Archery/Trick Arrow for Review

This character is my newest 50, and has been a blast using nothing more than SOs besides his stealthproc. The major thing he lacks though is survivability, if I pull-off his AoE attackchain wrong or over-estimate his abilities a tad he's on the ground. With i19 I have been reviewing all of my builds and redo'ing them with the slotting knowledge I've gained since their last "plan" was created.

He previously had Shark Skin and Hibernate from the Epic pool.

He now has Power Build Up, Temp Invulnerability, Total Focus and....at the last minute Conserve Power. I spent a long time debating Conserve Power or Force of Nature, but with Temp Invul, Tough and Weave I added I wasn't sure it would be of use.

Since my goal for the build was quick recharge, high aoe damage and survivability end use is a huge factor, FoN would crash me every time I hit it, while Conserve Power on this build would have a net downtime of 90 seconds; much more useful to the build imo. But that is the biggest question of the build, which of those 2 is better in the instance of this build?

I also had performance shifter 4slotted(brawl for now) with perf shifters including the proc, and health (rest) 5 slotted with 4 numina's including the proc, and the miracle before the FoN/Conserve swap. Adding Conserve Power I pulled the slot miracle would've used to re-distribute into another power instead.

A couple other changes to this plan from his other were having to drop Flash Arrow and Poison Gas Arrow even with the powerchoices freed up from fitness (having kick/tough/weave and 2 extra ancil powers now). Flash Arrow I never found myself using, SS+Stealth Proc=5ft more of stealth than Invisibilty, so the -perc is irrelevant. And I think adding Tough and Weave will make up for losing the -tohit and -dmg of these 2 powers. As it is PGA wasn't taken til 47, and I don't have a need for hitting it after my attackchain is done.

Oh, and glancing at the build again another reason for FoN feeling unnecessary was EMP Arrow. I use that as an "oh !@#$ power" and it does reasonably well, but that use for it is the main reason I picked that power to hold a purpleset(desired for the +rech anyway, just a matter of what powers got the purples). Since it is a 35ft radius AoE I really was interested in putting the damage IO from Unbreakable in it, but the acc/hold/rech was the candidate for being replaced (didn't want to work to get it 6slotted), and the 169% acc is much more comforting for my "emergency" power than 149%.


Thanks in advance for taking the time to look over the build

*This build was finished and this post was typed while my bloodsugar was semi-low, if I missed anything/did something just plain stupid is what I really need from any once-overs you guys give this lol.

10 50's To Date! Check out Titan Sentinel; it got my CoH presence synced online

Something about that post wouldn't let my Data Link hyperlink, grr.

Click this DataLink to open the build!

10 50's To Date! Check out Titan Sentinel; it got my CoH presence synced online

I will preface this post by saying I am in no way an Arc/TA expert. Infact, my highest Arc/TA toon is 17. I have looked at your build and what I can say, without ambiguity, is that I do not like the fact you did not take Flash Arrow. Flash Arrow is an awesome power. The reduced visibilty and -ToHit really helps. I cannot stress this enough, especially since it is a non-aggro attack. You lead off with Flash Arrow and pull, if you aren't lucky enough just to pull a portion of the mobs due to reduced visibility, the mobs you do pull will have their ability to do hit you reduced.

You also didn't take Poison Gas Arrow. I have no experience with this one in combat, as I haven't attained a free level to aquire it. However, with its listed status effect of -DMG, I cannot find a reason not to take it. This and Flash arrow alone are a great combination, expectantly. You reduce their chances of hitting you and when they can, they do reduced damage.

Like I said, I am by no means an expert. And if I have said anything that contradicts any in-practice experience you or others may have garnered, please disregard it.

Yeah I was really not happy pulling out Flash Arrow, but the build was tight. I think it came down to pulling it out to add Total Focus, which I really wanted so he'd have a power besides brawl that isn't ranged/aoe (it also is doing 350+ ST damage which is great). Normally defense types of enemies don't make me make build decisions, but I was playing a ranged toon recently against something that wouldn't budge, then I hit a moderate melee and boom, there goes 1/4 of their health lol. I also almost pulled snapshot for Flash Arrow, but I personally love flipping back and forth in constant succession between snap shot and aimed shot on my archers, it's just fun .

I took PGA at 47, and it was a VERY good string of teams that I went from 46-50 on, but I never found myself hitting it before everything was dead.

(Acid Arrow>Glue Arrow>Disruptor Arrow>Aim>Rain of Arrows>Explosive Arrow>Fistful of Arrows=win)

I respec'd into this build with the conserve power, and it looks like it's gonna be awesome, but I haven't played with it much yet.


This powerset combo is really amazing. for +level enemies you can throw OSA into the chain and light it, and EMP is great for a virtual "pause" button if you're in trouble (along with ice arrow).
The Power build up I was really glad to see available and take also looks epic, it boosts the -def of acid and OSA as well as damage etc. And I was thinking (but haven't tried it yet) EMP only does -recov, it doesn't drain you to 0 end it lets you do it yourself having no recovery for awhile......Conserve Power seems like that'll cancel it and be "interesting"

10 50's To Date! Check out Titan Sentinel; it got my CoH presence synced online

Interesting build. For the sake of sharing, this is my ar/ta corr which I have developed a real affection for recently (read: since I got rain of arrows). She is now 35 and already plays like a powerhouse of damage. Unlike you, I decided to focus exclusively on ranged defence because she's a fly/hover user and will be quite mobile. Your endurance consumption seems a bit high for a char that will probably be spamming stuff nonstop. Or maybe I'm just paranoid about end use.

Click this DataLink to open the build!

Just to see what would happen if I tried the same I made up a quick alteration of an a/ta corruptor build slotting for Ranged Defense like you.

I found that ranged defense being mainly a 6-slot setbonus, and the recharge I was going for being 5, of different sets, I would have to cut my recharge way back.

Wow, I just did a side-by-side, I can't believe it, my current build with all toggles running;
Sprint+SS+Tough+Weave+Temp Invul uses less end then the new one I whipped up as a test;
Sprint+SS+Hover+Maneuvers+Temp Invul

I thought for sure the 2 fighting toggles being swapping for 1 leadership and the tiny enddrain of hover would be less enduse/sec, but it's actually .02 more lol.

Here's my current plan (lv50 but 85% unslotted in-game)
Click this DataLink to open the build!

and the one I made just testing out the Defense set concept
Click this DataLink to open the build!

If I played with it more I could probably do better, but for now the one I have live is better than the test I did. Better than yours though, probably not haha.
Oh, I also found it kinda cool all the sets giving ranged-def apparently also give good stat protection, 11%hold res from sets sounds cool to me (when I compared the 2 totals panels I noticed that the ranged build had all these statprotection numbers that the other had at 0)

10 50's To Date! Check out Titan Sentinel; it got my CoH presence synced online

Your links were not clickable, by the way.

Hover is actually not as tiny as you'd think. I was surprised by this recently, because I expected it to be miniscule like Combat Jumping is. In fact, CJ nice and tiny at 0.065/s but Hover is 0.195/s quite a bit more than double.
It's true though that when I focused on def I completely sacrificed decent rech. The way I see it though, Rain of Arrows is up so fast by default I don't think I'll feel too slow. Only time (and a lot of inf) will tell once my build is done.

Sorry, I had hit the button to stop bold/underlining the rest of the text from the hyperlink and it killed them all lol,

My Current One:
Click this DataLink to open the build!

Ranged Defense Modification:
Click this DataLink to open the build!

10 50's To Date! Check out Titan Sentinel; it got my CoH presence synced online

Yeah, turns out I can squeeze almost 2% more ranged def out of changed to the fighting pool instead of leadership (well I still take assault later) AND it winds up using less endurance. Won't really be in the thick of things on a team to make maneuvers useful to anyone else anyway, and once you approach softcap every last percent makes a huge difference.

Flash Arrow is always first in my attack chain. Flash, Glue, Poison, Acid, Disruptor, Build Up, Rain of Arrows. I vary it when soloing a bit, but I almost always team with that toon. lvl 50 a/ta with the Musculature Alpha Boost = fun.

So far things die so fast on my teams that I tend to use Disruption arrow and Acid arrow first, to help the team most. Then I queue up rain and hit explosive while rain is firing.

I'm planning on taking Flashing Arrow a bit late in my A/TA build (Lvl 12), but I think it'll be very useful.

Poison Gas also has a Sleep component to it. Fire it into a mob, put them to sleep, drag one out with an attack and isolate it. Repeat as needed.

You guys were right, that build was horrible lol . I re-worked it into this one and respec'd him and he's much better now. He's got his tier3 Musculature Alpha and is incredible . He's no where near fully slotted with the IO sets, but he's great already with IOs dropping in over the current lv50+ SOs.

(Changes I made if you can't see the build;

• Removed the fighting pool
• Changed Leviathan Mastery to Power Mastery; Conserve Power, Power Build Up, Temp Invulnerability, and Total Focus
• Re-Added Flash Arrow
• Took Poison Gas Arrow(First time using it))

• I don't play buff/Debuff toons much other than this one, I wasn't expecting much from the -dmg of PGA, but it really makes a noticeable difference in the damage you take when you use that.
• Power Build Up is great for all the debuffs too, especially acid and OSA.
• I was using Leviathan before for hibernate after I ran out of end/crashed from EMP, but Conserve Power replaces that purpose well.
• Total Focus is great being 100% ranged damage, I like having at least 1 power that targets a different positional defense than all the rest. It being extreme damage for anything that lives through my arrows to get into melee is nice too

10 50's To Date! Check out Titan Sentinel; it got my CoH presence synced online