Questions about Ranger / Archer

[Kibon]

I want to create an archer and have some questions:

Does Improved Critical: Pierce work with bows? It does piercing damage (at least the arrows do)

Does Power Attack apply to bows?

Why taking the class Ranger and not Fighter when playing pure archer without melee?
Only plus for Ranger is the healing.
The prestige class Arcane Archer is possible with race Half-Elf or Elf too.
The capstone of Fighter gives 10% alacrity vs 12% of ranger (25% is stated but not correct)
Fighter gets a lot more feats to increase damage/hit.

Does any feat even matter after have the epic destiny Shiradi? Because the base damage is so low in comparsion to the procs of the destiny only speed matters then.

Thanks in advance!

[TheLegendOfAra]

I want to create an archer and have some questions:

Does Improved Critical: Pierce work with bows? It does piercing damage (at least the arrows do)

Does Power Attack apply to bows?

Why taking the class Ranger and not Fighter when playing pure archer without melee?
Only plus for Ranger is the healing.
The prestige class Arcane Archer is possible with race Half-Elf or Elf too.
The capstone of Fighter gives 10% alacrity vs 12% of ranger (25% is stated but not correct)
Fighter gets a lot more feats to increase damage/hit.

Does any feat even matter after have the epic destiny Shiradi? Because the base damage is so low in comparsion to the procs of the destiny only speed matters then.

Thanks in advance!

Improved Critical: Piercing does not work with bows. However Improved Critical: Ranged does.
Power Attack does not apply to bows. Precision does. Get it, use it, love it.

If you're making an AA and planning on not meleeing, you really should look into a monkcher build. You're just wasting your time buildind an AA that doesn't melee. Can it be done? Yes. Is it a good idea? No.

The biggest advantages Rangers have are very potent self heals(if you build for them) and the inherently free feats for both ranged and melee.
You get the entire TWF line for free on a ranger without having to worry about stat distribution.

Fighters do get a lot of feats, but you're going to spending most of those on things the ranger gets for free. So this isn't really a +.

All feats matter, since you won't want to be in Shiradi Champion on an AA. The DPS just is not there for a bow user atm sadly. Level it, Twist Pin, Otto's Whistler, and make your main destiny Fury of the Wild. While this will boost your Ranged DPS by a metric ton, it will also really boost your melee damage which as a pure ranger/fighter AA you will be relying heavily on.

[Kibon]

Thanks for the fast answer!

Can Precision and Improved Precise Shot be active at the same time?

Why Fury of the Wild? Shiradi has a lot of procs with ranged weapons. What does Fury of the Wild have to compensate that? Except the Haste Action Boost which can be taken with Twist of Fate.

I read a lot that you HAVE to melee as a ranger but why? I never saw a Artificer in melee fights. Are bows so bad against repeating heavy xbows?

[Soulfurnace]

Thanks for the fast answer!

Can Precision and Improved Precise Shot be active at the same time?

Why Fury of the Wild? Shiradi has a lot of procs with ranged weapons. What does Fury of the Wild have to compensate that? Except the Haste Action Boost which can be taken with Twist of Fate.

I read a lot that you HAVE to melee as a ranger but why? I never saw a Artificer in melee fights. Are bows so bad against repeating heavy xbows?

Yes. Bows are complete and utter ... let's just say they're bad without manyshot.

Speaking as a shiradi sorc (both when I had no gear and now), the procs require lots of spellpower. I have that through enhancement lines and gear. I couldn't even imagine about getting spellpower gear (besides potency, perhaps) on an archer. Also, Shiradi works off attack/second, which a ranger seriously lacks, aside from manyshot/10k stars. Having done a little testing, using only one attack (such as.. one arrow) it is terrible compared to FoTW. Sorry, but it is.

FoTW is amazing. Adrenaline/overload and unbridled fury are insane damage, esp with manyshot. The only useful things I see from Shiradi (in relation to a ranger) would be otto's whistler and pin. Both are great CC, esp with IPS.

You can use either, but FoTW is much stronger 99% of the time imo.

[Teh_Troll]

Thanks for the fast answer!

Can Precision and Improved Precise Shot be active at the same time?

Why Fury of the Wild? Shiradi has a lot of procs with ranged weapons. What does Fury of the Wild have to compensate that? Except the Haste Action Boost which can be taken with Twist of Fate.

I read a lot that you HAVE to melee as a ranger but why? I never saw a Artificer in melee fights. Are bows so bad against repeating heavy xbows?

You SHOULD melee on a ranger, even an AA. There's no reason not to as you get all the TWFing feats for free.

You can use your bows a lot, but situationally they are not a good choice so why pigeon-hole yourself? it is foolish not to use everything available that makes you strong. When manyshot is on timer and you're not in a situation to nail multiple targets with IPS melee is a better option.

Fury is just better for bows most of the time, adds a ton of damage. The shiradi procs quite frankly aren't strong at all with bows. You just don't get enough shots for the random part of it to all work out in your favor.

[96th_Malice]

You SHOULD melee on a ranger, even an AA. There's no reason not to as you get all the TWFing feats for free.

You can use your bows a lot, but situationally they are not a good choice so why pigeon-hole yourself? it is foolish not to use everything available that makes you strong. When manyshot is on timer and you're not in a situation to nail multiple targets with IPS melee is a better option.

Fury is just better for bows most of the time, adds a ton of damage. The shiradi procs quite frankly aren't strong at all with bows. You just don't get enough shots for the random part of it to all work out in your favor.

The only time I don't use my bow across 20 archer builds is when I am healing .... Hehe.

But you are correct that with all the feats you get for free as a ranger .... Melee-ing is a viable back up option.

About 1/4 of my toons have the 2 lvls of monk and I used to hate the monks combat style but once you figure it out its quite fun.

A couple toons that I don't put the bow down on are my old school bowbarian and my latest capped toon. 1 ranger . 1 Druid . 18 fighter. Which works out as a kensai 3 arcane archer. Tons of fun

[TheLegendOfAra]

Thanks for the fast answer!

Can Precision and Improved Precise Shot be active at the same time?

Why Fury of the Wild? Shiradi has a lot of procs with ranged weapons. What does Fury of the Wild have to compensate that? Except the Haste Action Boost which can be taken with Twist of Fate.

I read a lot that you HAVE to melee as a ranger but why? I never saw a Artificer in melee fights. Are bows so bad against repeating heavy xbows?

Np.
To answer your questions:
Yes, Precision will work perfectly well with Improved Precise Shot.

You will want Fury Of the Wild because it just has a very high PDS rate, in fact using FOTW you will have some of the highest burst DPS in the game. Here's an example:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ICniyKtofE ** See not below!

Shiradi, while it looks nice, and is very interesting, lack a lot in the DPS department on an AA, because it's based on random proc rates, and all your proc'd damage is dependant on Spell Power, which outside of Devotion is pretty hard to slot on a DPS AA without gimping your gear set up.
On top of this, All of shiradi's random procs greatly benefit from your rate of attack. This is what makes Shiradi casters so effective is that they can spam low level spells that have a ton of "hits" at a low SP cost. As a bow user, and as a Ranger AA your rate of fire is already behind melee by a lot, so Shiradi while situationally fun, is not optimal.

Aslo, Haste Boost comes from Legendary Dreadnaught, Not Fury of the Wild. :)

This is wrong, You don't have to melee on a ranger. You're perfectly fine using a bow 100% of the time. But this is suboptimal from a DPS perspective, and there are better build out there suited to doing this. As a Ranger you are given both all ranged feats, and all twf melee feats for free. A ranger is meant to use both freely and interchangeably; You are a master of both. You certainly don't have to, but it's not advisable, and it will probably leave you feeling very gimp, and lacking in terms of DPS and your contributions to the party.

As for any Longbow/Xbow comparisons, Xbows at low level just destroy. From levels 1-12 they are undoubtedly better. There can be no argument about this fact. However at around levels 12+ Xbows start to lack in DPS and Rate of Fire, and this is where Longbows pull ahead. While Xbows are very front loaded, ruling in DPS from low to mid levels, a good bow in the hands of a skilled player will out DPS, and out perform an Xbow user from mid to end game levels. Both are viable options of course if you build for them, but Xbows on a ranger are Meh at best. Trust me on this, I've done it twice already.

Hope this helps you.

~Ara

**EDIT: The build in this video is called the Sithali and is here on the forums. While this build is a monkcher build making use of 10K stars as well as manyshot, and over all it will out DPS a pure ranger or a ranger based build 99% of the time, this is mainly do to the 10K stars varient of AA builds, where they get a much higher Rate of Fire, and much longer use of multiple arrows being fired; your base number will not be far off if built right. So you can expect DPS like this is Fury of the Wild, but it will not be as sustainable as a 10K stars build is, since you only have 20 seconds of manyshot every 2 minutes.

[ZeebaNeighba]

The capstone of Fighter gives 10% alacrity vs 12% of ranger (25% is stated but not correct)
Fighter gets a lot more feats to increase damage/hit.Just a tip, all ranged alacrity is bugged. So the ranger capstone only gives (roughly) half of what it says, but so does the fighter capstone, and so do items that boost alacrity. Haste is also bugged, however the bug is compensated for because haste is coded to give 22% ranged alacrity (which, after the bug, is closer to the 15% on the description).

[barecm]

shiradi is great for cc. Most of the shiradi cc puts mobs into a helpless state therefore gaining 50% damage. You have dancing arrow, pin and nerve toxin which all work well. Shiradi is great for running solo or with friends on EE where you need to incapacitate enemies and kill them without taking any damage. You can render casters and archers useless with pin, dance the melee mobs and nerve toxin procs enough to be very useful. It is like having a cc caster without worrying about saves and long cooldowns. It does take some practice to master as pin only works for stationary targets while ottos works only on moving targets.FoTW is great for raids in particular (it is good all times) as you can lay down a ton of damage in a short period of time. The downside is the cooldown and the need to hit natural 20s for a chance to gain back an adrenal. A hybrid damage and cc is running legendary dred twisting in sense weakness, pin and coccoon. You dont need adreneline to do good damage (not as high as FoTW) but still respectible. You get the +30% damage clickie, stacking seeker 6, devestating crit and advancing blows that all add to damage. Instead of burst damage of 3K + for a short time, you constantly are doing 1000-1500 per crit with the pinion. No need to worry about building up unbridled fury or maintaining your adrenalines. Don't get me wrong, I love FoTW and usually run that when I am raiding or running something where a lot of burst dps is required, but there are other viable options. The good thing is that you have these options and not just one way of doing things.