I need an Archer

Hey everybody!

So I've been deeply craving an /Arrows/ character, But I'm not sure what to pair it with, or what Archetype it will work well for :[

I've already attempted a Arch/Dev, and an Arch/Fire blaster and neither worked well for me. I'm a blaster-holic so on terms of ranged attacks that's always my "go-to" AT, but I'm wondering if i'm missing out on ranged ATs.

What other pairings/ATs/ have worked well for you guys on terms of having /Archery/ as a ranged set?

EDIT: I'm not looking for a specific build yet since I'm on my mac, and don't have access to mids :[ So any suggestions are welcome

Just so we're clear, a Ninjas Mastermind is out of the question, even though it gets three of the Archery powers?

I love my Earth/TA controller. Tons of control and very slot friendly.

I'm a fan of Archery/Energy blasters. Archery is all ranged, and many of /energy's abilities work from afar. Plus /energy past its glow-handed melee attacks is pretty visually innocuous, letting you be a 'pure' archer easily. The cream on top is boost range, so you can get some pretty decent reach.

I'm an Arch/Nrg Blaster fan too. Love boost range and that crashless nuke Rain of Arrows.

With enough recharge, you can even farm things like the BM map with relative ease and speed. Also hear dof folks doing the same with Arch/MM blasters.

Much like elec melee with lightning rod on scrappers, I can't imagine playing archery on any AT besides blasters, because RoA is so amazing on blasters. The best secondaries, as mentioned, would be EM or MM. EM for a pure ranger, and MM for lots of survivability.

I would suggest Trick Arrows/Archery Defender.

Trick Arrows' debuffs are the most potent on a Defender, and Defender's Rain of Arrows is the only one that does the correct amount of damage (Blaster and Corruptor both do less than they should, though it's still more than Defenders).

Note though: It's a very late bloomer, TA's debuffs aren't as potent as other debuff-heavy sets, though most TA powers have larger AoEs, and what you bring to teams (offense) is not usually what people are looking for in a Defender.

Corruptors' Scourging Archery is nice, but Corruptors' TA is numerically very similar to the MM version, which is very... um... meager.

Trickshooter's Characters | @Trickshooter @Brightside

Yeah I know, but to me, it just takes too long.

RoA by itself is 4-5 secs of animation time. If you need to spend time debuffing the mobs first, then reacting to their return fire, and only then attacking, it'll be like 10 secs of "fighting" before you do a point of damage to the mobs. On some teams the whole spawn will already be dead by then. Meanwhile with a blaster you just launch RoA from complete safety, and you're not even attacked until the arrows start falling.

At least that's how I imagine it. The only archery toon I've played is a blaster.

I suggest an archery/dark corruptor. Or possible dark/archery on a defender.

You can just about cap, or get close to the cap, on ranged and smashing/lethal defense, and its easy to get aoe defense to 32 or higher. That doesnt even take darkest night into account. Then, the resist debuff is a long duration slow patch so you can just set it down and then simply shoot shoot shoot, and on the corruptor, scourge away!

Plus youd have all the controls and the heal etc for versatility.

Lewis

Arch/MM Blaster. Yeah it's awesomesauce.

I just want to underline what Trickshooter said.

Go TA/A defender.

Both rain of arrows and oil slick are comparable on a defender to how they are on more damaging ATs like corruptor. Now just realize that since these two abilities can kill a +2/x8-+3x8 (depending upon enemy type and whether or not you have laid debuffs down) spawn all by themselves, you don't really care if fistful of arrows or whatever is doing a little less damage because that is completely irrelevant.

Also, as Trickshooter said, be aware that the set is very late blooming. It's like the permadoms in the days before when the damage buff also came with domination...one day you go from sucking to kicking ***, and it is unfortunate that you suck for so long because it is deceptive.

I'm a big fan of /Trick Arrow. It's got something for everyone and I've had some great results with a various /TA trollers; Fire/TA, Plant/TA and Mind/TA

They have their strengths and weaknesses, and with the latter two I needed to take some form of igniter APP/PPP to get the best out of Oil Slick Arrow - but there are plenty of choices (personally I found Mu works well)

Of those three, the Mind/TA was potentially the most powerful, but most difficult to play - the best control, but weakest damage - and the Fire/TA was sometimes conflicted, Fire control has a lot of melee attacks and TA by definition is ranged.

Plant/TA is fun, especially with Carrion Creepers and OSA running and plenty of AoE from the Mu, pets and many of the powers of Plant.

"You got to dig it to dig it, you dig?"
Thelonious Monk

I like my Archery/Energy blaster a lot. Fairly cheap IO'd build with recharge enough to do Snap/Blazing/Snap/Aimed and a bit of ranged defense. Flight, no Hasten, all the Leadership toggles. Power Thrust slotted with six Kinetic Crash on auto. Surveillance and Cryo Ray, I should probably take out the snipe and put in LRM some day for multinuke goodness.

It all depends on how you want to play the set, as each one plays differently. If you didn't like archery/fire, you might not like Mental manipulation too much either. Both are played in melee a lot.

So many choices, thanks guys

Can't believe no one mentioned Archery/Storm. The greatness of having a -res patch like Dark Miasma but chock full of debuffs like -rech and -fly but with the control of an ice slick. Castable from around a corner and a slow toggle to bunch them up. Anything that reaches your corner will get a mouthful of Lightning Storm and vs tough targets like EBs and AVs, you've got multiple tornadoes eating away at them.

Yeah, there's also stuff like Hurricane's knockback/-ToHit too and if you like the synergy, Stunning Shot + Thunder Clap (+ Tornado if you want).

I personally like the thematic link between rain powers too, just a cool trick that will own most foes.

Granted, I don't have an Arch/Storm myself but I can tell it'd be great fun.

As soon as they got Archery, I rolled an Archery/TA Corrupter. Fun ride to 50 and is very powerful with only the basic IOs. I'm sure that he would be a monster if I fleshed him out with IO sets. I'd recommend that to the OP for an archer.