Need couple tips for Magic/archer.

[OnlyOffensive]

Im going Potd playthrough and want to play some kind of Arcane archer type of character, enchanted arrows and some offensive / illusion magic. I kinda understand how it gona work but can't figure stat distribution, i think i gona need finesse no matter what, but i didnt find much about might value for ranged character? Also do i need to improve WIT? and quickness?

I thought smth like 12m/10q/14q/12w rest 10 or lower resolve and increase finesse more. The main question is do i really need might and should i need much WIT. Tnx for advices.

I might consider javelin instead bow if someone has good ideas about stats.

[Killerelf]

max Finesse to 18 for lvl1 is needed for act1 Ascension hall potd... remember to put all points into lore at startup so u can cast spells and train parry at every level.

[Gregorovitch]

I just hit Act 3 on PotD playing as mage and I can offer this FWIW:

PotD is brutally difficult early- to mid-game until you get a handle on the game's systems because the enemies are extremely tough and deal vast amounts of damage compared to your party. Theyt are space marines bascially. The most difficult battle in the game, certainly by the beginning of Act 3 anyways, comes at the end of Act 1 and it is entirely possible to be unable to win it however hard you try if you haven't developed your charcters viably at that point: viably in this context means able to deal sufficient damage quickly enough.

Offensive magic is a viable means of dealing sufficient damage, but to do so you require two things (apart from Sigils which are easy to buy): Lore and spell slots. You need as much lore and as many spell slots as possible and the slots come from your mage tree and the leadership tree. Thhe implication of thiis is that you will need to invest a lot of level ups in the mage tree and thhe leadership tree to get sufficient slots and lore.

Physical weapons are also a viable way to deal damage but not on their own - on their own on PotD physical weapons like bows are weak sauce. The get them to work you have to study the skill trees and understand the skill synergies designed into the game that accelrate damage output for specific styles of play. This will also require bee-lining very specific skills in particular skill trees.

So you should consider that you will have limited level ups by the time you get to this infamous end-of-Act 1 battle and if you have failed to get your charcter up to snuff on spell slots and lore for offensive magic or your chosen physical weapon system's key damage output abilities (the passive ones tend to be the best), such as by trying to do both for example, you may not make it past that battle. I didn't first attempt I had to restart.

I don't really know but my feeling is that playing an archer/mage and dividing your level ups between them is going to be somewhere between tough and impossible unless you really know what you are doing. I would say that either going full on mage or going full on 2H slice 'n dice is going to be a lot easier. I would not bother with 1H + shield. 1H weapons just don't cut it when in comes to killing stuff on PotD and traditional tanking doesn't work.

[OnlyOffensive]

Well i want to main ranged weapons but with additional you might say supportive magic, like enchanted arrows / dots / defensive spells. I understand that being both effective in archery and having serious offensive magic would be hard in general. My goal is an Archer with slightly augmented magic use. Im pretty sure from what i saw that archer can do significant damage with explosive shot and fire enchanted volley, this kind of things.

What i really want to know is if Might has any value for archer and do i need to invest in it.

[wms]

My experience playing on POTD is that dual class characters just not viable. If you blend anything with magic, you will find that spells are just too powerful to even bother go melee or ranged. I initally wanted to make a 2 hander/caster combo. But as soon as I got couple of +spell slots talents from leadership and magic tree, I find myself very very rarely swings my 2hander. It's just spells after spells after spells. And the 2hander became a huge burden on my char, because it got a massive recovery penalty. So I promptly got ride of my 2hander and went unarmed, lol.

If you are playing with spells, unarmed is the way to go. The recovery system in Tyranny discourages any combo caster builds.

[wendigo211]

For PotD max Finesse, regardless of specialization ("class" really doesn't fit here) there is no other attribute that will contribute more to your success early on. The enemy defenses are so high you just need an accuracy boost. Once it hits level 18-19 you can level something else, but start with an 18 Finesse. For an archer/mage, I would level Finesse, then Might then Wits and then you can start putting points in Quickness at the end. You can get away with an 8 in Resolve and Vitality

If you want magic then put all your starting points in Lore, train Lore with Regg at the Chorus camp and make the Infirmary your first Spire upgrade so you can hire Sage Euphora to train Lore. Also team up with Lantry and Eb and get their abilities that accelerate Lore training. You don't need to train your weapon skill because it will get enough training through use.

I haven't played an archer on PotD, although I have soloed with a One-handed character, and played in a party with a Unarmed and Two-handed character, all of them used magic. If you just want buffs then a 130-160 lore is enough, if you want offensive casting then you need to break 200, which is more than possible but requires commitment.

Having played the Disfavored, Anarchist and Rebel paths, I can tell you that the Anarchist and Rebel paths are the easiest paths through the game as you can fight the Scarlet Chorus at Ascension Hall instead of the Vendrien Guard. Also if you play on PotD and aren't siding with the Disfavored, take every opportunity you can to tick of the Disfavored, they get a lot easier to kill when you can sever Ashe's Aegis.

[OnlyOffensive]

Originally posted by wendigo211:

For PotD max Finesse, regardless of specialization ("class" really doesn't fit here) there is no other attribute that will contribute more to your success early on. The enemy defenses are so high you just need an accuracy boost. Once it hits level 18-19 you can level something else, but start with an 18 Finesse. For an archer/mage, I would level Finesse, then Might then Wits and then you can start putting points in Quickness at the end. You can get away with an 8 in Resolve and Vitality

If you want magic then put all your starting points in Lore, train Lore with Regg at the Chorus camp and make the Infirmary your first Spire upgrade so you can hire Sage Euphora to train Lore. Also team up with Lantry and Eb and get their abilities that accelerate Lore training. You don't need to train your weapon skill because it will get enough training through use.

I haven't played an archer on PotD, although I have soloed with a One-handed character, and played in a party with a Unarmed and Two-handed character, all of them used magic. If you just want buffs then a 130-160 lore is enough, if you want offensive casting then you need to break 200, which is more than possible but requires commitment.

Having played the Disfavored, Anarchist and Rebel paths, I can tell you that the Anarchist and Rebel paths are the easiest paths through the game as you can fight the Scarlet Chorus at Ascension Hall instead of the Vendrien Guard. Also if you play on PotD and aren't siding with the Disfavored, take every opportunity you can to tick of the Disfavored, they get a lot easier to kill when you can sever Ashe's Aegis.

Tnx, that was a nice help. So i basically need to keep high lore and later pick up some WIT to be able to use some usefull magic? I dont think i want serious offensive magic, i want to add element factor to attacs/abilities mainly. As i understand my main defense will be dodge ( archers can't parry? ) so i aim for some defensive magic aswell.

[OnlyOffensive]

Originally posted by wms:

My experience playing on POTD is that dual class characters just not viable. If you blend anything with magic, you will find that spells are just too powerful to even bother go melee or ranged. I initally wanted to make a 2 hander/caster combo. But as soon as I got couple of +spell slots talents from leadership and magic tree, I find myself very very rarely swings my 2hander. It's just spells after spells after spells. And the 2hander became a huge burden on my char, because it got a massive recovery penalty. So I promptly got ride of my 2hander and went unarmed, lol.

If you are playing with spells, unarmed is the way to go. The recovery system in Tyranny discourages any combo caster builds.

As i said i dont want to be a mage with random weapon to burden me. I plan to be mainly archer but with a possibility to enchant my attacks with magic like fire arrows, you got the point. And use some defensive magic. Wendigo211 got my idea and provided helpfull comment, but i appreciate any thoughts.

Actually would like to see what people think of javelins instead of bows?

[wendigo211]

Originally posted by OnlyOffensive:

Tnx, that was a nice help. So i basically need to keep high lore and later pick up some WIT to be able to use some usefull magic? I dont think i want serious offensive magic, i want to add element factor to attacs/abilities mainly. As i understand my main defense will be dodge ( archers can't parry? ) so i aim for some defensive magic aswell.

Yeah Wits will still help with some buffs, e.g. it will increase the damage from weapon buffs and I think healing buffs as well. Resolve will increase the buff duration but I find you can do well enough with the duration increasing accent sigils. You really only need the buffs to last longer than the cooldown which isn't hard to manage. What you really want is the pride/selfless and strength accents to make your buffs more powerful (pride/selfless Haste is insane), which is why you'll want at least 130 in Lore.

With dodge being your defense, keep your second weapon slot empty so you can switch to unarmed if you get surrounded (unarmed uses dodge for melee defense). Also grab a spell with either a root or CC. False Pit from Illusion is pretty good if you increase the AoE radius, there are sigils that let you add roots to Force and Atrophy cone attacks and another one that lets you add a stun to any lighting attacks. Early on the frozen status effect is easy to come by and slows enemy movement by 50%.

Also in the magic tree there are abilities that add 25% damage as frost, fire and shock damage. Pick up all three of them, on average they add more damage than the weapon mastery feats, since most enemies either have no elemental armor or elemental armor against only one damage type.

[Gregorovitch]

There are three abilities that add fire/frost/shockk additional damage to physical weapon attacks on the mage tree - but they are way up the mage tree. If you go for them you will have virtually nothing in your range (bow) tree.

Having looked at the range tree just now I see there is one ability to poison, one to bleed and one to burn. The problem is on PotD these are not killing abilities, thery are pretty weak.

The burn one for example will work for 12 secs or w/e/ on a 30 sec or w/e cooldown. Fine. A mage has one AoE and one sigle target spell each for frost and fire that can be enhanced with the Mageefire sygin which also sets enemies alight. The difference is the two AoE ones, which also come round every 30 secs or so, is they set two, three maybe four enemies alight at a time. There is no comparison in terms of damage output.

It's your game of course, but I just point this out as well as the fact that if you look at the ability trees concerned with 2H weapons you see a lot more in the way of heavy damage dealing abilities and the weapons themselves do a lot more damage than a bow. I may be wrojng but the bows look like weak sauce to me, and I can asure you you don't want to be wielding weak sauce on PotD.

BTW wendigo2112 is corrent that your most important stat is finesse becasue you really, really need accuracy on PotD as the enemies have rediculous high defences. Don't concern yourself with equipment bonuses or abilities that proc off crits either 'cos you won't get any crits.

And wms is correct that if you play caster weapons don't matter as spells are so much more powerfull and you will never have time to use a weapon.

[MrMurLock]

For an arcane archer type, my suggestion is to load up on weapon-type spells. Haste yourself then stack on as many elemental weapons as you can.

Definately focus on finesse atleast till 18 though. The danger here is that you have to wear light armor to minimize the time for recovery.

[OnlyOffensive]

Originally posted by Gregorovitch:

There are three abilities that add fire/frost/shockk additional damage to physical weapon attacks on the mage tree - but they are way up the mage tree. If you go for them you will have virtually nothing in your range (bow) tree.

Having looked at the range tree just now I see there is one ability to poison, one to bleed and one to burn. The problem is on PotD these are not killing abilities, thery are pretty weak.

The burn one for example will work for 12 secs or w/e/ on a 30 sec or w/e cooldown. Fine. A mage has one AoE and one sigle target spell each for frost and fire that can be enhanced with the Mageefire sygin which also sets enemies alight. The difference is the two AoE ones, which also come round every 30 secs or so, is they set two, three maybe four enemies alight at a time. There is no comparison in terms of damage output.

It's your game of course, but I just point this out as well as the fact that if you look at the ability trees concerned with 2H weapons you see a lot more in the way of heavy damage dealing abilities and the weapons themselves do a lot more damage than a bow. I may be wrojng but the bows look like weak sauce to me, and I can asure you you don't want to be wielding weak sauce on PotD.

BTW wendigo2112 is corrent that your most important stat is finesse becasue you really, really need accuracy on PotD as the enemies have rediculous high defences. Don't concern yourself with equipment bonuses or abilities that proc off crits either 'cos you won't get any crits.

And wms is correct that if you play caster weapons don't matter as spells are so much more powerfull and you will never have time to use a weapon.

Im pretty sure archers have crazy AoE aswell. Something like fire arrow volley and explosive shot. Everywhere i saw everyone praise casters. The thing i dont want to play pure caster but i dont want to miss tyranny magic system aswell. Im not fond of playing melee right now too, well i might think about 2H character but not sure. I dont think this is the hardest game i've played and im pretty sure you can finish a game on very hard with any build that make sense.

Lets say ill start 2H, considering that i should go finesse, it would be light armor 2H right?

[wendigo211]

You're going to be going far enough down the magic tree to grab the extra spell slots, that's 5 points, it's another 4 for all the weapon damage abiltiies. You'll probably also sink 3 into leadership for +2 spell slots for the party. The rest can go into ranged. You'll probably end up somewhere between level 16-22 so you can spread some points around. The capstone abilities from most of the trees are pretty bad, so you're better off spreading things around than commiting to a path.

You will eventually get crits, but that will happen once you get your weapon skill over 180. It won't happen early game, but it will kick in towards the end of act 2 and act 3. You can also get crits against enemies who have been debuffed, e.g. prone, stunned, petrified, and recieve a penalty to their skills. However if you aren't making a One-Handed duelist the crit abilties probably aren't going to pay off for you. Spells are good at spreading the damage around, but with the right buffs, weapons will do more single target damage. Also if you are using Haste, you will go through your spells quickly enough that you'll be waiting for them to come off cooldown and will have to use your weapons.