Archery still the best at things

In response to the general discontent about rapid fire being fixed I decided to put my bow back on last night and give it a shot.

I have full GM's in Blade and Bludge. I spent the last 4+ months on blades. I also have near full gm's in archery with GM's in the skills and the passives in the 80/90's.

So I slung up my bow for the first time in 4+ months and hit my usual farming spot that I have been doing for a year solid (Ulfaim)... hundreds and hundreds of runs as seen here:

Swords: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/200145522
Bludge: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/209875264

Dont give up your archery, it is still for me by far "easy mode" for PvE farming.

This is why

As an archer, you can just run around tab targeting stuff and just stand there and kill it, usually before they get to me. Any mob in the 500's goes down fast (Wolf, skels in Ulf). I can take out groups of 6 wolves just as fast if not faster then using ground pound (AOE). I can kill the 2400 hp cultists in the same amount of time with far greater focus efficiency. I could kill the bulk farming mobs without even needing to stop and wait for mana vs blades and bludge. With blades and bludge, you still have to chase the mobs all over the zone (even with body slam), with archery, just stand there in one spot every time.

So in short, archery has been fixed and it is really balanced well in my opinion and if you are thinking of switching to something else, it is still a bad move, keep it.

People need to stop trying to move around to the "uber skill of the week", by and large the class's are pretty balanced now.

 

to be fair what bow where you using and what mace or sword?

 

bow does more damage to one target. all other deal to more then one (mage is it's own thing) so yea it does more damage on one target. but your also fighting a lower tear then your able to fight so the bow looks great when blowing up things

 

fyi.. i'm not saying your wrong or right.. just want more info

 

I have been using bows since day 1 (yes, there are lot more vet archers here and happy with it) and I accepted the changes, why? basically because the change was a fix and because I'm still killing the same things like before.

If we talk about pvp, then yes, there are some balance work needs to be done with ranged skills but for pve is still good and works really well.

 

I think this post is about pve well I believe the words where pve farming ...

 

Thats why I started talking about my experience in pve and then more generally

The complaints from other players were about both, pvp and pve.

 

I have no feels for you arrow slingers. My 'bite' skill doesn't exist.

 

So you think that really matters? I roll around in store gear

 

I am glad you can kill multiple low HP greens fast with a bow. I still think the bow is in a good place too but your test should be killing high level mobs not low level ones. My only issue with the bow is that I have to change builds to efficiently AOE. Single target is still great IMO but swapping to a fire or death build to AOE is way more efficient. But that is my fault for picking a single target skill tree to main.

 

The change didnt really affect 99% of the population.... because you needed to get rapid fire to ~125+ to see the drastic change... and always 5 stack, so the problem wasnt farming crap pve mobs, the problem was how 5 stacking became useless. I can foresee a lot more 5 stacking nerfs in the future for skills over 125. The change really only affected 4-5 players.

 

For single target Maybe... but the Only aoe skill in archery is Woefully abysmal.. Blades is imo the best ( and i say this because i was an archer well into persistence until i started training blades heavily 2 months ago)

and you can always add a ranged arrow spell into your deck to pull attention from the other mobs and nuke them with whirling blades or sawblade sweep.

Archery i would say is for the people who are more cautious. i could be wrong about that but thats how it feels

i do agree though that things are more balanced than they have been in a long time

 

/facepalm

 

I just lose all my enthusiasm and joy on playing archer and this game.i have to up my skills to 130/140(and i have it!) for make things that other "classes" make with lvl 80/90 skill in same time.
Just good job!

 

social engineer?

 

A few things to note, melee have shared skills that dont work well or at all with ranged.

Pole arms can 1 shot kill alot more things than ranged can.

All melee are lighter to use than a bow.

I havent used bludgeon so i dunno about them but last i heard they can substantially reduce incoming dmg from a target.

Swords do alot of sustained damage and hit quickly, have the highest crit/hit chance on 1 handers (and weakest 2hander variation comparativly)

Polearm is current flavor of the month

 

I have the opposite experience. after running blades and bludge for the past 4+ months, Im sticking with archery since its so easy mode still. In my case, I have far higher skills in bludge then archery right now. I also have 1000 attun in earth and Im sticking with archery for a while.

Even better so...

Control points are coming back and its much easier to stand around on the plate (next to the healer) and <tab> twang mobs with my bow then having to run around half the zone trying to hit them with melee. Im taking all my archery passives up to GM now to be ready for them.

or.... hey... with control points coming back, maybe I can start using this 864 skill points I have in healing and start being a healer.

 

Clearly bow is fine and even fun farming crag foothills, deep ravenwood(300 health lichs being shot from high ground) and Ulfaim. BTW did I miss the bow video? I see mace and swords. The question I have is if its worth taking bow skills past 100. They don't seem to scale up and in fact when I parse (which I always do) I see 3 skills that even matter for damage(autoattack, aim, rapid fire). Maybe the rotation/combination just hasn't been found yet(by me).

Anybody care to share a video of how to farm elves in the Rise? My friends around level 90 claim to be doing that in blades and Air. Can it be done with ranged now? The room I can't imagine doing solo is the one where you drop down into a room with 10 or so elves. Is that one doable? Was it even doable pre-fix?

 

I haven't noticed any difference. It's still my go-to for soloing things. Then again, I wasn't even aware of the rapid fire stacking. I guess I missed out on that exploit.