Arcane Archer weapons?

[Seroster01]

I swear I saw a larger thread about Arcane Archer a day or 2 ago, but I can't manually locate or google find it now & I can't figure out how to search the Obsidian forums directly.  It may also have been on the reddit, I'm not sure... 

 

In any event, it said in the thread I read somewhere that only certain weapons are "compatible" with Arcane Archers in that they have the proper tag to not get the -acc hit from the class passive.  They had a short list of ones that people had confirmed working, and that's basically what I was looking for.  The only one of those I could remember was the Thundercrack Pistol, and I'm trying to determine if there's other or more viable options.

 

If anyone knows the list, that'd be great! Thanks.

[Boeroer]

Essence Interrupter

Frostseeker

Kalakoth's Minor Blights

Thundercrack

 

are the ones I remember.

 

Besides that: also all Flames of Devotion attacks will not suffer. Using Paladin/Arcane Archer is a good way to prevent the ACC malus with any weapon once your Bond is gone.

Edited December 20, 2018 by Boeroer

[Kaylon]

Dragon's Dowry too.

[Boeroer]

I wonder if a Paladin/Arcane Archer with Spearcaster is as good as I anticipate. With FoD you can circumvent the ACC loss of the Archer - and since you are putting lots of points into Arcana anyways...

 

Plenty plenty plenty ACC I presume...

[Mannock]

Essence Interrupter

Frostseeker

Kalakoth's Minor Blights

Thundercrack

 

are the ones I remember.

My bow is kick ass. 

 

The Arcane archer seems very fun. Will have to be used for one of my future runs.

Edited December 20, 2018 by Mannock

[TheWeaver]

The build that used Grave Calling got me thinking about what other weapons might be exempt.  Here's what I found:

 

Grave Calling -- as the build suggests, it is exempt.  Odd since it doesn't have Frost as a keyword or alternate damage.  It has the lash that builds up per hit.

 

Magran's Blessing (Shield) -- is *not* exempt even though it does do fire as alternative damage type.  No idea why as it seems like it should work.

 

LDV -- is exempt as you'd expect given the Shock alternative damage type.

 

Modwyr -- not exempt -- consistent with the fact that most "lash only" weapons aren't exempt.  Others in this category include Aldris Blade of Captain Crow, Magran's Favor, Acolyte's Frostbite, and Tarn's Respite (there are more, but those are the one's I tested -- seems pretty consistent though so I would expect them all to have the penalty).

 

Hel's Beckoning -- exempt -- this fits with the Grave Calling pattern that if you can enchant with a building lash then it is exempt -- wonder why.

 

So it seems that a lash isn't sufficient, unless it is a "building lash" (what other weapons have that, I've only tested the 2 above).  Having an elemental damage type seems to work, except for the shield which seems bugish, but not sure.

[TheWeaver]

Just noticed another oddity.  The "ticks" on Binding Web are suffering from a -5 ACC penalty that isn't labeled.  In the tooltip it just says -5 with no text after it.  I assume this is the AA malus, but that seems unintended.  They are also getting the Arcana bonus, so that's somewhat of a counter balance.

 

Oh and the spells don't seem to be scaling the same way that the equivalent Wizard spell does.  In particular they don't get PEN scaling of any kind which will obviously be problematic on PotD (honestly with a PEN of 7 on both missile and fireball I think it is a problem on lower difficulty levels too).

[Boeroer]

You should report that. Nick Carver (designer of he new subclasses) said in the beta forum that the Imbue Spells are supposed to scale with Power Level like other spells do.

Edited December 28, 2018 by Boeroer

[TheWeaver]

Good to know -- I actually posted this thread more as a question 2 days ago -- https://forums.obsidian.net/topic/107559-question-arcane-archer-scaling/?p=2127098. No response yet, but then again it is the holidays.  Just updated it with a quick test I did comparing Fireball vs. Imbue: FB from the same character -- FB scales and its imbue variant does not.

 

Really too bad, I very much want to make an AA, but as it stands right now the Imbue powers are pretty much sub-par (they get a little extra ACC if you dump everything into Arcana, but that's not enough to overcome the PEN issues, not even on the new Veteran and certainly not on PotD).

[Marigoldran]

Most of the new classes simply aren't very good right now.  

Edited December 29, 2018 by Marigoldran

[Archaven]

Wow I was looking to play an AA build. Thanks now that I can put it on hold.

[TheWeaver]

Note that there are still other advantages -- such as the fact that the Imbues work with Driving Flight and can take advantage of bouncing weapons like Watershaper's focus.  I think the sub-class will be fine once the scaling issue is fixed (which it sounds like it should be).

[Archaven]

Note that there are still other advantages -- such as the fact that the Imbues work with Driving Flight and can take advantage of bouncing weapons like Watershaper's focus. I think the sub-class will be fine once the scaling issue is fixed (which it sounds like it should be).

Shouldn't that be intended? Otherwise what's the point of driving flight?

[TheWeaver]

I assume it is completely intended.  Just makes it even more valuable to an AA and therefore has to be part of the overall balance for the sub-class (which isn't to say that it makes up for the scaling issues, it doesn't, but as of now I'm assuming that's a bug).

[Boeroer]

It is intended. I got direct confirmation from the designer. As I said: he also stated that Imbue should scale like regular spells.

 

Bloodmage is good, Tactician is good, Furyshaper is good, Priest of Woedica is good, Steel Garrotte is good, Ancient is good. Others are ok but niche. The ones that need some work are Arcane Archer (fix PEN), Forbidden Fist (balance the ability), Psion (alter the focus-interrupt on getting hit), Bellower (improve the bonus).

 

So I don't think that "Most of the new subclasses aren't good" is warranted. It's hyperbole.

 

As stated several times before: they are not supposed to be better than the others or their vanilla class.

 

Doesn't mean they can't be improved of course. Ancient's scaling issue annoys me for example.

Edited December 29, 2018 by Boeroer

[TheWeaver]

Bellower is getting 1PL per phrase which seems fine (even good) from a magnitude perspective (looking at how they treat PL bonuses it is actually on the high end).  The thing that makes no sense is its duration -- as in why does it even have one?  The fact that it does implies it might help abilities used after the invocation, but unless you have a way to get more phrases back in 6 seconds it really can't (no chant benefits from PL and the bonus doesn't impact non-Chanter abilities).  The "problem" I see is if they fix that (say let the bonus impact non-chanter stuff), then they are going to reduce the bonus and I'm not sure that's a trade you'd want to make (it would essentially force multi-classing).

 

It also would be better if the impacts of PL were more obvious/documented/understood.  As we've seen folks assume it will benefit summons (a reasonable assumption on paper), but as we know, it doesn't.  So it's easy to choose invocations on a Bellower that don't benefit from its perk.

Edited December 29, 2018 by TheWeaver

[Boeroer]

Summons do profit from power level (increased base duration which can mean quite a long duration gain with good INT) - just way less than other invocations and also differently than one might think.

 

I still have no idea why summoned creatures and weapons (and animal companions) don't scale their stats with power level but char level.

Edited December 29, 2018 by Boeroer

[Silvaren]

Mith Fyr adds fire damage. Can it solve the problem of elemental attacks to avoid penatly from arcane archer? Or the damage type of the weapon has to be pure elemental.

 

Too bad Black Bow isn't on PL 7. It would be interesting for multiclass characters to use that spell.

Edited December 29, 2018 by Silvaren

[Boeroer]

I don't think that passive Mith Fyr will transform the attack type to elemental.

 

But it's worth a try.

 

Black Bow is PL 8 and thus not a accessible for multiclass chars. But I guess you meant 8.

 

Would be a great weapon for an Arcane Archer.

[Silvaren]

Yeah. I mean it's shame that Black Bow isn't PL 7 spell. PL 7 is still endgame stuff but could be used in multiclass builds while in current state with the Black Bow spells on 8th it's impossible.

 

So none tried Mith Fyr with arcane archer?

 

I noticed that animation of Frostseeker changed a bit. Projectiles are faster, not so flashy and fly in straight line. Old version looked cooler.

 

EDIT

It doesn't work with Mith Fyr.

Edited December 29, 2018 by Silvaren

[Boeroer]

Sorry, I misread. :oops:

[Silvaren]

Belt of Magran's Chosen doesn't help as same as Mith Fyr ;<

 

It's funny that Frostfall, Firebrand and other elemental melee weapons prevent from arcane archer -5 acc penalty. Too bad those weapons can't be used with AA special arrows. I don't know if it's a bug, but summoning Kalakoth's Minor Blights from crafted scrolls do nothing. The icon of spell appears as active effect but weapon isin't summoned.

[brasilgringo]

Belt of Magran's Chosen doesn't help as same as Mith Fyr ;<

 

It's funny that Frostfall, Firebrand and other elemental melee weapons prevent from arcane archer -5 acc penalty. Too bad those weapons can't be used with AA special arrows. I don't know if it's a bug, but summoning Kalakoth's Minor Blights from crafted scrolls do nothing. The icon of spell appears as active effect but weapon isin't summoned.

Ze scolls, they do nothing!

[hmaupard]

@Boeroer I tried AA/Bleak walker Paladin. I think the self buff from eternal devotion no longer seems to count as elemental. Only the eternal devotion attack removes the acc malus from AA. All subsequent standard attacks (only with the burn % effect) seem to get the lower ACC from AA (-5). Can someone confirm? If that's the case, not sure it's worth multiclassing AA with paladin tbh

Edited June 1, 2019 by hmaupard

[Boeroer]

I actually never said that the auto-attacks that follow Eternal Devotion will be counted as elemental. Or at least I didn't mean to say that. They never did work that way. Adding a lash doesn't turn weapon attacks into elemental attacks (ask Druid's Wildstrike: same thing). They need a keyword.

Only the initial attack of "Eternal Devotion" is keyworded with burn. The following attacks will only have a lash and that does not automatically mean they count as elemental attacks. 

So it is correct and confirmed that you get -5 ACC as long as you don't use a weapon which itself is keyworded properly.

However: the lash of Eternal Devotion adds to the imbue spell damage(!) That is pretty important and was the point I was trying to make. Sorry if I caused confusion on that part.

So: with Eternal Devotion itself (the attack ability) you don't suffer the -5 ACC. With auto-attacks, even lashed ones, you will suffer (as long as you are not using an elemental weapon as Frostseeker etc.).