"Strimtom's Acid Arrow", Maximum Bow DPS, F2P/new player Friendly

[Strimtom]

Disclaimer: This is mostly a leveling build. It does work well at level 30, but it isn't refined for level 30. I TR constantly and haven't been able to fully play test at 30.
Current for U49

Introduction

Hello, my name is Strimtom and I am here to share my award winning build for the ranger class. The idea was to build a ranger using the newly revamped Arcane Archer enhancement tree. What I found was a build that was new player/F2P friendly and the highest damage I could possibly find. If you are looking for a guide that maxes INT and uses acid arrows for 100% of the damage, check HERE.
Lets start with the pros and cons:
Pros

• Playable at full damage capacity on a first life/28 point build.
• Requires only one item (Silver Longbow) for maximum damage, and that item comes from a free to play quest.
• Is ranged, so it takes almost no damage.
• It's so easy to play it makes warlock look like a challenging class.
• Playable with one hand.
• It will give you increased sex appeal.
• Life will turn from a bleak tunnel into a bright and sunny future.

Cons

• Has trouble raising allies from the dead.
• You'll level so fast you won't know what to do with your time.
• Other players will have less fun since all other monsters will be dead.
• This build can't make Elminster talk faster.

There is a joke that to play warlock effectively all you have to do is hold down W and the right mouse button and you'll go from 1 to 20 in no time. However, when making this character, I found that using both hands to play the game was too taxing on my body. Thanks to the auto attack command this character and be played with just one hand, using W to move and Tab to target, allowing you to use your other hand to eat a sandwich, read Nietzsche, or practice caligraphy.

The Meat

Let's start with where all the damage comes from. Bows don't have too fast of an attack speed when compared to melee, and getting ranged power can be quite tough. Fortunately, Turbine beefed up the arcane archer tree and made the elemental damage options much higher than normal. Additionally, bows use Dex to Damage which allows you to stack only one stat, making it a very easy character to build.

Starting Race
This doesn't matter. All races are good for this build. Elf/Halfling/drow give +2 dex, human gets a feat, and warforged are cool as ****, dwarves get more life, half orcs and half elves get nothing. This build doesn't take any points in the racial tree, so play whatever you want. My character was an elf but if I was to do it again I would be a dwarf for the extra life and to be a stumpy dude with a bow. Or a warforged because warforged are cool.

Starting Stats
Strength - This only affects carrying capacity. I like having 16 by end game, so starting with an 8, +2 from ship buff, and a +6 or better item is plenty. Strength has no other purpose.
Dexterity - To hit, Damage, Armorclass, reflex saves, balance checks. Max this and put all your level ups into it.
Constitution - Gives you more life. The more life the better, so get this as high as possible.
Intelligence - This stat gives you skill points that you don't need, and slightly boosts spellpower. Not worth putting any points into unless you focus 100% on spellpower, which this build does not do.
Wisdom - So I thought you would need lots of this, but there is almost no way to spend spellpoints and the DC abilities like paralyzing arrows don't let you use acid damage at the same time soooo.... as long as you can get 14 to cast all your spells, you can probably dump this stat too. Will save is kinda nice tho.
Charisma - Embrace ugliness and bad manners. Dump this stat.
Ideal stats are as follows:

Be aware, that having 36 points doesn't give you any more damage than 28 points, just some life and some free strength for carrying capacity.
Skills
Since you are likely a dumb rock, you only get 5 skill points to play with. More than enough. Priority is as follows.

1. Spellcraft - DAMAGE AH HA HA HA HA HA HA
2. Spot - Useful to see monsters and traps if you aren't like me and have every trap and monster location in the game memorized.
3. Heal - Gives positive spellpower for self healing. Easily able to get 300 spellpower by level 20.
4. Balance - Wolves trip you, and that is bad. Use this to get up.
5. Use Magic Device - Being able to cast raise dead scrolls at level 30 is awesome.
6. Swim - No cap on this skill, so maxing this and using merfolks blessing gives hilarious speeds that are faster than walking.

If you have extra points, you can put some into jump, but jump has a hard cap of 40, and you will start self casting jump at level 6 making putting points kind of unnecessary.

Feats
These are the feats I took as an Elf. I will label the unimportant/subjective ones and give suggestions.
Level 1 - Point Blank Shot (Really good early game)
Level 3 - Precision (Really good always, definitely take this)
Level 6 - Dodge (Meh).
Level 9 - Improved Critical: Ranged (Best damage feat in the game)
Level 12 - Mobility (Meh) Could take quicken for consistent healing.
Level 15 - Shot on the Run (No -4 while moving is kinda good, and 4 ranged power is cool. Worth 3 feats? IDK)
Level 18 - Weapon focus: Ranged (+1 to hit and 2 ranged power, pretty nice IMO)
Level 21 - Overwhelming Critical
Level 24 - Combat Archery
Level 26 - Holy Strike
Level 27 - Blinding Speed
Level 28 - Doubleshot
Level 29 - Fount of Life or Toughness or Harbinger of Chaos/Embodiment of Law
Level 30 - Scion of the plane of Earth, Epic Reflexes


Favoured Enemy
These are the ones I think are the best, and in the best order:
Level 1 - Undead
Level 5 - Elemental
Level 10 - Construct
Level 15 - Evil Outsider
Level 20 - Plant or Human
I feel like this is best, since undead are always prevalent and suck to fight as ranged, giants are also everywhere, and evil outsides/constructs/Plants/Humans sums up the hardest monsters/raid bosses.

Enhancements
This is where ALL the damage comes from. Just two trees, Arcane Archer and Deepwood Stalker. There are two variations that I will present before you now.

First, Classic Arcane archer for max DPS.
41 Points

The super important enhancements in this tree are as follows:
All Core Enhancements - Negating all damage reduction, and 20% doubleshot
Acid Arrows and Elemental damage - Most of your damage comes from here. Scales off Spellpower and Elemental Damage dice
Conjure Arrows - Carrying arrows is annoying
Force Arrows - Allows you to hit ghosts/do full damage to demons/devils. Scales off Spellpower and Elemental Damage dice
Soul Magic - Grants spellpoints when you shoot people, which is every second shot once you get enough doubleshot. This gives you infinite healing

39 Points
The super important enhancements in this tree are as follows:
All Core Enhancements except Horizon Shot - 20 ranged power is not as good as 20% doubleshot since this build scales from multiple sources
Survivalist I, II, and III - Life and physical resistance. Pure fictional awesomeness
Action Boost Damage - Gives you a nice buff to combo with manyshot
Favoured Hunter - +3 to hit and damage against all favoured enemies is super useful
Aimed Shot - Lets you keep up archers focus stacks while running around.
Killer - Since you are always top damage, you will get all the kills. This gives you more double shot when you get kills, making you do more damage and get more kills. Best passive ever
Extra Favoured Enemy - Pick whatever you want here, I chose human. What matters is +8 damage against all favoured enemies. That's insane
Heavy Draw - Really good. Really strong, +5 base damage is awesome. -5 to hit kind of sucks. Might not be good at level 30, but until then you should have so much extra to hit that it doesn't matter
Strikes Like Lightning - 20% Doubleshot. Enough Said
Improved Archers Focus - Improved Precise shot doesn't stack archers focus, but it does let you have +5 ranged power. Pretty good

There is also the variable option which isn't as high as DPS (maybe 5% less) but gives you 12 extra points to play with, so you can spend them in racial trees for cool racial abilities or in your universal enhancement trees, if you have any




With these trees, the path is simple.

1. Go into AA and start taking Acid damage
2. Get acid damage to the 4th tier and take soul magic
3. Spend points in Deepwood stalker until complete
4. Spend rest of points in AA for capstone

If you follow this build, damage and good bones will come to you.

Items
There is really only 1 required item and it's the Silver Longbow. The reason this bow is so good is 4-fold. First, it has a base damage of 1-10 instead of 1-8 like a standard longbow, giving it a higher top end. Second, it has a way better critical profile with a base 18-20 (15%) crit rate that stacks with improved crit. Third, it's holy allowing it to deal good (the damage type) damage and bypassing almost any damage reduction with metaline arrows active. Finally, it has an augment slot so that you can keep it updated with the best acid spellpower augment and keep ontop of your acid damage. Eventually, you will construct a hilarious tooltip like this.

The Gameplay

The first thing about this character is to make sure you have auto attack on your bar, and that you leave it on. Using RMB to auto attack will cause arrows to mysteriously disappear, so make sure to let the game fire for you. It isn't as fun as running down a hallway all gung ho and gunning people down, but it aint about fun. It's about killing monsters with super charged acid arrows.

Time to focus on the level by level information.
Level 1
Start out by buying the barbarian hireling Byron Swordscout. He will solo all quests that are level 1 and 2 for you on elite. Just summon him and put him on agressive. Then smash boxes with a melee weapon. Ranged weapons are useless at this level. Make sure to get your character into a guild and go buy cure serious potions from the guild vendor in the House K square.

Level 2
Oh boy, rapid shot! Now that you have rapid shot and soon to have improved weapon finesse, strap on a regular longbow and go to town. The damage isn't amazing, but Byron will still slay things for you for the most part. Your bow damage will start to be able to effectively kill enemies that start to attack you instead of your hireling making you a little more survivable.

Level 3
Buy the level 3 barbarian hireling Frenzy who will continue to solo all of the quests in the game for you. Take precision here and activate it for those sweet critical hits on undead targets. Just stay at ranged, always summon Frenzy, and drink those pots. Easy Elites.

Level 4
Level 4 is fun. You get morphic arrows to give full damage to undead, and more acid damage! You also get Ram's Might, a first level spell, to give you an extra +2 damage. Make sure to add the spell to your book and keep it up at all times.

Level 5
Take Elemental as your next favoured enemy here. Your damage is going to start increasing pretty fast at this point, so you may want to consider using a level 5 cleric hireling instead of Frenzy.

Level 6
Oh baby, the motherload. You get Manyshot, your bread and butter. Manyshot gives you a new attack that does a very high amount of burst damage that can be used all the time. You should use many shot every time you see a slightly dangerous monster, like a magic user, ogre, champion, or reaper! The feat you take here doesn't matter, but if you are warforged make sure to take mithril plating. You should be using a level 6 Cleric hireling. I generally prefer favored soul hirelings, but Storm doesn't heal very much and prefers to melee. You get a second first level spell here, and I recommend Jump as the best contender for the spot. If you are good at using the mouse to turn you can jump over enemies while still shooting at them. You should also have metalline arrows at this point. Remember to swap between morphic and metalline arrows based on whether it is an undead/rakshasa or a construct/outsider.

Level 7
More acid damage, more happiness. Same gamestyle, just run and shoot and stay at range.

Level 8
Silver Longbow time! This weapon will dramatically improve your damage. This is when your physical damage will start to catch up to your acid damage, since critical hits will be more frequent and really start to augment your damage. You are getting a 200% increase in crit chance as you are moving from a meager 5% (20) to a 15% (18-20). This is the main reason the physical damage starts to catch up, so always make sure you are using the right type of damage type. You also get a level 2 spell, and I recommend Bark Skin for a better armorclass. If you are always updating your armor you can get pretty good numbers and stay pretty tanky.

Level 9
Evasion at this level will help you avoid all those silly traps and fireballs. Feel invincible, dodging all attacks and constantly raining down a hail of acid arrows. Did I mention that you get improved crit at level 9? Your crit chance is going to go from 15% (18-20) to 20% (17-20). This is a big damage spike, however at this point you are going to notice your AOE (Area of effect) is lacking and that those pesky barbarians will clear rooms faster than you. Just wait and keep pinging away at enemies.

Level 10
Take Construct as your favoured enemy here. If you happen to have some spare dragoncraft relics from gianthold, I recommend picking up a dragoncraft leather armor set (or docent). It won't give you damage like some other body armors, but you likely won't have a protection or shield bonus to armor class and this gives a total of 8 extra armor. It also gives 75% fortification, making you almost impossible to be critically hit. At this point, you should have 30 points in the arcane archer tree and can start working on pumping up the Deepwood Stalker tree for some extra life and PRR. Again, your AOE is lacking, but just give it one more level.

Level 11
Improved precise shot. Oh. Baby. This ability should be placed on your bar and turned on. It makes your arrows pierce targets, hitting everything in the way. This ability is so broken it is really why this character works so well. When you enter a hallway, just click the target at the back and let the auto attacks tear the whole room apart. This is where being a more skilled player will reap you more rewards. The better you are at positioning monsters in between you and your target, the more damage you will deal and the more your teammates will be jealous of your amazing character build. This is the most complicated part of the character, but if you can master it you will feel like an unstoppable god. Manyshot works really well with improved precise shot as the three arrows will take care of nrearly everything infront of you. Also you get level 3 spells so take Cure Moderate Wounds. You get a lot of positive spellpower from the heal skill and the Deepwood stalker tree so keeping yourself alive will become much easier than using potions. Cure Moderate Wounds only costs 8 spellpoints and thanks to soulmagic you will almost always have spellpoints to cast a cure. It also lets you heal allies which you should do whenever possible. Topping people up and saving desperate melee are what makes you a great team player.

You should also have Sniper Shot from DWS core abilities at this point. Sniper shot has a huge crit chance, does extra big crit damage, and makes enemies turn around. It has no cost and a 6 second cooldown so use it whenever it comes back up. When enemies are running at you try to fire it in a line and make them all stop for a moment.

Level 14
You get level 4 spells at this level. Take Freedom of movement and make sure to keep it on 100% of the time. Also cast it on all your team mates during annoying quests like Spinners Prison and What Goes Up because being stuck in web sucks monkey butts.

I don't really have any more to tell since the build just takes practice at this point. I do have some pro tips however.

• Practice using improved precise shot to shoot through people. Don't get lazy, just do it until it becomes natural. You will be very happy you did.
• Consider quicken spell, as once you get a second 4th level spell you will be able to use cure serious to heal yourself for over 100 life per cast.
• Always focus champs first, and prioritize using sniper shot on champion monsters.
• Merciful shot is bugged and works like 30% of the time. So if you use it and it doesn't work don't worry, it isn't just you. When it works it feels great but it generally will only go off on red named end bosses, and even then it sometimes just chooses not to work.

Congratulations on level to level 20. How does this build fare in epics? Good, it will easily carry you up to level cap. This is an introductory build however, and you should keep looking for good builds once you have mastered the basics.

Maximizing Damage/effectiveness

• Keep acid spellpower at maximum. Use cannith crafting to make a ring or slot an augment in your silver longbow. Get an item to boost your spellcraft and keep it pumped up. Spellcraft items (suffix: Spellsight) are hard to come by and are mostly only lootgen. Get lucky or fork over some dough on the AH.
• Get this quiver from Grimm and Barrett.
• Use VoM and Mantle of the Worldshaper for true seeing and swap to force arrows when fighting incoporeal creatures to make sure you hit 100% of attacks.
• Always use a damage and accuracy item.
• Whenever you see a caster type enemy cast any type of buff make sure you shut it down with a dispelling arrow. Taking the displacement off a skeletal enchanter in Madstone Crater will make you look like a God to the melee in your party. (Although TBH it should be dead before they get to it you if know what im saying pew pew pew)

The following is a chart showing the rough scaling of acid damage in this build (With all enhancements taken)

I'm not entirely sure how the math works, but at 200 Spellpower I have never seen under 40 damage, so I feel like there is some rounding going on. Either way getting 200 spellpower really only requires one augment gem at level 20 and adding the chance for a 126 top end hit on every auto attack is unreal in how strong it is. The acid damage makes it so that even if you don't crit you are still applying a very large amount of damage on every strike that helps with consistency.

EPICS

Getting a Thunderforged bow with Acid spellpower is an insane damage boost. Do that ASAP. You can start epic hard right away with no destinies, it's extremely strong. You do good damage for epic elite, but everything will squash you like a bug in one hit. Avoid epic elite unless you can be carried. As for Epic Destinies...

• Tier 1 - Fury of the Wild - Extreme burst makes this very good for EE with access to Expose Weakness + Pin. Very good for level 30. Easy to cause helplessness, stacking Fury with Sniper shot is OP. Ideally you want to stack unbridled fury and manyshot whenever possible, always waiting on using unbridled fury if you do not have many shot off cooldown.
• Tier 2 - Shiradi Champion - Required to level for access to Pin and Otto's Whistler. Very strong bonuses to physical damage and gives a more fluid and smooth playstyle over all. Much stronger for non-burst scenarios than fury of the wild, and personally my preferred method of dealing with monsters.
• Meme Tier - Draconic Incarnation - Most fun. Energy Burst, Breath, and Vortex do crazy damage. When doing epic hard or lower monsters will still fail saves even though you don't have a very high int/cha, and the damage is insane. Makes AOE packs much easier to clear. Flyby attack is fantastic for moving over open pits. Makes the class more dynamic. A lot of fun and gives you some punch when manyshot is down. Be aware, draconic incarnation is completely useless at level 30 with this build when trying to do quests on anything above Epic hard. Don't use this in reaper feywild please!

For feats, Combat Archery, Epic Reflexes, and Scion of the Plane of Earth are really really strong. The rest of your feats don't matter as much.

For doing pure endgame content, I would take Fury of the Wild while twisting Otto's Whistler, Pin, and rejuvenation cocoon. If you have more points you should also twist in Grim Precision.

Basic level 30 item build:
Goggles: Legendary Garstone's Lenses
Helmet: Legendary Pansophic Circlet
Necklace: Legendary Ward-Inscribed Pendant
Trinket: Legendary Cursebane Focus
Cloak: Legendary Shadowhail cloak
Belt: Legendary Braided Cutcord
Ring #1: Legendary Ring of Nightfall
Ring #2: Legendary Ring of Prowess
Gloves: Legendary Crumbling Gloves
Boots: Legendary Shadow's Footsteps
Bracers: Legendary Bracers of the Fallen Hero
Body Armor: Legendary Mist-laden Vestment
Bow: Legendary Inferno Sniper or Morninglords Longbow

This gives All the damage stats you need to damage some bad guys. You get the mists of ravenloft set as well as the silent avengers set.

Raid geared item build:
Goggles: Legendary Garstone's Lenses
Helmet: Wind Howler Mask
Necklace: Slavelords Chain (False Life - Accuracy - Use Magic Device - Quality Constitution)
Trinket: Echo of Ravenkind
Cloak: Cloak of Strahd
Belt: Legendary Braided Cutcord
Ring #1: Legendary Ring of Nightfall
Ring #2: Legendary Band of Insightful commands
Gloves: Molten Silver Guantlets
Boots: Legendary Flightfoot Grieves
Bracers: Legendary Bracers of the Fallen Hero
Body Armor: Legendary Mist-laden Vestment
Bow: Chaosbow Longbow, or Void, the Endless Cold if nobody else applies vulnerbility.

This list should provide you with the best items countless man hours can buy. You might notice that this list lacks acid spellpower; that's because it does! Acid spellpower is really hard to itemize around for end game unless you focus on it. Grab an augment for your bow and that's basically all you can do sadly.

REAPER MODE

This build is not really designed for reaper mode, so if you are planning on reaper mode I suggest another build. However, if you must go into reaper...

1. This build still does high damage, so as long as you have others standing infront of you, you should be OK. Be aware that reapers can automatically teleport onto you so if you aren't careful you will get jumped and quickly popped.
2. Force arrows are essential, and I would recommend getting them before you get Tier 2 of acid arrows. Being able to give reapers the smack down is one of your key roles as a ranged DPS player. Sure, the damage is lower, but removing plague reapers is super strong.
3. Always pack the shield spell in some capacity. either with the gloves from korthos or a shield wand from the marketplace wand vendor, you need it to stop Famine reaper magic missiles. Or you will die lots.
4. Once you get improved precise shot, paralyzing arrows becomes an extremely strong option. It works on reapers, and while it doesn't do damage, it does stop all daamge from coming in. I would recommend putting more points into wisdom and stockpiling some echnantment DC items. Especially in group play, having paralyzing arrows and good timing can let your group do reaper mode 2 levels higher as long as you can keep ontop of targets and lock down the right guys.

FAQ

I don't have a Silver Longbow. Do I need one?
No, but it comes from a free to play quest. Go get one.

This build is 20 Ranger, but I want to multiclass it with X. What should I do?
Less damage. You might gain trap skills or healing or a pet or something, but you will always do less damage. If you choose to multiclass you give up on the capstone which is a flat 20% damage increase. I don't recommend it, but if you really want to be a trapper than go for it.

By using this guide I was promoted to Mega CEO of my company, have had a non-stop rush of both men and women soliciting me night and day and have acquired $100,000,000,000 as a result. Now that I am the supreme ruler of the planet and a God among men, what should I do with my time?
While those things are nice, remember not to get complacent.

Is this the best archer build?
No. But since U49 has come out recently, nobody really knows what the best build is yet. I'll update this when I know.

Have you tried Final Strike?
Its... fine. I don't like it much.

Conclusion

This build is easy, new player friendly, and really cool to play. Makes you feel like Legolas when you are jumping over chasms and laying down the hurt with acidic burning arrows. This guide is a max DPS guide, so it isn't 100% focused on the acid damage but instead uses it as a supplementary tool to help in the early game and give more damage options in the late game. I will be building my next character as a full intelligence Harper ranger to maximize spellpower to see how well that works, and I will be posting an associated guide. I think it will go poorly.


Try it out as your next life and let me know what you think!

Supportive videos:
https://youtu.be/iG7qS-VFkT0