Archery build

[Tydeus]

You never want to lean too heavily on magery with a dexer template because of the obvious reason...unequipping...but it sure is nice when you need it.

90 magery/30 med is pretty nice on a couple of my dexers. Because of the lower frequency of casting, 90 magery will suffice even though you take a hit on gheal effectiveness. And 30 med still leaves much to be desired, so it's certainly not too much because you're not gonna have a full mana pool all that often anyway because of armor.

I am used to 90 magery/70 med on my main Provo tamer so I am fine with 90/30 on a dexer.

Here's the deal regarding stats: apparently swing speed scales 1:1 with DEX value so there are no benchmarks to reach for. There was a misconception for the longest time that swing speed came in groups of 30. This is not true, as it turns out.

STR may be a similar story. There is an alleged 5% dmg bonus for having 100 STR. I have not tested this, but I run 100 STR for the carry weight anyway and take my extra INT out of my DEX. Something to take into consideration.

100/90/35 or 100/95/30 both work well. If you see yourself needing or wanting to gate you can always run with 40 INT, but that's gonna cripple your ability to cast for a while. I definitely advise 90 magery/30 med if you think you're gonna do that.

Scrolling: chances are if you are bumping your skill cap by 20 you are going to run 110 Provo or higher. Definitely advised. You can always dip into your tactics. The damage you lose from tactics will be worth the peace of mind of a lower Provo fail rate.

Un-equpping isn't that much of an issue on a provo archer because you'll be keeping safe distance whenever possible, whereas on a dexxer without archery you need to run up to the monsters and attack them. Un-equpping also becomes much less of an issue if you put a decent amount of healing skill on your archer.

The small hit with greater heal potency from 90 magery doesn't mean that much, especially with the extra healing skill.

I also believed that misconception about the 30 DEX swing rate, but only because I was misinformed by some other posters here.

100 STR may have something to do with extra damage, but would this also apply to arrows? Realistically, you don't use strength to hit harder with arrows; you only need enough STR to fire the arrow with the bow.

Having balanced stats makes the mindblast spell basically worthless as well. My stats make MB do a measly 6 damage on a successful resist, 12 otherwise. I've seen plenty of monsters cast this; just right now a gazer managed to come into my house on Avatar Isle and cast it on me.

My tactics are to use summons and other spells to make the job of barding faster, easier, and more convenient. If you're fighting monsters that do not dispel, daemons can lend a hand and they last for quite a long time (more than 7 mins?). IMO, the summons and extra magery ability are more valuable than having 100 anatomy, a slightly faster firing rate, and more AR on a pure dexxer bard. Magery and more mana with meditation also allows for you to cast the Arch Protection spell, which will boost AR by 10 for a few minutes. I wear leather armor on my archer mage bard because I do not get hit very often and I want faster mana regeneration.

I haven't even noticed much of a difference in bow firing rate with 75 dex compared to 100 dex. If you don't mind using a lot of resources, you could carry greater agility and refresh potions on you to always have an extra 20 dex points, although this is a waste if the mobs aren't very challenging to begin with, otherwise they can come in handy.

I'll test out 30-50 Med, 70-90 Healing, 60-75 INT, 60-75 DEX and adjust the skills and stats to my play style if I notice that I could use either less or more mana during any given situation. The fail rate on using the meditation skill seems like it could be a problem with 30 med. I'd typically use the meditation skill after killing something powerful with provo, archery, and an EV. It will take time for the liches or daemons to spawn again, so in the mean time I could be using the meditation skill while they respawn. So many factors come into play, but not having any decent amount of healing skill on your archer bard is something I do not want to live with, and this is why I think people should sacrifice points in other areas in order to get some healing if they're playing an archer mage bard.

 

[Bromista]

Un-equpping isn't that much of an issue on a provo archer because you'll be keeping safe distance whenever possible, whereas on a dexxer without archery you need to run up to the monsters and attack them. Un-equpping also becomes much less of an issue if you put a decent amount of healing skill on your archer.

The small hit with greater heal potency from 90 magery doesn't mean that much, especially with the extra healing skill.

I also believed that misconception about the 30 DEX swing rate, but only because I was misinformed by some other posters here.

100 STR may have something to do with extra damage, but would this also apply to arrows? Realistically, you don't use strength to hit harder with arrows; you only need enough STR to fire the arrow with the bow.

Having balanced stats makes the mindblast spell basically worthless as well. My stats make MB do a measly 6 damage on a successful resist, 12 otherwise. I've seen plenty of monsters cast this; just right now a gazer managed to come into my house on Avatar Isle and cast it on me.

My tactics are to use summons and other spells to make the job of barding faster, easier, and more convenient. If you're fighting monsters that do not dispel, daemons can lend a hand and they last for quite a long time (more than 7 mins?). IMO, the summons and extra magery ability are more valuable than having 100 anatomy, a slightly faster firing rate, and more AR on a pure dexxer bard. Magery and more mana with meditation also allows for you to cast the Arch Protection spell, which will boost AR by 10 for a few minutes. I wear leather armor on my archer mage bard because I do not get hit very often and I want faster mana regeneration.

I haven't even noticed much of a difference in bow firing rate with 75 dex compared to 100 dex. If you don't mind using a lot of resources, you could carry greater agility and refresh potions on you to always have an extra 20 dex points, although this is a waste if the mobs aren't very challenging to begin with, otherwise they can come in handy.

I'll test out 30-50 Med, 70-90 Healing, 60-75 INT, 60-75 DEX and adjust the skills and stats to my play style if I notice that I could use either less or more mana during any given situation. The fail rate on using the meditation skill seems like it could be a problem with 30 med. I'd typically use the meditation skill after killing something powerful with provo, archery, and an EV. It will take time for the liches or daemons to spawn again, so in the mean time I could be using the meditation skill while they respawn. So many factors come into play, but not having any decent amount of healing skill on your archer bard is something I do not want to live with, and this is why I think people should sacrifice points in other areas in order to get some healing if they're playing an archer mage bard.

If you are being attacked by players un-equipping to cast or chug can be an issue. But you are right, largely it is a non-issue.

STR damage bonus would apply to archery as much as any other weapon skill if it does in fact apply.

I prefer to drop tactics before anat especially on a char with healing as anatomy serves a dual purpose.

Yeah, active med sucks below 70. You said you wear leather so that becomes more of an issue for you but most archers are doing it to mostly to get a boost to passive med.

 

[Fattson]

Here's the deal regarding stats: apparently swing speed scales 1:1 with DEX value so there are no benchmarks to reach for. There was a misconception for the longest time that swing speed came in groups of 30. This is not true, as it turns out.

Wait. What?

 

[Bromista]

Wait. What?

Hrmm. Not sure what to elaborate on so I'll cover all of it. If your DEX is 60, you will swing slower than if your DEX is say 80. In certain eras of UO, this was not the case. 60 would swing the same as 80 because the swing speed was calculated in 30 DEX intervals. 90 DEX would have been required to achieve a faster swing speed, 120 being max after potting.

But here it's simply the higher the DEX the higher the swing speed. No benchmarks, no bologna. Tested and confirmed.

I blame Halygon for the misconception, he's the one who had us all convinced early on that the DEX intervals worked that way

 

[Fattson]

Hrmm. Not sure what to elaborate on so I'll cover all of it. If your DEX is 60, you will swing slower than if your DEX is say 80. In certain eras of UO, this was not the case. 60 would swing the same as 80 because the swing speed was calculated in 30 DEX intervals. 90 DEX would have been required to achieve a faster swing speed, 120 being max after potting.

But here it's simply the higher the DEX the higher the swing speed. No benchmarks, no bologna. Tested and confirmed.

I blame Halygon for the misconception, he's the one who had us all convinced early on that the DEX intervals worked that way

Well shit. I've been telling my newbs since I formed the guild about the dex tiers....

 

[Bromista]

Well shit. I've been telling my newbs since I formed the guild about the dex tiers....

I used to pass it along too

I also used to tell people to gate bulls into dungeons to raise taming.

Doh.

 

[Fattson]

I used to pass it along too

I also used to tell people to gate bulls into dungeons to raise taming.

Doh.

As I'm sure you're aware, the taming reference just went way over my head.

 

[Bromista]

As I'm sure you're aware, the taming reference just went way over my head.

Oh, just making irrelevant references.

They made that a jailable offense. And of course before that I had not only gated my own tames into dungeons to make training my second tamer a little easier, but advised other people to do it as well.

I hate telling people the wrong thing.

 

[Fattson]

Oh, just making irrelevant references.

They made that a jailable offense. And of course before that I had not only gated my own tames into dungeons to make training my second tamer a little easier, but advised other people to do it as well.

I hate telling people the wrong thing.

Hah. Me too.