Suggestions for Archery/

I'm contemplating about making an Archery/ alt and I'm not sure where to go for the secondary. I was greatly leaning towards Devices, simply for the cloaking device and the targeting drone, plus gun drone and also the bombs.

Any disadvantages to this build that i should know about. So far I've picked Archery/Dev with SJ, Fighting, Mace Mastery. Also, I skipped Taser. (:

I like my Arch/Dev/Munitions but I rarely play him any more. He's really only good for soloing and he's safe but very slow for that. He's not all that good for teams since almost all of the secondary powers with the exception of Web Grenade and Caltrops have excruciating Activations/Interrupts/Endurance costs.

Some caveats and information on Arch/Dev. What I chose, how I slotted it, and why I see it that way:

Web Grenade -This is your have to take power from the secondary. It's actually quite useful since even targets that it doesn't immobiilized will be slowed and suffer a massive recharge penalty.

Caltrops - One of, if not the, best power in devices. With enough recharge you can have 3 patches out at once. Nothing is going to be getting into melee range with you. I gave it 4 slots with the End/rech/slow enhancement from each of the slow sets.

Taser - Extreme Short range, standard duration stun. If you are using the above 2 powers properly nothing will ever get close enough to use it. It can be useful combined with Stunning shot vs bosses but most likely the bosses will be dead before they get into taser range. I skipped it.

Targetting Drone - For an Arch/Dev I don't recommend taking this power. There are several reasons.

1) Archery has a higher base accuracy than any other blaster primary. You get more mileage out of your accuracy enhancements.

2) High endurance cost especially considering how few powers in Arch/Dev that it helps. (This power does nothing for Caltrops or Cloaking Device)

Targetting Drone does nothing for Pet and Psuedo Pet powers. These powers will need accuracy enhancements to function effectively:

Rain of Arrows (psuedo pet based rain power), Trip Mine (psuedo pet), Time Bomb (psuedo pet), Gun Drone (pet).

3) Supresses when mezzed. While you are mezzed you get no benefit from Targetting Drone but blasters get to fire their tier 1 and 2 primary powers and tier 1 secondary power even while mezzed. That means that Snap Shot, Aimed Shot, and Web Grenade will still need standard accuracy enhancement so that you can hit your targets while mezzed. In the late game (especially against Carnies) you'll spend most of your time mezzed and only get to use these 3 powers though pre-laid trip mines and caltrops will keep you relatively safe enough that these missions are still soloable.

Adding all that up only 8 out of the 18 powers in Arch/Dev, get any benefit from the drone.

The benefits that you do get from Targetting Drone can easily be simulated by other means. TD gives + to hit, +perception, and resistance to tohit Debuffs.

You can get + to hit from slotting a Kismet Unique in Combat Jumping, using Aim, and from using yellow inspirations which fall like rain while playing.

You can get +perception from slotting a Rectified Reticle Unique in Aim. Granted it's not as much + perception as TD provides but it is still enough to see through Night Widow smoke grenades and fire at disappearing targets like Ghosts and Ancestor Spirits.

You can't get tohit debuff resistance from any other source but you can avoid the worst of the debuffers through smart play. The time this is most useful is in the mid 20s to high 30s when you run into CoT ghosts. You have alot of tools to use at your disposal to prevent being debuffed in the first place:

Ghosts will fly over your caltrop patch but web grenade gives them -fly and solves that problem. You can also use stunning shot to detoggle them and if all else fails you can use Aim or a yellow insp to counter the debuff.

On top of all that you can slot several +accuracy set bonuses by using sets like Positron's blast and Scirroco's Dervish.

All in all I found TD to be of little utilty for my Arch/Dev and respecc'd out of it early on.

Smoke Grenade - The to hit debuff is minor and the -perception can be worked around by using some combination of stealth powers such as Super Speed, Cloaking Device, Stealth, and a Stealth IO. All in all this power is entirely skippable. The only reason I had it was as a mule for a Dark Watcher's set. I respecc'd out of this power early on.

Cloaking Device - A decent power as there is no movement penalty and it provides a slighly higher defense boost than it's pool equivalent, how ever I recommend skipping this one too and taking the Stealth Pool instead. The reasons being that you can slot an LotG +7.5 in Stealth, Grant Invis and Invis and one of the things you'll need as a blaster and won't get until very very late game from your APP (if it has one) is a rescue power for when you get over whelmed. Phase Shift is available at level 20 and I highly reccomend the pool route to get this power at level 20. Since you can't use Cloaking Device and Stealth at the same time I recommend skipping Cloaking Device. You can compensate for the -speed in Stealth by using it in combination with Super Speed.

Trip Mine - A good power if you don't mind SLOOOOOW. 5 second cast and a 4 second interrupt and a recharge speed of 20 seconds means this is a power you won't use on a team. If you are soloing as a trapper this will be a staple power. A slotted up stack of 6 will wipe out an entire spawn including the boss in one large explosion. It will also take you 2 full minutes to set up.

The best use that I have found for trip mine is to drop a mine between me and the spawn and put caltrops on it. Drop one or 2 of these Caltrop/trip mine patches depending on spawn composition and then unload your AoEs. Aim + RoA > Explosive Arrow > Fist full and anything that's left will get stuck in the caltrops and run afoul of the trip mine.

I slotted it with 5 pieces of Obliteration (every thing but the proc) and a Multistrike Dam/Rech.

Time Bomb - A good power if you don't mind excruciatingly SLOOOOOW. 9 second cast and a 8 second interrupt and then a count down to detonation of 15 seconds all on top of a 360 second recharge means this is also a power you won't use on a team. If you are soloing as a trapper you can place a time bomb, back up and drop a trip mine, throw caltrops on it, you then have a couple seconds to wait, but if you hit Aim as the light on the time bomb starts blinking faster and immediately fire RoA onto the Time Bomb both powers will do their damage simultaneously and you'll wipe out the spawn. Anything that gets missed will be easy to finish off with your other attacks or the Caltrop/Trip mine patch.

I took this power and slotted it the same as Trip Mine.

Gun Drone - This power is a huge disappointment. It has a 7 second cast, 6 second interrupt, and a 180 second recharge. It only lasts 90 seconds and can be destroyed by enemy fire. It costs 39 endurance, does just a little more damage than Snap Shot each time it fires, and it moves at standard speed which means you'll consistantly out distance it even if all you did was put one run enhancement in Swift.

Gun Drone will interfere with trapping as it is not stealthed and will begin attacking the spawn you are setting up for spoiling the set up.

The only thing it is really good for is soloing in a high mez environment (like Carnies) as it is unaffected by mez.

I skipped this power.

Don't go Device

Take Traps instead, buy yourself a stealth IO proc and place it in super speed and call it a day. If you have issues in caves because of super speed you can turn on super speed with the stealth proc and buy yourself a jet pack and use that in caves. It offers the same benefits that cloaking device would but gives you the control you might need.

You can obtain full positional defense cap with Traps and still have the bombs you want.

Corruptor for DPS or Defender for higher defense returns ( basically you get defense cap quicker )

Further if you take the time to look down a bit you will see a thread on Gun Drone. Nutshell its a love hate relationship. And I never heard anyone ever say Traps sucks. where as Device is very debatable.

My Archery Blaster is Arch/Energy. He stays almost always at range, with Boost Range making Fistful of Arrows into a decently long AoE. Boost Range+Snipe means that you can defeat a minion or lieutenant long before his buddies can shoot at you, and you can take a large chunk out of a boss. Boost Range+Rain of Arrows lets you have more time to deal with survivors.

The first power in the secondary, Power Thrust, makes a great "get out of my face" power so that you can keep foes at range. Of course, you get Build Up (unlike Devices), so your all-important Rain of Arrows will do a lot more damage. You get a melee stun which will stack with Stun Arrow to take out a boss, which I have found to be very valuable -- I hit him with Stun Arrow as he comes towards me, then the melee stun when he gets to me. Then I hit him with Total Focus for some serious damage, back away and start shooting arrows.

I can see Ice being a good secondary for Arrows. Shiver is an amazing mitigation tool with a huge Slow and -Recharge. Ice Patch for personal protection. Chilblain as a ranged Immob. And even a melee hold.

I just got my Dual Pistols/Devices guy up to 50 last week. Devices is a fun secondary if you like to mostly solo, but it is slow to set up Trip Mines to make up for the lack of Build Up. I even took and used Time Bomb, that universally hated power (and actually liked it!) In fact, I took every power in Devices except for Taser . . . I took the Devices set because I wanted to experience it. Now that I've tried it, I doubt I will ever do it again. I'm not sure I would go with Devices for Arrows. That Build Up with Rain of Arrows makes a big difference.

That's a good assessment of /Devices. The one combo that might benefit from Smoke Grenade is Ice/Dev/Dark. SG + Bitter Ice Blast + Night Fall is about 15% ToHit Debuff unenhanced.

I'd argue that a lot of the Blaster Secondaries that are now over 7 years old need a pass by the Devs to modernize them.

Make an elec/shield scrapper or fire/shield or dark/shield.

Archery's big thing is rain of arrows. You pay for having rain of arrows with moderate single target damage and an extremely resisted damage type, and rain of arrows is extremely slow animating. If you want max damage out of rain of arrows it takes nearly 7 seconds to fire off with aim and buildup or or roughly 11 seconds if you are laying a tripmine first. Shield charge with buildup takes 3 seconds ? At that point you have better single target damage, vastly increased survivability and even more follow on capability.

That said if you still want a blaster because as Strato Nexus characterized "Some people like being more dependent on their team", Devices is wonderful as a theme. You get the hi-tech huntsman feel, really you do. The problem is hunting is a patient and slow business. Milady's Knight has done an excelent job outlining devices problems, no need to go over it again.

Your best bets are to either pair archery with a radically different damage type or try and leverage its range. Arch/fire is a good combination if you are willing to get in the middle of a spawn and instead of raining arrows you fountain arrows on to the spawn (use it as a pbaoe) and then use fire on whatever is left. Arch/ment is very nice it can go either extreme damage at range with Rain followed by psychic scream (Stay away from the robots) or it can do the pbaoe tricks and drop rain of arrows , drain psyche, psychic shockwave all from the center of a spawn. (Note trying these things on the new content will get you very quickly dead.)

Archery/Energy is the ticket to an extreme range Blaster. Get enough recharge to make Boost Range Perma and then unload far enough away that enemies can't touch you. This is the "Archer on the Tower" build, and I have a lot of fun with it on outdoor maps. Crank up higher recharge for additional RoA goodness to boost your DPS.

Archery/Mental is supposedly a Blasting superstar, or at least I've seen some very strong ones. How it works, though is beyond me.

I will throw in my 2 cents on Arch/Energy. It has been my favorite character ever. You simply put, become death from afar. Dropping mobs before they even get a chance to get to you. And I have said it a million times and I will say it again, anybody who says 1 shotting mobs is over rated, cannot 1 shot mobs. Build Up, Aim, DESTROY! Wash rinse repeat. Too fun.

The corruptor fans are gonna tell you to make one with Trick Arrow. I have tried one. I just cannot get past the less damage. The whole thing that makes the blaster is BIG orange numbers, right out of the box. Sure, the corruptor might be more useful in helping with team control. But if I wanna play a Controller, I would play a controller. I LOVE dropping mobs fast quick and deadly. So there ya go. Just my 2 ducats.

I love my arch/mm, built for softcap s/l, stealth proc in super speed, run into a mob and hit RoA, drain psyche and psychic shockwave, pick off anything still standing (mainly just bosses) and move on

From the get-go I was forming a themed character that is fun for solo play. From what all of you have said, I re-arranged the build and here are some toss-ups i went with:

I dropped targeting drone, and used kismet+retified retical procs to boost my accuracy to about 200% + for all of my arrow attacks
1. Dropped cloaking device for stealth, simply for lower end cost (i don't mind the reduced movement speed)
2. Six slotted timed mine & Trip mine with Oblit set & one dmg/rech
3. I am debating keeping smoke grenade, but i'm unsure of it's effectiveness in combat. I'll have to actually get it & try it out in battles. (i was thinking to use it in this combo --> Smoke grenade+stealth --> Timed mine on a group)
- In this situation is it actually helpful, or just redundant?

4. Swapped out stunning shot for web envelope mastery power
Also, is arcrobatics any good for mez resistance; it grants resistance to hold/imob but it it worth the take? otherwise I'm considering clarion for my destiny slot.

Here's a data link for the build;

You failed to post a link Bionut911

But I think your gonna have to go down that device road for yourself and just see exactly what the issues are. This set is not what it used to be. What it used to be is what we call Traps today.

I have an Arch/Dev that hoverblasts with ~43% range defense and somewhere between 60-70% global recharge (couldn't fit in hasten, though).