Edit: miasma is good to start, remember to honor first, use enemy of one if needed, and bring a scorpion slayer.

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[Stinky Pete]

Serpent arrow is quite underwhelming. The only good use for it that I have found is to spam it in PvP to keep the target from healing. The problem is that you have to land every shot in PvP, which is not likely.

 

[Valeria]

Yeah, I've been underwhelmed with Serpent Arrow as well.

Am taking your advise and replacing Poisoning with higher Bush & Chiv. Moved Poison to a Soulstone so I didn't lose it.

Question about Sacred Journey: What am I missing with regards to runebooks? I've got my marked rune in a runebook, but can't cast SJ on it. I have to remove the rune from the runbook, cast SJ on the rune, then replace rune back into runebook. Feels like I'm missing something here cause a neatly organized runebook gets messed up pretty fast like this. Advice?

 

[Xris]

Yeah, I've been underwhelmed with Serpent Arrow as well.

Am taking your advise and replacing Poisoning with higher Bush & Chiv. Moved Poison to a Soulstone so I didn't lose it.

Question about Sacred Journey: What am I missing with regards to runebooks? I've got my marked rune in a runebook, but can't cast SJ on it. I have to remove the rune from the runbook, cast SJ on the rune, then replace rune back into runebook. Feels like I'm missing something here cause a neatly organized runebook gets messed up pretty fast like this. Advice?

Go to the correct page in runebook, then click sacred journey on that page

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[Pawain]

Thanks for the replies. I also found serpent arrow underwhelming. But, thought others may have found a way to use it.

 

[Valeria]

One last tweak of these stats and should be pretty close. My Chiv is at 100 so I need to decide if I'm taking it to 110 or 120 cause the template is getting full.

Current Skills (20 points remaining):
Archery 120
Anatomy 120
Tactics 120
Resist 120
Chivalry 100
Bushido 60
Healing 60

+10 points to Healing = 70: If I bring Healing up to 70 then I can use Enhanced Bandages (+10 to Healing) to get my effective Healing up to 80. That allows me to Cure poison and Res. I don't YET know how to use a Poison Trap Box, but it seems like the way to go. That would leave me 10 more points.

+10 points to Chivalry = 110

Or... I could drop Bushido down -10 to 50 and bring Chiv all the way up to 120. I've never used Chiv before and my research is inconclusive regarding 60 Bush & 110 Chiv or 50 Bush & 120 Chiv.

Either way it's time to decide if I should seek an Exaulted or Legendary Scroll of Chivalry (110 or 120).

Your thoughts please and THANKS!

 

[Pawain]

Go to TC and you can set the Chiv to 120. You will find it will do more damage by increasing chiv than increasing other things.

 

[Valeria]

Never even thought about TC! Not even one time did I consider that. Appreciate the tip.