GameBanshee Forums

Hi guys,
After 3 months of crusading ive finally made it to legendary undefeated(0 deaths). Might i also add that i faced every boss and enemy and cleared every area of every map while using xmax(mod that increases enemies by 10* which means 3 manticore,typhon, dragon liche, barmanu etc) I'll give u the low down on the key stats. 2362 Defensive Ability which is the equivalent of 80% dodge attacks. Also 65% avoid projectiles which includes 35% from art of hunt tree. At least 80% in every resistance. Damage per second is 5193, as an archer you really need to neutralize enemies quickly so it is key to maximise the marksmanship tree as soon as possible.

Ill note that i haven't put a single point in call of the hunt,study prey or plague as my damage is good enough without it so far. The bow i use is a legendary eldritch bow(prefix= Tyrants 32% total damage, Suffix= harrowing 13% reduction to health, 10% chance of stun). There are bows that can do a lot more dps but nothing ive found kills bosses quicker than this bow. For example it took literally 15 seconds to kill the manticore which is usually very hard for archers to kill, i had a haruspex that took around 5 mins to kill it and he did 8k dps which shows the power of this bow. The bow is also slow which is a lot quicker than the normal bows which are set at very slow.

I also have + 6 all skills and an additional + 1 to hunting(stonebinders, visor of shadowlord, aphrodites favour, blood gem artifact). This allows you to get more bang for your buck when it comes to skills and it really helps to have +4 in the marksmanship mastery which is helpful because the one hit crowd kills stop in epic asia. Also if u are an archer take care when fighting the epic Dragonian Sorcerer Hero(Dmg reflection!), i let my pets kill him this time lol. Feel free to post the secrets to your best builds. I believe that this build is by far the best archer ive ever seen, if u believe yours is better or have seen a better one feel free to post it here. Ill post my progress in legendary so you guys can see how far an archer can go without dying. Also do you guys have any suggestions on how i can increase his survivability in legendary?

Congratulations. Keep us posted on how things go in legendary. I have seen your character in action. An amazing build with some insane gear too.

Watch out for manticore on legendary! Yikes! That beast is fierce.

And time to max HoO now most likely...(PS beware spellbreak)

Im a total noob to the game, but it shouldnt be too hard to survive as a ranger... After all, you can hit n´run, and with a bow its really easy. But dont be offended, since im just past the first chapter and have already died 8 times

lol wow funniest thing ive heard in while. Go ahead and see how far you get as an archer. Not as easy as it seems, especially with xmax on and enemies that reflect damage. Anyway im up to legendary fayum and have taken out 3 hydras with relative ease except for a poison attack that took a 1/4 of my health. Noticed that the legendary monsters(hydras, manticores) have pretty good resistance to me as opposed to the epic versions. A good strategy for archers against the hydra is to get him to chase u almost out of the swamp so that he hangs around on the other side of the rocks, u can then proceed to sniper him, ive tried it 3 times and it hasnt failed yet. Ive also changed my artifact from blood gem to Star of ishtar in order to boost my defensive ability and elemental resistance. so my resistances are 80 fire, 71cold and lightining. 30 pierce which im worried about but since my avoid and DA is so high its not really affecting me yet. Some random advice for any strength based character, betrachos greaves are priceless and are without a doubt the best greaves in the game. Even though it may take like 2 days to find them their worth farming. Ill give another update when i finish asia.

You might want to get that Pierce res increased. Out of all the resistances I found Poison and Pierce res to be the most valuable. Especially for the ape archers and the Marchae archers in Hades levels.

Haven't made an archer character yet. So keep us posted how your progress continues. I am not too fussed about whether you die or don't die. Its an achievement but not integral to a good build...and by the sounds of it you have a very good build.

I would be interested in seeing what items your character has (listed). I am not up to speed on some of the green text MI items out there of late but am interested in seeing what combinations of items with Masteries people have built up.

Currently working on a Rogue/Hunter that is specialised in poison/calculated strike/blade honing and bleeding damage with his spear and maxed traps for monster distraction, support damage and crowd control.

Currently 58th level half way through Hades levels in Legendary. Died a couple of times (around about 4 or 5 times) but having fun slogging through the quests.

@ Vidar

Maxed traps is a whole lotta fun! good idea for a spear brigand because traps are good for mobs.

Hmm is xmax that mod that makes all enemies multiple into three? If it is, then getting levels would also be faster wouldnt it?

Me personally Drunkside wouldn't bother with it.....there are areas in the game that enable yo to level up quick enough....

I'll tell you a few....

Between the exit point of the caves of Parnassus and Athens (Act 1) there is plenty of level up potential and....

The last gate from Thebes through to Babylon (Act 2)....basically the Obelisk type structures that pump out glowing skeleton's provide you with a good dose of xp when you kill them....

So anyways there are a few areas you might want to consider good for leveling....

I would suggest Wusao mountain (Act 3) but I have found that every now and then you get thrown a "curb ball" so to speak by the computer and your character will die from a single series of crits from the monsters in there or you get a particularly unlucky run of the 3rd Telkine.....

So hope that helps...

Lets stay on topic guys...

@Drunkside, you've been here long enough to know that hijacking threads is rather rude. Please stay on topic.

Apologies Siberys.

Just waiting for Shanco to come back with an update of how he is going on his Archer character.

By the looks of it I think he should post his build once he has gone through and completed Legendary.

Would be good to see a few more people posting a few of their builds on the forums here again.

Gives other players a good insight into what works and what they might like to try with their character.

So Shanco lets keep this thread going aye and post another update on how things are progressing for your Archer character.

So far so good guys ive just completed egypt. And am up to shangsung village. Ive decided to change weapons seeing as my health reduction bow wasnt doing enough damage against the 3 manticores and hydras. I heard that those legendary monsters(legendary hydra,manticore, dragon liche) have 96% resistance against it. Which explains why it took so long to kill em this time as opposed to the 10 secs it took in epic with my reduction bow. Anyway ive taken this opportunity to upgrade a few things. Ive gone for a pair of stonebinders that are impenetrable of alacrity in order to boost my attack speed and pierce resistance socking it with an epic herakles might dmg bonus. The bow ive gone for is a bramblewood(Ferocious of annihilation) and ive socked it with an achilles but this time ive gone for the 101 reduced armour bonus. Hopefully this will work a bit better on the legendary monsters. Im gonna test it today, going back to try it on the hydras. They seem to be the safest option for me to farm with my ranger. So far the manticores have been the toughest challenge, beaten them twice and i really tried to avoid their ranged attacks. As at that point my pierce res wasnt the best at 30. Now its around 70 and my avoid is at 63. Even though my stun res is at 80 i still got majorly stunned by those centaurs in act 1 for about 6 seconds. Lucky for me my 2744 DA practically immunes me from physical damage. There was 20 of em with battle standard up and i only took 50 health points in damage out of 8773. Anyway asia is most definitely the dangerzone for me with those dragonian heroes with dmg reflection so ill keep you guys updated.

Thanks for the update Shanco.

Sounds like changing the weapon was the obvious choice. I would recommend keeping all the bows that you make up along the way. You never know when they may come in handy again. I constantly find that I am changing spears to suite different monster types...

Yeah the Dragonian Sorcerer Heroes may be tricky but also look out for the Dragonian charging fellas in Wusao...they can be a handful for range attackers if they start getting critical hits on you or start stunning you....they tend to have better Offensive rating than Centaurs so be wary I would recommend.

Definately sounding like a good thing to have a really high def. rating....if it enables you to avoid the majority of physical damage most of the time then that has to be a very good thing.

Look forward to hearing how you get on in the Orient onwards....and how you go against the Neadathal fella on top of the mountain.

LOL! Funny u should mention old barmanu, he was by far the hardest monster ive faced. Took half my health with a single meteor fragment. But i know him too well and after much running around i finally killed the bastards. I'm officially in dragonian territory so im gonna put on my best game face from now on. The thing with the new bow is that it does well against the legendary bosses but my other bow is better at killing normal enemies and bosses, go figure. I should be able to get through asia by tonight ill post my progress on Typhon and the dragonians. The only bad thing about this mod is that im guaranteed to run into at least one dragonian hero lol! lucky ive got all my pets maxed now.

Dead at 65. Dragonian sorcerer hero, just before cave of general's treasure. Thats as far as ive gotten with 0 deaths on xmax. I think i may have shot a volley into the mob and he must have been further in the back of it, so i didnt see em.

Shanco I realize that the problem was that you just didn't see the Dragonian Sorceror...

BUT

I wonder if you could change tactics in that area (where Dragonians are expected) and lure off a pack at a time run in circles so you can see if there is a hero. Put a weapon switch with Ensnare 1pt +skills on the RMB and net the hero then run to another area. The minions will follow you you switch back to bow and kill them. Then you weapon switch again return to the hero and just keep netting him letting the dogs tear him apart or perhaps punching him (won't be enough reflected damage to one shot you).

When you weapon switch your LMB and RMB skills change so you could have a second setup with ensnare.

I guess the key would be to be very careful in areas of dragonians and perhaps not farm them too often. I just read a thread on titanquest.net another experienced gamer who acknowledges that once he figured out the game that half his deaths were to dragonian sorcerors.

I honestly dont mind going down to my arch nemesis. The problem is the range of the bow is so far and damaging that its hard to avoid it no matter what you do. Also i always scout that area b4 i start shooting. Best strategy i think is just to run through if ur a high dps archer.

Good job though level 65 for first death.

Yeah those elite Dragonian Sorcerors are a pain...come to think of it I don't like the elite Tigermen heroes either.....

Good work on the build you might want to keep track of you point allocation for build posting so other players can learn from your build.

I am currently trying (stress trying) to build a pure Pyromancer and believe me it is the hardest character I have tried to build to date so far.....35th level and probably enough deaths to warrant taking shares out in a Greek funeral home....however I will persist and see whether or not it is actually feasible and even possible to get through to Legendary....