Ok, I am setting up an archer character, so far I have GM archery, tactics, anatomy, music and provo. I want to have magery, healing and hiding... I wont be using magery except to be mobile, so I which build is best?? 1) GM archery, tactics, anatomy, music, provo (70.1 magery, 80 hiding, and 49.9 healing) 2) GM archery, tactics, anatomy, music, provo (50.1 magery, 80 hiding, and 69.9 healing) I am leaning towards #2 since I like the self healing option with the limited mana with no meditation. What say YOU???
2 sounds cool to me. But you're going to get the deluge of "Archery sux you shouldn't use that!" comments, but it's an underestimated skill in my opinion. For PVM should be fine.
You will want suficient magery to mark runes and cast blade spirits to tank harder mobs for you.... 60 of magery is suficient... In my opinion, the Invisibility spell is even better than hiding... So 80 of magery + heal.... you will be good...
I like the 2nd build more, and I used to run a similar one. I would consider dropping hiding altogether and GMing magery and healing. Or, maybe drop it down to 50. As it stands right now, you're going to fail when casting recall... and that's not great when a PK is on your tail. Healing is nice on an archer, for sure, since the 'swing' delay is pretty long... every second you keep that bow equipped helps.
Archery sucks. You shouldn't use it. If the choice is between the two, I am also leaning toward #2. I haven't had much enjoyable success with Test Server toons that have archery and less than 90 dex. Have you messed around with the success rate between 65 and 80 Hiding? I would either cut there or cut tactics by 10 or 15 (augmented to 100 with magic bows) to get higher healing. But that's only because my mindset is that if i have a character with Healing as his/her primary "healing" method, i run no lower than 80. Anything lower is outside of my comfort zone.
After mulling it over, I'm with @One and @Xavant_BR - unless you're really in love with Hiding as a skill, I would drop it. My provo-dexxer build is this: Fencing 100 Tactics 100 Provo 100 Music 100 Healing 90 Anatomy 80 Resist 70 Magery 60 I carry a bunch of blade spirit scrolls with me to save weight and regs. I can solo the titan/cyclops area in Despise, as well as the leprechaun caves with the clover golems. I don't miss many heals (I don't get hit often because of provo), never missed on my recall macro, and she's a demon with the right slayer spear. However, my biggest criticism is that 1v1 against almost any magic using mob gets me tense (f'kin banshees are the worst). I find myself wishing for those 8th circle summons more than hiding (or having resist, for that matter). For what it's worth, I'm not a min/max person. I have a swords/archer toon with 30 magery just so I can give her a crossbow and a silver axe, recall into graveyards, and call her my "undead hunter". Again, if I had to choose based on what build looked more fun to me, I would roll with #2.
All great opinions.... my issue really stands with str/ dex /mana... at 100 dex archery fires pretty quick and I have a killer slayer... i would love to have magery higher but without a mana supply being low what is the use? I will be using scrolls mostly and potions combined with healing. HMMM... maybe drop some dex to gain mana and use potions to raise it up when I want to finish anything off with archery. Think I am going to drop hiding for now and see how to works with GM magery and healing.... I know that archery is not a great skill, but I like trying different builds to see what is possible. The game is 20 years old and I am still trying different builds.
I would recommend against splitting healing/magery, it creates 3 issues. Your self bandages heals can fail completely, your magery heals are not as strong, and your stats get split up too much for what looks like a non-pvp toon. I recommend something closer to this: GM archery, tactics, anatomy, music, provo, 90 hiding, 90 healing, 20 magery. 100str/100dex/25int That build would allow you to move around with recall scrolls while still getting use of your other skills.
I run 95 STR, 90 DEX, 40 INT on my bard. The 40 INT is good for one BS scroll, 1 GH, 1 Recall, and a Cure if I get noxxed mid-heal and want the HP back more than the bandaid cure (I'm also accounting for at least 1 point in passive mana regen in this). Since you're not tanking, you could drop STR to 85 and raise INT to 50. I was actually messing around with an archery build on test last night with these stats. I still got three shots off with a bow before a demon got within melee range. Two with a crossbow. One with a heavy. The timing between each was just too slow for me to disrupt its GH casts. With an axe/archer, I could stand my ground and solo it with 100 healing but not 80. But that's just me standing still and going toe to toe. Archery might not be great, but it's far from useless. In any event, I think that managing your Provo is going to be your most damage producing weapon with whatever you go with.
Not with 20. Probably need around 40 but that is just a guess. With 20 you will fail sometimes. Depends on how fast you need to recall.
Probably closer to 40-45%% success rate. 50 magery is 100% 4th circle scroll. Edit: the math for this is (x-z)*2.5%. (20-6.1)*2.5 = 34.75% success rate.
My toons with 20 magery will sometimes fail 3 times in a row. Other times I get 10 of them first try, if you want to recall without fail 90% of the time use 30 magery. I have 30 on most of my dexxers and it works great to recalls and magic reflect scrolls.
