Magick Bowman's Band

[Nezeroth]

I haven't played Magick Archer for a week now, I have the only rings of real use (Magick Bowman's Ring and Magick Archer's Band). The Bitterblack Gear for Magick Bowman's Ring/Band only gives 3 skill options. My Bowman's Ring has NFB upgrade, but I was wondering what the significance of getting a 2 skill ring would be. Explosive Rivet doesn't sound very appealing because I prefer Strider climbing, and Magickal Gleam is far too situational to be useful in any way. Are those two options even worth considering?

[Paradox]

Have you actually tried out Explosive Rivet/Volley? The skill is incredibly potent, especially against enemies weak to Fire. And even against those not, it can still dish out a great deal of damage. Just try sticking 10 rivets into an Elder Ogre's head then detonate it with a double jump attack. Chances are you'll even knock the Ogre down when you do that. Indeed versus enemies with a weakness to fire such as Cursed Dragons, you wont even need to blow up the rivets to deal damage. It's base damage is such that it can kill the Cursed Dragon with a number of well placed shots that have been Magick Rebalancer buffed.

[Nezeroth]

I've tried it. Most situations I'm in can be handled well with either NFB, RH, or HB. For those with high magic resist i just use my buffed immolation and hit with melee. But the times I have replaced HB with ER, it didn't seem all that effective, even in melee. The way I played got me through things easy enough, so I didn't see the point in altering the style of it any further. I do have a tendency to miss things, though. Clearing up confusion usually gets me to try things, all I know about Rivet is it fires an arrow that explodes when struck. I may have seen that it shoots multiple rivets at once, either that or i was just spamming rivet without noticing. My experience with rivet is slightly lacking but it's been enough to keep me from using it over HB.

[Paradox]

I've never been too much of a fan of Ricochet Hunter as the skill always seemed too situational to bother with. I generally only swap it in over Hunter Bolt when venturing into BBI.

The way Explosive Volley is supposed to work is generally in tandem with your pawns who seem to be pretty smart about detonating the rivets. And the third tier of the skill fires five rivets per skill application which then say embedded in an enemy or the terrain until detonated. It seems that you can have a maximum of approximately 10 rivets around at any given time and it has probably the best KD/Stagger ability of all the MA bow skills when detonated.

Explosive Volley, Ninefold Bolt, 1000 Kisses and Instant Reset have always been my staples as MA.