What are things one should know as a STR archer?

Starting a marauder STR archer inspired by the silver knight archers with huge-ass Dragonbows from dark souls. Since these knights wear heavy armor, a STR themed archer felt natural.

Thing is Ive never played a STR archer, so Im not sure what one should know.

How much dex to wield the best bows?
Are there unique bows that requires STR?
Burning arrow has 20% ignite and I get 15% ignite chance from passives. Can I go resolute?
What defense is the cheapest (in passive points) to invest in as a STR archer?
What escapes do bow users use in general? Quartz flasks? :P

Anyone? :P Or is the min dex req for high end bows my only worry?

212 dex, but round that to 220. skills only want 100 and supports want 150 ish
no bow requires str
you can, but crits are stronger and you already need to grab dex anyways (thus you gain acc). it would be safe to grab the keystone then remove it later.
good question, marader has life/armor mix nodes at its start, its semi mandatory to grab as you don't want melee damage boost =p. after that though... you could safely use armor/eva gear as you'd be using reasonable amount of dex for the evasion side.
str classes have leap slam or shield charge, dex classes get whirling blades or smoke mine, and int classes get lightning warp. there is nothing for bows per se for escaping, but smoke mine might count if you can grab the int (its a hybrid skill)... but its a bit slow. the ranger side of tree already has movement boosts mixed into stuff.

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soul4hdwn wrote:

212 dex, but round that to 220. skills only want 100 and supports want 150 ish
no bow requires str
you can, but crits are stronger and you already need to grab dex anyways (thus you gain acc). it would be safe to grab the keystone then remove it later.
good question, marader has life/armor mix nodes at its start, its semi mandatory to grab as you don't want melee damage boost =p. after that though... you could safely use armor/eva gear as you'd be using reasonable amount of dex for the evasion side.
str classes have leap slam or shield charge, dex classes get whirling blades or smoke mine, and int classes get lightning warp. there is nothing for bows per se for escaping, but smoke mine might count if you can grab the int (its a hybrid skill)... but its a bit slow. the ranger side of tree already has movement boosts mixed into stuff.

Thanks for the reply.

The question about resolute is because I wont be grabbing a single crit node. 212 dex though, ouch!

Resolute is a must if you are going str archer.
Try to get at least 100+ dex in the skilltree, and avoid accuracy nodes as you will go RT anyway.

With the burn chance on burning arrow, the burn chance nodes on the skilltree, and burn chance uniques, AND the burn chance on the curse. You should be more than fine if you want to burn enemies.

Other than that, play away and have fun, str archer might not be the most optimal build of them all, and you might also want to try explosive arrow, that one would go really well with a high hp fire dmg build. And you dont need almost any dmg nodes if you are just starting out. Just a quillrain. And a lot of mana/blood.

It's a fairly long way to many of the bow damage clusters on the right side of the skill tree. If I were to do this, I'd look into Explosive Arrow builds and Quill Rain.

Quill rain, explosive arrow, and burning arrow don't seem to convey the force behind a Dark Souls greatbow. Perhaps Puncture is more thematic? Slow-firing big hits that occasionally evaporate whatever it hits.

In raw power terms, the whole Strength area is a bit lacking at the moment, especially as a bow user, which will give you very few damage/crit nodes to work with. You'll want to take Iron Grip of course, but it'll only give +80% or so damage unless you really make an effort to stack Strength. Ironically, Marauders are also outclassed by Rangers in the heavy armour stakes, due to Iron Reflexes; without Iron Reflexes, you're actually better off mixing in a bit of Evasion instead of going for pure armour. You don't really have the right nodes to do well with Puncture (lack of crit is bad news, and even aside from that you'd want some plain physical/projectile damage nodes to boost the DOT, but they're mostly in the Shadow/Ranger areas).

On the positive side, you do have the Fending cluster, so you can knock back enemies with the force of your shots (be sure to get a high attack rate somehow). You could even get Stun Mastery, find a Craghead unique quiver and make a stun archer build using Warlord's Mark. It'd be an eccentric approach and you'll struggle to get enough REST to stun bosses, but it could work OK otherwise.

In terms of actually dealing damage, physical->fire damage with Burning Arrow + Avatar of Fire is a lot more promising than straight physical if you're staying on the left side. You could take Lava Lash and the Templar elemental nodes, for instance. But if you insist on pure physical damage, Tornado Shot is probably the best general-purpose skill.

Maybe something like this:



Together with items like these:

You will probably reach a phys damage increse from strength of about 130%
(Correction: If you get 30 strength from belt, ring1, ring2, chestpiece and helm you will end up with about 170% phys increase from strength alone)
((These numbers arent too hard to reach, if you go all in with itemaization and have perfect stuff like: +50 str/ +14 all rings and 30str+50str+14 all amulet - you can go all the way to about 204% physical increase from strength and +518 baselife...))
plus you will get lots of baselife (~420).
Also combined 50% reduced enemy stun threshold and 174% increased stun duration... Dont know if it will do much?

Skill Tornado shot for general purpose and Fire Arrow for single target?


BTW: the tree I posted grants you 204 dex and you could use the bow I posted with the dex on the bow itself... now I`m somehow tempted to try this kind of tank/permastun/knockback Archer...

Edit: I just saw that Doryani's Invitation (physical variant) would be so sweet for this build: Strength, Phys damage, Resistances and reduced stun threshold on flasks! Ummy...