1.5 Sling Archer w/ Heavy Armor Guide

[loophoc]

This isn't necessarily intended to be a guide to building the optimal archer, it builds a different kind of archer. An Archer, who uses a sling and shield and wears massive armor. Instead of shooting people from over the horizon he's just as happy caving in their face from point blank range. A Concealment Bow Archer is more flashy at low levels, but I think a Sling archer is actually more overpowered.

Why Slinger?(...)

Because it's fun !

Hi blakemw, I recently begun to play ToME and well, I didn't want to play the classic archer - ambitious newb is ambitious - so I've been looking for more exotic builds - and there you are with your very complete and well written guide \o/

Since the sling is a thing to me, a childhood dream (probably thanks to one of my ealry years heroes : Thierry La Fronde) and mixing it with melee/shield made this build very appealing.

Even if my chars are still dying early (not your fault, eh ! but, beside greenhorn-eagerness, probably because I'm trying to rush massive armor too early this leading to upgrade Strength instead of Dext and maybe Cunning, plus no space left in inventory induces often poor choices of equipment ) I do enjoy the rythm of the Heavily-Armoured Slinger gameplay and I will persevere !

Lots of thanks for the fresh build and your dedication.

[helminthauge]

Great guide. Just got my first insane win with it https://te4.org/characters/235359/tome/ ... 52eedc8fde. Also it gives me a choice to play ghoul with. The whole game is pretty easy. Both deaths are to orc cyromancers in high peak hidden vaults. I underestimated them too much and didn't kill them first or run away when I only have half of my life left (and even didn't bother using my shield runes). And then their icy shard hit me with 800+ cold damage... (I have 51% cold res!)

[blakemw]

Great guide. Just got my first insane win with it https://te4.org/characters/235359/tome/ ... 52eedc8fde. Also it gives me a choice to play ghoul with. The whole game is pretty easy. Both deaths are to orc cyromancers in high peak hidden vaults. I underestimated them too much and didn't kill them first or run away when I only have half of my life left (and even didn't bother using my shield runes). And then their icy shard hit me with 800+ cold damage... (I have 51% cold res!)

Good job beating insane. I haven't managed that yet, mainly because I'm too reckless. It's gratifying that you used Ghoul, shows I'm not mad for thinking it's a completely viable choice for this build.

[Chronosplit]

Question: why no mention of Pain Enhancement System? This build is begging for it.

For this Prodigy you're wanting to go STR/DEX/CUN in your stat spread. You're putting in STR for your armor while none of your weapons or talents scale with STR. You're also going to crit a lot. This means that you get a huge boost in every single thing your character is around during PES's duration (even your Conditioning talents), and it's going to trigger just about every time it's not on cooldown.

[helminthauge]

Question: why no mention of Pain Enhancement System? This build is begging for it.

For this Prodigy you're wanting to go STR/DEX/CUN in your stat spread. You're putting in STR for your armor while none of your weapons or talents scale with STR. You're also going to crit a lot. This means that you get a huge boost in every single thing your character is around during PES's duration (even your Conditioning talents), and it's going to trigger just about every time it's not on cooldown.

because it's worse than Arcane Might. It gives you 60% of your Strength to your sling shot damage calculation while AM gives 50% of your Magic and all your spell power to it, which is at least 70% of your Magic, and it's full uptime. Yeah, strength seems easier to stack than Magic and higher strength gives you higher basic physical power and thus higher damage, but 1/3 uptime is really not good. Arcane Might also gives you some crit chance, and if you stack some +crit chance equips it's not hard to reach 100% physical crit on archer.
may be better than Superpower though.

[helminthauge]

a correction to PES vs Arcane Might:
if you're taking PES you'll be maxing your STR, which gives physical power passively, this is about a tie to the spell power to physical power of Arcane Might (STR is easier to stack than MAG, but you may have seperate spell power from equips)
so it's basically 60% STR 1/3 uptime vs 50% MAG always, and obviously unless you can assure that you can kill everything within 6 turns, the later is better.

a correction to bow/arrows vs sling/bullets:
though they both use 120% total stats and arrows and bullets have the same base damage, bow/arrows do have a 1.5 multiplier for ego bonuses while sling/bullets none.

I'm playing another sling archer (yeek, antimagic, parasite, tinker), and here're some thoughts:
1) no need to restrict yourself to heavy armor. You should have enough points for both Heavy Armor Training and Mobility tree. Heavy armors offer better defense while light armors and robes better offense (15% speed/crit multiplier and great damage bonus respectively), so just prepare your heavy armor against enemy archers/other big weapon menaces and benefit from the offensive bonus from light armors/robes in other cases.
2) Antimagic seems not forbidding your from Arcane Might. it's just that you're probably going to have less MAG because of your equipment restriction, but should still be better than Superpower.
3) Windtouched Speed seems a solid choice for your other prodigy. Global speed and CD reduction. Solid for both offense and defense. For the preqs just go to Zigur, buy the mindstar tree and put some points to it, or go Antimagic or unlock Harmony if you want.

[OnkOnk]

If you go AM + AM you are limited by gear extremely though, since Arcane Disruption halves your effective spellpower which will also reduce phys power.

[helminthauge]

well, after playing with debug mode a bit, I see no "Arcane Disruption" effect and I get the same augumentation from Arcane Might w/o antimagic (not using any equips). So it's just gear limitation.
You get about 70% Mag to weapon damage (you need a raw physical power over 300 and no spell power from equips to get lower than 70%. or at least 60% as long as your raw pp is lower than 1100) from Arcane Might, while 40% Wil from Superpower. So 140 Wil does the same thing as 80 Mag, and I guess the later is still easier to reach even with Antimagic.

[OnkOnk]

What I mean is that gear that disrupt spells also reduces your spell power. So if you go both Arcane Might and antimagic you have two types of sources you can't use, arcane and arcane disruptive gear. This would make it much harder to gear.

[vonfackenheim]

What I mean is that gear that disrupt spells also reduces your spell power. So if you go both Arcane Might and antimagic you have two types of sources you can't use, arcane and arcane disruptive gear. This would make it much harder to gear.

Taking Arcane Might will not prevent you from using arcane disruptive gear. There is no negative whatsoever to taking Arcane Might on an anti-magic character other than you now have another stat to increase (magic) that would otherwise have been a dump stat.

[Cathbald]

Taking Arcane Might will not prevent you from using arcane disruptive gear.

Technically yeah, you can still use arcane disruptive gear.
But the way Arcane Might is coded, everything that reduce spellpower now affect your ppower. So when you're dazed without AM, your ppower is halved but when you're dazed with AM your ppower is now only 1/4. Similarly, since arcane disruptive gear reduce your spellpower, you can end up with less ppower after taking AM than before depending on how many piece of arcane disrupting gear you have. So no, you can't really use them.

[helminthauge]

according to my test, one piece is half physical power, already bad enough.
but there are few good egos/fixdarts powered by arcane disruption forces, and they're not common, either, so not a really problem (especially with font of sacrifice).

[Chronosplit]

Boy, 1.6 did a lot for Archer in general. Luckily slingers tend to be not as hard hit by the speed reduction and AI as Bow due to range and Rapid Shot.

But the main question I have is how about that Poison? It seems that Munitions is gone, but it's been replaced by Poisons and therefore a nifty new prodigy in Mystical Cunning. While you're running Arcane Might it's a good idea pick this up for Vulnerability Poison and the boost in mastery, right?

Thanks to the escort updates we also have a couple more toys: Curse of Defenselessness is handy in at least earlygame for making stuff stick thanks to saves not playing a part, and escort spell trees are much nicer in general due to them all starting at 1.00.