Heavily Armoured Fighter Archer Keinsei?

[PaddyMaxson]

Hi All,

It's been many years since I've made my own build.

I'm currently looking at a lot a Longbow user using Falconry for Wisdom to damage. I remembered Kensei having a lot of ki related abilities which it doesn't seem to have any more.

Question is I suppose, am I missing something, or is a Wisdom to hit kensei not going to struggle at all when heavily armoured as opposed to being built for dodging?

Cheers

Paddy

[Carpone]

Kensei + Falconry only makes sense for melee.

For bows you'd have to go Tier 5 Horizon Walker instead of Kensei, which means going DEX instead of WIS. Without HW, you're losing out on Improved Archer's Focus (50 RP) and 10% dshot. And once you're heavily invested in HW, Ranger is going to be better than Fighter because of the favored enemy synergy.

[magaiti]

Kensei only has one Ki-related ability, and that is you can be centered with a weapon of your choice.
Which for Bows can be achieved just by taking Zen Archery feat.
And it only makes sense if you want to multiclass as Monk or use some monky GMoF stuff.
You don't.

Kensei + Falconry only makes sense for melee.

For bows you'd have to go Tier 5 Horizon Walker instead of Kensei, which means going DEX instead of WIS. Without HW, you're losing out on Improved Archer's Focus (50 RP) and 10% dshot. And once you're heavily invested in HW, Ranger is going to be better than Fighter because of the favored enemy synergy.

And once you switch to Ranger, there's no dire need in Horizon Walker, since Deepwood Stalker Capstone and T5 are just as good.

Typical build without HW would be 20 ranger DEX based, AP: 42 DwS, 3 AA, 21 Vistani, 2 Falconry, 12 Harper.

[Carpone]

And once you switch to Ranger, there's no dire need in Horizon Walker, since Deepwood Stalker Capstone and T5 are just as good.

*Dwight Schultz voice* False. I've analyzed half a dozen builds for bows, including the various trees as Horizon Walker was being developed. Horizon Walker is *the* tree for bows. DWS falls way behind, and 20 Ranger is suboptimal. Here's the guide.

[magaiti]

I will catch up to your wisdom as soon as HW becomes available for DP.