Marksman Guide

Ive been playing Archery since before the game's original launch and have never been more excited about the set than now. I expect to be able to PvP effectively with the Marksman AT, compete in open missions, and be an effective elite lair DPSer as well.

Some ideas for getting the most out of your Marksman AT.

This AT is built for DPS, and runs in Avenger stance. That often means a trade-off in defense, but doesnt have to be in the case of this AT. By using the advantages unique to this AT, and your advantage choices, you can have good DPS as well as some pretty solid defensive capabilities.

So lets get started.

Strafe (energy builder)
Take the, "Aversion," advantage on this power to provide yourself with a significant bonus to both your dodge and avoidance scores.

Straight Shot
Take the, "Split the Arrow," advantage here for best effect. The way multiple damage increase percentages work you will get more out of reducing your foe's defenses by 15% than out of ranking the Straight Shot to 3.

Sonic Arrow
The Deadly Dissonance advantage on this power increases its area of effect damage and gives its stun an are of effect as well. This can greatly reduce the amount of damage you take in a combat.

Quarry
This is one of the best passive skills in the game. There are two very valid approaches to ranking this skill. You can rank it to 3 which will give you the greatest possible boost to your INT and EGO, as well as your Dodge and Avoidance chances, and Damage buff. Another option would be to take Quarry to rank 2 and take the Fair Game advantage. Fair Game gives you health every time you make a kill. The amount of the heal scales on your constitution, and can be quite significant. Either choice is a good one.

Torrent of Arrows
This is my favorite power in the archery set. I suggest taking the, "Relentless Recurve," advantage to provide you with an area of effect knockback with some serious alpha strike ability. I start most fights off with a full charge of this power. It will kill, or nearly so, groups of henchmen and buy you time to get off other attacks to deal with the survivors. Torrent is also a great way to interrupt master villains (or other players) attempt to charge up a big hit. The knockback is fully effective on a tap. Definitely take this one to rank 2.

Retaliation
This is a nice block power which gives you the ability to deal some very intense burst damage. I'll go over some suggestions on how to take advantage of this later in this post. I suggest avoiding the advantage on this power because of a conflict with another power in the AT. I generally take my block power to rank 2, but if you are short on advantage points this is a place you can trim them without too great an impact on your effectiveness.

Snap Shot vs Focused Shot
Snapshot does not do a ton of damage per hit, but hits very fast. Its inherent bonus damage vs low health foes make it a great finishing power for spamming against tough foes who are on their last legs. I want to love Focused Shot, and have used it extensively, but the long charge time coupled with being easily interruptible, makes this power only useful as an Alpha Strike, and you have a better option for an Alpha Strike later in the set.

Hunters Instinct
You dont have to do anything to get the benefit of this power. It will give you energy back every time you make a critical hit with your non energy builder attacks.

Evasive Maneuvers
This power is so good that even non archery min/max PvP free form builds take it. Take this one up to rank three. The buff to your dodge chance is a life saver.

Storm of Arrows vs Gas Arrow
Gas Arrow is a new power for the FtP launch. As a result it has not been tested as much s is the case with Storm of Arrows. Even so I find it to be an excellent addition to a build. Taken to rank 2 with the, "Noxious Fumes," advantage your toxic damage over time is nice, as is the ability to cause an area of effect stun. Even so the winner here is Storm of Arrows with the, "Achilles Heel," advantage. The ability to keep your foes rooted in place inside the maintained area of effect of this attack just cant be equaled by Gas Arrow.

Explosive Arrow
The single most powerful attack in this set, if advantaged properly. The advantage, "Where's the Kaboom," delays the explosion from this power by 3 seconds, but allows it to full damage without the charge up. So you will get the initial piercing damage on a tap, followed by a full explosion 3 seconds later. Keep in mind that you cannot stack multiple, "WTK's," on a single target so hit him with a tap from this power and then tab to the next target and repeat. Alternately, for great single target damage, tap a WTK into your target then cycle through your other attacks against him until the WTK detonates, then repeat. Oh, one last thing, one last spectacularly awesome thing, WTK does full damage at rank 1. There is no need to spend advantage points on this power beyond buying the, "WTK," advantage.

Talent Suggestions
I generally focus on the talents that provide two +5's:
+5 Dex/Int
+5 Dex/Ego
+5 Int/Ego
+5 Dex/Con (you can never have too much health ;D)
+5 Con/Ego
+5 Con/Rec

Gear Suggestions
Focus on the stats mentioned under Talents, take a piece of Dodge/Avoidance gear, and perhaps a piece of + Endurance on Kill gear as well.


Now for some suggestions on how to use all of this.

I highly suggest getting a piece of gear for your Primary Defense slot that provides a bonus to your Dodge and Avoidance.

In play you want to get to the full 3 buff stacks from Quarry as soon as possible. A Torrent of Arrows followed by a couple of fast Snap Shots will do the trick.

You also want the Aversion advantage on your energy builder up as often as possible. The time this takes will vary because the advantage doesnt come into play until you score a critical hit with Strafe.

Use Evasive Maneuver, often, as soon as it comes off of cool down. With your superstatted INT you should be able to ALWAYS be under the benefit of this power. The reason I suggested not taking the advantage on your block is that it benefits you if foes are in melee range. If you use Evasive Maneuvers frequently, that shouldnt happen all that often.

Use Straight Shot to debuff your target, then block an attack, followed immediately by a charged Straight Shot. You wouldnt believe me if I told you what kind of damage numbers you can generate with this, so test it for yourself.

The Marksman is a very mobile AT, the most mobile in fact. Keep moving, charge or tap your Torrent of Arrows on the run, then pause long enough for a maintain of Storm of Arrows after your kiting has bunched your foes up in a tight group.

With dodge/avoidance gear, Evasive Maneuver spamming, Aversion proccing, and the ability to knock and stun groups of foes at a time you will find this AT to have survivability beyond the reach of any other non tankish AT's.

Hope this helps.

EDIT:

Here are some suggestions that will likely make your life easier in the early levels of play.

1) Take deadly dissonance on Sonic Arrow early. Stunning and damaging an entire group of mobs with a sonic arrow alpha strike will give you time to get off another charged sonic arrow. This will likely finish all but the toughest member of a group.

2) Take Relentless Recurve on Torrent of Arrows early.

The key here is that the Marksman's charged attacks all do very nice damage, which makes it very efficient to charge up an AoE that provides crowd dontrol, which in turn buys you time to charge up another such AoE damage/CC attack.

I personally would buy those two advantages before actually ranking anything beyond R1.

These two suggestions should make a huge difference in the leveling process for this AT.

After these two advantages I think you will find that your own preferences come more into play. If you absolutely love spamming Straight Shot, and have more difficulty with tough single foes than groups of henchmen, then rank it sooner rather than later.

If you prefer an attack rotation style of play, where you use all of your attacks frequently, rank Quarry next since it benefits all of your attacks.

Once you have the basic building blocks of being able to deal with groups of mobs effectively, anything goes.