27 réponses à ce sujet

[Rcclassiks]

 Do you are an archer, do you actually enjoy being one? I have tried two times and it was boring with barley any action. What strategy do you use and what class are you? 



:alien::alien:

[dkjestrup]

Rogue, obviously. Warrior Archers are decent, but not as good.



Spec Bard/Ranger, so that you can support your entire party. Grab Arrow of Slaying ASAP, then focus on the rogue skills, especially stealth.

[weyrleader]

Rouge and mage....and yes, you won't be getting into the heat of the battle unless you step up. I do not believe that there is any penalty for close combat, but I could be wrong. I do know that there are some situations where firing a bow will seriously save your and your characters' asses, if you're wanting to keep your player's and npcs' fatalities down.

[mgass]

Pure archers aren't that great. Focus the Rogue on melee with Dirty Fighting and Riposte. You'll have to bump your Dex up anyway, so, grab Arrow of Slaying with no other archer talents. It gives you the ability to take out or whittle enemies before they swarm you.

[SusanStoHelit]

Rogue archer - bard/ranger. Cunning build. AoS, Song of Courage, Suppressing Fire, Scattershot, high Stealth, Lethality.



You do damn good damage (but not early on, it takes a while to build), but you're not a dps king if that's what you consider the only fun way to play. Your main role is support/utility.

[KariTR]

Alistair is my tank. My archer focuses on enemies he has taunted, though I also clean up incoming critters. Sten and I crowd-control, he knocks back plus damages with his 360 swing, I damage and stun with scattershot. I use debuffs on bosses and save my one-hit for mages (though the cooldown, stamina management is improved greatly with 1.02 so it isnt quite the precious commodity it once was) and/or yellow mobs. I favour DEX build over Cunning, but the latter is by no means shabby either.



Gear wise, I focus on crit bonus items.



Spec, definately Ranger and one other of your choice. Ive played around with the others and not found one that stands out.



Lastly, yes I love playing Archers. Of 3 complete and 1 almost complete playthroughs, 3 have been archers and 1 a mage. I like playing from range, being able to see everything that is going on.

[lessthanjake9]

Hahaha well I dont wanna start another gigantic argument here, but I say go for a warrior for your archer. Pump dexterity almost entirely (except to get to 25 in strength, which ill get to in a secnd). Get Precise Striking early for the quick +10 attack (which archers need early since they cant hit anything to start the game). Then try to get to Master Archer and Arrow of Slaying as quickly as possible. Particularly Arrow of Slaying, which is basically an instant kill of any non boss. If you get Master Archer early, you can get an early +30 defense bonus from Defensive Fire which will make you impossible to hit for a good portion of the game if you get it quickly. Go Champion for Rally and Warcry so that you are useful to the party overall. The other specialization is up to you. Get up to 25 strength in order to get Death Blow around level 12. Set a tactic to attack the enemy with the lowest health and you will be rolling in stamina to use abilities (which is more fun than auto-attacking and you are looking for fun). If you are pumping dexterity then your defense will be obscenely high, especially with Defensive Fire on. If you want to, then, you can utilize taunt to act as a tank, freeing you up to have another damage dealer in the party.This is pretty fun.



You COULD also go for two other types of archer depending on what you want:



1. You could go rogue and get Dexterity up to 30 for Arrow of Slaying, and then pump the rest into Cunning. Get Lethality ASAP so that your cunning affects damage. Go Bard for Song of Courage and make sure to utilize stealth and lockpicking. If you want to use those two things with your main character, and you like being the party buffer then this is the way to go.



2. You could go rogue and pump dexterity like with the warrior, except only put strength up to 20 for equipment. Then go Ranger for the ranger pets. This is probably the way to get the most damage per second out of an archer, since the dexterity will ensure you hit a lot, while the ranger pet will be doing huge damage on the side.The downside is you wont be so useful at typical rogue stuff like lockpicking.





Personally I think the warrior archer is the best way to have FUN with an archer. It starts off a lot better in combat than a rogue archer (due, among other things, to higher attack, especially with Precise Striking) and Death Blow makes things less boring by replenishing your stamina a ton, allowing you to use talents a lot.

[dkjestrup]

Nah, I still think rogues>warriors for archery. Mainly from stealth, Bard and Ranger, as you archers aren't good enough to be DPS kings anyway.

[Realmzmaster]

Why would I go for warrior/archer when rogue/archer/ranger allows me to call a pet? As a ranger I can have a great bear as a second tank. In fact I can have a selection of pets (wolf, bear and spider) and eventually after becoming a master ranger (blight wolf, great bear and poisonous spider). I can anywhere from a 5 to 7 member party on the PC (If I have three rangers). (console versions can only get one pet for the party :5-members).

Modifié par Realmzmaster, 28 janvier 2010 - 07:37 .

[bri193]

Rcclassiks wrote...

 Do you are an archer, do you actually enjoy being one? I have tried two times and it was boring with barley any action. What strategy do you use and what class are you? 

Yes and yes !!
Human female rogue ranger/assassin full archery lines. Currently level 22 (just done Landsmeet) never touched a dagger/sword since dealing with the rats in the origin story, only bows. Gave away and/or sold melee weapons ages ago - too messy... She has her appearence to maintain, no icky bits on her, thank you...

First shortbows pumping DEX with a bit of CUN, then pumping CUN until I got Lethality, then switch to longbows. I prefer going  DEX/CUN build rather than gimping one for the other, since CUN so important for a 'complete' rogue.
Maxed combat expertice and coersion, then traps and poison, then survival
Stealth and tools are a must, then whatever other rogue talents you fancy

Typical strategy:
1- Enter transition area.
2- Immediatly place standard party (Morrigan, Oghren, Shale) on hold
3- Go into stealth and scout next section(s)
4- disarm any traps, unlock doors, chests
5- determine location, number and type of enemies at hand
6- lay numerous traps of different types at choke points
7- position at door way or choke point and take out mage or any higher ranked enemy with Arrow of Slaying
8- select next target for scattershot - this stuns in AoE
10- Any enemy not stunned use shattershot for knockdown, followed with critical shot
11- pepper stunned enemies with critical shot or normal shot until there are mobile and let the chase begin
12- run back down area where traps are set with the mob following you.
13- stop at end of area with long view back and pick-off the survivous using shattershot/critical shot or pinning shot/critical shot.
14- collect loot drops, stealth on to the next room and repeat
15 once a reasonable section of corridor/area has been cleared, bring the gang and place on hold around a corner or choke point.
16 - repeat 3 to 15 ...
17- If anything survives through the above, then run back behind the party and unleash the gang on them.

Another favourite strategy is wait at a choke point and let the enemies come to me 1 or 2 at a time. I have cleared out entire levels on my own using this. I call in the party only when forced through a cut scene or if there is a particularly elite boss to take care of.

Oh ... I use the Better Archery mod ..... Brings archery to life and would not play an archer with out it .... Also makes enemy archers more deadly so you need to deal with them right after mages and before the melee mob otherwise your party will be a grease spot...

Modifié par bri193, 28 janvier 2010 - 02:06 .

[JosieJ]

mgass wrote...

Pure archers aren't that great. Focus the Rogue on melee with Dirty Fighting and Riposte. You'll have to bump your Dex up anyway, so, grab Arrow of Slaying with no other archer talents. It gives you the ability to take out or whittle enemies before they swarm you.

Arrow of Slaying is highly situational.  Its best use is to take dangerous enemies--particularly mages--out of a fight right away.  It does massive damage, but its hefty stamina cost, hit to stamina regen, and cooldown time mean you're not going to be throwing it many times in a typical fight.  It's also a 4th level talent, so you have to take Pinning Shot, Crippling Shot, and Critical Shot to get to it.  For these reasons, I wouldn't advise anyone who isn't either a totally dedicated archer, or primarily an archer with a few dual-wield talents thrown in, to take it.  If you're going to be primarily a dual-wielder, you should be getting behind your target (Master Stealth rocks!) and backstabbing.

Properly built, pure archers are fine, either with the Pure Archery mod mentioned above or without.  I played a Dalish archer PC in a very similar manner as the poster above me describes: using Stealth and Survival to scout ahead, setting and disarming traps, tossing grenades, using Arrow of Slaying from stealth to generate massive damage, and just generally harassing and confusing the enemy!  It was a blast to play.  I actually didn't use the mod, and did just fine.

[Moirnelithe]

I hated archery until I got the better archery mod, it's quite fun now. I'm using a rogue (bard/assassin) dex/cun build with a shortbow.

[KariTR]

lessthanjake9 wrote...

2. You could go rogue and pump dexterity like with the warrior, except only put strength up to 20 for equipment. Then go Ranger for the ranger pets. This is probably the way to get the most damage per second out of an archer, since the dexterity will ensure you hit a lot, while the ranger pet will be doing huge damage on the side.The downside is you wont be so useful at typical rogue stuff like lockpicking.

I don't have a problem with picking locks, but I take enough cunning and enough talent levels to ensure it isnt a problem and ofcourse, though DEX dominant I still have enough Cunning to warrant taking lethality. With equipment and the Fade bonus, I only have to raise STR to 16, would be even less if I hogged all the +attribute equipment, rather than pass most off to my tank.

[ownedbywitt]

Make a rogue archer/bard/ranger focused on cun.



First, put all your points in dex until 26 (plus +4 from fade u get 30).

Until then, your archer will be like a dex archer, so it won't suck that much at the beginning of the game or it will be the same as a dex archer.

By lvl 8, be ready to learn lethality.

After you reach 26 on dex, put the rest of points in cun.

First spec on bard, and go for song of courage.

As soon as your party starts getting buffs, you will notice a high improvement. Also, when u pick tainted blood, because of your cunning, it will rocks.



I'm at the end of the game, with tainted blood, doing 80-100 on all the enemys and 140+ on criticals.

[Ferelden Templar]

Actually I want to build a Dalish Warrior Archer because of the initial Pinning Shot.



But I'd definitely go and get Scattershot ahead of anything else. Arrow of Slaying isn't as good as any Spell (Horror, Force Field, Crushing Prison). As a warrior you can handle pulls when they come close.



Since Berserker reportedly doesn't work with Bows I might go Templar/Champion. (Warcry, Rally)



Righteous Strike looks interesting to try out as an alternative to getting Arrow of Slaying.



Also, Blood Thirst with increased attack speed? Might be interesting to try.



My problem mainly is who should handle lockpicking.. Zev is hard to refocus into a lockpicker. Lel isn't as flexible to respec as a close-range fighter.



That said, what's the best Medium armor in the game?

[MarshmellowDonuts]

I had the opposite, I started out with a mage and was having a great time but after patch 1.02a that changed pretty quick. I had focused on the crushing prison & cold spells having just a terrific time to later have the patch nerf those lines, made my mage character bland and I'd especially never picked Blizzard. That's when I found myself enjoying Lel a whole lot more. She could kill from afar, had a lot of usefull abilities, started to be the most damaging of my party, and I loved watching her walk in banded mail, very flattering and form fitting so I started controlling her more & more and enjoying it more than my main char.   

Archers are pretty bland when you start, but mid-late game I love them.  Shattershot knocks down opponents, arrow of slaying (in my case) does the most damage against bosses than any other party member and a one shot kill against enemy mages. Pinning shot holds a character for a bit, and instead of my tanks chasing down mobs & setting off traps it's nice to have someone who can take care of remote enemies.

Good skills are Shattershot it knocks down opponents, try to get to arrow of slaying ASAP along with evasion. I prefer Bard + Duelist with archers and also the cunning build over dexterity (go 30 dex and then cunning). With 40 Dex an archer will hit one time more out of 33 shots over a cunning archer/bard with song of courage, but the cunning archer grants a 6% attack boost to the party, 5 extra damage with each hit for party, and a 6% chance for critical for the entire party (that adds 50% damage) and a cunning build can open locks, persuade, etc.

At 60 Dex, the archer will connect 7 times more out of 100 shots over the cunning/bard archer, but the cunning/bard will give the party 8% attack increase, 8% increase of party doing a critical (50% extra damage), and each hit of the party will do 7 more damage, and can open almost all locks/traps/doors.

To me, even with a stat of 60 seven extra "hits" out of 100 is not as good as with cunning archer/bard with song of courage.  To each their own.

Modifié par MarshmellowDonuts, 29 janvier 2010 - 09:32 .

[Wournos]

weyrleader wrote...

Rouge and mage....and yes, you won't be getting into the heat of the battle unless you step up. I do not believe that there is any penalty for close combat, but I could be wrong. I do know that there are some situations where firing a bow will seriously save your and your characters' asses, if you're wanting to keep your player's and npcs' fatalities down.

POSSIBLE SPOILER ALERT
This is true when encountering Zevran for the first time. I met him yesterday in my second playthrough and I got my bum handed to me three times before I let my dwarven rogue woman first take out the mage with melee then range the ones on the cliffsides with a crossbow. This despite having Sten with me who is supposedly a warrior. Some warrior...

Beats me how I managed to survive this on my first playthrough at first try. Maybe because I had Alistair instead of Leliana and Dog instead of Sten. Leliana is a ranger (crossbow) who switches to daggers inside buildings.

[Solica]

My first run-through, was with a city-elf warrior archer.
I eventually gave her all archery talents, and gave her dex and strength in roughly 2:1 proportions.

It worked well, in as much that I got an enjoyable game. It was a lot more challenging than my second run though. No comparison. And IMO that was entirely due to that I wasted talents for the party that should rather have been melee.
In my experience, archer talents start to become wasted and useless rather early. It's sort of opposite to 2H, which gets better and and in the end is pretty good.

My gripe is that a talentless archer makes almost the same damage, given same dex+str, later in the game. Take "arrow of slaying" for example. It is excruciatingly slow, taking forever. It completely drains your stamina and halts regen for a crippling long time. What do you get for it? Nothing. During the same time an untalented archer can make the same or better damage, just by firing more shots. With no stamina consumption. And saving talents for awesome dual-wielding talents instead. Which makes almost any fight rather easy. I also don't think I ever saw other talents like "pinning" or crippling" ever work on the later high level opponents. They just waste a lot of time and stamina again. "Critical", same reasoning as "slaying", not much damage for all the time and stamina used. Etc. The single one talent that seem to work and have some value, is "scattering shot".

So my sort of advice would be to give your archer mostly dual-wielder talents instead, for the melee moments.

Early in the game, though, arrow of slaying is awesome for sniping enemy mages before they get bothersome. But it only works so many times. Then the mages are too high level.

Modifié par Solica, 30 janvier 2010 - 09:13 .

[SuperMedbh]

Solica wrote...
My gripe is that a talentless archer makes almost the same damage, given same dex+str, later in the game. Take "arrow of slaying" for example. It is excruciatingly slow, taking forever. It completely drains your stamina and halts regen for a crippling long time. What do you get for it? Nothing. During the same time an untalented archer can make the same or better damage, just by firing more shots.

I'm seeing something of the same thing with my current archer/rogue.  She does fairly good damage, but what I really use the AoS for is "sniper missions".  At the end of a scouting run, she'll hang about just within view of the enemy and shoot a mage or other such baddie.  Then she runs like the dickens to draw the enemies into the awaiting traps and other party members.

But as a choice in an already ongoing melee?  Meh.  You're right, might as well just shoot normally and save the stamina.

[SusanStoHelit]

I don't find that. Your rogue archer should be in stealth in combat (obviously, that takes a while). Fire AoS first up from stealth, only target <normal or lower> enemies with it, high level foes often resist it.



Lethality, high Stealth, AoS, Suppressing Fire, yaay!

[SuperMedbh]

You like suppressing fire, Susan? By the time I get done with turning it on, summoning my ranger pet and singing the Song of Courage, my stamina is all gone. I even dropped a few points into willpower, which helped, but didn't solve the trouble. Is suppressing fire worth not being able to do the other special shots?

[Timortis]

Solica wrote...

My gripe is that a talentless archer makes almost the same damage, given same dex+str, later in the game. Take "arrow of slaying" for example. It is excruciatingly slow, taking forever. It completely drains your stamina and halts regen for a crippling long time. What do you get for it? Nothing. During the same time an untalented archer can make the same or better damage, just by firing more shots.

You miss the point, AoS is burst damage. You can't fire more shots at a caster after he's Crushing Prisoned you, which he can't do if you 1 shot him. Even with yellow casters, you can open with Scatter shot, immediately follow up with AoS, and by the time the stun wears off, they're dead or almost dead and 1 more hit will kill them. You can't do that by just firing normal shots at them, and letting them freely cast.

[dkjestrup]

^ Exactly. Arrow of Slaying isn't the best against most trash mobs, because they die so quickly anyway. It's great for Mages though (moot point when you have Mana Clash though).

[SusanStoHelit]

SuperMedbh wrote...

You like suppressing fire, Susan? By the time I get done with turning it on, summoning my ranger pet and singing the Song of Courage, my stamina is all gone. I even dropped a few points into willpower, which helped, but didn't solve the trouble. Is suppressing fire worth not being able to do the other special shots?

Yes, I do. But I do always put a couple of points into Will because of the sustains. And I use the Stamina potion mod to help too.

I don't run it non-stop. I use it as and when. It's great - stacks on itself. I rarely use the other archery sustains. Song of Courage + pet + stealth + suppressing fire (when needed) = win.

Modifié par SusanStoHelit, 31 janvier 2010 - 06:44 .

[Solica]

Timortis wrote...

You miss the point, AoS is burst damage. You can't fire more shots at a caster after he's Crushing Prisoned you, which he can't do if you 1 shot him. Even with yellow casters, you can open with Scatter shot, immediately follow up with AoS, and by the time the stun wears off, they're dead or almost dead and 1 more hit will kill them. You can't do that by just firing normal shots at them, and letting them freely cast.

You are so right. But I didn't miss the point. My argument was rather that it doesn't work well late in the game. And the same goes for almost all archer talents. If I can't kill with that shot, the talent is wasted. And I can't. I'll take dual wielding talents for my dex.-warrior-archer instead, thankyou.