Thoughts on best ranged for unfair?

[atm]

I'm on about my 8th or so unfair run (trying to work through all the paths; currently on Legend). I'm in Act 5, and having hit L20 I am trying to fill out my party with a couple of extra mercs to make things go faster. This got me thinking about what is the best ranged for late-game unfair. I have tried lots of different approaches (some of my favorites below), and am hoping people can suggest something different that I can try.

On unfair, ranged has a few hurdles before they can function. They will need high attack to hit, and if they are going to do anything worth a damn against the enemies' boosted health they have to do high damage. They can't geniekind-stack, so if they are going to use elemental barrage they will need other ways of adding elemental damage to their attacks.

I believe all ranged will need to have shatter defenses (with the party causing shaken via various means), as that is a pretty reliable way to hit flat-footed against the invisible-seeing enemies in the late-game. (It seems to me that most enemies that see invisible are not immune to shaken, and many that are immune to fear can't see invisible).

The other problem on unfair is that fights nearing the end of the game get so big and so long that it gets harder and harder to play the game on turn-based. This means that a good ranged should really be minimum maintenance; having to manually use a swift action each round etc is very powerful early and mid game where turn-based is more viable, but very suboptimal in late game except on some bosses where you can still go turn-based.

My favorite ranged approaches so far (which I probably won't use as I want to try something different):

-Sanctified slayer archer with domain zealot and madness, luck, good, and a couple of other domains. This is amazing early and mid game, as you get sneak attack and studied target, with bane weapon, and can buff your attack by over +20 (by late game) while also having a 10-round luck effect, for some nice crit chance. You get divine power for another +6 attack and damage, and can self-greater-invisible. Also, being an inquisitor, they get their wisdom to initiative, so with a few additional initiative buffs can generally expect to go early or first in a round. You can take a level or three in Loremaster for some rogue talents (the dispelling one can be quite nice), or now that spells work, you could take sense vitals for another 5d6 sneak.
They do drop off a little in the late game as their damage doesn't play nicely with elemental barrage, and there is no ranged weapon that has multiple elemental damage types on it. They also only really shine in turn-based, which is less viable in the late game.

-Oracle with two element-based mysteries and elemental barrage. Seems like a strange choice, but it does (at least kind of) work; at L11 any weapon they wield becomes flaming/frost/etc from their mystery, so they will get up to 10d6 holy damage added to every attack, and more if they can add more elements. Works well with the decay spreader, or rolling thunder, two ranged weapons that have rare elemental types (acid, sonic). Now that Loremaster works, you could also take sense vitals for 5d6 sneak, firebrand for another fire hit on weapon attack etc. (Oracle 11/ Loremaster 9 could be a very interesting build with some smart loremaster choices).
Also, if one of your mysteries is Flames, you get all your fire spells empowered for free if you stick with it to L20, so with a maximize rod and with the bolster feat, you can also shoot off bolstered/empowered/maximized hellfire rays, making them very good blasters as a backup.
Their main problem is just getting the raw attack numbers to actually hit in the late game. They do have divine power, and it is possible to take spell specialization and use the +2 CL staff to get that to a 24h buff, but to get much better than that you will have to rely on others buffing you which requires some micromanagement. They are also pretty feat-starved, making the build a real balancing act.

-Eldritch Archer - is just a cool class. You can add 3 elements to your weapon, you can make all your attacks against flat-footed for 2 rounds with prescient strike, you can buff your attack by your intelligence, and you can cast a spell each round and still make all your attacks. Unlike with normal maguses, spell combat actually costs you little to nothing; a normal magus has to have a free hand, but an eldritch archer doesn't (you can even dual wield throwing axes), and they also normally don't need to move, so they play like an archer who also gets to cast a spell each round on top of their normal archering.
The primary issue with them is that they require a lot of micro to work well, and will slowly run out of arcane pool. Their raw attack is kind of lacking, and in the late game they will just miss a lot when they aren't popping their attack boosts. Still, one of my favorite classes.
(Honorable mention is a char I am running in my current game, who is 1 Eldritch Archer, 19 Eldritch scoundrel, who is playing as a ranged rogue, for the +8 to hit from debilitation, but still getting the free spell cast each round as well, so he can throw out a ray of frost or scorching ray to get the first hit and apply debilitation, then attacking with the weapon to take advantage of the +8 to hit).

So anyway, am looking for some interesting ideas for something else to try as a good low-micro ranged. If anyone read this stupidly long post, thanks!

[Chronocide]

İlk olarak atm tarafından gönderildi:

An update on the merc cost:

I did have about 800k gold, once I had sold some junk, so that's how I was able to hire a merc to test the level/ mythic ranks.
I discovered, however, that once I hit L40 the merc cost suddenly capped again at 200k. Not particularly pleased about losing the additional 500k for recruiting that merc when I was L38. (I made a L20 Skald to push my power higher, and wasn't too worried about not having all the mythic levels on him).

That's interesting. So they "fixed" it for max level legends, just not the others...