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Bara's Archer Guide

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Bara's Archer Guide Empty Bara's Archer Guide

Post  BarakiEl Wed Jan 06, 2010 4:44 am

Bara's Archer Guide
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I've been threatening to do this since forever - WQ is boring, so might as well write this. Idea
Strange that I want to write an archer guide when the first time I actually looked at an archer guide was in my 80s (and all the major mistakes had already been made). Let's hope this will help the rest of you to not make those mistakes.


ABOUT THE CLASS
Archers are the "snipers" of the game. They are good DDs (damage dealers), along with Wizards. Archers can fly from level 1 (but mana is a prob until 20+). As high damage dealers they are prone to stealing aggro from other classes, so be careful. We also got a kickass glowy hand thingie! It says to the PKers: "here i am, come kill me!" Razz

BUILDS

Your "character build" refers to the way you allocate points in your Character Stats pane (default key: C). You get 5 points every level. (With all these builds keep in mind that putting points into magic is not recommended).

Pure Dexterity build: This is the best recommended build for archers. Put 1 Str, 4 Dex every level. (Recommended if you plan to PVP).

Pros: High damage, high crit rate, high dodge (evasion) rate.
Cons: Low hp.

Hybrid build: Put enough strength and dex to be able to wear armor and equip crossbows and pump the rest into Vitality.

Pros: Higher survivability.
Cons: You sacrifice damage, crit % and dodge rate.

Tank build: There's a tank build too, but I really don't see the use. If you wanna be a barb, go play barb =P. For interest's sake I'll mention the tank build here. Pump your points into strength, with only the necessary points into dex to be able to use your bows.

Pros: High hp pool and high defense
Cons: lower damage, evasion and hit-rate/accuracy

Comments: There are a lot of builds out there, but the 2 main ones are Pure Dex and Hybrid. The pvp type (pure dex) archers bash the hybrid build, saying it's a build for people who can't make up their minds whether they want to tank or deal damage. My advice to you, mister high-n-mighty-pure-dex, is: Shush - we survive aoe's you can't! =P

ARMOR

Archers are a light armor class. I haven't seen any guides recommending heavy armor or arcane. Archers go Light Armor!
Light armor is actually the best armor class in my mind, since it is the in between type. In other words it offers both magic defense and physical defense. Where heavy offers physical defense and arcane, magic defense.
How to tell if your armor is light armor: The requisite specs for light armor will show that strength and dexterity requirement is exactly the same.
Note: With heavy armor the strength requirement is higher, with arcane armor the magic requirement is higher.

Try not to buy armor from Tailor NPCs. It is best to make armor. Up until level 70 if you can get your hands on Legendary armor (the armor has an orange/gold name) - do it. Otherwise go with 2-star (blue name) or 3-star (purple name) - between these two types 3-star is best. From level 70 you can go to Twilight temple with squads to farm TT mats for Twilight armor. See the forges near General Summer.
Note: Some say TT armor is better, some say Legendary armor is better. It really depends on the stats or the armor, so have a look at that.

Armor sharding: HP shards are the most highly recommended. If you go pure dex you definitely have to shard your armor with Citrine shards (HP) to make up for lack of hp. Hybrid can get away with sharding their armor with Physical Defense (Garnet) Shards.
Note: To shard your armor go to a tailor and choose the option > Infuse Soulgem. Drag armor over, drag shard over.

WEAPONS

Here's a no-brainer: Use bows, lol.

Slingshot: Has the highest low-damage and lowest high-damage limiters. Recommended for PVE.
Longbow: Has medium low-damage and medium high-damage limiters. A balanced bow.
Crossbow: Has lowest low-damage and highest high damage limiters. Recommended for PVP.

Remember to check if you have ammo before you go to fb's and such! It's embarrassing if you run outta ammo ...
believe me -.-'

SKILLS

Early skills you should maximize as soon as you can:
Blazing arrow, Winged Shell, Lightning Strike and Frost Arrow.

Blazing arrow: Adds overall damage. (At lvl 10 adds 40% in fire damage).
Winged shell: Your best defensive skill. Can also be use in conjunction with meditation to recover mana swiftly.
Lightning Strike: Your main damage skill (early on). Especially necessary for PVP/duels. Has high mp requirement so use it sparingly when PVE'ing. (I didn't find Thundershock as important, since there is rarely enough time to apply it first when dueling/pvping and/or fighting mobs. A good skill for bosses though, since there is more than enough time to apply it.)
Frost Arrow: Useful for slowing down your enemy.

Maximize your passive skills ASAP, especially Bow Mastery.

Note: If you dont plan on buying wings, maximize Flight Mastery. Only works on the white elven wings you start out with. This is an awesome skill for poor people like me!

Get knockback ASAP. But it is not as important to level it. Keep it at level 1 until you have extra spirit and money to use. (Doesn't work against other players, only works with PVE.)
Get Stunning Arrow and Aim Low ASAP. But it is not important to level it. Keep it at 1 until you have extra sp and money to use.
Get Winged Pledge and Wingspan ASAP. It's your first close range skills. Close up you do less damage with other attacks, so these two skills are very useful.

Important skills you get later on:
Deadly shot, wings of grace, sharpened tooth arrow and barrage of arrows.

Deadly shot: A good opener for mob killing. High damage, but takes a while to cast. (Also uses more mp than take aim).
Wings of Grace: Awesome when dueling clerics cos they can't sleep you if you use it. Timing is crucial.
Sharpened Tooth: A must when fighting bosses. Squads usually rely on the archer's to ST the boss. If you don't have a barb, this skill is dangerous. (It does massive damage when it comes full-circle and barb is only one that can hold that aggro.)
Use it when you start with the boss. It gives the boss hp equal to the amount it's going to take away. So using it when the boss's hp is 50% literally has no effect.
For instance: If your ST says it will take away 10%, it will first give the boss 10% hp and then later when ST wears off, it will take away 10% again. = No real effect.
If you use it when boss has 99.5% hp, it will push hp up to 100% and later when the ST wears off, it will take away the 10%. = Decent effect!
It doesn't stack, can only be used once. Let archer with highest level ST, ST the boss.
Get it to lvl 10 asap.
Barrage of Arrows: Get it to lvl 6 at least so you can GV (GV = rebirth order, lotsa xp). It's expensive, but a good skill. Your best AoE skill. Uses a lot of mana, so only use it with full mp pool.

TECHNIQUE PVE

The idea is to keep the mob AWAY from you. So its a good idea to have max range (passive skill winged blessing comes in handy). Start off with a slow cast, high damage attack (take aim, deadly shot). Then use slow, stun and knockback with normal attacks inbetween. (Remember wingspan is also a type of knockback.)
Practice, practice practice. Create your own combo to suit your style.

Mana can be a problem, so use winged shell together with meditation if you want to save pots.

I find apothecary pots useful, especially life powder and focus powder. Not necessarily flourish orb (the herbs are harder to farm). Life powder gives 50hp regen / second. Focus powder gives 50mp regen / second. Flourish orb gives both of these. All of these last 10 minutes.
As an archer you can choose which drops when you fight : your HP or your MP. You are in control. If you use high damage attacks the mob won't really hurt you, because it wont get to you, but you'll run out of mana. Or you can conserve mana, but get hit more and therefor lose more hp. So if you make lots of life powder, conserve your mana and let the mobs hit you. If you use focus powder spam high damage attacks - repair costs will be cheaper.

It's a good idea to invest in a genie healing skill called Second Wind. Because of the low affinity requirement you can get it early on. Some say it's cheaper to use genie heal than pots.

AVOID poison and mana-drain mobs. Make friends with clerics! I love you

TECHNIQUE PVP

Your technique will be different for each class. I'm not great at PVP so I'll just give some basic tips. Ultimately you'll have to practice to find your own style. In all these cases activate your shield. Note: Knockback doesn't work against human players.

VS Melee classes: (Barbs, BMs) Stun, run and lightning. These classes have low magic defense so use Lightning Strike as your main attack skill. Do NOT stand still and tank against BMs and Barbs. If they stun you, you are dead. (Another bonus is it annoys the hell out of em if you dont stand still, heehee!)

VS Clerics: Archers do the best against clerics. We have a good chance to interrupt them and we have Wings of Grace (timing for this skill is crucial to avoid Sleep). There is also a genie skill Adrenaline Surge which makes you immune to sleep, but I haven't tried this. Use physical attacks against Magic classes and stun, stun, stun.

VS Archers: It sucks fighting an Archer with 2 misty rings, believe me!!! (winks at AQUI Wink ) For noobies out there a misty ring gives 50% accuracy. So the person that is wearing TWO of them will not miss you. Nope... they will pawn you. Big time. Even if you are a higher level...
Fighting an archer: First person to get stun off has advantage. Don't use skills that have a long casting time like Deadly Shot.

VS Wizards: I suck against these. Their main attack style is to do high damage in a short amount of time. So they two- to three-hit you and it's over. The best chance we have I think is to stun them, spark and do a major physical attack. And hope for a crit. They have low hp, so if everything goes well we should be able to take them out in 3 shots also (assuming the wiz is the same lvl as you.)

VS Venos: This is a tough one. You get Heavy, Arcane and Light Armor venos. So if possible check which armor class the veno is first and act accordingly. It also depends on how the veno fights, she might go in fox form and melee (physical) attack you along with her pet. She might stay human form and magic attack you from a distance while pet goes in. So yeah... practice.

Question As Tideborn is still quite a new class, I don't really know much about their fighting style and/or how to fight them. I predict our technique against Psychic will be much the same as with cleric and wiz; and against Assassin, it will be much the same as with a fist BM. (Im really dreading the invisibility thing...)

Note: I don't find Barrage of Arrows useful in duels at all. It's an aoe spell and it takes 2 sparks that could have been used better otherwise, not to mention the extreme demand on mana.

GENIE

Get Second Wind and/or Tree of Protection. (Don't use ToP if you have a hp charm equipped. It tends to take some hp away first before healing, which might make your charm tick.)

I'm too lazy to type more, so go read this if you wanna know more:

Strength Genie vs Dex Genie for archers:
http://pwi-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?t=287301

Helpful Genie Skills:
http://pwi-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?t=543621

LATE GAME

TT Weapons: If you plan to go TT all the way to lvl 90x then plan it.
At lvl 60 get Swiftwind Crossbow. At lvl 70 get Thundercrack or Spirit Breath. At lvl 80 get Flash Fire or Soul Freeze. At lvl 90 get whatever.
Note: Just make sure not to get something like Unicorn (TT70 longbow) that can't be taken to lvl 90. It stops at 80 with a bow that is bound. (Otherwise go ahead and get Unicorn, but you'll have to buy a different bow at some stage. You can't build it up.)

Sage/Demon:
Apparently Demon is the way to go -> http://pwi-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?t=263481
If only they would call these something else ... Like Sage should be "Butterfly" and Demon should be "Dragonfly" ; or "Cookie" and "Biscuit"... I can't go "Demon" Sad It's evil! Sad

Suspect If you are still awake ... feel free to comment, ask questions, lemme know if I missed anything or if you have ideas on how to improve this guide (especially the PVP part).
BarakiEl
BarakiEl
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Bara's Archer Guide Empty Re: Bara's Archer Guide

Post  BarakiEl Sun Jan 10, 2010 4:03 am

Sharpened Tooth Arrow explained in detail:
http://pwi-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?t=501002

The way I explained it wasn't 100% correct, this is a very thorough explanation Smile Enjoy.
BarakiEl
BarakiEl
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Posts : 19
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Location : South Africa

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