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Making a Dodge Tank with Archery is Completely Unviable
championsrper
Posts: 70 Arc User
Though its technically possible to do, it is SO terrible and unreliable at it that it's completely unusable.
TL;DR towards the bottom.
As someone with 8 different Dodge Tanks fully geared with R8-9 mods and some truly ridiculous builds, I definitely consider myself one of, if not, the leading expert on the subject.
Dodge Tanks need to maintain 100% dodge chance 100% of the time, or they don't work. Dodge requires such heavy investment of all your stat resources that it is your one and only source of damage reduction. If you're the Main Tank, even a 0.01% miss chance is enough to ruin an entire cosmic raid for everyone.
Its 100%, or nothing. Anything less is unusable. Period.
While there is quite a bit of room for versatility in Dodge Tank builds, there are a couple absolute necesitites:
Because of these two requirements, your major restriction is that you NEED to be spamming melee attacks constantly.
The Elusive buff only triggers off of melee attacks and only lasts 2 seconds, so you can't even use any charge attacks with more than a 1.5 second charge time without dying. Any kind of ranged attack is completely out unless its something with a quick enough activation time to spam between Melee attacks.
The Floating Lotus Blossom advantage of Thundering Kicks is really only good for while you're still gearing your character and can't quite get to 100% with just the 18% from Rank 3 TK. Beyond that, its otherwise too inconsistent and therefore incredibly risky to be used reliably in endgame content.
Lithe lasts 12 seconds, though realistically you want to reapply it before it runs out, so you have an 8-10 second window between TK combos to do some ACTUAL damage with other melee powers. TK's damage alone is so pitiful that it will simply never be enough to hold aggro on its own. This is actually where you have a lot of room to have fun exploring all of your melee options, even PVD's like Magic Gauntlets, Brilliant Cleave, Toxic Blades, and Electric Vengeance.
Besides Martial Arts, Archery is the only other power set that tries to use the Dodge mechanic... and it completely fails at it. I would LOVE to be able to expand Dodge Tank builds into using Ranged powers, but it simply isn't possible right now. Archery has very few options, and they're all bad.
Snap Shot
Snap Shot is the Archery combo that is kinda like Thundering Kicks, except that its just not. The biggest problem is that it doesn't actually apply Lithe, the one thing you would want to use it for. Its damage is somehow even WORSE than TK, and its significantly slower. TK's combo takes 0.3, 0.4, and 0.5 seconds for a total of 1.2 seconds. Snap Shot takes 0.5, 0.67, and 0.83 for a total of 2 whole seconds. Almost double.
The only thing Snap Shot has going for it is an advantage that grants Floating Lotus Blossom with Archery attacks. However, TK's FLB activates on each hit of its combo and ANY melee attack, but SS's FLB only works with Archery powers and only after completing its combo. This is just way too slow to be useable.
Does Archery have another option for getting Lithe besides TK?
Yes, actually, but also, no, because its completely unusable.
Fair Game is a healing power that is the equivalent of MA's Bountiful Chi Resurgence, except that its not, because instead of being able to trigger from every time you Dodge, it triggers when you defeat an enemy, something that simply doesn't happen in endgame boss fight content. Archery's Lithe bonus is FOR SOME UNFATHOMABLE REASON, tied to an advantage on Fair Game that, once again, only triggers when you defeat an enemy, and ALSO, can only grant the minimum 12% dodge chance bonus that a Rank 1 TK would grant, and cannot be ranked any further. This is, in every way, completely useless.
Every other source of Dodge chance bonus is either too long of a cooldown to be reliable, too brief of a duration to last, or too small of a bonus to matter. The Archery framework, even in combination with the Martial Arts power set, is simply incapable of functioning as a Dodge Tank, despite its poorest attempts to try to be one.
Even if you're using TK to get Lithe and Parry to get Elusive, because of Snap Shot's 2 second combo time, your Elusive bonus will wear off before you can build stacks of FLB to replace the lost bonus from Elusive. Even if it DID end up working, instead of spamming one bad combo, now you have to spam two, so that 8-10 second window you get is now even smaller. You really only have time for maybe one full 5 second maintain of Rapid Shots before it's back to spamming combo attacks that do no damage, all just so that you don't die.
This isn't just BAD, its TERRIBLE. Its UNPLAYABLE. Its janky, its unreliable, it does terrible damage, and it require such a heavy investment in gear and mods just to become the worst tank imaginable.
And, I forgot to mention a Dodge Tank's other major restriction: Dexterity.
Because you NEED Elusive, and Elusive stacks with DEX, you basically NEED all the DEX you can get. The DEX Primary SuperStat also gives you Quick Reflexes Dodge bonus which scales with DEX, and you get Brush It Off, the 10% AoE Dodge buff which, while not really something you should rely on all the time, is a very welcome safety net when fighting bosses who primarily use AoE attacks.
DEX is a necessity. So it kinda sucks that Archery's Form, Precision, is only INT based. What ever happened to Form's scaling from the highest of two different stats? Why such restrictions?
The only Forms that primarily buff Ranged damage and scale with DEX are Sharpshooter and Chilled.
Sharpshooter requires the Furious buff which Munitions is completely incapable of quickly applying in a way that won't get you killed. So your only options left are in the completely antithetical STR/Enrage/Melee Bestial power set. Howl has too long of a cooldown, and Pounce+Furious Charge is just adding EVEN MORE unnecessary complications to an already cluttered skill rotation. Your only other option is Frenzy which also has an advantage that can apply Furious, but its chance scales off of having stacks of Enrage unless you finish the combo to guarantee 1 application of it, and I'll be damned if I'm even going to consider adding a THIRD combo power to my rotation. So Sharpshooter is out.
Chilled on the other hand requires fighting from far away, something a Tank fundamentally can't do, or partially charging or maintaining a power, something you also can't really do too much. As previously mentioned, you don't have time between combos to do more than a single Rapid Shots or maybe a couple of half-charged Straight Shots. This means instead of building up your Form stacks every 4 seconds, you can only build maybe one or two every 8 to 12 seconds in between your combos. This is just way too slow to reliably build and maintain stacks or replenish the energy that will be used up by combos that don't build stacks or generate energy. So Chilled is basically out too.
This is probably the biggest barrier to actually making an Archery Dodge Tank, there simply is no viable Form to make it work. You are, unfortunately, best off using Form of the Tempest and only getting HALF of the Ranged damage bonus that you would get to Melee, but at least you can build those stacks reliably.
TL;DR: What does Archery need to ACTUALLY make an effective Dodge Tank?
Archery powers are cool, but they're not great for DPS, and they're just plain unusable for a Dodge Tank, despite my repeated best efforts to make them work. I'm not asking for them to be the BEST, or even good, I'm just asking for them to be at least playable. And spamming a pair of the saddest 200 DPS combo powers is just NOT playable.
TL;DR towards the bottom.
As someone with 8 different Dodge Tanks fully geared with R8-9 mods and some truly ridiculous builds, I definitely consider myself one of, if not, the leading expert on the subject.
Dodge Tanks need to maintain 100% dodge chance 100% of the time, or they don't work. Dodge requires such heavy investment of all your stat resources that it is your one and only source of damage reduction. If you're the Main Tank, even a 0.01% miss chance is enough to ruin an entire cosmic raid for everyone.
Its 100%, or nothing. Anything less is unusable. Period.
While there is quite a bit of room for versatility in Dodge Tank builds, there are a couple absolute necesitites:
- Lithe, a +18% dodge chance bonus from Rank 3 Thundering Kicks
- And the Elusive Monk/Swordsman advantage from Parry/Deflect.
Because of these two requirements, your major restriction is that you NEED to be spamming melee attacks constantly.
The Elusive buff only triggers off of melee attacks and only lasts 2 seconds, so you can't even use any charge attacks with more than a 1.5 second charge time without dying. Any kind of ranged attack is completely out unless its something with a quick enough activation time to spam between Melee attacks.
The Floating Lotus Blossom advantage of Thundering Kicks is really only good for while you're still gearing your character and can't quite get to 100% with just the 18% from Rank 3 TK. Beyond that, its otherwise too inconsistent and therefore incredibly risky to be used reliably in endgame content.
Lithe lasts 12 seconds, though realistically you want to reapply it before it runs out, so you have an 8-10 second window between TK combos to do some ACTUAL damage with other melee powers. TK's damage alone is so pitiful that it will simply never be enough to hold aggro on its own. This is actually where you have a lot of room to have fun exploring all of your melee options, even PVD's like Magic Gauntlets, Brilliant Cleave, Toxic Blades, and Electric Vengeance.
Besides Martial Arts, Archery is the only other power set that tries to use the Dodge mechanic... and it completely fails at it. I would LOVE to be able to expand Dodge Tank builds into using Ranged powers, but it simply isn't possible right now. Archery has very few options, and they're all bad.
Snap Shot
Snap Shot is the Archery combo that is kinda like Thundering Kicks, except that its just not. The biggest problem is that it doesn't actually apply Lithe, the one thing you would want to use it for. Its damage is somehow even WORSE than TK, and its significantly slower. TK's combo takes 0.3, 0.4, and 0.5 seconds for a total of 1.2 seconds. Snap Shot takes 0.5, 0.67, and 0.83 for a total of 2 whole seconds. Almost double.
The only thing Snap Shot has going for it is an advantage that grants Floating Lotus Blossom with Archery attacks. However, TK's FLB activates on each hit of its combo and ANY melee attack, but SS's FLB only works with Archery powers and only after completing its combo. This is just way too slow to be useable.
Does Archery have another option for getting Lithe besides TK?
Yes, actually, but also, no, because its completely unusable.
Fair Game is a healing power that is the equivalent of MA's Bountiful Chi Resurgence, except that its not, because instead of being able to trigger from every time you Dodge, it triggers when you defeat an enemy, something that simply doesn't happen in endgame boss fight content. Archery's Lithe bonus is FOR SOME UNFATHOMABLE REASON, tied to an advantage on Fair Game that, once again, only triggers when you defeat an enemy, and ALSO, can only grant the minimum 12% dodge chance bonus that a Rank 1 TK would grant, and cannot be ranked any further. This is, in every way, completely useless.
Every other source of Dodge chance bonus is either too long of a cooldown to be reliable, too brief of a duration to last, or too small of a bonus to matter. The Archery framework, even in combination with the Martial Arts power set, is simply incapable of functioning as a Dodge Tank, despite its poorest attempts to try to be one.
Even if you're using TK to get Lithe and Parry to get Elusive, because of Snap Shot's 2 second combo time, your Elusive bonus will wear off before you can build stacks of FLB to replace the lost bonus from Elusive. Even if it DID end up working, instead of spamming one bad combo, now you have to spam two, so that 8-10 second window you get is now even smaller. You really only have time for maybe one full 5 second maintain of Rapid Shots before it's back to spamming combo attacks that do no damage, all just so that you don't die.
This isn't just BAD, its TERRIBLE. Its UNPLAYABLE. Its janky, its unreliable, it does terrible damage, and it require such a heavy investment in gear and mods just to become the worst tank imaginable.
And, I forgot to mention a Dodge Tank's other major restriction: Dexterity.
Because you NEED Elusive, and Elusive stacks with DEX, you basically NEED all the DEX you can get. The DEX Primary SuperStat also gives you Quick Reflexes Dodge bonus which scales with DEX, and you get Brush It Off, the 10% AoE Dodge buff which, while not really something you should rely on all the time, is a very welcome safety net when fighting bosses who primarily use AoE attacks.
DEX is a necessity. So it kinda sucks that Archery's Form, Precision, is only INT based. What ever happened to Form's scaling from the highest of two different stats? Why such restrictions?
The only Forms that primarily buff Ranged damage and scale with DEX are Sharpshooter and Chilled.
Sharpshooter requires the Furious buff which Munitions is completely incapable of quickly applying in a way that won't get you killed. So your only options left are in the completely antithetical STR/Enrage/Melee Bestial power set. Howl has too long of a cooldown, and Pounce+Furious Charge is just adding EVEN MORE unnecessary complications to an already cluttered skill rotation. Your only other option is Frenzy which also has an advantage that can apply Furious, but its chance scales off of having stacks of Enrage unless you finish the combo to guarantee 1 application of it, and I'll be damned if I'm even going to consider adding a THIRD combo power to my rotation. So Sharpshooter is out.
Chilled on the other hand requires fighting from far away, something a Tank fundamentally can't do, or partially charging or maintaining a power, something you also can't really do too much. As previously mentioned, you don't have time between combos to do more than a single Rapid Shots or maybe a couple of half-charged Straight Shots. This means instead of building up your Form stacks every 4 seconds, you can only build maybe one or two every 8 to 12 seconds in between your combos. This is just way too slow to reliably build and maintain stacks or replenish the energy that will be used up by combos that don't build stacks or generate energy. So Chilled is basically out too.
This is probably the biggest barrier to actually making an Archery Dodge Tank, there simply is no viable Form to make it work. You are, unfortunately, best off using Form of the Tempest and only getting HALF of the Ranged damage bonus that you would get to Melee, but at least you can build those stacks reliably.
TL;DR: What does Archery need to ACTUALLY make an effective Dodge Tank?
- Snap Shot should apply Lithe, scaling up to 18% at Rank 3, just like Thundering Kicks. This is the only thing it could ever possibly be good for. The FLB advantage is fine, but would be nice if it applied on each hit like TK does, not just the last hit, especially since its so slow. Also, maybe like, make it not so slow.
- Archery could REALLY use its own version of Parry/Deflect, but triggering off of Archery powers, if not just any Ranged power. Perhaps it could even scale off of INT instead of DEX. This would probably make it even harder to reach 100% without DEX SuperStat Specs, but I think it might still be doable. At the very least, it would at least be different.
- Precision NEEDS to be able to scale off of DEX unless you make it possible to make an INT based Dodge Tanks.
Archery powers are cool, but they're not great for DPS, and they're just plain unusable for a Dodge Tank, despite my repeated best efforts to make them work. I'm not asking for them to be the BEST, or even good, I'm just asking for them to be at least playable. And spamming a pair of the saddest 200 DPS combo powers is just NOT playable.
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Comments
I remember having high hopes for an archery rework, and petitioned for archery to get a viable dodge build.. but what we got was utter trash. The archery rework was 100% disappointment.. I really stopped caring about powerset reworks after that one.