Vengeance

With all of these changes, I'm curious as to what you guys think would be a good spec for archers?  

I was telling Lifesbane last night that  you'll want at least a modified 50 stealth, preferably more, with the changes to see hidden, it is going to help.  Would you go 50 bow? Or try for a balance of bow shield and melee?

As far as realm abilites go, damage increasing ones are a must, but I could see True Sight being really handy.  The reason being, you bring your group to M1 emain, use truesight, earn easy realm points.  It doesn't help the solo archer as much, but I think it helps the groups and realms a lot.  IP is almost a must have, but with the cost, I know many don't want to get it till high RRs.  What about Longshot and Volley?  Archers are probably the only GTAoE class alb actually sees now.  I haven't seen many Earth Wizzies at all.

You can get to 50 stealth pretty easily. Since it's a sliding scale you could probably plan on 36 stealth which gets you 50 by RR4, or 35 for 50 by RR5. There's a huge difference between 49 and 50 stealth when you're an assassin, but I don't know how bad it would be for an archer. We already see them from farther away by virtue of Detect hidden (not see hidden).

Volley, uber. IP, uber. Longshot, not so uber.

I think 42 shield is still a good spec for scouts, with all that dex they block like madmen, and if block is truly fixed in this patch it'll be a huge advantage for them.

Heh I know of only one earth wizard, Belania. Fire wizards are in short supply at high levels too I think though there is always a lot coming up cos its good for PvE. Im temped to switch back but will wait i think.

Im interested to hear how you go with this new spec since at present my stealth is weak, LB maxed with high thrust etc which so far has been very effective. I had planned to leave stealth since it was till now relatively useless vs the infilt types. Might have to rethink that a little i guess.

One thing about archer stealth. If it's REALLY bad, like 40ish, we can spot you from miles away. Now, a dumb infiltrator (or axe when he's been drinking) will just line up the perf and run in for it, which 9 times out of 10 will get you counterperfed by the archer's assassin bodyguard. There are almost no archers left who try to operate without a bodyguard.

But if you're smart, you've pinpointed their location. Then you call in the cavalry, go for the perf, get counterperfed, and have your friends charge over the horizon, stomp the dirty stealthers into the ground, and rez you. Pwned! Sorta.

Good example of this is Mawavi, who always travels with Brec, and usually 1-3 other rangers.

I was just perfed on Pendragon by an elf nightshade for 764 damage.  I'm assuming this is cap.  Ouch.

Also in the Pendragon fun, respecing to MoM2 lets my spirit cabalist do 447 cap damage vs a giant dragonfly. And my pet beat up a skald who was trying tokill me.  Go pet.

We got a silent nerf though, they changed the resist type of the resist debuffs to something besides general. The RM TL said that his cold debuff was now on energy resist type.  Which means you can see your 15 sec resist debuff down to 7 sec...not much worth it.

I'm hoping they'll fix it before it goes live.

That's interesting, so duration of debuffs is now affected by resistances. I suppose you could debuff for your debuff, lol.

FOTM scout spec:

34 stealth (50 at RR6)
45 bow
42 shield
30 slash/thrust

Why even go to 45 bow? Why not leave it at 40?  Or take it to 50?  

Bow is the leftovers. You already get 42 shield (more isn't useful for scouts) 30 slash for amethyst (more isn't useful) and enough stealth for 50 eventually.

My old scout was spec'd

36 stealth
42 shield
46 longbow
25 slash

I pocketed him because I was waiting to get pm gear and sc'ing.

45 bow = Quickshot 2