[Archery] What skills to add to an archer?

[CorwinXX]

I have an archer. I'm going to get those skills:
120 archery (5 from a quever)
80 bushido
120 tactics (15 from a ring)
120 anatomy (15 from a ring)
120 chivalry (15 from a ring)

So I have 240 free points. What do you suggest to try?
Examples:
music+disco
taming+lore
myst+focus
sw+focus???

Even weird suggestions are welcome. Also plz post your opinion about other suggestions. I have never tried almost all of skills listed about. To be fair I have never tried anything except fighter skills .

P.S. The classic choice is Resisting Spells + Healing (what I have now). But I think it could be interesting to try new skills.

 

[Skunk]

Maybe hiding stealth or music disco?

Sent from my SCH-S720C using Tapatalk 2

 

[DJAd]

swords and healing.

 

[Podolak]

Spellweaving should be a consideration. Maybe...

100 SW, 100 Healing and bring up Bushido to 120 or drop some skill points off jewelry and add some FC for your chiv spells.

 

[CorwinXX]

What could you say about piecemaking? +20 hp and regens look good.
Can I upkeep a mastery solo if I have enough mana?

 

[CorwinXX]

swords and healing.

And get a pvp char?

 

[skaven]

I got Mining and will go hunting Valorite Elementals (and maybe even the paragon versions when i will be tough enough)

Barring that, Peacemaking+Music brings another dimension to the word "Harass"...

 

[DJAd]

And get a pvp char?

Not necessarily for PvP but it could come in handy. I was thinking more for close encounters.

 

[Obsidian]

I've always wanted to run an arcane archer with spell weaving, but getting to FC 4 with a bow pretty much limits you to using the Orny for one of your jewels. Not sure how well it would work on the end, but it has long interested me to try.

 

[CorwinXX]

I could make this archer 4/6 by changing jewels but in this case there would be 15 Energy resists and 10 LMC wasted on the suit.
I have a 4/6 macer and till now he's my favorite char. But I need to remake his suit due to last changes (material resists, stamina loss reduction, hci cap decreased, refinement and so on).

I think an archer needn't 4/6 so much as a melee char. 3/6 would be enough.

This char has JOAT Spellweaving. GOR gives him 11 HP every 2 second for 90 seconds.

 

[Lorax_Pacific]

I have an archer. I'm going to get those skills:
120 archery (5 from a quever)
80 bushido
120 tactics (15 from a ring)
120 anatomy (15 from a ring)
120 chivalry (15 from a ring)

So I have 240 free points. What do you suggest to try?
Examples:
music+disco
taming+lore
myst+focus
sw+focus???

Even weird suggestions are welcome. Also plz post your opinion about other suggestions. I have never tried almost all of skills listed about. To be fair I have never tried anything except fighter skills .

P.S. The classic choice is Resisting Spells + Healing (what I have now). But I think it could be interesting to try new skills.

Do your skills not add up to 510 (105*3+115+80) with 210 left to add?

Let's see 300-120-80=100 pts to get additional 5 mana reduction. You could do 85 ninja and raise bushido to 95-100 for that maa cost reduction. That leaves 105-110 pts. If you add 40 necro and 60 spirit speak you could be like me and have the curse weapon for 18 seconds to get your healing.

-Lorax

 

[CorwinXX]

I don't want to use necro because I need 20k karma for DF.
How could I use ninja besides 5 mana reduction?

 

[Lorax_Pacific]

Are you healing only from Chiv then?

Ninjitsu and archery you can do animal form (wolf), mirror image (pretty lame move though), focus attack, and death strike without hiding and stealth. You can probably do ki attack, but I'm at 100 DI.

I mostly just use it for the mana reduction since when calculated per second that comes out to about 4 mana per second savings...10 seconds that saves 40 mana.

BTW I have always wanted to make a disco archer. Once started, but never finished.

-Lorax

 

[CorwinXX]

When I have arcane circle I use GoR for healing. When I haven't t I use Confidence. But in the most cases I needn't to heal at all.

 

[CorwinXX]

Do your skills not add up to 510 (105*3+115+80) with 210 left to add?

Yes but I have free room for two skills on my bracelet. So I can add two "120 (15 from a bracelet)" skills.

 

[CorwinXX]

I trained music and disco to 90+. Till now I don't find them very useful. May be they must be 120/120 to be useful, may be I just don't know a right way to use them.

Questions:

1. What is the best (fastest) way to clean up first two levels of a spawn?
It seems I need to get 2/6 jewels and use Holy Light.

2. What mods should I imbue on a bow?
4 mods are: Super Slayer, HLL, HML, DI.
5th mod?

 

[James [W^H]]

I trained music and disco to 90+.

The Bard skills are limited until you reach 120. For the best insight on how to use the skills and masteries, read the various posts in the Bard Forum by Logrus.

Katrena

 

[Lorax_Pacific]

Ya you have to have 120/120 disco archer to discord a peerless.

1. momentum strike and have a macro for nearest target. Pull a bunch toward you.

2. for spawns you should use area affect.

Here is an example crossbow I used for spawns when my bow needed 25 SSI and prior to the new bump on max imbuing weight as well as before Whetstone of Enervation:
Hit Fire Area 36%
Hit Stamina Leech 34%
Hit Lightning 48%
Velocity 34%
SSI 25%
HCI 5%
DI 10%
enhanced with Yew

My suit has 90% DI. I use Wraith form because the mana leech is greater than the HML.

With 120 chiv you don't need a slayer.

-Lorax

 

[Kelly O'Brian]

...read the various posts in the Bard Forum by Logrus.

...and Poo.

You should know, that while for the base functions of the bards skill itself (aka peacemaking, disco..), shown skill is calculated, but for the boni of the spell songs only real skill matters. So you may want to put two of your other skills on the jewels, where the shown/real gap isnt a matter.
I have no experinces with an Peace-Archer, but my full bard depends heavily on mana regeneration. Thats no issue, when solo, but in a large party the upkeep costs are enormous. MR as a stat may not fit in your armor. And when you say, you neednt to heal yourself most of the times, than i suppose, you dont need the peacemaking songs anyway.

Besides Holy Light what about Hit Area for the first and second level spawn?

I wouldnt worry about Karma and going wraith and gaining way more than you loose

 

[CorwinXX]

The Bard skills are limited until you reach 120. For the best insight on how to use the skills and masteries, read the various posts in the Bard Forum by Logrus.

Katrena

I have read the Bard Forum but haven't found any useful info. For example, I haven't found answers for those obvious questions:

1. What does Discordance do?
2. What does Tribulation do and how long it stays on?
3. What does Despair do and how long it stays on?

Could you give me a link?

 

[skaven]

I have read the Bard Forum but haven't found any useful info. For example, I haven't found answers for those obvious questions:

1. What does Discordance do?
2. What does Tribulation do and how long it stays on?
3. What does Despair do and how long it stays on?

Could you give me a link?

1) Discordance lowers your target's skill and stats by an amount proportional to your skill (at 100 is -20%, at 120 is an uncomfirmed -24%).
2) Tribulation further reduces the Hit Chance and Spell Damage of the target of an amount unspecified (i suspect the same as Discordance). It has a chance of causing further damage to the target whenever it is damaged (again, i suspect the same as discordance). And, as all Bard Masteries you have to pay Mana per second (10) to keep it up.
3) Despair is mantained exactly as Tribulation, but it does damage over time and weakens the target. Again, unspecified amount.

All damage is DIRECT DAMAGE, but is subject to Magic Resistance.

All info are taken from this page: http://www.uoguide.com/Bard_Masteries and a bit of speculation based on direct observation.

 

[CorwinXX]

Ya you have to have 120/120 disco archer to discord a peerless.

1. momentum strike and have a macro for nearest target. Pull a bunch toward you.

2. for spawns you should use area affect.

Here is an example crossbow I used for spawns when my bow needed 25 SSI and prior to the new bump on max imbuing weight as well as before Whetstone of Enervation:
Hit Fire Area 36%
Hit Stamina Leech 34%
Hit Lightning 48%
Velocity 34%
SSI 25%
HCI 5%
DI 10%
enhanced with Yew

My suit has 90% DI. I use Wraith form because the mana leech is greater than the HML.

With 120 chiv you don't need a slayer.

-Lorax

1. I have only 80 bushido so I can't use momentum strike

2. Hit lightning and Velocity do low damage to one target, don't they? What is a sense to use them in PvM?
I have tried Hit Area with my thrower but it does too low damage compared with WW or Holy Light.

Well 120 disco helps vs peerless or champion but looks completely useless when I do spawn or collect keys.

 

[CorwinXX]

...and Poo.

You should know, that while for the base functions of the bards skill itself (aka peacemaking, disco..), shown skill is calculated, but for the boni of the spell songs only real skill matters. So you may want to put two of your other skills on the jewels, where the shown/real gap isnt a matter.
I have no experinces with an Peace-Archer, but my full bard depends heavily on mana regeneration. Thats no issue, when solo, but in a large party the upkeep costs are enormous. MR as a stat may not fit in your armor. And when you say, you neednt to heal yourself most of the times, than i suppose, you dont need the peacemaking songs anyway.

Besides Holy Light what about Hit Area for the first and second level spawn?

I wouldnt worry about Karma and going wraith and gaining way more than you loose

So you suggest me to drop two of my main skills by 15 and train disco/music to 120?
I could drop tactics/anatomy or bushido/anatomy. But it seems it will take ages to train disco to 120 .

Well, I will think about this when I get answers to my questions in the Bard Forum.

Would peacemaking be more useful compared to discordance? For example, I could use area peace then kill mobs one. It must be faster because I could switch bow (slayer type), recast EOO, use honor (to get full mana after kill)... Although I don't know how exactly peacemaking works.

 

[Lorax_Pacific]

1. I have only 80 bushido so I can't use momentum strike

2. Hit lightning and Velocity do low damage to one target, don't they? What is a sense to use them in PvM?
I have tried Hit Area with my thrower but it does too low damage compared with WW or Holy Light.

Well 120 disco helps vs peerless or champion but looks completely useless when I do spawn or collect keys.

No momentum strike (min skill required is 70)?: Well hitting two target in one swing speed time is a boost to both damage as well in my case to my mana and health because I run wraith form as well as use curse weapon. I get health from every hit as well as mana 20% of damage for every hit. You give me a choice to get 40% mana back with momentum strike and I will take it. I also get stamina from every hit with HSL. I like double my pleasure.

Everything is low, but adds up in archery. My template point is to be as offensive as possible. Each successful target there are three damage counters that go up direct damage, HL, and Hit area. Velocity does eight more direct damage to a target 8 tiles away. I like seeing three damages going up because it fills my screen with damage to the foe and I like...They all add up to more damage. HL is like 10-11 damage. Velocity adds like 1-10 depending on how close is the creature. I don't remember how much Hit Area adds, but in the abyss I pull all those gremlins (or at spawns) and hit area them all at once resulting in more mana per second. I get about four mana from having HL and velocity on my weapon per hit and maybe four HP.

Barding:
Discord helps against every opponent that is discorded. Think about it. If any creature goes from 120 wrestling to 90 then that is a positive effect to your hit chance calculation, which goes from 73% to 92%. Or calculate the DCI if you have 45 DCI and the creature has no HCI its chance to hit is 34%, but goes to 27% when discorded (it has to swing four times instead of 3 times for 100% chance to do direct damage on you). If any mage creature goes from 120 magery to 90 then your chance to resist is better and its damage is less. Discord is an awesome damage boost due to the improvement to your hit chance and your defense chance alone. The creature will also have less hit points and less strength or intelligence for its attacks and lower the damage inflicted upon you. This goes for every creature discorded.

I will add it to my archer one of these days, but ya my bard just doesn't raise skills very fast and I don't use skill jewelry on "Lorax". Unlike Poo it has taken me years and years to raise my barding (one of these days I'll rent Poo to raise my bard skills).

Enjoy the task of creating a template and make it how you want it. It will be more fun that way. I like my template, but it reflects the way I play.

-Lorax

 

[CorwinXX]

Momentum strike have low chance for second short with 80 bushido. I use double shot - it has 100% chance. And I needn't be close to mobs.

You must be in melee range to use momentum strike so velocity adds 1 dmg, doesn't it? I usually do 100-160 damage per short with a slayer and eoo. 50% chance to do 10 more damage doesn't look like a great bonus.

Discord helps... but only if you have time to apply it. I need to honor a mob and cast concentrate weapon (it doubles-triples my damage). Most of mobs are death or close to death when I get opportunity to discord it. For example, a High Plains Boura usually dies in 3 shots (double shots) and there are very few mobs that live longer.
Also when there are 5 mages casting on me discording one to reduce its magery doesn't do noticeable difference.
Discordance must be awesome vs 1-2 mobs with 5k+ hp but usually there are 5-20 mobs with 100-500 hp around me.

 

[CorwinXX]

What I think after some research.

1. Music + Disco
Masteries are useless - mostly because it's a one target damage. I'd better spend this mana for a DS/AI.
Discordance quite useful vs middle level mobs like boura, dragons, etc. but there are a lot of situations where even Resisting Spells would be better.
I'm going to change jewels and test it vs high-end mobs but 20% chance to succeed and halved effect don't make me feel optimistic.

2. Music + Peace
Peacemaking definitely gives me more defense so I'm going to test it too.
Masteries are much more cheaper and you needn't to recast them every few seconds.
Area peace could give you a second to escape or cast a spell.
One target peace could help you to use slayers and EOO when fighting mixed groups.
I started to train peace and going to test it.

3. Myst + Focus
This is another defensive combo. It helped me very well when I had low-level suit. But the main spell - Raising Colossus - requires 5 pet control slots. I don't lose moving speed and 20% damage absorb so I leave it for my thrower.


I want to test my initial combo - Resisting Spells and Healing. I will do it as soon as I find 5 SSI jewel to imbue. Since I don't need 120 healing I'm going to add some FC/FCR.
While I'm looking for jewels I continue to train disco/peace.
While this training my archer is pretty cut because she uses in fights just 405 skill points (115 archery, 105 tactics, 105 chivalry, 80 bushido) and 411 intensity on her jewels (5 ssi + 5 hci + 15 chivalry on the ring and 15 dci + 25 di on the bracelet). But she is still able to kill mobs like Fend, Paragon Greater Dragon, etc.

 

[CorwinXX]

I decided to divide different tasks. So I transfered Music/Peace/Disco to another char (to train them to 120).

Now my archer has:
120 Archery
120 Tactics
120 Chivalry
107 Resists (will be 110)
80 Bushido
120 Anatomy
73 Healing (will be 85)

At the moment she has 15 free points to train. I don't want to spend gold for 120 Resists PS so I'll train Healing instead.

I finally have bought ash runic fletcher's tools so now I can craft bows. The first bow I made is with Arachnid slayer.


I tried Navrey yesterday.
It took me 11 minutes to kill it. I did about 200 damage per double shot (100+100) and was able to use DS about 80% of time.
I believe I always had 100+ HP... well, may be 80 HP one time. Freeze wasn't a problem at all if don't count that I didn't damage while were frozen.


I also tried Arachnid Champion Spawn. I wasn't glad by results.
First two levels were quick and easy. I just ran around spamming Holy Light. With 2 FC casting time was 1.25s. My 4/6 paladin do it about 2 times faster. (He leaches 2x more mana and hp but this doesn't make any difference at this levels).
The third level was slow and boring. I haven't slayer bow for poison elementals. I wasn't able to leach enough hp to spam Holy Light standing in the middle of a crowd. So I killed them one by one.
The forth level wasn't quick as well - it took 9 minutes. But at some time I was accustomed how to do it faster. (I think I need to add sorting by distance to my mobiles window - I'm going to try it)
Mephitis surprised me with very high lowest resit. With EOO and a slayer Yumi I did about 35 damage per shot. I have 51-67 character base damage and should do 153-201 damage so I expected to do 50-70 damage per shot. In addition I missed a lot. I looks like I missed every second shot but I believe really I missed about 25% of time. As to me it's too high with 120 archery, 45 HCI and 30 HLD. I switched to my Repond Slayer composite bow (40 HML only) and it took me 15 minutes to kill it.

 

[CorwinXX]

I tried Dread Horn yesterday.
It took me about 25 minutes to get keys. There was a critical moment when I was attacked by Irk and Spite (or Guile) at the same time. They are able to keep me manadrained, there is no room to run without disturbing more mobs and I fail a lot with bandages when my HP is very low. (I didn't use GOR because I hadn't Arcane Circle).
It took me 15 minutes to kill Dread Horn. It looks pretty long. 50000/15/60 = 56 dps. I used 50 HML (arachnid slayer) Yumi. The most of time I had less than 180 due to his -20 stats ability. It also often cast blind breaking my shot. -20 mana is also increases chances that I haven't mana for DS (I need 32 mana for chained DS).

P.S. I think this weekend I'll check the total damage I do to a Dread Horn/Narvey Night-Eyes to calculate my real DPS.

 

[CorwinXX]

I written a video how I fight vs Dread Horn. On this video I counted that I shoot 50 times during the first 2.5 minutes - 3 sec per shot. Then I fought it again trying less move and more shoot. I didn't worry so much about distance and about being hit. As a result I killed Dread Horn in 10 minutes.

 

[Doubleplay]

I have used disco/music on my ranged guy. It was OK, but quite limited in my opinion. I am having the most fun with a char like yours that has magery up to 100% invis capability and resist up to 100% paralyze avoidance. The invis works great when there are a lot of mobs, as it allows you to break agro long enough to get shots off to the main target.