Strength Archer - specializations

Was having a /u chat the other day with various people about strength archer and specializations. I was spec'd ranged and life and was really liking it. Tactics was brought up as vital and ranged as not that important. I made that switch and it seems to bear out, certainly feel like I am doing more damage.

I also got a lot of feedback about using earth as the second specialization (to enhance strength further, plus a few other useful things in the tree depending). I did that to 80 and I'm really not seeing much difference, other than my healing isn't quite as hot. My Strength of Earth is only giving 31.7 strength, which seems out of line with what people were saying I should expect. It's only 5 str higher than I was getting from SoE without the earth spec. My combat STR is now 208 instead of 203 (218 with a potion of might). That 5 str seems to be doing nothing.

Any useful feedback from anyone, either about strength archer specializations in general or about earth spec as my second and why I don't seem to be getting much strength boost from it? My Train Strength is at 108.

P.S. Honestly the more I sacrificed Dex for Strength, the more misses I was getting which was clearly not advantageous. Have found that keeping my Dex at least at 140 seems to mitigate that pretty well. My strength fighting is 208. Adv Level is 113 (with no gear or buffs). Someone in the chat said they are walking around at STR 240 and DEX 240, I don't know how. Maybe they are Adv Level 140 or something? My Train Dex is also 108.