Archer Post Patch Build

Pocah · August 2016

One thing that interested me is that after the patch that gave us an increase in crit rate ( thanks developers that was much needed ), the best build for archer may well have changed. Archer build has traditionally been crit all the way. But I was talking to another archer today who was saying that since the patch they were getting better results by replacing the standard carving niveot with a pounding. Alternately, archers could now replace keen vyrsks for power. Or maybe in fact both is a better approach? Has anyone tried this?

Nopi · August 2016

I'm talking from a low tier player perspective. Maybe what I'd say is not what you might need but until a min max player comments, eh, well. Personally, I'd keep the keen crystals. Too much crit factor in them. The carving could indeed be swapped if you already have high enough CF, but of course, tests by min maxers out there are needed to confirm if carving is indeed not needed anymore in highest tier play. The crit buff does feel more than 15% to me. My dps got very high after this, even more than my slayer and at least among my characters, second only to my ninja, since I find archer easier to play than most other classes.

Sylviette · August 2016

Use mixed crit + power accessories, everything else full crit. Pounding > forceful > carving. Use 7.2% cdr for your 4th roll on weapon.
The 15% is flat % increase (ex if your skill's crit rate was 50% now it's 65%, 80% > 95%, etc.) so it's much better than it seems.
The crit buff not only change archer's build, but also skill's priority. RF is a much bigger part of your dps now (sorry high ping archer), and you want to abuse the almost 100% crit rate for RF as much as possible.

Ultemecia · August 2016

With properly rolled jewelry and mid-tier properly rolled gear you should replace your carving with pounding. Carving is really only good for so long. Once you hit a certain level with crit, pounding becomes the better choice for dps.

I'd say you could probably do what most zerks do. If you've got a mystic run 2/3 power/crit jewelry. Just a priest run full crit.

Pocah · August 2016

Ultemecia wrote: »

With properly rolled jewelry and mid-tier properly rolled gear you should replace your carving with pounding. Carving is really only good for so long. Once you hit a certain level with crit, pounding becomes the better choice for dps.

I'd say you could probably do what most zerks do. If you've got a mystic run 2/3 power/crit jewelry. Just a priest run full crit.

3.3% I believe equates to about 12? Now with a base power of 72, the archer power crystal increases that by 8% which equates to an increase of about 6. So almost exactly replacing two keen vyrsks with two power vyrsks has the same effect as replacing the one niveot with a pounding.

Darkomax · August 2016

The sweet spot seems to have 300 total crit factor, allowing 100% crit on RF and about 85-90% radiant crit chance. So assuming you have BiS gear, keep double crit with a priest and use a hybrid set with a mystic. Unless you have a ping too high to use RF, stay full crit.
Don't use power vyrsk, they have a bad crit:power ratio(2:1). Jewelry only sacrifices 1.8 crit for 1 power. Carving is pretty much irrelevant since you can stack a [filtered] ton of crit, even before archer buff. Pounding is superior to forceful (Forceful niveot gives 20 power, which is bad when you have 300+ power)

Pocah · August 2016

People often take stats of items in isolation but miss one very important point, and that is that as you pile more and more on to a single stat, the effectiveness of placing even more on there reduces as compared to placing it on other stats.
For example. If you have a power of 100 and a crit rate of 100. If you add something to your gear with a crit rate increase of 6, that adds 6%. Similarly if you if you add an item that has a 6 point power increase thats adding 6%. Basic math I know. But if instead of adding to the power item you add a second 6 to crit rate, then it doesn't add another 6%. It adds 5.6%. So the more you add to a particular stat, the lower the effect of adding more. If we add 10 crit items that are each 6, then our total crit rate is 160 and adding yet another will only add 3.75% to our existing crit rate stat. However, adding 6 to power instead would add 6% to power. So, once you have a setup that has half a dozen items added in the equation, it's not a question of whether power crystal or crit crystal is better. You can't compare two items and ask "which is better?", what you must ask is "which item has the greatest effect on my existing setup"? And the answer is not, in most cases, the same as "which is better?". There is a balance point for all classes where building up the crit rate is less efficient than building up the power, no matter what the relative strengths of individual items is, or is not. Giving people the benefit of the doubt, I am pretty sure that historically building up the crit rate was the best thing to do, but particularly with the archer I am no longer convinced. I think that people may well be paying far to much attention to the crit rate and ignoring the fact that there is a balance point somewhere and that balance point has changed because of the introduction of the new passive skill that pretty much doubles the base crit rate. This has dramatically reduced the effectiveness of adding more to the crit rate. Someone said that the sweet spot seems to be around 300. But if you take the new passive skill in to account then for the archer the sweet spot is now +200. Why? Well the base rate is 60 and the new passive skill is 60, so add all that lot up and you get 320. So yes, no point in having another 12 from the carving niveot ~ replace that with a pounding. But also consider perhaps other changes to reduce crit rate to around the 200 level.
Now before you go screaming that I am mad, one of the most powerful archers on my server has done exactly that. With a crit rate of +200 ish they are getting noticeably better dps than other archers. Of course its always very difficult to say. They may be just an awesome player. But as a general rule I have to say it does seem to make more sense. Incidentally, I am not talking about other classes here. The archer is the one that got the passive skill.
So, I still remain a little unconvinced. I am not saying that people are wrong, I am just saying that I am not convinced by their arguments!! I need more convincing that the "traditional" crit build is the best thing for an archer.

Nopi · August 2016

Soooo. Has anyone tested RF's crit chance after buff to see how much CF one must have then? We all know the buff lowered the need for massive CF which we can now use on power. But has anybody checked where the new line is now?

Darkomax · August 2016

From my exp, 300 total crit factor. I don't exactly always have 100% due to casual side crits but i'm pretty sure you'd have very close to 100% with 100% back time. With a priest I have 285 crit and the crit rate goes under 95%, I casually see white hits even from behind. With mystic setup, I only have +175 crit factor (+241 with aura) and I never noticed white hits when I hit from behind. Tried to go as low as +157 (no crit etching at all) but that's not enough, both RF and Radiant arrow become inconsistent (like with priest party). I decided to go for 1 Energetic, so someone with double crit etching should not have problems whether your healer is a priest or mystic.
You can check Xaioli and Chunt stream that pretty much covered eveything about PvE archer
https://www.twitch.tv/essentialmana/v/79674540

dinners · August 2016

I think, make 300 crit first, then talk about power.

Xaioli · August 2016

Like others have said, you should be fine as long as you hit 300 crit (whether you have mystic auras, food etc). At that point, you can start concentrating on other things such as power jewelery and energetic etchings.

Once you hit 300, it's really important to decide what kind of playstyle you want/can do. If you have 1-100 ping, you can use RF and can substitute some crit (such as some from the standard double-crit jewelery for power set, perhaps an energetic etching etc.) to help boost your raw Rapid Fire damage since Rapid Fire has really high crit rate and is your #1 or #2 skill if you spam it off cooldown.

Any higher than 100 ping, I suggest you using a charge build where you actually go full crit and do a bit less damage than the RF build but not that much worse with consistent and somewhat reliable crits on RoA and charge arrows.

If you follow the basic rule of thumb above and skim through a basic rotation in the video Darko linked or Chunt's Archer guide, you can easily pull 1.2M+ on any boss and much more.

To directly answer the questions in your original post:

Pounding has always been better than Forceful. However, it's better late than never. Definitely use Pounding in addition with the basic Savage, Focused and Spiteful (try to get Dyad versions if you can, the extra multipliers do add up). Carving gives a fair amount of crit but Pounding just gives so much damage. +8.5% damage is pretty nuts.

After a lot of testing, I personally feel like 4x Keen Vyrsk won't change, despite the changes. The amount of crit they give is too much to give and helps add consistency to crits whether you're going RF or Charge build. If you're really interested, you can take off a couple crystals and test for yourself but my two cents urge you to keep full crit vyrsks no matter what.

Nopi · August 2016

I see most of you saying 300. Is this after the recent buff or is the number coming from older pre-buff guides? I mean, I've been seeing the magic number 300 since awhile.

My current total without mystic buff is 60+201. The aura would raise my total to 321. My accessories are not perfect rolled because I don't own a SES fountain. They are 3x shadowgate and 2x corvette. I could get a little more if I farm shadowvain but I don't feel like it now. (I don't pvp so no shadowmaze for me) <.< At default without mystic aura I see a LOT of crits when fighting IoD bams. But not 100% I'd say about 90% to RF and a little less on my charge attacks.

Darkomax · August 2016

This is pretty much empirical data (or to be exact, DPS parses data). No real maths behind. But just like Xaioli said, it really depends on how much you use RF. Once RF always crits, the value of crit factor combined with the last 15% crit chance buff reduces a lot. It's like warrior, once scythe hits 100% crit, you can build up other stats. RF should do at least 20, even 25% of your DPS if you have <70 ping. For high ping archer, like pre-buff archer, just stack crit factor.

Nopi · August 2016

I'm at 99 ping so I can't run a true optimal RF, but at least the way I see it, it looks fast enough.

RakWraithraiser · August 2016

Nopi wrote: »

I'm at 99 ping so I can't run a true optimal RF, but at least the way I see it, it looks fast enough.

I'm at 250 ping. But I guess RF is true garbage for me. Keke

Yamazuki · August 2016

Nopi wrote: »

I'm at 99 ping so I can't run a true optimal RF, but at least the way I see it, it looks fast enough.

Odd, I have no problems with it even at 120.

Archer Post Patch Build

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