Discussion on Heavy Armor Build for Archers

Neodaystar - Sanctuary

Some will probably tell me to reroll as a bm after seeing the title of the thread – lol, but then you won’t have those awesome archer skills to use. I am planning on restating for a heavy and fist build for more PVE solo’bility from lvl 90-99 and to farm for TTs to help acquire e.g. gears for a pure dex build.

I’m currently a pure dex build with 6600+ hp buffed (mainly from refines and loads of immac citrines). Working in squads is easy. I mainly just DD, STA, stun/freeze running mobs for the barb, AoE clusters and control aggro. As for mob killing quests and solo grinding (non melee mobs), piece of cake. And PVP as an archer (killing those with similar level and gear), just awesome But when it comes to solo PVE and instances, that’s where everything can go wrong.

After a bh 89 run one day, I stayed behind on my own to finish that 3x20 mob quest. (I have a set of elemental and physical def ornaments, which I switch between depending on my target’s attacks to max the needed defense) Here’s how it went:

(not sure if many other archers have tried killing these on their own with a hard time)

Celestial Dranite Priestess: They didn’t do so much damage, but the poison can stack and kill you if left untreated. Without using demon spark to purify the accumulated poison and a hp food, there was no way I could have solo killed the thing fast enough before it killed me.

Celestial Oddfoot Champion: Had to demon sparked each time follow by stun to get a spark for aim low right after that. By the time the freeze and spark buff wore off, it had 50% hp left and was pretty much impossible to kite even with stun and frost arrow. By the time you stop running and attack, it’s already gotten to melee range where your attacks are reduced. Using winged shell or wings of grace is just a waste of time and chi. 4 attacks from it can pretty much kill me if hp is left untreated. All I can do from then on was running and use lighting strike/other melee skills, which don’t even do much damage to it considering it’s a wood mob. (In my conclusion, most of archers top skills are useless in this situation or of little effect, or just don’t have enough chi to recast).

Heavenly Rhinorex: I used the same attack tactics, demon sparked, then froze it and do max damage to it before it comes to me. Even though it wasn’t a melee mob, it was earth, its attacks were more physical based, and there was no way I could have survived 3 hits from it without hp foods/winged shell/genie.

It was after the frustration and pot cost of solo’ing those mobs that I started thinking about restating and switch over to heavy armor and using fists from now on until I can do PVP in the big league (with so many high levels with end game gears, a non CS archer like me just can’t compete in PVP atm – it’s the truth). Heavy armor would give me more physical defense. Using fists with some interval gears (lvl 95 ones too), demon spark, and cloud eruption can give me close to perm spark, won’t really diminish my damage, but may possibility increase it from what I’ve read in other archer threads. If I do need some more magic protection, I can always switch back to a light plate. So would this be a way to go for more PVE oriented archers (lvl 90-99)?

Finding squads TT/BH can be troublesome for low to mid 90s archers during the prime hours. People will always prefer a second cleric or barb over an archer for those world chats. Even if they do need an archer (like delta or frost), then there’s the competition among us fellow archers in which the higher level is preferred. I didn’t have trouble tanking any of the bh 79 bosses with just one cleric spamming IH since lvl 80+. I’m not sure if a heavy armor archer can efficiently tank those in BH 89/99 seeing how a level 85 barb with 10k hp can do so efficiently in Seat of Torment, and I (6600+ hp) got killed in 2 hits by a mob =( Sure, I’ll might fail as a DD with a bow, but not a failed DD with fists or a vital character to a squad if I can tank and DD. And as mentioned in another thread, an archer spam normal attacks and uses skills only for the effects.

I have seen a few archers running around with heavy armor, but never got a chance to see them in action. I would love to hear from you folks about your experience before I restat

Scorched_Sky - Sanctuary

Hai Neo :O.

I made one lol. I kinda like it. It's lvl...11 o.O...hitting stuff with a pole and winged shell is funny.
I wouldn't have enough experience on the topic to give you any good advice or comments about the HA archer, although you might want to chat with elyiawatson if you see him (lvl 101 HA archer).

From what I've heard others say though, this is what it boils down to.
1) damage significantly decreased, as well as crit rate and attacks/sec
2) most mobs are magic, so HA wouldn't be great
3) archers don't have to tank - job of the barb, and even if you were HA, people would still doubt your ability to successfully tank

(These are not my opinions)

But if you do instances with more melee/archer mobs, it could help...
Plus you can still wear LA, so you could switch sets when necessary, like you do with your orns.
If you grind on a specific type of magic mob frequently, you could find some gear with only that elemental resist and load it with immac element shards of that type (I saw that elyia had well above 13k water resist on his set like this - although I didn't actually calculate it; it was probably much higher).

WaffleChan - Sanctuary

you may want to PM Valirah on our server, shes a bit of an estranged archer whos been HA for a while now, has carried it to 99 aswell.

Asterelle - Sanctuary_1381265973

Don't give up on the pure route.. for PVE overwhelming offense is an effective defense and is much more gratifying. The biggest problem you have is that your spark can't kill an fb mob on its own. Invest in demon skills like mastery, quickshot, stun arrow and later barrage and tooth. Try to work for refining your weapon to like +8 or higher and improve your attack interval and crit.

There is like a magic point where that last bit of extra damage suddenly means you kill pretty much anything before it gets in melee range.. when nothing can touch you and it feels good to be an archer. If you have to try hard not to steal aggro from hercs on TT bosses you're doing a good job.

Mercinary - Heavens Tear

Interesting idea, but I think what I'd do is stick with the LA build but get enough str to equip the 85 Lunar Claws which have a chance to increase phys att and defense, and your only hope would basically be to spark and Jiaozi. Although I went sage I've actually held off Stygen (79) by myself mixing sage spark and wind shield along with Jiaozi, and using the lvl 30 claws that add a bit of defense.

Not bad personally considering I only have about 3.3k hp. I need money... All donate to the Mercinary fund for Refines and Shards please

sparkslinerhigh

Hey guys, I'm totally new (first post), but I've played until level 20 so I suppose I should attempt to say something and look stupid for your amusement.

I've been doing the Fist build (along with 10 mag/10 vit), and I've noticed that following that build let's you use a Hv armor a couple of grades down, and that increases pdef compared to the current Lt Armor in exchange for a lot of the ele resist. I feel that the Heavy route's more natural in this case, because the Str you need to eq a fist is high enough to eq a decent h armor and still eq your current bow.

(Please don't flame me too hard, I'm your friendly neighborhood nab! ^^')

AngleSnipe - Heavens Tear

Maybe you should take it to the next step and farm some ADS to wield GX axes b:chuckle

Elenacostel - Heavens Tear

Neodaystar - Sanctuary wrote: »

Heavenly Rhinorex: I used the same attack tactics, demon sparked, then froze it and do max damage to it before it comes to me. Even though it wasn’t a melee mob, it was earth, its attacks were more physical based, and there was no way I could have survived 3 hits from it without hp foods/winged shell/genie.

Sort of off-topic, but you can knock these back.

Also, do you open with Sharpened Tooth Arrow on instance mobs?

Kiyoshi - Heavens Tear

All i gotta say is... every archer should go heavy.

Ussichu - Sanctuary

Demon quickshot and you can take down instance mobs with Aim low > quickshot proc > dead without getting hit

if it doesn't proc, use stunning arrow and knockback and you should be fine. I did this with a lol windcatcher and was fine.

GARCeleritas - Lost City

Mercinary - Heavens Tear wrote: »

Interesting idea, but I think what I'd do is stick with the LA build but get enough str to equip the 85 Lunar Claws which have a chance to increase phys att and defense, and your only hope would basically be to spark and Jiaozi. Although I went sage I've actually held off Stygen (79) by myself mixing sage spark and wind shield along with Jiaozi, and using the lvl 30 claws that add a bit of defense.

Not bad personally considering I only have about 3.3k hp. I need money... All donate to the Mercinary fund for Refines and Shards please

AngleSnipe - Heavens Tear wrote: »

Maybe you should take it to the next step and farm some ADS to wield GX axes b:chuckle

Sorry, I've got no idea what any of that means. Every time someone says ADS or HH or something like that it just floats over my head, everyone using acronyms leaves us nabs in the dark QQ

Smobo - Heavens Tear

Heavy armour involves raising your strength a lot. Which means your bow damage goes down.. but your fist damage goes up. Since fists have a very high dps for archers, this could be exploited, so at higher levels, HA could be a very solid build, which may even out dps pure dex.

However, there is 2 big issues, mainly with how fist archers work so well:
- Rank 4/6/8 chest is LA. There goes your single most defensive piece of equipment.
- Getting the LA 99 set bonus as a HA user is much more stupid then getting the HA bonus as a LA user.

Rank chests make you lose ~1k p def, there is no HA chest which gives you -interval. You could also hypothetically get the LA set bonus from wearing LA boots and wrists, or ..-shivers-.. evasion ornements.

GARCeleritas - Lost City

Hey I did a bit more fisted/heavy archer leveling, and since my first character is a level 21 pure dex arc and i've just gotten to lv 15 fister as my second, I want to do a comparison.

Getting you started: My particular set's heavy pieces i make, all a rank lower. Low level fisting rocks. You guys remember the little quest where you have to go get the treasure chests from the fish? Took forever pure dex, but while doing it with a fist I took out 3 aggro fish schools w/o much trouble. Then the "mid-boss" quest where you gotta fight the archer outside of plume city and then the elf + veno duo was easy as pie with a fist. I repeated the plume part to level, it was that much faster with the fist instead of the pure dex bow, where it was a total pain and i kept dying until i found a cleric to help.

:O Venomancer Siren talks to you while you're killing the Seduced Elf. That scared the **** out of me !!! It was awesome, like wow... >.< why's a mob talking to me!!!

I guess I said all of that to basically say that heavy armor and fisting 1 - 15 has been a lot faster than pure dex. Iunno about later. Right now bows/slings seem to do such crappy damage in comparison, after i made Life Powder i stopped using the bow altogether to increase killing speed, **** slowing the mob down and stuff when I can bludgeon it to death faster, and Life Powder makes me invincible at the level too so getting in a monster's face and tanking hits without ever healing is easy.

Smobo - Heavens Tear

At level 15, its too early to say. I personally used a sword a lot until I got KB arrow. The key to a fist archer is stacking -interval gear, which besides a 100m+ tome, you can only begin to get around level 60, and you can't even. really get your attacks super fast until 99. HA and LA 99 set, event cape and -int fists don`t even start popping up until you`re reaching high 80s and 90s.

GARCeleritas - Lost City

Level 1 -> Call to Duty 19 works fine, because of Life Powder negating the crappy HP. When Life Powder stops working well I'll have to rely more on the bow and skills to stay alive, and that's when being Pure Dex vs. Heavy Armor should actually start mattering, I think.

XxArchmagexX - Dreamweaver

Yay Heavy armour archer!!!!!!!!!! Low hp and pathetic mag resistance I wish we were both on the same server b:thanks

VILKASS - Sanctuary

XxArchmagexX - Dreamweaver wrote: »

Yay Heavy armour archer!!!!!!!!!! Low hp and pathetic mag resistance I wish we were both on the same server b:thanks

o.o Why low hp? HA gear gives the most bonus to when you +refine it, compared to LA or AA. Unless of course u're comparing a vit LA archer VS a HA with no vit b:bye

Interesting idea, but I think what I'd do is stick with the LA build but get enough str to equip the 85 Lunar Claws which have a chance to increase phys att and defense,

Duno about claws, but my wife got enough str to equip the Event Helm

Valirah - Sanctuary

XxArchmagexX - Dreamweaver wrote: »

Yay Heavy armour archer!!!!!!!!!! Low hp and pathetic mag resistance I wish we were both on the same server b:thanks

You have no idea what you are talking about. I have as much HP and Mdef as most typical archers. HA archers are no more vulnerable to Mag than LA archers if built right, and a lot better off against Phys.

VILKASS - Sanctuary

Valirah - Sanctuary wrote: »

You have no idea what you are talking about. I have as much HP and Mdef as most typical archers. HA archers are no more vulnerable to Mag than LA archers if built right, and a lot better off against Phys.

b:chuckle Hi Val. I just wanted to post yours & Elysmth (grrr always forget how to spell his name, the guy from "Oz") as one of the HA archers the OP could talk to at least.

Elyiawatson - Sanctuary

I need to check forums more often...

What Val says is correct, and she shards her HA gear with sapphire (immaculates if I remember correctly), and has an impressive amount of hp, more than I last I recall. But just because you're HA, doesn't mean you're denied LA gears for the magic mobs

I do fine, it's just a matter of tweaking how you play out the fight against mobs. Take the magical hits like a caster or an afk'ing barb, or stun/cancel and run up close to force them to do physical damage. If you have the will to do something, you'll be fine.

As for damage, my stunted dex does seem low compared to other 100 archers, but it's nothing a measly refinement can't fix. Even then, I never lack in damage when asked to deliver. Strength stats to increase fist damage is laughable, seeing how strength adds a peon's amount of difference to the overall damage, if you want, stick to minimum base requirement for HA and you'll be well over already for fists. I have an attack rate of 2.0 with my gears for fist now, which I plan to increase (when I win 5 scroll of tome) and easily take aggro from most barbs whenever I flair out a demon spark unless they have axes +6 or more, then it's a juggle between the barb's skill and my probability of crits (which is above 20% to those who wonder). I have come to accept that now, my fists does greater dps than my bow (until it becomes nirvanafied and +12) and am happy with what I chose.

To the one who said rank equips will make HA archers lose a lot of phy defense; yes, that's true but that 1-2k difference for -0.1 (I may be wrong) is a risk on whoever's wearing it, since you surely must realize that if you don't plan to tank, gauge the person's ability to hold aggro against you and be smart. Otherwise, just hotkey your HA armour the second the boss turns on you.

To you who said the LA/HA set bonus is ridiculous if you were stereotypically the other weight, not true. Both LA/HA set bonus is the same thing if we're talking about TT99, TT90 gold gives you stat bonus, which you can use regardless for fist/bow damage. Seeing how the 99 set gives you -0.05 interval for 2 pieces, 15 vit for 4 and +3% crit for all 6, it's wise then if you're planning for dps, to have two of both LA and HA would it not? Evasion isn't a bad thing, if anything a friend of yours especially if you're facing with a lot of thrashing mobs, I've even considered getting the TT90 magic rings because of their 30% increase in evasion.

All-in-all, it ends up in how you play. If you're smart enough, you'll figure it out when it's time to use a bow, or when it's time to run up. Not to abandon your archery childhood and to use your fists in a complimentary mix. You'll find that in many situations, where LA just wont cut it will have you appreciate (or envy) the HA folks. (You'll also find it the other way around, but that's a rarer case)

That's my bit, hopefully this helps.

Asterelle - Sanctuary_1381265973

Elyiawatson - Sanctuary wrote: »

I need to check forums more often...

Especially when necroing a 2 month old thread b:chuckle

Elyiawatson - Sanctuary

Shhh... I'm too distracted for such things =P