Arcane Archer damage estimation

[Therigar]

I made a serious miscalculation that affects the results in my original post (found below). In evaluating other weapon suggestions I discovered that I had forgotten to include STR damage on normal hits for all weapons. This changes the results, which now look like this:

Pinion: Shooting only with Manyshot & 10K -- 44674.
Pinion: Manyshot & 10K, GTWF when both on timer -- 43190.
Pinion: Manyshot only, GTWF when on timer -- 36815.
Celestia: GTWF w Tempest PrE -- 36224.

The original post continues below.

In a previous thread I posted somewhat disparagingly about the Arcane Archer prestige class. After considerable debate I determined to work through some numbers to discover whether my point of view was correct or not.

The results of my numbers were revealing to me.

To analyze the effectiveness of the AA PrE I first looked at how to get the maximum damage from ranged combat. This is adequately covered in many posts and involves combining Manyshot with Ten Thousand Stars.

Manyshot has a 120s cool down and 10K has a 60s cool down. This effectively allows the use of 1 Manyshot and 2 10K with 40s/120s of normal rates of fire. At a standard of 100 shooting animations/60s this produces 402 attacks/120s.

I compared this to the rate of GTWF at 133 animations/60s or 266 attacks/120s.

Using the guide of 19 hits/20 attacks this produced 382 hits/120s for the AA and 253 hits/120s for the TWF.

From this information I calculated the number of critical hits assuming Improved Critical for the weapons I compared. This allowed me to calculate the damage of all attacks combined over the 120s interval.

The weapons I compared were Pinion, Cloud Piercer and duel-wielded Celestia, Brightest Star of Day.

Assuming NO damage resistance these are the results:

Pinion: Manyshot & 10K, GTWF when both on timer -- 38901.
Pinion: Shooting only with Manyshot & 10K -- 38661.
Pinion: Manyshot only, GTWF when on timer -- 30986.
Celestia: GTWF w Tempest PrE -- 30206.

So, I was wrong. A fully outfitted and equipped Arcane Archer will produce more damage over 120s than a Ranger with the Tempest PrE that melees the opponent.

But, this comes with an important caveat. It is only true if the opponent has no DR.

This is problematic for the AA because most raid bosses do have significant DR and Pinion has difficulty breaking DR.

In the estimation of damage I slotted 1d10 fire damage in the red augment slot on Pinion. That could instead be slotted with some metal or alignment bypass. That is still a problem as far as I can tell.

I'd be interested to hear from others on how they bypass DR as I don't see an easy way.

Celestia, on the other hand, bypasses all DR except for mobs with light immunities. As far as I know, that is no quest or raid end boss.

At DR 25 things look like this:

Pinion: Manyshot & 10K, GTWF when both on timer -- 30403.
Celestia: GTWF w Tempest PrE -- 30206.
Pinion: Manyshot only, GTWF when on timer -- 26435.
Pinion: Shooting only with Manyshot & 10K -- 25123.

Things also change significantly if Slayer arrows are not used. Without Slayer arrows the results (assuming no DR) look like this:

Pinion: Manyshot & 10K, GTWF when both on timer -- 30270.
Celestia: GTWF w Tempest PrE -- 30206.
Pinion: Shooting only with Manyshot & 10K -- 28611.
Pinion: Manyshot only, GTWF when on timer -- 27618.

At this point it is important to look at time lost in recognizing and switching to the proper attack form during the 120s span. When combining Manyshot with 10K and GTWF the player has to activate 3 shooting stances and also make 3 weapon set changes.

The numbers given are total damage per 120s. Divide by 120 and it gives damage per second (DPS). DPS for Pinion with Manyshot & 10K using GTWF when those are on timer is 252.25. DPS for Celestia is 251.71.

If the player uses even 1 second for all the switches among attacks and weapon sets that are needed then Tempest Ranger jumps ahead. And, even under ideal circumstances the two are so close that they are effectively the same DPS.

All in all, it was very revealing information for me. I thought it interesting enough that it deserved a thread of its own.