abstract
| - There are three key principles to keeping an archer efficient: (a) use talents only when completely necessary; (b) have Shale in the party ( Rock Mastery aura is one of the best buffs in the whole game and works well with archers; (c) don't use the following: Haste or Swift Salve - refer to Ranged Attack Speed Bugs. Refrain from using archery talents because they - compared to other spells and skills - have poor cost-efficiency ratios. Archery talents suffer from serious meta-balance issues. In other words, their cost-efficiency ratio in comparison to other talents/spells is as said before very poor. Cost, in this case, represents both stamina cost and the casting time. For example, the skill, Arrow of Slaying in theory seems efficient but, it takes 3 seconds to set up and a high stamina cost. With a proper setup, you could have two critical hits scored by the time it takes you to unleash one Arrow of Slaying - at zero stamina cost, without any consecutive penalties. Not to mention that even damage-wise, two critical hits are better than one Arrow of Slaying, unless one is fighting critter/normal-rank enemies, that is (yet one really doesn't need to resort to Arrow of Slaying to defeat critters).
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