Zhuozo wrote:

Yeah, I get all that, but how good is an archer WITH JUST NPC GEAR?

No class is any good with just NPC gear.
Base statistics only account for a small proportion of your total stats. The rest comes from gear.
If you aren't going to spend any money at all then don't bother with archer, battle defender, ranger. Fighters, tank defenders, mages are at best 50/50 with no gear.
Priests you can just about get away with, but even then you'll struggle a bit.

The higher level you go the more important your gear becomes.

Umm... that isn't true at all...

ALL my toons have npc gear (even my lvl 41 nm priest, which I did a 2wis 2int 1rec build on), and they are all just fine.

Currently, I have a ranger, a battle tank, and a priest in hm, plus my nm priest. They all do fine. In fact, a lot of people are actually surprised at how well I do when they find out that I'm running with just npc gear or drops with a few orange stats...

Don't even try to tell me that I NEED epic gear to play well, cause I don't. I've done without it so far, and I'm going to keep going without it until I figure out which one of my hm toons I like the best (cause I can't fund ALL of them). If all you are going to do is to keep telling me I need to buy better gear, then stop commenting now, cause I don't want to listen to that crap. If archers in particular rely on it, then that is different, but I know that pretty much everything else is fine without it cause I have done it.

You are right - I should qualify what I said before.
It all depends on your aims whether you need good gear.
A lot of people come in here asking the fastest way to get to 70 and they aren't concerned about how much they have to spend to get there. You get into that sort of mindset and forget that other people might have different goals. Which is a bit odd for me in particular because I'm not one of those driven to get to 70 as quickly as possible.
Anyway, I apologise for my misconception & will try to switch mindset.

The next information is based on active partying rather than being power levelled. If you get power levelled then it makes no difference.
Okay - let's start off by saying that any class can get away with NPC gear if you aren't concerned about being the best and levelling the fastest.
Some classes are still easier than others though.
Priests are probably the easiest because they only need a little wis in order to be able to heal pretty well. They can also party with much higher levels as they don't have to take or deal damage.
Your NM priest I probably would have gone 2 wis/3 rec or even 1 wis/4 rec rather than adding int in there, but that's another story.

Next easiest to level with NPC gear would be tank defenders, followed by fighters and mages.
Fighters/mages may actually be slightly ahead of tank defenders because they can solo a lot better. Tank defenders are almost solely dependent on parties.
Rangers would be next. They tend to solo a lot as a lot of people don't like them in parties.

Right at the end of the chain would be archers.
The problem for archers is that they get less attack than melee characters.
A melee character gets 1.3 attack per 1 point of str. Archers only get 1 attack per point of str.
But archers also get .3 attack per 1 point of luck. Melee characters get nothing - only increased crit chance.

The upshot of this is that once you hit the 95% critical rate, it doesn't make much difference for an archer whether you add points to luck or str (it's actually still a bit better to add str, but the difference is nowhere near as big as for a melee character).
But you have to hit that 95% crit rate - which takes a lot of luck.
Doing that with base stats only (only NPC gear) is actually impossible as it would take well over the maximum 70 levels.
So, your only option would be to just go with a str/dex build all the way - which then means that you are compromising the natural archer ability to crit.

So, to answer your question, archers are certainly the worst class to try and use only NPC gear. I'd go so far as to say stay way from archers unless you have the funds to buy good gear.
If you do have the funds though they are a lot of fun.
And the funds needed to buy good gear for archers is considerably less that to buy fighter gear.




Also, what levels are your toons?

Your nm priest you say is level 41, are your other toons higher or lower?

The reason I ask is because of the last line of my previous post - the higher you go the more important gear becomes.

Once you hit Pando you are going to need more stats than you can get with just NPC gear.
Melee characters / ranged chars will need at least 200 dex by 50, by 60 that goes up to 250/300.
If you combine that with actually damaging the mobs it gets harder and harder with just NPC gear.

Lower levels though are a lot easier.

Well, all my hm toons are levels 15-20 cause I started/deleted a few to see which ones I wanted to keep working on.

My ranger I'm doing a 4str 3dex build, but I'm going to change that to 5str 3dex or maybe even add some luc in there (but probably not).

My battle tank is also 4str 3dex, and I'm also going to change that to have more str because even though it can take a lot of hits (most of them miss completely), it has a weak attack. I've actually been using it to tank yellows and oranges for dps toons in duo parties to get it to the level it's at now...

My priest is 4int 3wis. I'm happy with that build so far. Might consider changing to 3int 2wis 2rec cause it's a bit squishy, but I'm waiting a bit to see if that will be necessary. I'm adding the int for damage, and I'm adding a lot of wis cause otherwise I run out of mp really fast (and running out mid-pull sucks), plus it boosts my healing if I ever, for some reason, end up in a party.

For an archer, I'm gonna try what xybolt suggested, and do str/dex until I get the dread gear. I can't afford really good armor, but I can easily farm for lapis so if I manage to get drops with slots I can just add lapis (plus the dread gear quest items have slots anyways, don't they?). And, if I decide to keep my archer, I will either buy some AP or try to farm enough to buy a restat rune in trade, but again I'm not gonna worry about that yet cause I want to make sure I like an archer first...

And as far as high-level playing goes, I will probably never get that far. I'm very much a casual player, and the highest I've ever taken a hm toon is lvl 25, and it got deleted cause I stopped playing on the server I had it on for so long. So really, I'm not at all worried about having to deal with that. If I ever do get to that point, then I will start to try and fund some better gear, but for now I'm just sticking with npc gear and whatever drops I get when I solo grind...

P.S.
Sorry for getting a bit upset there, but it pisses me off when I ask for help and everyone immediately tells me to buy awesome gear (even when I say I can't afford it), and they tell me I absolutely must have it to be any good (even though I've been playing for over a year without it so far and have done fine)... I don't care about being the best, I just want to be good enough to have fun playing the game.

Oh btw: started an archer, and am doing 5str 2dex as suggested. Is great so far. If I still like it when I hit lvl 30, I will definitely invest in a restat and possibly some armor when the dreads from the quests get old. I have some good bows stored in my WH already, and I can usually rely on drops for okay gear until then.

As you've found out, gear is nice but not necessary from level 1-40 something. Heck, decent builds aren't even necessary. I used melee to get a full strength easy mode priest to level 15 once because I wanted to use it for a damage test dummy for 1-15 pvpers and I was bored. Strength priests are terrible, this just illustrates how anything is possible at low levels.





But once you hit the level where you must grind in Pandorashys and harder maps, the monsters actually have some defense. You're looking at hitting for about 1000 less than normal. With no gear besides NPC gear, you may not hit any harder than 20 damage. Gear of some kind is sadly a necessity.

If you insist on no gear or seriously can't afford/farm basic lapis, just grind in cloron dungeon level 3 until it's all white I guess.



That said, a totally welfare HM/UM archer is a kind of decent class to use junk gear on in some ways. 1) DoT damage isn't really affected by strength/luck. 2) You get elemental buffs at level 31 and elemental lapises are expensive.

Granted, there's also drawbacks to using junky gear as 90% of the posters in this thread point out.





As for your 5 strength/2 dex build, keep it higher than level 30 if you plan on skimping on gear. Maybe restat at 35-40. Also, at level 31 you'll notice your damage increase about 50% since you'll have elemental buffs.

Well, like I said before, I'm also not sure which one of my current toons, if any, I will be taking to later levels (40+). I don't plan to skimp on gear if I can afford it, but I certainly cannot afford it for ALL my toons. I'm going with npc gear only until I can decide which toon to fund for late game. And then once I have a pretty good late-game toon, I can use that to fund the others...

However, what I was looking for is a guide for how to get an archer near lvl 40 without expensive gear, so I can see how it goes and I can make a good decision on where to go from there...

Edit: Also, I think I will still be fine restating at 31 or so, cause of the quests to get dread gear (I can farm the lapis I need easily enough, it's getting gear to put it in that's the issue XD).

From my perspective this is a fascinating thread for a few reasons...

1) The fact that people make considered choices about what class to take is I suppose understandable at an intellectual level but for me (and I would guess plenty of others) the decision is made by the heart or the soul. I don't know where it comes from but naturally in these kind of games I always feel most comfortable with a bow!

2) As a noob I've been playing around a bit with builds and background reading on the topic in the forums. With my current HM archer I started him off with something like a 4:2:1 mix of STR, DEX and LUC for the first 8 or 9 levels but then I too picked up the message that the pure LUC build was the way to go so I've been just loading up with LUC since then (now at lvl 17). The fact that this thread asserts that the pure-LUC-theory is last years news and that LUC+DEX+STR is the way to go is something I now need to dig in to...

3) The sheer scale of the stats being talked about is fascinating in itself - so far I haven't seen beyond level 30 and based on what kind of gear I saw at that level and the stat points that I achieved at that point the idea that by level 60 I need to have something like 500 points for LUC; 300 for DEX; and 200 for STR seems totally unachievable. My conclusion is that the stat-power (if that is the right word) of gear is somehow going to grow exponentially through the game because based on where I started, where I am now and where I need to get to it can't be linear.

To wrap up this noob's perspective I'll throw out one more comment and one question:

Final Comment: Thanks to all for contributing to this topic - I know that for some much of this is probably well known and the detailed explanations underpinning the opinions expressed maybe aren't needed - but for us noobs that level of detail really is very welcome and very informative (even if some of it still isn't fully understood yet) - Thanks.

Final Question: Is my conclusion that the stat-power of gear grows exponentially as you move up through the levels correct(ish) or does that conclusion provide some clue that I'm already woefully off target with my current toon; and if the latter what might I be missing (apart from the obvious answer - experience)?

...JayGee... (aka Razour on Etain)

One thing I don't see mentioned: we get 1 free loot box every hour, and you get a good number of rems out of them. If you barter rems you get but can't use for ones you need, you could probably pull off a decent build at early levels by using the rems you get.

@ ...JayGee...

It's not so much that the stat power of the gear grows, it's that you can get gear with more slots for lapis. Lapis give huge bonuses to stats, so more slots = more stats. The gear can have some extra stats to begin with, but mostly it's all about lapising gear with three or more slots. I don't know how many levels of lapis there are (7, I think?), but lvl 3 ones give +7 to a particular stat or +200 to mp/sp/hp... So you can see how they would give HUGE boosts when used properly...

Also, I'm making my decision of a toon on whoch one suits my playing style best. I've been trying everything, and so far I really like rangers and priests. But only time will tell which is my favorite...


@ K_I_A_N_D_R_A

What are loot boxes and rems? I've not played shaiya for 2 months now, so other than knowing how to play I'm pretty much a noob all over again XD