Normal attack on bosses or use skills too?

Normal attacks are your highest DPS without counting for quickshot procs and (depending on the weapon and your -interval gear) demon barrage.

Skill spam only servers 3 purposes: Lowering your DPS (which nerfs your damage output so you won't take aggro as easily), Looking Flashy, and wasting MP.

the only time id spam skills if i were you is if:

A. i had demon quickshot, stunning arrow, and/or sharpened tooth arrow
B. wanted to lower dps on a boss for noob or herc tanks
C. spamming sparks, because those are worth using

There are a few reasons to use skills over normal attacks. Heres a few that wern't covered here:

1. If you hold down the take aim button, it will automatically fire. This generates 15 chi. If you spammed this as much as you could when not in a spark, your chi gaining goes up a fair bit. This will allow you to spark more frequantly increasing your overall dps.

2. There are certain bosses that have "triggers" at certain HP percentages. Drum in 1-2 and 1-3, and general feng in 2-x are examples of this. In the case of these bosses, its often best for the welfare of the squad you're in if one of the archers takes a slight loss in dps to spam STA enough that the bosses HP % remains high (by lowering its max HP).

3. When killing decent sized mobs, (like the dragons in 1-2 and 1-3) and a barb is tanking, its often nice to spam stunning arrow as much as possible. This relieves a bit of stress off the cleric and barb, and also reduces the barb's repair bill.

4. Demon stunning arrow and demon sharpened tooth arrow give a temporary +10% critical rate. Statistically, your DPS is higher if you spam these enough that your crit rate stays higher.

5. Demon quickshot. Nuff said. ((If its not, you use demon quickshot as much as you can to get the speed boost when you're not sparked))

6. That sage skill that gives you +50 chi for free every minute. If you have it spam it, who doesn't like free chi?

7. Barrage of arrows on a boss which makes your attack speed go down frequantly (like Holeen). Barrage isn't affected by attack speed, so even if you're attacking very very very slowly normally, barrage still attacks like normal.

So theres 7 I can think of right now, when you're only DDing. If you're tanking something theres obvious potential uses for stunning arrow, aim low, knockback, frost arrow, winged shell, wings of grace, wingpan and blessing of the condor. Also there are the moves which deal full damage in melee, and those can be useful as well. The level 100 skills are both also worth drooling over, and can/should be used in a lot of situations (if you have em). Skills are far from useless.

However, with all that said, stormrage eagleon is only good for making girl on girl elf babies or forcing your opponent (or tank) into an epileptic seisure. Also all the dots suck to the point where we pages and pages of expert archers trying their hardest to find somekind of use for them. ((I mean, you could use serated arrow to hit someone so they think a nix is eating them and they run away... I guess))

Pretty much if you're not using the take aim trick or expensive demon skills, your highest DPS is with normal attacks. Skill spaming is a waste of chi Even with take aim trick and demon skills, you're just setting your normal attacks up to be more awesome anyways.

truekossy wrote: »

Nice new sig, Waffle. Gonna miss your old one, though.

thanks, i found he old one rather silly,needed a new change of pace

thundershock is really not all that useful in PVE, unless you have clerics dithering about with their stupid magic when they should be healing.

Its not totally one or the other. Also it depends if you want to tank the boss or not.

For demon if your tanking just spam demon quick shot and use take aim if you dont get a proc. some times i do demon knockback to see if can get it to proc too for extra chi.

use sharpentooth for the 15 sec of 10% demon blazeing arrow for the extra 70% and tripple spark when you get the chi.

If your not tanking, well do what ever makes it so you dont take aggo dps is a mute point.

why do ppl say "I use xxxxx so I don't take aggro"? If you want lower dps, stop attacking.

thanks forthe information about thundershockb:victory

Solandri - Heavens Tear wrote: »

Hmm, I was thinking of starting an archer, but now this has me thinking what's the point. From a pure damage perspective, aside from bow mastery, what advantage does an archer have over an assassin using a bow?

Greater range, blazing arrow, bow based skills, and access to crossbows and slingshots.

Chez i see i am not the only stealth assassin poster .....

Best archer combo ever for dps. Serrated Arrow and Posin Arrow chained back to back. Major damage per tick and if your demon you get an uber heal so you can live while you tank.

Sint - Harshlands wrote: »

perhaps you havnt noticed this, but in lower lvls, if you have maxed lighting strike and thunder shock, and no interval, spamming those 2 actually gives you better dmg. casting a lvl 1 serrated arrow also adds to your dmg, as well as giving you a nice bit of chi. those skills cast fairly fast, and the added dmg far outweighs whatever you could have done with normal shot in that time.

Are you basing this solely off the cast and channel times, or are you factoring in the time wasted when you stop normal attack to use a skill, and the time wasted from after-cast? That will likely shift things a good amount, as that is about 1-2 secs added on with no damage at all.

Teppeii - Dreamweaver wrote: »

What weapon are you using in that?

Two weapons:

1. Bow: Heaven Shatterer

2. Claw: Decide