Beverly Helfbilly Ranged Contender

[wax_on_wax_off]

Point 1:
Improved crit is nice. But you are way overstating its importance. It is naive to claim that it adds 10% to your DPS. High end bosses have heavy fort and are highly resistant to criticals, so you statement is just incorrect there. In easy content, you might see an 8 or 9% increase (max for a typical bow) but then its easy content and not as big of a deal. Not to mention a keen weapon effect (like one that appears on a MinII bow) would achieve the same result.

There is no keen bow that is viable DPS in end game that an archer would ever want to use. LitII, Alchemical Earth/Air, Epic Bow of Earth or Epic Thornlord are your choices.In particular, the Epic Thornlord will get significantly greater effect from Improved Critical and probably remains the highest DPS bow in the game. In addition, at cap you will be focusing more on the CC aspects that IPS brings to the table and Improved Critical has very nice synergy with shimmering arrowhead to apply the crippling effect.

Boss fortification in challenging content is now lower than what it was before. For epic lob, for instance, once the following effects are applied fortification will be 0: weaken construct (blasting chime), destruction, improved destruction (once they are fixed to stack in U13), improved sunder (even my rogue can do this in epic) and a double stack of FvS aura.

Even against 100% fort foes IC:R still adds DPS in the form of bursts (bursting and blasting on LitII for instance).

Point 2:
All other 10k star users don't also have manyshot and dont also have good blade barriers and dont also have divine punishment (not to mention spell self healing). The nice bonus that one achieves for improved crit pales in comparison to any one of these effects. Blade barriers, many shot, 10k star and divine punishment reliance wont just make this build competitive with other 10k star users with improved crit, these effects will completely blow them out of the water in damage.

All 10k star archer builds have manyshot as well. The only builds that might have 10k stars and not have manyshot are melee builds who take 10k stars for a little ranged DPS on the side. 10k star archer builds have other perks to balance out the DPS like kensei specialisation, ranger favoured enemies/rams might or earth stance III enhanced critical modifier. Not having any of these and not being able to fill a healer spot means that you will have to try very hard to compete with these builds and missing Improved Critical: Ranged is going to be a big dampener on your attempts to do so.

On 1 hand a 13 cleric / 6 monk / 1 wizard build can plausibly fill a healer spot in easy epics or as a backup healer with 3 mass cures and 2 feats to back it up. For this cleric build you can get away with gimping your DPS a little as you can bring something besides ranged DPS to the table.

On the other, a FvS build only has ranged DPS and self healing - basically something that any 10k stars build can provide. You need to optimise your ranged DPS and improved critical is a big part of that.

This without even considering the massive amount of extra damage that can be achieved against a foe who has their high fort reduced by a FVS. We are talking up to 50% or more.

This makes the argument for IC:R all the stronger (and kind of screws up your previous point).

I didnt say clerics didnt have good bonuses to offensive spells. I said they didnt give as high of a bonus as FVS. First off, you overstate (again) the effect of the CL2 bonus. This results in a +2 bonus, bringing base damage of divine punishment from 16.5 to 18.5 (an increase closer to 12%). A favored soul with AOVII PRE will get a 30% bonus to his blade barrier. +4 divine might is good for a cleric. FVS wont get the specialization you claim at level 13, but they do get a silver flame bonus of +2, and couple this to +5 action boost to damage and in my mind this beats out the cleric divine might.

Sorry for the miscommunication, I use the terms weapon proficiency/focus/specialisation as I can't be bothered to remember the intimate details of the relationship a FvS has with it's diety.

Blade Barrier is not going to see as much use end game as what you seem to think it will. Anytime that another caster w/BB is around you'll have to put your blade barriers away as in all likelyhood theirs are stronger and they don't stack. Additionally, the actual DPS of the blade barriers is kind of marginal compared to melee DPS so you have to make sure that your kiting isn't preventing melee characters in the party from connecting (or you'll be reducing party DPS).

Blade barriers are used end game plenty, against the hound, Demon queen, shroud boss killing, Reaver, any epic with masses of mobs, or places where kiting is necessary just to name a few instances. This build will have a high enough DC to effect even mobs with evasion.

The DC will be ~3 lower than a similar caster. Unless you have 2-3 sorcerer past lives? If you don't have empower along with maximise and CL:15 (achieved with an epic abishai set) then your blade barriers will be quite mediocre and definitely trumped by a wisdom based cleric or favoured soul or an artificer.

Another point is that cleric can access Cleric Wisdom III for another possible point of DC/more 10k stars love (depending on gear). Not sure if this is possible with enhancements though.

Now one important thing you did not mention was that a cleric could regenerate his clickies with his PRE. This is very nice, and if it was not for the fact that the FVS heavily dominates the cleric in offensive buffs I would probably reconsider.

I assumed you'd done your research.

I don't see any heavy domination in areas that actually matter.