Annor's Archer Basics (guide)

DevilCrys - Heavens Tear

This guide kinda failed on most parts, it wasn't to detailed for noobs that still don't understand skills. You should have put all archer skills and listed what ones are ASAP max and what ones you pace/Dont lvl, Winged shell is a max ASAP if you .. well anything its vital. I maxed that n my blazing arrow first, then my thunder, working on maxing my stun/other buff. I stopped leveling frost arrow,stopped leveling vicious arrow n bleed, Vicious arrow n bleed..for the ammount of damage they do over time blegh not worth spirit till later.

Now question, Take aim/Quick shot..Apparently Sage Take Aim is amazingly strong and in the long run is stronger then deadly shot..Someone said level Quickshot and that its good for PvE/PvP..Tbh Quickshot I got to lvl 4 n I normal shot higher then it ..

Any suggestions on what skills are PvE/PvP to be maxed first? And whats generally better for a pure dex archer, Slingshot,Crossbow,Bow ? Also my ornaments are vitality mostly,rings are str n crit, gear is resistance/reduced damage/vit - sharded with hp, my helm is reduced damage taken aswell..

Grinding - I use the lowest lvl of ammo

PvP - I use the highest I can

Correct?

Also if anyone has suggestions for future stuff/ornament use/attribute use let me know, Im staying pure dex..I can 70% of the time kill the mob before it reachs me if my normal stun lands, otherwise ill maybe get hit twice..If Im being ganked by two mobs ill winged shell n if both melee ill use wingspan then knock back on one of them then set off a stun n hope it hits..the other mob will be running back by then, in that time the other mob is dead n my knock back n wingspan have cooled down n i do it again. Is knockback worth getting up also? I havent leveled mine really.

Thanks.

Annor - Heavens Tear

DevilCrys - Heavens Tear wrote: »

This guide kinda failed on most parts, it wasn't to detailed for noobs that still don't understand skills. You should have put all archer skills and listed what ones are ASAP max and what ones you pace/Dont lvl

Erm I did, thats what the abbreviations were about, Max means ASAP and the word you picked 'Pace' is actually one of my abbreviations as well, and yes i do say which are not to be levelled. By the way, telling me my guide 'failed' is a rather aggressive start to a post which later asks for advice.

DevilCrys - Heavens Tear wrote: »

Winged shell is a max ASAP if you .. well anything its vital

You are entitled to your opinion, due to its regular Chi conflict with frost arrow, which should be used virtually every fight, this ability often takes a back seat, and being a rank or two behind generally doesnt cost you that much in effectiveness. In my opinion its not an essential "MAX IMMEDIATELY".

DevilCrys - Heavens Tear wrote: »

Now question, Take aim/Quick shot..Apparently Sage Take Aim is amazingly strong and in the long run is stronger then deadly shot..Someone said level Quickshot and that its good for PvE/PvP..Tbh Quickshot I got to lvl 4 n I normal shot higher then it ..

This isnt actually a question by the way, but in response: quickshot is pathetic for damage from levels 1 to 10, don't worry about it until 89.

DevilCrys - Heavens Tear wrote: »

Any suggestions on what skills are PvE/PvP to be maxed first? And whats generally better for a pure dex archer, Slingshot,Crossbow,Bow ?

Slingshot is generally considered best for pve, while crossbow is considered best for pvp. This really only comes into play when two items of different type and very similar quality are available though, and this generally wont be the case until the later stages of the game... so if you're starting out, just use the strongest weapon you can get your hands on.


The knockback question i addressed in my guide, use it at level 1. On the other questions around this area of your post (i got sick of quoting and replying individually) you seem to be mostly on the right track.

erm... ty... i guess

Fleuri - Sanctuary

Annor - Heavens Tear wrote: »

You are entitled to your opinion, due to its regular Chi conflict with frost arrow, which should be used virtually every fight, this ability often takes a back seat, and being a rank or two behind generally doesnt cost you that much in effectiveness. In my opinion its not an essential "MAX IMMEDIATELY".

I sort of agree with Devil's Cry on this issue: if you use winged shell, you do not need to be using frost arrow in most fights. Also, when I fight ranged opponents, I much prefer winged shell. Of course, if your fights are sort of easy, you might use both, alternating between them so you do not have to wait for winged shell's cooldown. But if your fights were difficult, winged shell might have turned them into pillow fights. And if your fights were really easy you would not need to use either.

(I also think you have overlooked three nice features of level 1 quickshot.)

Rockstare - Heavens Tear

I am newb to this game (though I do have xp from other mmorpgs), and this has been the most usefull had most information of the archer posts I've read so far, thanks!

And for all the people who are so fast to judge this, you may write better on your own?

JK, I hope this improves in constructive manner to be maybe even better.

Good allaround post, keep up the good work, mate!

Razor - Dreamweaver

I acciddently used 1 point at vit. i have the pure build. am i no longer a pure then??? b:shocked

Tristesse - Harshlands

Razor - Dreamweaver wrote: »

I acciddently used 1 point at vit. i have the pure build. am i no longer a pure then??? b:shocked

No!

You're tainted b:angry

Mark - Harshlands

Hey Annor,

Thanks very much for the guide, it's been very useful in my new life as an archer on Harshlands. It seems like a long time since I helped you with your fb19 b:laugh

Mark
(aka - Revstar, FuriousWrath, Vultura on HT)

Annor - Heavens Tear

Ahhhhhhhhh Rev!!!
Ty again for that
and glad I could help

DevilCrys - Heavens Tear

Frost arrow is only used for a bit until you get your stun and when yo uget your stun you kill it before it hits you basically.

sival01

Make a sage and demon guide for archers it helps and thats reallly one helpful guide i must USE IT

Annor - Heavens Tear

I made my guide based on what i know, i pay a lot of attention to the Sage/Demon discussion, but I don't consider myself an authority on the subject (nor am i 89 yet).

Another reason I don't really want to guide people on this subject.. ever... is that it is a permanent, important, and irreversible decision, if someone were to follow my advice and choose a celestial path they later regretted, i would feel like a bad, bad, nasty, miserable individual.

(by the way, YAY 100 replies... lets just forget that a large number of those were mine.)

KiRa_y_oShi - Heavens Tear

Illusionista - Heavens Tear wrote: »

I LOVE YOU ANNOR. BE MINE! b:dirty

You know my critiques and comments from before, no need to list them here XD

illu stop fallowing my woman around liek a sick puppyb:angry

ishan

Sooo hypothetically...if I made an archer...and got to I think lv 8...and was a noob and evenly distributed attributes, including magic and vitality, am I screwed and should start over? Hypothetically?

Fleuri - Sanctuary

ishan wrote: »

Sooo hypothetically...if I made an archer...and got to I think lv 8...and was a noob and evenly distributed attributes, including magic and vitality, am I screwed and should start over? Hypothetically?

I would say, hypothetically speaking, no. You will be recovering health and mana faster than some level 90 archers. But I know archers with 50..90 health, you will not be even close to their survivability unless you buy up your vitality (but they need help with their accuracy).

But you need to be buying up your dexterity.

With 10..15 magic you should also be using lots of level 1 skills (preferably with a crossbow) during combat, so you can take advantage of your slight boost in mp recovery and your larger magic pool. Level 1 quickshot works great with a crossbow (especially later on). Level 1 take aim will be your fastest skill possible (activate again when it starts charging or you will take forever). Level 1 knockback works brilliantly. Look for skills which take 1 second of channeling and which do not cost any chi (once you get chi and once you have skill options available to you). But also realize you are wasting chi when your chi bar is full (because every shot you take and every skill you use builds chi except when you have no place to store your chi).

You might have lost 1% of your damage potential, but you will also have increased your defenses by 1% (physical) and 2% (magical) which -- along with your slightly faster recovery rates and health and vitality pools, will help you somewhat, especially later on.

Some people will tell you you can get gear (later on) which boosts your recovery rate. And you can, and your innate recovery rate will stack with your gear's recovery rate. Or you can be wearing +dex gear instead of recovery gear, which can balance your early investment.

Anyways, eight levels of evenly distributed stat points might cause you some early problems (if you can not equip a good ranged weapon before you get your dexterity up) but will not hurt you for very long.

Also, all archers struggle during their early levels so we all tend to be somewhat dissatisfied with our builds, hoping we can survive until later.

Meanwhile, when you can, please make sure you max and use winged shell. Winged shell will multiply your innate endurance and help you build on your strengths.

Also, you should learn to kite. You will be able to recover slightly faster than other archers but only slightly. Build on your strengths by trying to not be hit very often.

You also need to learn to choose when to stand (perhaps using winged shell) and when to kite, but both can work.

Annor - Heavens Tear

Hmm, i would look at which build you intend to aim for. If 'pure' is the route you want, those vit/magic points are going to be somewhat painful to your build. If you're more interested in hybrid though, you could probably ignore your losses and go with a very slightly less effective stat build until restatting a long way down the track. Eventually you will want to restat, so its a question of starting over now, or paying 300k-500k later.

A massive part of this game is efficiency, and any graduate of archerschool will tell you that the most valuable attack an archer has is their regular (mana-free) shots. The cheapest, highest damage potential archer possible is the 'pure', and every dexterity point counts. The skills you are forced to use, and the hp lost by mob attacks are the result of the shortcomings of your basic attack (in defending you properly by killing mobs before they reach you). While you can never fix these shortcomings completely, you can try to minimize them by having every point in dex possible, and the best weapon you can get your hands on.

Damage is King.

ishan

Thanks for the great answers guys.
I got some more questions.
What exactly do the attributes dex, strength, magic, do? Whats the difference between strength and dex? I know the attribute affect the lv of your weapons and armor you can hold, but do they do anything else?

Also, what is "Kiting"? I'm guessing its flying during a fight?

I don't have enough spirit cultivation to learn winged shell. I haven't used any yet actually I just figured out how to use the trainer after reading this. Cultivation is like xP right?

Annor - Heavens Tear

You can see the effects of the stats by scrolling over them in the character window:
Vitality: Increases HP, HP recovery rate, Phys/Magic defense
Magic: Increases MP, MP recovery rate, Magic attack
Strength: Increases physical melee damage, physical defense
Dexterity: Increases ranged physical attack, acurracy, evasion, phys/magic critical hit rates

So strength = melee (so its for BMs/Barbs)
dexterity = ranged (archers).

Kiting is basicaly 'hit and run', shooting a monster then running back to avoid being hit, hitting again etc, it often involves slowing the monster. The aim of kiting is to avoid being hit altogether. I wouldnt reccommend it for regular use, it slows down combat too much, for maximum XP you want to be killing fast, so reserve this for minibosses or particularly difficult monsters.

Your spirit is like xp in that its accumulated together with it (at a rate proportional to your xp); the difference being that it is used as a currency to buy abilities rather than levelling and resetting. Your spiritual cultivation is different though, at every 10 levels on the 9 (Lvl 9, 19, 29 etc..), you are able to reach a new level of spiritual cultivation, by completing a quest, which unlocks new abilities. Spiritual Cultivation quests show up in yellow in your quest log, and are usually initiated at elders, taoists, 'celestial' npcs.

angellicdeity

In my opinion all you can do for the sage/demon guides is write the skill descriptions and let them decide for themselves.

Both paths require luck.

Both paths have something rewarding that creates envy towards the other.

To enjoy a particular path it must suite your style of play.

Sage has higher damage more consistently with a further range.

Demon has a whole load of useful things such as a winged shell casted upon a Wing span, or a Thunder shock that never misses, or perhaps an increased critical rate (temporary) when casting certain skills.


In my opinion demons are quick spikers while sages seem to be long term consistent damage dealers (talking about archers here.)

Mosz - Heavens Tear

angellicdeity wrote: »

In my opinion all you can do for the sage/demon guides is write the skill descriptions and let them decide for themselves.

Both paths require luck.

Both paths have something rewarding that creates envy towards the other.

To enjoy a particular path it must suite your style of play.

Sage has higher damage more consistently with a further range.

Demon has a whole load of useful things such as a winged shell casted upon a Wing span, or a Thunder shock that never misses, or perhaps an increased critical rate (temporary) when casting certain skills.


In my opinion demons are quick spikers while sages seem to be long term consistent damage dealers (talking about archers here.)

and it sucks major donkey balls to get any useful skill for either class?
while you make look at once side and be all ohh these skills i prefer or this+this+this=pwn remember to see how difficult it is to get the skills >.< (except the fb89 ones, take aim, frost arrow, and blaze arrow-those are fairly simple to find)..someone should starts working on a list of which skills are easy and hard to get..and some info on fb99
page of fate-complete cube 1-50 at lvl90+ (get 1 per cube completion?,30 pages per skill for each of 5 of lvl 99 skills?)
mysterious page ???
fb89 skills (for lvl 89-3 fairly easy to get)
fb99 skills (lvl 89 skills, low rate/hard to farm?)

Fleuri - Sanctuary

Annor - Heavens Tear wrote: »

Kiting is basicaly 'hit and run', shooting a monster then running back to avoid being hit, hitting again etc, it often involves slowing the monster. The aim of kiting is to avoid being hit altogether. I wouldnt reccommend it for regular use, it slows down combat too much, for maximum XP you want to be killing fast, so reserve this for minibosses or particularly difficult monsters.

We have several variations on kiting.

For minibosses, shoot and run, taking five minutes can work rather nicely.

For regular low-level combat, waiting till something gets near you and then jumping over its head can reduce your incoming damage and can increase your total damage by giving you some range for another shot.

And, so on..

AndromedaB - Sanctuary

or u could use ur KB or that stun thing

ishan

thanks guys it helped a lot.

goldian

I must thanks you for this great guide, i've read it before even installing PWI. When it was installed i got to lvl 25 in one day and i followd this guide for stats/skills is kind of hard to level the archer against certain kind of mobs. But for tehe rest its okay. Also if possible now you've made this you can get more detailed in your guides.. Example: Dont use skills till you reach lvl 5 then lvl only "XXX", then when you become lvl 9 you get the "XXXX" one etc etc.
Cause atm im only lvling those skills that are said to be on MAX (not the pace on..) winged shell etc still lvl 1 ^^ and I always got a bunch of spirit left

Anyways thanks you, now if you could make a gold guide that would be great lol ;p

Ps I play in Dreamweaver and my nick is Goldian

Annor - Heavens Tear

I might revise the guide with that in mind, thanks for the input. As a quickfix though, after those MAX skills, i consider winged shell the next highest priority .

Aesthor - Heavens Tear

Seeing as there's lots of KSing complaints you might want to add KS to your glosssary.

I will get back to you about the cube thing I told you about in-game first opportunity I have to test it o.o. It might be a while in the coming because I only just hit 80 so I am reluctant to cube, and also because my HP charm is almost dead whereas I tend not to equip one until TW....

Aesthor - Heavens Tear

Mosz - Heavens Tear wrote: »

and it sucks major donkey balls to get any useful skill for either class?
while you make look at once side and be all ohh these skills i prefer or this+this+this=pwn remember to see how difficult it is to get the skills >.< (except the fb89 ones, take aim, frost arrow, and blaze arrow-those are fairly simple to find)..someone should starts working on a list of which skills are easy and hard to get..and some info on fb99
page of fate-complete cube 1-50 at lvl90+ (get 1 per cube completion?,30 pages per skill for each of 5 of lvl 99 skills?)
mysterious page ???
fb89 skills (for lvl 89-3 fairly easy to get)
fb99 skills (lvl 89 skills, low rate/hard to farm?)

Yes and because of the drop rate of skills I tend to favor demon because you will always have the spark, and the merits of demon spark appeal to me far more than sage spark.

Plus I'd have a little Khoshy-burger flying around me all the time ._. (inside joke)

ishan

oh no...read mroe carefully...and of course the two skills I went and maxed out are take aim and quick shot...

Fleuri - Sanctuary

ishan wrote: »

oh no...read mroe carefully...and of course the two skills I went and maxed out are take aim and quick shot...

I hope you can come up with something useful -- level 1 vicious arrow and knockback arrow have reasonable mana costs. Even maxed, quick shot will not be too bad (not free, but not too bad). Even maxed, take aim will be only moderately costly (when compared with some of your other skills) and should do some nice damage? (If I were in your shoes, I would probably dump most of my chi into winged shell, and maybe use recovery boosting apothecary powders.)

Elenacostel - Heavens Tear

Greetings, Lady Annor.

This guide is impressive.

Here are some comments:

- I found the writing style's directness refreshing.

- Formatting issue: I suggest, for the PvP section, you break it out into paragraphs based on armor type. This becomes a bit more readable.

- Knockback in PvP: I read somewhere that it does not work, though I have no idea myself. Since you did not suggest it, I am guessing this is true. Perhaps this should be mentioned?

- Chi regeneration: One way to regain chi is to cast Wings of Protection repeatedly. This is useful, especially after dying within a dungeon. Also, I think Lady Aesthor posted once somewhere that you can use Take Aim and cancel it before it goes off, to achieve a similar effect. My apologies if I have my source incorrect.

- For PvE grinding, I think one or two items that have mana regeneration is a good investment. You can switch it out for non-grinding purposes.

I am not sure if you are interested, but here are the combos I use; all combos end with normal attacks, of course. This is after level 60, in which most creatures have ranged attacks and do not come into melee distance. I have a hybrid build, and most of my gear is based on HP and MP recovery (though I believe I will change that in the near future).

- Normal Creatures: As you suggested, Frost -> Normal -> Normal -> Knockback
- No Chi: Take Aim -> Stunning Arrow -> Normal -> Knockback
- Increased Life: Same combo as no Chi, adding afterwards: Winged Shell -> Spark
- Increased Defense: Still experimenting.

I've also found that Barrage does not aggro as much as normal attacks against bosses. Can anyone verify?

Annor - Heavens Tear

Tyvm Elena,
- I will probably take your advice on the PVP section, ty. I admit i was a little anxious writing that section; I'm not bad at PvP, but I am acutely aware that other people know a lot more about it than I do.

-The Knockback effect does NOT work in PVP (the damage does though, so in high level PVP some people use it purely for this, as most people still actively grinding keep it at level 1 though, thats really a late game thing)

-I use the Wings of Protection spam for chi as well, ty though, I will probably mention this. And yes, you can cast Take Aim then hit the ability again to fire instantly (not cancel it) which is a very effective way to get Chi.

-I use a single mana regen piece as well to help grind, i think this is really effective especially when you can reduce your mana consumption to the point where it is practical to completely recover the mana you use, and use little or no mana potions.

Your combos look very effective, sparking that late in your increased life rotation though, dont the monsters reach melee range well before your spark runs out?

I would be surprised if Barrage generated less aggro... note that at low ranks though its damage is actually comparible to regular attacks, delivering approxiamately double damage with half as many attaks per second.

I will probably be adding or enhancing sections of the guide that deal with efficiency when killing/Chi management; and I'll work on my PVP section as suggested.

Ty again
P.S. i remember that 20/20/20 run with you Elena, i was impressed ^^