Thinking of making an arcane Archer/priest of Berath

[Fleet Intelligence]

How bad of an idea is this? What stats/ability picks/gear would you suggest? I know generally how AA works, I've fixed the scaling of bues with a mod. I was thinking of using priest for AOE dmg situations and AA for big hard targets. Berath is for flavor and the end game choices of the playthrough more than anything else. I'd probably use spearcaster or dragons dowry....

 

This is for turn based. I'm worried about running out of bond fairly quickly, just using it on imbues and takedown combo.

 

The alternate is the obvious paladin.

 

Thanks in advance for any help, references, pointers, or waive-offs!

[Boeroer]

I never tried Rot Skulls with Arcane Archer. Could be a thing...

[Fleet Intelligence]

I can't tell if you're being sarcastic or not, but I will look at that particular spell and try to figure something out.

[Boeroer]

Why would that sound sarcastic?

Rot Skulls is a ranged weapon which the Priest of Berath can summon. And the imbue shots of Arcane Archers only work with ranged weapons. Since Arcane Archers get an ACC malus when not using imbue or elemental attacks it may even be that Rot Skulls will prevent that (if it's tagged as corrode weapon) - but as I said I didn't test that combination.

Edited May 9, 2020 by Boeroer

[Boeroer]

Since you mentioned Paladin: I played a Bleak Walker/Arcane Archer with Spearcaster and is was an absolutely solid build. Also due to the fact that Flames of Devotion counts as elemental attack (so no Arcane-Archer malus), gets +10 ACC by itself and +10 ACC from Ring of Focused Flames plus the Arcana bonus for Spearcaster. Add Zealous Focus, Marked for the Hunt, Survival of the Fittest and Stalker's Link. It's very difficult to graze or even miss enemies. Also works with other Paladin subclasses of course. Bleak Walker just had the higher FoD damage. 

Also: Eternal Devotion puts its burning lash (10%) onto every direct damage you cause, including the imbued shots and the damaging procs (Missiles, Fireball).

Imbue effects will proc with every jump of a projectile (Blunderbusses' 4 pellets count as 1 projectile), so Driving Flight is a must (imbue shots proc twice). An alternative to Spearcaster can then be a weapon which already has a built-in jump, like Watershaper's Focus. Then an imbue shot will proc thrice. This can be very potent (even with non-damaging procs): three parallel Pulls of Eora (applied with first shot from stealth), combined with three Binding Webs (second shot after stealth) packs enemies together very, very, very tightly and takes them completely out of the game for a very long time. As long as there are no immunities one of the 6 parallel procs every 3 secs will always hit. You can then shower that dense cluster with all sorts of AoE nukes while they can't get anywhere. I value this a lot more than Missiles or Fireballs. Also you'll have no PEN issues at all. 

Enemies with Escape, Evasive Roll or Leap might be able to escape randomly though (see Splintered Reef fampyrs) if the AI is smart enough to time the ability right.

In this case an (or more) additional Slicken from a fellow Wizard can be great. 

Edited May 9, 2020 by Boeroer