U49 Bow Max DPS Build Complete Guide

[Arkat]

I definitely hope there's CC in the cards. I'm enjoying the new bow stuff (Hunt's End! Many Shot! Die!) but the lack of CC and the way nerve venom basically sucks completely now is problematic.

I hear you on the result of the Doubleshot nerf on Nerve Venom. Ranged needs to get back some CC.

[CrackedIce]

I hear you on the result of the Doubleshot nerf on Nerve Venom. Ranged needs to get back some CC.

Pretty sure the devs are not worried about that. The ED revamp is on the way and things will change.

[Tsutti]

In your accuracy breakdown, you mention the 6% from racial at the end but forgot Precision 5%.

In DR bypasses, does Harbinger of Chaos not bypass chaos dr? It does 1d20 bane damage against all targets and an additional 2d20 chaos damage to lawful targets, and afaik all chaos DR enemies are also lawful (marut, codex, not sure if anything else).

[Carpone]

Instead of going into Vistani for haste, why not just twist it over from LD? Then you can do elemental damage from Arcane Archer and also have haste.

Because math.

Dropping VKF for T4 AA means loss of: 10% dshot, 2 favored enemy damage, Haste Boost, Deflect Arrows and 1 RP. Let's assume you're dropping Meld Into Shadows (instead of Whirling Wrists) in order to twist Haste Boost, even though that's a really poor idea in reaper. Gearing for spellpower means dropping Thorn Boots and Belt of Sure Strikes for Stone Shoes and Burnscar Sash, which is a loss of 5 damage and 10 crit damage.

Acid spellpower:
202 Item
107 Insightful item
053 Quality item
020 Elemental Arrows IV
010 Soul Magic
030 Implement bonus
004 Remnant tome
004 Morale - Greater Heroism
025 Potion of Spellpower
050 Artifact - Touch of Power (replaces +4 CON)
019 Spellcraft augment (replaces +20 Vitality)
011 Spellcraft ranks
005 Spellcraft tome
031 Spellcraft INT bonus
010 Spellcraft epic level skill bonus
060 USP epic levels
015 Ship buff acid spellpower
015 Deep Gnome past life x3
002 Completionist
002 Racial Completionist
001 Tiefling racial past life
001 Dragonborn racial past life
001 Harper core 1
006 USP Reaper’s Arcana I
006 USP Reaper’s Arcana II
006 USP Reaper’s Arcana III
012 USP Reaper’s Arcana IV
012 USP Reaper’s Arcana V
002 USP Reaper’s Arcanum V
004 USP Reaper’s Arcanum VI
TBD USP Mythic/Reaper Gear
---
726 acid spell power
045 Profane Reaper boost

I may have missed some minor sources, but that's a pretty reasonable spell power.

Let's assume we're hitting a mob on a dice roll of 1 or 2 since we've got extremely high attack and +11% to hit.

4d8 acid arrow damage * (1 + 7.26 spellpower) = 148.68 acid damage per hit.

5 damage from Thorn Boots: 5 damage * (1 + 3.65 ranged power) = 23.25. On a 17-18, that's 232.5 dmg and 19-20 it's 372 damage. 37.5 dmg on average for all hits.

10 seeker from the Belt of Sure Strikes: It's an average of 14.44 dmg per hit.

10% doubleshot: 227.87 damage * (1 + 3.65 ranged power) * (.10 doubleshot) = 105.95 dmg. Without even calculating the damage loss from crits, sneak attack damage, and favored enemy damage with reduced doubleshot, elemental arrow damage already falls behind. And that assumes elemental arrow lands fully on every creature without immunity or resistances.

[Carpone]

In your accuracy breakdown, you mention the 6% from racial at the end but forgot Precision 5%.

In DR bypasses, does Harbinger of Chaos not bypass chaos dr? It does 1d20 bane damage against all targets and an additional 2d20 chaos damage to lawful targets, and afaik all chaos DR enemies are also lawful (marut, codex, not sure if anything else).

Thank you, the accuracy has been updated.

The chaotic damage doesn't break lawful DR. It would be neat if it did.

[Synthetic]

Your arcane archer damage numbers are off.

If you do take up to T4 in AA you should be getting 7d8 acid damage (You gain 2 damage dice when you don't take a new element or 1 damage dice if you take an additional element). If you went T5 DWS and capstone AA you gain 15% more doubleshot than what you gain from VKF - 20% from capstone and 5% from the shadow stance.

You lose some RP and sneak damage, but the first is a much larger number than your DS number and the latter isn't that significant compared to your base damage and would get a boost from the additional DS. You also pick up some pretty decent elemental damage if you can get that amount of spell power.

Cheers,

Synth

[Xgya]

045 Profane Reaper boost

Are you REALLY going to use Reaper's Power and not Reaper's Strike?
Wondering if adding that to the total is even worth mentioning.

[Carpone]

Are you REALLY going to use Reaper's Power and not Reaper's Strike?
Wondering if adding that to the total is even worth mentioning.

You're right, it's not worth using over Reaper's Strike. I listed it as part of the exercise for completeness. It wasn't included in the calculations.

Your arcane archer damage numbers are off.

If you do take up to T4 in AA you should be getting 7d8 acid damage (You gain 2 damage dice when you don't take a new element or 1 damage dice if you take an additional element).

Ah, thank you. Let's revisit the numbers then:

7d8 acid arrow * (1 + 7.26 spellpower) = 260.19 per hit

With 10% less doubleshot, crits contribute 153.05 damage less per hit:
Crits: (((227.87 base dmg * 5 crit multi * 2 crit range) * (1 + 3.65 RP) * .10 dshot) + ((227.87 * 8 crit multi * 2 crit range) * (1 + 3.65 RP) * .10 dshot)) / 18

With 10% less doubleshot, sneak attacks contribute 77.42 less per hit:
SA: (111 SA dmg * (1 + 3.65 RP) * (1.5 SA scaling) * .10 dshot)

The total damage loss dropping 10% dshot is 105.5 base dmg + 153.05 crit dmg + 77.42 SA dmg = 335.97.

So you are losing 75.78 dmg per hit on average choosing AA over VKF. That doesn't include the 2 less FE dmg, or 1 less RP.

If you went T5 DWS and capstone AA you gain 15% more doubleshot than what you gain from VKF - 20% from capstone and 5% from the shadow stance. You lose some RP and sneak damage, but the first is a much larger number than your DS number and the latter isn't that significant compared to your base damage and would get a boost from the additional DS.

Going DWS T5 (38 AP) and AA Capstone (41 AP) leaves you no AP for Harper, which is a loss of 13 insightful damage, 8 FE damage (T5 DWS, DWS core 5, Falconry and VKF), 10.5 sneak attack damage, +1 hit/dmg, 23 RP, and Haste Boost. You also lose 6% doubleshot from the wood elf tree because you only have 17 AP left on racial enhancements. So you're netting 9% doubleshot, not 15%. You also lose Deflect Arrows which is your primary defense against ranged mobs.

Average hit with your proposed enhancements is 1030.38:
(213.87 base dmg * (1 + 3.42 RP) * (1.09 doubleshot))

Average hit with the enhancement split in the guide is 1132.8:
(227.87 base dmg * (1 + 3.65 RP)) + (10.5 sneak attack dmg * (1 + 3.65 RP) * 1.5 SA dmg scaling)

The divide only grows further when you factor in crit damage, the loss of 8 FE damage and loss of Haste Boost.

[Kenzan]

Thanks for posting much an in depth guide as well as a answering possible questions.
You rock man!

[IlmerSilverhilt]

(Combat): You sneak attack Training Dummy for 793,129 points of pierce damage.

Got this with my rogue AA Falc (build in sig) Its also max bow dps, but Im not sure how it compares to yours

[Carpone]

(Combat): You sneak attack Training Dummy for 793,129 points of pierce damage.

Got this with my rogue AA Falc (build in sig) Its also max bow dps, but Im not sure how it compares to yours

Highlight reels are meaningless. Do the work and show the math behind the build.

[Coffey]

What kind of highlight reel numbers do you see with your build Carpone?

[Synthetic]

Some good analysis

You could pickup 3% DS from Wood elf since you would put 38 ap into DWS and 41 AA. That leaves you 15 racial ap to get to tier4 and 1 ap for through the branches. For DWS I'd drop Head shot, Leg shot and core5/6 to reach the 38 ap put a point into favored defense I guess. So, you can recover 2 FE damage and one FE. AA gets 2 more dex then your layout which makes up for the 1 damage from racial.

If you drop Scion of the ethereal for Scion of Earth you get 21 more acid damage and 40 spell power while losing 5RP and 21 sneak damage. Using the standing numbers this layout pulls slightly ahead, but realistically adding in a few RP buffs/haste boost will have your currently layout pull ahead. Also, fury is all about base damage.

The one scenario this alternate AA layout seems to have a real advantage is if you're using IPS. The additional damage from Acid isn't affected by the 20% reduction from what I've read, and the loss of Archers Focus RP doesn't matter as much. It's about 6% more damage per hit on paper.

[Carpone]

Thank you to Viamel for the revised gearset:

+5 Quality Seeker
+4 Profane Accuracy/Deadly
-17 Insightful Accuracy
-2 DEX

I'm including both gearsets in the guide for now. The original gearset provides +14 accuracy, which matters in a handful of circumstances with high AC raid bosses like LOB.

[Carpone]

I take it this statement is assuming an 11/6/3 thrower instead of pure ranger? You say thrower > bow, and ranger > split vs favored enemies, why still run one or the other instead of combining them into pure ranger dagger thrower?

11/6/3 thrower is 448 dmg (about 5% more) per hit on average than a pure ranger bow. The disparity is *much* greater when you factor in burst damage from Multitude of Missiles. It would be reasonable for Horizon Walker to at least make the two ranged styles equivalent. I wouldn't be surprised to see HW end up being a clone of VKF, with just a few modest changes to integrate the PnP flavor and abilities.

The thing about a pure bow ranger is that you can also incorporate a throwing dagger into the build just for Multitude of Missiles burst. Swapping out Weapon Focus: Ranged and Sneak of Shadows for STWE and MoM, you can easily rearrange the VKF tree to pick up 3 ranks of Knife Fighting, Rapid Throw, and Deadly Blades for the cost of 1 RP from Harper. It won't keep up with a dedicated thrower since you don't have IC: Thrown. You can use the new Feywild throwing dagger for the Keen, but it lacks Soul Tear that Wide Open Sky has.

[Rednorva]

Any suggestions for heroic leveling gear and AP progression?

[Carpone]

Any suggestions for heroic leveling gear and AP progression?

Gear: Max DEX and doubleshot. Ravenloft bow at 10. Wallwatch 3pc at 15. Have enough HP to not get one-shot.

AP: Leave Falconry and Harper last. Get T5 DWS at level 12.

Use your best judgement.

[barecm]

The dilemma I have with bows now is that to be great (for bows) dps, you need to rely on things like sneak attack damage and making things vulnerable to sneak attack vs using the AA tree which is significantly less dps, but you can generate crowd control. For me, I am still going wisdom based AA paralyze because I typically run solo, run reapers, and want an easier time even if it takes a little longer. Plus, when I do run in a group (also typically reaper), most folks like when I freeze everything and melees take far less damage.

Post u49, it is looking like they are clearing the path for us to drop $ on Horizon Walker when that comes out so that you can feel good about bow dps. But I really did not like what I saw in the early preview. SSG continues to push bows to a single target dps style which, from my experience and what others tell me in game, is not wanted. But SSG will forge ahead because why would they listen to what customers want?

[Pandjed]

Post u49, it is looking like they are clearing the path for us to drop $ on Horizon Walker when that comes out so that you can feel good about bow dps. But I really did not like what I saw in the early preview. SSG continues to push bows to a single target dps style which, from my experience and what others tell me in game, is not wanted. But SSG will forge ahead because why would they listen to what customers want?

Because we're not customers, we're users. There is a really big difference. We're not buying a copy of a product, we're buying in to play more of the content and to get several QoL things. We're not a constant income that has to be pleased, we're an income that comes and goes and bring value whenever SGG brings something to the table we're willing to spend actual $ on, instead a farmable ingame-currency. That's how the online-market have developed and this is why "customer is king" is a really unapporpriate attitude to have, because we're not customers. This is a free-to-play MMORPG where you're free-to-pay.



I've played with my currently Inquisitive after spending some time before and after the bow pass with my archer toon. Inquis is certainly not my cup of tea, but after playing my archer for so long, I couldn't help but feeling real disappointment, because while I do think that bows stand better overall (though there has been some colleteral damage), it's plain as day that they can't compare with inquisitives in DPS and consistency.
If bows were a single-target concentrated playstyle, that would play around and with critical hits, I'd be totally fine with. Let other ranged styles have their own things, and while I always imagined the crossbow to be the more accurate weapon, I'd be just happy to have different flavors of ranged combat. But as long as I can force-brute myself easier against single enemies as Inquis with IPS on than with bows on a ranger with AF active, I can't even say that bows are single-target ranged DPS.
Bows have several problems. They're not treated like weapons that fills your secondary hand (strangely enough, bucklers in the P&P are meant to be fully bow compatible, but aren't equippable in DDO), they lack the amount of hits -> damage of other weapons, their dedicated trees don't support a unique identity (DWS is fully compatible with x-bows and thrown weapons as well, and AA is great at low/mid heroics, then fall flat fast and doesn't strengthen bows directly, just offering more options; it's also rather expensive), and I can't think of anything unique to them other than AA's DR bypasses, that's worth the trouble.
Even the elemental imbuement aren't that great. While Inquis Law on your Side starts out smaller, it stacks with Ranged Power (what you really want), is hardly resisted (just lowered dice when facing lawful stuff) and stack up to 12-14d8s vs. 9d8s.

Overall, I think the feats were a nice first step, but at least AA should have given an additional revamp. Maybe I write a thread about this singular tree these days...

[barecm]

Because we're not customers, we're users. There is a really big difference. We're not buying a copy of a product, we're buying in to play more of the content and to get several QoL things. We're not a constant income that has to be pleased, we're an income that comes and goes and bring value whenever SGG brings something to the table we're willing to spend actual $ on, instead a farmable ingame-currency. That's how the online-market have developed and this is why "customer is king" is a really unapporpriate attitude to have, because we're not customers. This is a free-to-play MMORPG where you're free-to-pay.

Customer and user is just a matter of semantics. You are still spending money either as a VIP or if you buy from the store as a free to play; or both. You are still supporting future development along with current salaries and expenses for SSG. We are customers, users, and consumers... or whatever else name you want to give to someone who spends money. We are the lifeblood that keeps the lights on at SSG. If they continue to ignore us and try to squeeze us more for money, more and more, people will leave. I don't care what title you give it and how you think recurring revenue differs from spot purchases, but it all amounts to the same thing. Our money supports their jobs and they seem to think it is ok to ignore the folks paying for their livelihood.