Tier 5 AA or DW ?

[Elindel22]

Hi.

Can't figure out which tier 5 enhancement enhancements to use.

The arcane archer tree has a few good enhancements.

Final strike does the same damage as arrow of slaying. I do around 350 damage on heroic elite with them both, as a level 18 ranger. And sometimes I do insane 1.5k damage with final strike.

That seems OP to me.

But I have read that since neither scales with ranged power ( but they do crit and scale with crit, or am I wrong ?), that the damage becomes insignificant at level 30. Or is that wrong too ?

And the improved elemental arrows gives good crit damage bonus, and from corrosive arrows, you get a good fortification and AC reduction to target on hit that stacks up to 8% on both.

On the DW tier 5 tree, you get first off the 20% doublestrike enhancement. But I have read that if you use manyshot on cool down like I do, that you get a big penalty to doubleshot. So is doubleshot even worth it
if you use manyshot on cooldown?

You also get the favored enemy enhancement with +10 damage from 5 favored enemies, which is good.

And the heavy draw enhancement comes with a huge -5 to hit. Don't know if it's worth it.

And finally, the archer focus enhancement. You almost never use it, always moving, except on a few bosses.isnit really worth it ?

Overall, i tend to use the arcane archer tree for now, because the slayer arrow and final strike arrows do very good damage at my level.

But if that damage does not scale as you level, I guess the DW tier 5 is better ?

Thanks for the feedback.

[Harkmar]

Hi.

Can't figure out which tier 5 enhancement enhancements to use.

The arcane archer tree has a few good enhancements.

Final strike does the same damage as arrow of slaying. I do around 350 damage on heroic elite with them both, as a level 18 ranger. And sometimes I do insane 1.5k damage with final strike.

That seems OP to me.

But I have read that since neither scales with ranged power ( but they do crit and scale with crit, or am I wrong ?), that the damage becomes insignificant at level 30. Or is that wrong too ?

And the improved elemental arrows gives good crit damage bonus, and from corrosive arrows, you get a good fortification and AC reduction to target on hit that stacks up to 8% on both.

On the DW tier 5 tree, you get first off the 20% doublestrike enhancement. But I have read that if you use manyshot on cool down like I do, that you get a big penalty to doubleshot. So is doubleshot even worth it
if you use manyshot on cooldown?

You also get the favored enemy enhancement with +10 damage from 5 favored enemies, which is good.

And the heavy draw enhancement comes with a huge -5 to hit. Don't know if it's worth it.

And finally, the archer focus enhancement. You almost never use it, always moving, except on a few bosses.isnit really worth it ?

Overall, i tend to use the arcane archer tree for now, because the slayer arrow and final strike arrows do very good damage at my level.

But if that damage does not scale as you level, I guess the DW tier 5 is better ?

Thanks for the feedback.

I ran a 18/1/1 ranger/wiz/rogue build for a while. The penalty to double shot following many shot was removed as part of a rework a while back (it was stacking with a monk ability).

As for which tier 5 it depends. I personally was using paralyze arrow instead of an elemental arrow and I would just hold all of the trash mobs on lock down while my buddy's barb cleaved it all down. I took the tier 5 DW abilities most of the time. At level 30 I would decide if I wanted more alpha strike damage per shot or more consistent damage. During an alpha strike to kill a boss fast I would use an ability in an epic destiny for 400% damage, use many shot, then use head shot. Each arrow would crit for about 12-15k and I would hit with 3 arrows and sometimes a 4th. I changed over to tier 5 AA and slayer arrow using the same abilities except use slayer arrow and I would crit for 22k-25k but i would only get 2-3 arrows out of it due to lower double shot amounts.

As for archers focus. Once you get improved precise shot you will seldom use archers focus when solo'ing. I found in certain raid situations archers focus was a nice boost but when you click manyshot it clears the stacks of archers focus.

Heavy draw is worth it over all. Most of the game you will have more than enough attack so giving up +5 to get more damage is well worth it.

As with anything else your mileage will vary, I build out to be able to do traps, crowd control with para arrow, and toss a few heals as needed. I spent most of the time watching my buddy slaughter 90% of the mobs in the mission until we got to a boss then I would burn it down in seconds. I am currently playing a pure rogue mechanic using a great crossbow. Gave up an insane alpha strike for boss killing to be able to mow down trash through the whole rest of the mission while still doing pretty solid boss damage.

[barecm]

Short answer... deepwood T5.

AA T5 is a one trick pony of fury shot (fury of the wild: Adrenaline Overload + Arrow of Slaying).

All of Deepwood T5 is useful. Some more than others. At the minimum take heavy draw and strikes like lightning... but again, all of them are pretty good. Cannot say the same for AA T5.

[Wipey]

AA T5 is a one trick pony of fury shot (fury of the wild: Adrenaline Overload + Arrow of Slaying).

That one trick pony does 100k+ arrows ( helpless trash ), instagibs champs, reapers, minibosses.

As opposed to another "sustained deeps" ? Bring melee blitzer instead.

Paralyze is useful to complement primary castery cc in both cases but I'd say Fury brings something unique ( utility, teamwork and different gameplay wise ) actually. Each to their own, but for what it's worth, everybody that knows their stuff has always shown up in Fury as far as I remember.

Search ranged gameplay vids, achievements threads since Motu ? Guess what destiny it might be.

[Kaboom2112]

People still play archers?

I thought everyone switched to throwers

[Enoach]

Its a tough call and really is dependent on your playstyle in my opinion.

While Slayer Arrows is powerful, it does not need to be part of a "Fury Shot" to be of value.

Now my opinion on AA Tier 5

1. Slayer Arrows - I feel like this is a powerful ability and a strong reason to take this one

2. Moonbow - Often overlooked, but if your build does use spell points getting 20 SP every 30 seconds means you have that option available. Keep in mind AA has other shots that cost SP and Slayer Arrows is one of them

3. Improved Elemental Arrows - Elemental Arrows was improved to use spell power so if you use these arrows the additional abilities this adds from making things easier to hit, slowing them down adding vulnerability or adding a DoT can be a boost to not just your own personal DPS but that of your parties

4. Runebow - Sure it is only +2 to your bow, but hey we often work hard to fit in even a 1% dps improvement

I'm actually not a fan of Final Strike, I personally stopped using it.
---
Then on DW

All of them are good from Extra favored Enemy to Headshot 5W (Slayer Arrow on that side), Power Attack for Bows and Improved Archers focus (If you only use IPS this is not useful)

---
So this is not cut-n-dry decision as some would like you to believe. You need to figure out which complements your playstyle. And since it is possible to switch with some coin, don't be afraid to try out both and see which you like better.

[Selvera]

People still play archers?

I thought everyone switched to throwers

Throwers? All the kids are using repeaters these days!

[Hipparan]

I always choose Deepwood Stalker over Arcane Archer for the T5 enhancement. Head Shot works very well along with Sniper Shot for dealing consistent sneak attack damage. Improved Archer's Focus is great for boss battles. Strikes Like Lightning is very nice as well, along with Heavy Draw. The weakest tier 5 that Deepwood Stalker has is the extra Favored Enemy, but I often find myself choosing that as well. If I did choose Arcane Archer, I would probably choose the +2 damage dice with elemental arrows over Improved Elemental Arrows. Normally when I have a Ranger using bows, I take tier 5 Deepwood Stalker, and take Shock Arrows, increase the damage with every other tier, and spend enough points to get Shadow Arrows. I spend points on Force Arrows as well because it's always nice to have Force damage which not much is immune to, the ghost touch is nice, and the damage scales with the elemental damage dice increases.

[Kaboom2112]

Throwers? All the kids are using repeaters these days!

Only if they want to do terrible damage.

[Selvera]

Back to more serious discussion; I've used both deepwood and arcane archer tier 5's; I don't have much of an opinion on which is better since I was running pretty different builds and there's so much else to consider when going into it. Personally I think the highest damage archer I've done so far has had Kensai T5's. But that's besides the point. I can get back to you on that later when I've done more archer lives (I do a lot despite how the devs don't seem to like archers much...)

In terms of improved elemental arrows vs elemental damage... I just can't bring myself to even try out improved elemental arrows.

Let's look at the options:

Elemental Damage: +2d8 damage for elemental imbues per hit = +9 damage per hit on average. It also applies to force arrows and adds universal spell power which increases the damage of all of your elemental dice and the damage of scion feats and the healing of your spells and anything else you use it for.

Improved elemental arrows: 1d10-3d10 elemental damage sounds very... questionable. I really need to test this; but a bow's multiplier is x3 on base; so does it start at 1d10 and get better with effects which increase your critical damage? Even if it's 3d10 on average/best case, that's an average of +18 damage on critical hits; the best named bows have 16-20 critical profile with usual buffs; which means 25% of the time. 25% of +18 is ~4 damage per hit. And ontop of that; devs seem dead set in the idea of not releasing bows with decent critical profiles anymore; which means if power creep goes to the point where you're forced to use bows without critical profiles, you're looking at 15% chance; which means you're looking at ~3 damage per hit.

So it seems that unless the tooltip is very misleading; Elemental damage gives much more damage and improves your damage (or healing) in more situations then improved elemental arrows without the bonus effects. So there's then the bonus effects:

Destruction: I like this effect in that it increases your chance to get critical hits. It however is essentially only useful against bosses that you can get it stacked up against. And that have fortification. Ok; maybe it's not super useful.

Burning: Does this scale with spellpower? If yes it might be ok; other then being one of the most common immunities in enemies and only procing on critical hits, which as we've noted, the devs aren't giving us new bows that crit in the last 14 updates.

Legarthy: Is also based on critical hits; and doesn't work on bosses. What it does do is slow the enemies slightly and lower their saves by up to 5. Cool! But if you're shooting them with frost arrows you aren't shooting them with paralyzing arrows at the same time; and the inconsistancy of this proc combined with how slow it is to switch imbues means you can't lower the saves with frost then switch to paralyze the enemies. So basically you're lowering the saves for your party members to instakill the targets easier.

Vulnerable: Vulnerable is amazing! But this is based on critical hits and loses a stack every 3 seconds; which means you need to critically hit the target more then once in every 3 seconds; with a guess of 25% critical chance; that's 4 arrows per 3 seconds to maintain a single stack of vulnerable. Stacking this up requires a lot of luck or alternative sources. You're never going to have this help you against trash.

So that's my 2 copper as to why I always take elemental damage when I go arcane archer T5s.

[Yamani]

Destruction: I like this effect in that it increases your chance to get critical hits. It however is essentially only useful against bosses that you can get it stacked up against. And that have fortification. Ok; maybe it's not super useful.

Cant forget that Epic Sapphire Sting already has Improved destruction on it.

[barecm]

That one trick pony does 100k+ arrows ( helpless trash ), instagibs champs, reapers, minibosses.

As opposed to another "sustained deeps" ? Bring melee blitzer instead.

Paralyze is useful to complement primary castery cc in both cases but I'd say Fury brings something unique ( utility, teamwork and different gameplay wise ) actually. Each to their own, but for what it's worth, everybody that knows their stuff has always shown up in Fury as far as I remember.

Search ranged gameplay vids, achievements threads since Motu ? Guess what destiny it might be.

How are you coming up with 100K damage on a single fury shot?

[Hjarki]

I think a good rule of thumb would be DWS for heroic, AA for epic.

If you're a pure Ranger, AA 5th/6th cores are better than DWS 5th/6th cores. It's certainly possible to do T5 in one tree and capstone in another, but this consumes all your AP so your other options need to be truly abysmal.

In heroic levels, you'll normally get better damage over time with t5 DWS than you will with t5 AA. In epic levels, any bow build is going to have weak damage over time compared to other ranged builds, so most such builds go the Fury Shot method - which entails Slaying Arrow.

[barecm]

I think a good rule of thumb would be DWS for heroic, AA for epic.

If you're a pure Ranger, AA 5th/6th cores are better than DWS 5th/6th cores. It's certainly possible to do T5 in one tree and capstone in another, but this consumes all your AP so your other options need to be truly abysmal.

In heroic levels, you'll normally get better damage over time with t5 DWS than you will with t5 AA. In epic levels, any bow build is going to have weak damage over time compared to other ranged builds, so most such builds go the Fury Shot method - which entails Slaying Arrow.

I disagree with this rule of thumb. I would say DW Tier 5 over AA in all cases.

[barecm]

And oh yeah... you can deal just about the same amount of damage on a quicker cooldown with sniper shot / fury shot vs fury + slayer. Not exactly the same, but just saying it is close. Personally, if/when I go back to a ranged power build, I will go LD and t4 AA and T5 DW. On Lamannia a few days ago I was doing 13K+ damage on crits (pinned) and not have to worry about having adrenaline loaded or whatever. And, much higher sustained dps due to the ease of being able to sustain blitz, damage being applied via IPS which fury no longer does...etc.

[IlmerSilverhilt]

How are you coming up with 100K damage on a single fury shot?

These days I would think it can be much higher, have a ss of 100k in my build thread in sig and thats from a few years ago. Now we have silent avenger some more multiplier(s), and via extra AP more affordable No Mercy. Tbh never tried dws much I swear by Slaying Arrows!

Ilmer

[grandeibra]

How are you coming up with 100K damage on a single fury shot?

These days I would think it can be much higher

Yep, quite a bit higher. Personally I really don't enjoy the AA playstyle (I hate having to time with lag risk, or disabling autoattack for a few secs to set-up Furyshot) but the damage from it is so insanely great, and fairly frequent, that for the various builds I've played on it's (unfortunately) far superior to DW5. It's not close at least for the builds I play.

you can deal just about the same amount of damage on a quicker cooldown with sniper shot / fury shot vs fury + slayer

I may very well do it wrong but isn't the fact that the effects get serially-multiplied for Slayer+Fury the whole point, and why it often does like a factor of 10 times the damage of sniper (or headshot) +Fury?

[barecm]

These days I would think it can be much higher, have a ss of 100k in my build thread in sig and thats from a few years ago. Now we have silent avenger some more multiplier(s), and via extra AP more affordable No Mercy. Tbh never tried dws much I swear by Slaying Arrows!

Ilmer

Not seeing the screen shot. Can you post here?

[Yamani]

Not seeing the screen shot. Can you post here?

Arrow of slaying/Final Strike + mortal fear + helpless damage boost + Manyshot + damage boost + Fury = insane numbers not really reproducible in quests.

[AscendantMadness]

Hi.

Can't figure out which tier 5 enhancement enhancements to use.

The arcane archer tree has a few good enhancements.

Final strike does the same damage as arrow of slaying. I do around 350 damage on heroic elite with them both, as a level 18 ranger. And sometimes I do insane 1.5k damage with final strike.

That seems OP to me.

But I have read that since neither scales with ranged power ( but they do crit and scale with crit, or am I wrong ?), that the damage becomes insignificant at level 30. Or is that wrong too ?

And the improved elemental arrows gives good crit damage bonus, and from corrosive arrows, you get a good fortification and AC reduction to target on hit that stacks up to 8% on both.

On the DW tier 5 tree, you get first off the 20% doublestrike enhancement. But I have read that if you use manyshot on cool down like I do, that you get a big penalty to doubleshot. So is doubleshot even worth it
if you use manyshot on cooldown?

You also get the favored enemy enhancement with +10 damage from 5 favored enemies, which is good.

And the heavy draw enhancement comes with a huge -5 to hit. Don't know if it's worth it.

And finally, the archer focus enhancement. You almost never use it, always moving, except on a few bosses.isnit really worth it ?

Overall, i tend to use the arcane archer tree for now, because the slayer arrow and final strike arrows do very good damage at my level.

But if that damage does not scale as you level, I guess the DW tier 5 is better ?

Thanks for the feedback.

So, are you soloing leveling, are you in a regularly in a party with CC, are you running high reapers in group, or are you running end-game raids? What monsters are you *aiming* at?

These are a couple of important questions to answer for yourself when preparing your archer for battle. In any of the above, the most important question is probably the latter. What monsters are you fighting?
If you are solo leveling, it's cheap through most levels to reset enhancements based on the quest or chain you are attempting. Undead, for example, cannot be paralyzed or feared, so it's really a waste to dump points into the AA tree, for the most part. Fill out your Inferno Shot, Morphic Arrows and a few tiers of Elemental Arrows then spend your AP in the DWS line heavily, then mix it up with some other trees like Harper, Vistani and Falconry if you have them to get three more favored enemies for that much more damage. If you have racial AP's or just points to spare, you can possibly eek out another one, depending on your race, if not, many racial trees have lots of utility.

If you are regularly in party with someone who already has solid CC, again paralyzers become less useful, though; they do still have a place for stragglers.

When running high Reaper content, it can be a toss-up. CC timers are shorter, so a high paralyzer DC might be indispensable but most groups would prefer to opt for higher damage output, indicating that if high reaper is your goal with a well-balanced party, then perhaps a Strength build in DWS would be the wiser choice. The same is often said for raid content. Trash is usually handled by someone else, so archers should be focused on putting out as much damage as possible. In such instances, the entire build would change to fit that role.
Alternately, you could find your niche *as* the CC for a high DPS group with a Wis build in the AA tree, depending on the content the group selects.

As previously mentioned, the monsters matter a lot. If you are spending an evening on the VoN chain, AA is the way to go as Para, Smiting, and Banishing can make a run a hell of a lot faster with the insta-kills If instead, you're running Necro 1-4, maybe even over a couple of days, then DWS is def. the way to go. Make those decisions at the start of your gaming day and fork over the plat to reset your trees and optimize for content. You'll be happier for it.

The difficulty you select can make a difference as well. If you're running Epic Elite, many of the mobs will have Epic Ward, making the jib-shots useless but if you pick R1 instead, you can insta-kill and paralyze more effectively since you'll be getting a boost to your DC's if you have a few points.
A favorite combo of mine is to run with another friend on a Para build while I run with Terror active for an effective vorpal team.

... I guess the question is, "How do you wanna do this?"

How are you coming up with 100K damage on a single fury shot?

These days I would think it can be much higher, have a ss of 100k... Ilmer

A buddy of mine has hit the 200K mark with Fury, prepping max stacks of Archer's Focus, vulnerability, Yugo pots and all the Rage spells he can manage, adding fighter levels for Kensei w/ Power Surge and fully raid buffed etc. Str. builds can put out insane burst damage on a Manyshot, especially when you focus on obtaining as many crit multipliers as possible.