Arcane Archer questions

[3x0du5]

So I was thinking to try arcane archer for my next play trough and I was wondering if Imbue spells will work With Rods and rod proficiency that gives blast to your rod auto attacks ,

also if I use Watershapers rod I should get double aoe from rod proficiency will this trigger my imbue spells on all of those hits ?

I also think to multi class my arcane archer with a priest as on this play trough I had single class priest that was not doing much when he is not casting spells any thoughts on that?

[Boeroer]

Imbue spells will trigger with every jump (so Watershaper's Focus will trigger two instances of the spell, with Driving Flight it's even three instances).

AoE hits however will trigger NO additional spell instance. 

It used to be like that (AoE hits each triggered an Imbue spell) in the beta version but that got removed quickly. You can imagine how OP Imbue:Fireball with Watershaper's Focus or Fire in the Hole were...

But even now Watershaper's Focus + Driving Flight using Imbue: Death (for example) is devastating. Three Death Rings from one shot kill a lot of enemies right on the spot.

By the way: multi projectile weapons like Blunderbuss or Frostseeker only trigger one Imbue spell.

Arcane Archer/Priest doesn't sound like a particularly effective combo. Arcane Archer/Paladin is good (if you are looking for a mix of offense and support). 

Edited August 26, 2019 by Boeroer

[3x0du5]

I was thinking maybe Priest of Magran / Arcane Archer could work with summoned weapon pistol and double blunderbusses in other weapon set for imbued fireballs 

[Kaylon]

The PL scaling of the imbue spells was finally fixed or not? The community patch fixed the penetration I think, but I'm not sure about the accuracy/damage...

[Boeroer]

No, the imbue spells' scaling wasn't fixed in the unmodded game - despite multiple attempts to remind the devs that those abilites don't work well without any scaling. Especially PEN was an issue. Only thing that scales is the accuracy (with Arcana).

Community Patch scales PEN with Arcana skill, too (which helps a lot). No change to ACC (since it already scaled with Arcana as I said) and dmg (doesn't scale - but with Driving Flight and other jumps this might have been too good). With Drivingt Flight you already get like dmg*2 with Fireball and Death Ring. Missiles still scale horribly though (no additional projectiles or dmg) and are bad even with Driving Flight. 

[3x0du5]

I guess I will just leave arcane archer for my modded playtrough in the future and just play some other  itinerant build on this one 

 

P.s. so I don't make a new thread about this , how good or bad are ranger pets compared to poe1 ? is bear still the way to go for potd? is it worth to pick up pet talents that increases its damage if I have bear pet ? what about boar and wolf on potd do they die very fast or can they tank for a bit 

Edited August 28, 2019 by 3x0du5

[Boeroer]

In general they are worse than in PoE. In PoE the animal companion's base damage scaled which worked very well with dmg bonuses like Predator's Sense - since a raise in base dmg is a multiplicative dmg boost (by the way I think the Wolf was the way to go for PoE1, not the Bear - since DR didn't have that much of an impact anyways but the higher starting base damage of the Wolf has). In PoE the AC was a slow hitter, but it could hit like a truck with the right talents/abilites. 

In Deadfire the base damage doesn't scale - but instead the Animal Companion gets additive dmg bonuses while he levels. This is a lot less impactful since the non-scaling base dmg is rather low and the additive bonuses don't provide the oomph then. With all the abilites the AC can hit okish - but not comparable to your Ranger and not comparable to an AC's dmg per hit in PoE. Still adds some damage though.

The bear can be made quite tanky with the right abilites - Armor Rating in Deadfire is more impactful than Damage Reduction in PoE was - so every point of AR you can put on the Bear will help a lot to make him more tanky.

In Deadfire the AC can have some more active abilites than in PoE and some of them are quite good. For example "Takedown Combo" will apply an effect on the enemy so that the next attack on him that hits gets +100% damage. This might also be a mighty spell. So you can do some nice stuff with the AC. But auto-attacks is not the strong suit unfortunately.   

[Kaylon]

Paladin/stalker with bear is very tanky and has some great synergies if you want to play a melee ranger.