A Guide for DAoC Hunters

Archery is an anomaly in DAoC as it is the only line with which you can deliver physical magic damage (discounting crossbow) in the form of arrows. Since archery was switched to the magic system many hunters have said “all or nothing” when it comes to spec levels. Actually, archery can perform well at many levels of investment, and can be given minimal attention in many templates, especially if your hunter is a kobold. Other races will need more skill and dex to achieve good DPS, but all can shoot effectively with the right set up.

See the “Maxing Archery DPS” entry to plan how much dex/skill you will need and the archery shot guide to explore the shots available to you.

Note for returning hunters: Quickness and bow speed no longer affect draw time; dex and the cast time listed in the spell's delve now affect draw time. You can no longer pre-draw shots. There are no requirements for crit shot except that you are stealthed. The rest of the changes you can study by browsing the shots.

As you spec higher in archery more shots become available to you and their damage increases. Here is a short guide from the former hunter TL, Mirvana, to help you choose which shots to use:

“My most-used shots:

Critical Shot: This is a from-stealth opener which bypasses all defense (Shield, BT, BG--doesn't break bt or bg). It has the highest delve of all the archery shots. I recommend using it on everything except casters who don't have a brittle guard up.

Powershot: This has a hard draw time of 6 seconds which makes it useful for only one thing: killing casters as it goes through and destroys bladeturn (it does not destroy BG). Because of the 6 second hard cast time you'll only be able to get this shot off from stealth. It has nearly the same delve as CS so if you see a caster with no brittle guard, open with this shot and your follow ups will land.

Standard shot: This is your fastest anytime damage from range; your spam style if you will.

Point blank shot: This is to be used on all stealthers and anyone within 1000 unit range. It hits harder and faster than standard shot (it's our fastest delve shot except for rapid fire, but is limited by the 1000 range). Great for all stealthers (the max you will see another stealther is 750 so you know they're in range), and against solo casters if they’re close enough--it's highly effective to powershot+PB+PB, and collect rps.

My slightly less-used shots:

Long Shot: This is great for runners. It takes some practice to flawlessly transition from standard shot to long shot, but once you've got the range down it finishes those running away at 15% in guard range nicely.

Fire/Cold Shots: These are very good damage, but slower than standard shot. Great for high PD toons or people who don't have CL/bot resists. If you're shooting at people in visible groups, these aren't the best shots though as standard shot only faces melee (26-31%) resists and grouped people probably have 50% cold/heat.

Rapid fire: This is now ONLY an interrupt or BT/BG breaker. It's fast enough to land between arrows, and if you have a Caster who has BT and BG up, you'll want to CS, hit rapid fire twice, then go on to your spam damage.

My least-used shots:

Acid/Poison shots: These are low damage very slow casting time, but they are very useful for keeping people unstealthed. When used with a dot bow like Galvornes, they're a good way to get through shields and still do damage.

Volley: Very useful in rare situations. When you know there's stealthers in front of you, just lay down a GT and hit Volley to pop them. It’s also useful in keep defense.

Siege shot: Ok, I'm still working on this one. It's a joke really, and the timer needs removed. At least one siege shot does kill Pnodes, and if you're on a door it's really all you can use.”

 

Here are my own thoughts on magic vs. standard shots:

You don't need to do any kind of testing to know if the magic shots (fire and cold) have more or less dps than standard shot. You have the delve, you have the draw time, you can calculate how much damage each shot will do per second with those two figures.

For example, let's say I have 50 archery. My standard shot delves at 187, I divide that by the draw time (5 seconds) and I get 37.4. My magic shots delve at 250, I divide that by the draw time (7 seconds) and my dps value is 35.7. So, standard shot gives about 4.5% more dps than magic shots. And that is the important value (4.5%); no matter how much you modify your archery with your dex/archery bonuses, those modifications affect the shots exactly the same way, and so the percentage difference between your real, post-modification dps values will be the same: 4.5%.

At 43 archery: Standard shot (168/5) = 33.6. Magic shots (225/7) = 32.1. Again, 4.5% more dps with standard shot.

And so on and so forth down the spec line. Now standard shots and fire shots are added at the same level of archery spec, where as cold shot trails by one level for each advancement. So at 43 archery you would have a discrepancy of 4.5% between standard and fire and 16% between standard and cold. I imagine that's why some people mention damage from fire shot before cold.

But here's the bottom line, standard shot advances at the same time (or before) the magic shots, it has better dps, it uses less endurance, and it fires faster (better for interrupts). The most any armor type is weak to a form of damage is 5% so it makes no difference if you exploit the melee weakness or the magic weakness, (ie. crush or heat for vamps) and you are less likely to face CL resists/bot resists with physical damage.

In short, there is no reason to ever use fire/cold shot, unless you want to look pretty or you’re assisting in a group where you’re all using the same LWs.

IN A NUTSHELL: You need crit shot, standard shot, point blank shot, rapid fire, and long shot accessible at all times. Don’t waste much time with anything else.

 

Examine the details/delves for yourself here:

 

http://www.camelotherald.com/article.php?id=373

The following is the result of a test I performed with my shaman on pendragon to help archers discover how much archery/dex they need to cap their dps.

Archery performance is affected by archery skill and dexterity. When finding the point at which you cap the delve of any spell, your archery spec and your archery bonuses are not independently important. The important figure is your total level of archery. So for example, a R6 hunter with 37 archery spec will do the exact same damage as a R4 hunter with 39 archery spec, provided they are equipped the same way—they both have 53 archery.

The second variable is your dex. Please note that I don’t yet understand exactly how dex works—I tested for the progression towards damage cap by raising spec points because it was much easier to do one step at a time—I don’t have a good feel for how dex gets you there as it progresses. Here’s what we do know: whatever your archery spec, you want 390 dex to cap casting speed, and that amount of dex will max dps for most specs.

Note: The actual values of the damage in this test are not the important figures—what’s important is the point when specing into archery stops increasing the damage of the spell.

Here’s a SS of the spread sheet:

http://i155.photobucket.com/albums/s319/nostalgiaa_merlin/archeryspreadsheetSS.jpg

So, six sets of results from a Kobold--the precise amount of dex I was running is noted beside each level of AD. The point where the damage stopped increasing is the point where my spec capped damage with that amount of dex. So for example, if you refer to the line labeled “no aug dex” you’ll see that damage caps at 63 archery. So, with 381 dex and 50 archery spec any R3 archer with +11 in template is capping their damage. They are not however, maxing their dps, because they are 9 dex short of casting speed cap. However, with AD 2 and 10 dex at creation, a kobold with 50 archery spec has capped archery dps with only +6 to archery skill—that’s right 56 total archery is all you need to cap your spells when running 393 dex—so you can reach dps cap at RR1!

That’s not to say that speccing high in archery is worthless—the higher delve spells continue to provide incentives for a high archery spec, but whatever you do spec, you’ll see that it is very possible for most players to get everything they can from the delves available to them. For example, a RR1 archer with about 390 dex and around 56 total archery (see results from 393 dex) would have better bow dps than a RR11 if he ran 56 archery and 390 dex. The RR1 would have to spec higher in archery to get 56 total, giving him higher level delves.

Anyway, you can see where this is going. If you are willing to run lower delve spells it is quite easy to cap those at mid to high RR. If you want the higher delve spells you won’t need hardly any aug dex to cap your dps, and will probably be able to remove archery bonuses from your template depending on your RR. All you higher RR snipers with 101 dex in template, 11 archery in template and high aug dex are currently wasting a hell of a lot of template space and RSPs.

There is a little more explanation in the original thread:

http://vnboards.ign.com/midgard_rogue_professions/b20912/103825133/p1/?37

Note: Since I first posted these results, the grab bag has given us a more specific number on where dex stops effecting casting speed -- conventional wisdom was to take dex to 386, but 390 is the actual cap. I've adjusted this section to reflect that information.