23 replies to this topic

[obbie31]

So one of the final runs I want to do is a human noble archer who marries Anora. But I have a few questions. I am not really all that sure what an archer should be leveling up. I hear strength and cunning are required to make a good archer build? Can anyone clarify how to build up a good archer?

 

Also, I am interested in marrying Anora, but I do not want to let Loghain live. Is it still possible to have Loghain killed by still marry Anora? I'm guessing make Alistair kill Loghain and not harden Alistair? Any input would be appreciated. 

[capn233]

For rogue, people would either go dex, or a mix of dex and cunning probably.

 

Pure dex is better when you get to Awakening since the Accuracy talent gives you huge bonuses based on dex.

 

In Origins, there is the "auto-crit" build that is essentially a cunning rogue that takes Duelist and Bard as specs.  I used that and it was decent.  I did not use Shale though, so I wasn't running 100% crit chance at any stage of the game, but it was still fine.

[HeliosDisciple]

It really depends what type of archer you wanna be. If you're gonna go whole-hog on the sneaky thief max crit rogue archer, you'll want to pump Cunning as much as possible. You need 36 Dexterity to use the best bows, otherwise max that Cun, your stealth/bard songs/etc use it, and with Lethality, you can use it to equip armor.

 

Bard and Duelist are the better specializations - Assassin does nothing for archers. Ranger only summons animal buddies, which is useful at lower levels to keep the heat off you and fitting for a Dalish, but doesn't directly help your archery.

 

If you just want to shot arrow gud and not worry about min-maxing, lockpicking, stealth or such, try a warrior archer and pump Dexterity (and Strength until you can wear the armor you want).

 

Stay away from crossbows unless you have a mod, and get the Repeater Gloves from Return to Ostagar.

[cJohnOne]

For me the problem for an archer is hitting stuff or a low to hit rate.  This means you should get alot of dexterity.  I go 2 dex. to 1 cunning.  I don't like the repeater gloves since they didn't really work better than not using them for me you get better critical without them.  Hate the Aim talent as too slow and recomend just getting a rapid aim bow.

[capn233]

 otherwise max that Cun, your stealth/bard songs/etc use it, and with Lethality, you can use it to equip armor.

 

Lethality only replaces strength for damage calculation, still have to use strength for armor.

[Qis]

Warrior will make a good archer, but somewhat not as popular with Rogue Archer

 

As a warrior, you don't really need high Dexterity to hit, because you have Precise Striking and Perfect Striking to help you in low to mid level. They work, but only for the hit rate, not the critical bonus.

 

Use Rapid Shot, it is more useful than Aim, multiple hits with normal damage by Rapid Shot is worth it than one shot from Aim, unless you have gears to counter the slow rate of fire from Aim.

 

Bravery will add critical depends on how many enemies you face, so you can tank while being archer, if you can't handle it just Disengage. Defensive Shot is good for tanking

 

As a Warrior you don't need Cunning other than the bonuses you get, armor penetration doesn't matter, you deal decent damage in the end.

 

Just increase Dexterity and Strength to the max, or Dexterity to the max and Strength for armor you want to wear, it doesn't really matter.

 

Don't worry about critical, because your companions buff and magic can cover it, also some gears.

 

Only Champion and Templar specialization work for Warrior Archer, Berserker and Reaver do not. Templar Righteous Strike don't work sadly, but others do.

 

Warrior Archer is easy playing, the only downside is cannot lock pick and disarm traps. As HN it is fine because HN origin don't have traps early on, but you can't unlock chests in the castle. Other origins have traps early on, Dalish especially and Tamlen is not a Rogue.

 

Enjoy!

[Snowdog65]

Cunning builds are vastly over-rated.

 

Archers tend to miss a fair bit, and Cunning based build will miss a lot.

 

Dex gives points to hit and damage, Cunning only to damage.

 

IMO Cunning is mainly useful in a bard based build to support the rest of the team with Song of Courage. I would prefer to leave that to Leliana, rather than my main character.

 

Other than a support Bard with Song of Courage, I would never do a Cunning based Build.

[capn233]

Cunning is always useful to a rogue, especially if you care to use rogue talents.

 

I don't see why a Cunning archer wouldn't take Bard.  And given that Song of Courage stacks, you don't have to pick a single party member to be the only character giving that buff.

 

Cunning rogue of whatever weapon talent should have decent hit rate if built properly.

[Snowdog65]

Cunning is always useful to a rogue, especially if you care to use rogue talents.

 

I don't see why a Cunning archer wouldn't take Bard.  And given that Song of Courage stacks, you don't have to pick a single party member to be the only character giving that buff.

 

Cunning rogue of whatever weapon talent should have decent hit rate if built properly.

 

Cunning is useful. Maxing it out is a waste, and vastly overrated.

 

My Rogue that I finished with was actually a Strength Rogue, but I respec'd him as a Dex vs Cunning Archer.

 

Dex Archer:

Defense: 166

Attack: 127 (SoC 131)

Damage: 57.8 (SoC 60.6)

 

Cunning Archer:

Defense: 95

Attack: 91 (SoC 103)

Damage: 57.8 (SoC 64.2)

 

Defense and Attack are MASSIVELY better on a Dex Archer, even with SoC activated.

 

Even my Strength Rogue had 124 Attack with a Bow (secondary weapon).

 

Think about duel between these two archers.

 

Sure the Cunning archer does more damage (extra 11 from armor penetration as well).

 

But it has ZERO percent chance of hitting the Dex Archer, even with SoC active. It doesn't matter what your damage is, if you can't hit.

 

The Dex Archer OTOH has over 80% chance of hitting the cunning archer, so it would be a total slaughter.

[capn233]

Sure the defense is going to be better, nobody would debate that.  What they might debate is the value of defense on an archer.

 

Some breakdowns of the actual attributes might be helpful, and listing the specializations.  Looks like cunning archer had 100 cun, but not everybody wants to back-calculate.  Also missing AP and crit chance which are the two big reasons to go Cunning.  You are showing 3.6 more damage per shot on the Cunning build, which is before accounting for crits or armor penetration.

 

Cunning rogue will get another 10 attack if they take Dueling, and further still if they take Leliana in party.

[Snowdog65]

I said there was 11 more points of AP on the cunning build.

 

A dex rogue also benefits from Dueling/Leliana etc..

 

A Cunning build is one trick pony. Sacrificing attack/defense for damage boost, which is mainly crit/AP boost rather than base damage boost.

 

A dex based one will hit more and be hit less, and better resist being knocked down/stunned.

 

But sure build a Cunning Archer for the occasional big number and party buffing, and running away so you don't get hit.

[capn233]

I said there was 11 more points of AP on the cunning build.

 

A dex rogue also benefits from Dueling/Leliana etc..

 

A Cunning build is one trick pony. Sacrificing attack/defense for damage boost, which is mainly crit/AP boost rather than base damage boost.

 

A dex based one will hit more and be hit less, and better resist being knocked down/stunned.

 

But sure build a Cunning Archer for the occasional big number and party buffing, and running away so you don't get hit.

 

I don't recall all the bottom lines when I opened the thread last, must have missed them or ninjad.

 

The earlier comment about a duel between the two types of archers may be an interesting thought experiment, but in the game you do not fight another warden.  More to the point you do not typically fight enemies with similar stat profiles.  Typically enemies have high attack but low defense, with some elites improving on those stats.  Adding more and more attack does not necessarily boost DPS at a point, although it may slightly improve hits on high tier enemies.  Of course those enemies are the ones who have high armor, where lack of AP will also be noticeable if you are going a dex build.

 

Saying a Dex rogue benefits from Dueling or Leliana's SOC is true to an extent, but the benefit will not be nearly as high as with the Cunning rogue.  You need to look at the numbers in context of actual enemies.  Do you think that going from 131 to 141 attack on the dex rogue notably improves hit rate?  What about 103 to 113 for the Cunning?  Or add in another 8 attack from Leliana's SOC.  Did that 8 to 149 really improve the dex rogue at all against the enemies you fight, relative to increasing the Cunning's attack to 121?

 

You did not post crit chance, but the crit chance for the cunning build is going to be appreciably better than the dex build.  And also reminds me that I did not ask if your attack and damage numbers were with Aim enabled.  Importantly it will magnify the disparity in ranged critical chance between the dex and cunning rogue when it doubles the chance at activation.

 

I don't have my saves for my cunning archer, or I would simply look at what her stats were.

 

It is somewhat unfair to claim cunning archer does only one thing well.  It does high DPS, which is always welcome.  Even if that was the only thing it did, that would be fine since that is the most important thing a rogue can do.  However high cunning also means that you are better at actual rogue utility like crate unlocking and trap spotting / disarming.  You are better at passing coercion checks, stealing checks, etc.

 

It might be more apt to say dex archer depends less on the squad, but the tradeoff is that it also has less synergy with the squad.  The cunning rogue depends a little more on composition, but if you take advantage of the synergies the character and total party damage will be superior.

[Blazomancer]

^This.

DEX archers are better than CUNN archers only in the early game and during solo runs. They would also be more effective in party setups that don't have tanks, support mages or bards.

As for hit rate, it isn't an issue for an adequately buffed cunning based archer by mid game (Heroic Offense, Rally, etc.) It gets even better (read 100%) with Shale and/or multiple bards.

As for damage advantage, in addition to AP and critical %, the CUNN rogue also gets +2 base damage for every 10 Cunning with Tainted Blade.

In addition, if one cares about such things, temporary pre-activation buffing is an option; higher CUNN also unlocks a few additional dialogue options, frees up talent points from the Deft Hands tree, and skill points from Stealing & Coercion as already mentioned.

Overrated? Circumstantially may be. Vastly Overrated? Certainly not.

[capn233]

As for hit rate, it isn't an issue for an adequately buffed cunning based archer by mid game (Heroic Offense, Rally, etc.) It gets even better (read 100%) with Shale and/or multiple bards.

As for damage advantage, in addition to AP and critical %, the CUNN rogue also gets +2 base damage for every 10 Cunning with Tainted Blade.

 

I forgot about Tainted Blade.  That's because I only got a lot of the DLC recently.

 

The point about Heroic Offense, Rally is part of what I was trying to get at with synergies.  There are a lot of ways squadmates can buff your attack or nerf enemy defense, but there isn't so much that buffs crit chance, and only a couple things that work like AP (sunders).

 

I loaded up my recent rogue and used the respec mod potion on her to try and get a feel for the numbers, since it has been a while since I played a dedicated cunning archer and apparently deleted that character.

 

Level 21 dalish rogue

Far Song, HoH (Long Sight for buff), Red Jenny's, Felon's, Bard's, Spellward, Lifegiver, KttC, Andruil's. 

 

-This was a solo dagger rogue (dex of course originally) and I didn't bother to find or console in all the ranged gear which would improve it slightly.  This also avoids DLC gear like High Regard and Sorrows.  It would be better to buff with max cunning gear when turning on SoC.  Also this is with a second stack of SoC from Lel.  Zev could potentially give another if you build him for it.

 

Str 24

Dex 44

Will 31

Mag 20

Cun 77

Con 28

 

Def 99

Atk 137

Dmg 63.1

Crit Chance 52%

AP 23

 

Far Song itself gives 10 attack, 10 from Dueling, some amount from SoC's.  Every other hit should be a crit this way with +25% crit damage bonus (Far Song + Red Jenny's).

 

The stat distribution came from a couple of factors.  Respec mod just pulls all points out which messes with racial distro, and fade bonuses.  So first I set the attributes to the same thing I had at character creation.  Then I put in the fade essence / font points, then put a few points in Str and Dex that would meet prereqs.

 

It is possible to meet bow prereqs with slightly lower Dex, but you can't get Arrow of Slaying without 30 "real" dex.  For a true auto-crit build you can actually skip that if you want.  Also possible to save a couple points out of Str if you plan to have a bunch of strength gear laying around to boost stats to put on other things.

 

In any case, I like cunning archer a bit more for teams, and of course dex for solo in Origins*.  Don't think either is useless; both work, just in different ways.

 

*As before, in Awakening Dex is a lot better because of Accuracy, but you can respec there if you want.

[Snowdog65]

So it's viable if you get a whole party to buff that character, and use all the best gear in the game, including stuff you have to be evil to get (Far Song).

 

Go play Leliana's Song and do a cunning build and report how that works out.

[Qis]

Critical Shot and Arrow of Slaying can one hit kill yellow ranked enemy with any build, so it's not a big deal to be Cunning or Dexterity archer

[Blazomancer]

@ Snowdog 65 - What does 'being evil' (roleplay) have anything to do with gameplay mechanic? Moreover, there's no need to use Far Song, there are a lot of good longbows in the vanilla game. And to be fair, any generic Dragonthorn bow does just fine.

Leliana's Song is not relevant here, the characters don't come with a clean slate like the warden, and the campaign is not long enough to specialize any one of them. Plus no one is forcing anybody to play an archer in it - Leliana comes spec'ed as a hybrid IIRC.

For what it's worth, allocating the few attribute points that Leliana earns in the DLC in cunning works out fairly well if one knows what they are doing. Yours truly here remembers doing so a couple of years ago, but you'd have to pardon me if I don't fancy going through it again and reporting here, thank you very much.

[Snowdog65]

@ Snowdog 65 - What does 'being evil' (roleplay) have anything to do with gameplay mechanic? Moreover, there's no need to use Far Song, there are a lot of good longbows in the vanilla game. And to be fair, any generic Dragonthorn bow does just fine.
 

 

It highlights how you need all the best gear in the game, and a party to buff you, so you can hit stuff.

 

Even then you are a glass canon with terrible defense, terrible physical resistance.

 

I am not saying you can't play this way, just that these builds are vastly overrated.

[capn233]

So it's viable if you get a whole party to buff that character, and use all the best gear in the game, including stuff you have to be evil to get (Far Song).

 

Go play Leliana's Song and do a cunning build and report how that works out.

 

No... a buff from Leliana would be a buff from a single party member.  You don't need the whole party to buff you.  Of course you can let the whole party buff you if you want though.

 

The best gear comment is unfounded.  Half of that gear is not in fact the best gear for that build, it happens to be gear that I had for a solo dex DW.

 

Far Song is not needed, it is just helpful.  Mage's Eye will do about the same damage with about the same crit chance, the main difference is lack of Rapid Aim and only +4 attack buff on Mage's Eye.  Sorrows of Arlathan is actually better than Far Song, but it is only for people with specific DLC.  Falon'Din's Reach also isn't horrible.

 

The whole reason I posted the gear was to show what you can have late game, and so people can actually know where the numbers are coming from so there isn't any confusion.  Also should be a little more helpful than the stats by themselves.

 

It highlights how you need all the best gear in the game, and a party to buff you, so you can hit stuff.

 

Even then you are a glass canon with terrible defense, terrible physical resistance.

 

I am not saying you can't play this way, just that these builds are vastly overrated.

 

It does not highlight that at all, IMO.  You are acting like Far Song is buffing Attack by 50 or something.  Some of this gear is available pretty early as well.  Harvest Festival Ring would have been better than Lifegiver for this character, but I forgot to equip it. HoH, Harvest Festival, Key to the City are +10 attack available after Lothering (stone prisoner is free, so everybody can have it).  Dueling is available in Lothering if you want to take it first.

 

Obviously the cunning build has less defense than dex build.  So what?  Nobody is asking the cunning archer to tank everything.  The point is to do damage, which it does better than dex archer.  Hence why pretty much everybody who has ever play tested them and written about them says the same thing.  If you want to off-tank, by all means go pure dex to ~150ish defense.

 

The attack difference is not going to be all that substantial early game where the cunning rogue has to invest in str and dex to meet bow / armor prerequisites anyway.  Where it diverges is more mid-late game where you can get whatever gear you want.  Attribute investment is also arguably more efficient since you aren't spending points for overly high attack and defense late game, you are spending it directly for damage, attack, crit chance, AP.

[Blazomancer]

Yeah, if being vastly overrated means being better at damage dealing using the bonuses provided by the teammates in a 'squad-based' game, then sure.

And they DON'T need the best gear in the game any more than a DEX archer do; only party buffs, gear is just bonus.

Cunning Rogues don't have TERRIBLE defense, neither they are glass cannons - it's more like decent defense and moderate armor rating. TERRIBLE DEFENSE and GLASS CANNON are terms one would associate with caster mages, which oftentimes is rather unfair. Moreover, defense and physical resistance for a DPS archer is moot; last time I checked, archers were supposed to be in the periphery of the battlefield not in the thick of things; if an archer is drawing aggro, the teammates are not doing there job, plain and simple.

Say what you will the fact remains that when it comes to raw damage output, the cunning archer is superior. Personal biases may lie, numbers don't. If that makes them overrated, then they are.

[Snowdog65]

No... a buff from Leliana would be a buff from a single party member.  You don't need the whole party to buff you.  Of course you can let the whole party buff you if you want though.

 

The best gear comment is unfounded.  Half of that gear is not in fact the best gear for that build, it happens to be gear that I had for a solo dex DW.

 

Far Song is not needed, it is just helpful.  Mage's Eye will do about the same damage with about the same crit chance, the main difference is lack of Rapid Aim and only +4 attack buff on Mage's Eye.  Sorrows of Arlathan is actually better than Far Song, but it is only for people with specific DLC.  Falon'Din's Reach also isn't horrible.

 

 

 

You are stacking the buffs from two bards, and using a bow with +10 attack, to "prove" that cunning rogues are good.

 

How good are they without stacks of buffs and superior weapons?

 

A dex rogue needs no buffs to hit.

 

I had Leliana built as a Cunning Archer, and she sucked because she just missed all the time. So I just left her in camp. 

 

Maybe if I had Farsong and had the whole party buff her, she could hit stuff, but as it was, she was useless.

[Elhanan]

For DAO, I like to take advantage of the Master Archer ability (no loss of RoF), and utilize heavy armor for my archers. Thus, my goals for a Rogue archer are STR 38+, CUN 22-30, WILL 20-30, and max almost the rest in DEX. I leave Mgc at base, and may place CON up a little.

In DAA, my Attribute goals are:

STR 48
DEX max the rest
CON 20
WILL 30
MGC base
CUN 30

If I were to play a Warrior Archer, then I could lower CUN to 16, and place those points into DEX. This may help bridge the difference in the loss of Skills and Ability loss of a Rogue design.

An advantage of heavy armor is being able to survive Grab, Overwhelm, and other special attack forms.

[Snowdog65]

An advantage of heavy armor is being able to survive Grab, Overwhelm, and other special attack forms.

 

How I despise Overwhelm.  Grab doesn't annoy me has much as its from 15 foot tall monstrous Ogre.

 

But packs of wolves/spiders having an auto-hit, no defense (except another party member knocking it off) attack just pisses me off.

[capn233]

You are stacking the buffs from two bards, and using a bow with +10 attack, to "prove" that cunning rogues are good.

 

How good are they without stacks of buffs and superior weapons?

 

A dex rogue needs no buffs to hit.

 

Used Far Song because it is the best vanilla game bow.  Why not post a comparison with gear if you don't like that bow?  Mage's Eye is 6 less attack.  It really doesn't matter a great deal because you have enough attack via whatever.  If you don't like Leliana buffing, should I include Wynne throwing out a Heroic Offense every once and a while?

 

You keep mentioning attack, but hit rate is practically the easiest thing in the game to increase via character buff, target debuff, gear.  There are progressively fewer buffs available for things like armor penetration and then straight damage.

 

Dex doesn't need any extra attack, sure that is true, which means fewer of available buffs will actually improve the damage at all.  Even without buffs, you end up with higher attack than necessary against low defense enemies (which is most of them).

 

Hit rate isn't the only determinant of DPS anyway.  A realistic comparison between Dex and Cunning archer would be that by mid-late game Cunning will relatively easily do 25-30% more damage per shot to targets with no armor, and then more like 40-50% more damage per shot to targets with high armor before even considering crit rate.  So how much worse does the hit rate actually have to be to do less DPS?