Ask a Bowman Thread.

I have a few questions about about raising my skills. Right now my skills are: 14 Marksman Boost, 10 Sharp Eyes, 1 Snipe, 1 Frostprey, and 1 Dragon's Breath.

Should I max out Marksman Boost first then Sharp Eyes?
When should I start saving points for Pierce?

I already passed SE 20 and Boost 20, and have a Boost 30 book. Money isn't a problem from buying skill books. I'm just not clear on the order of raising them. I mostly train solo and occasionally JNPT.

I would recommend finishing up Sharp Eyes before anything else, especially for solo training. I feel like Pierce and mastery are worthless without SE as it essentially doubles your damage.

After that, it's really personal choice. My MM is 139, and I'm working on max Snipe since I'd rather bosshunt than train. As for working on Pierce after SE, I've heard other MMs say you should max MM Boost first or it's too unstable.

EDIT:

A couple questions.

Regarding skillbuilds. During 2nd job my plan was to max iron arrow first with a point into mastery for the 15% mastery. I thought it worked out pretty well since I had a lot of fun with a strong iron arrow. But that was 2nd job, levels 30-50 can be done in a couple of days with casual play so skill point allocation isn't that much of a problem.

For 4th job my plan is to get snipe early and since snipe isn't very useful unless maxed getting to 13x might be a little slow. Should I just do 30 points into snipe or wait a bit and do like 1 point into mastery and 9 in sharp eyes?


About power knock-back.

I really like this skill even though it doesn't work 100% of the time. It feels like you have a lot more control than when you're using dragon pulse. It pushes back the mobs that are directly in front of you, whereas dragon pulse sometimes pushes the mobs in the back and leaves the ones in the front to rush you. Does PKB work on all mobile bosses like corkscrew and rush? I know you can PKB Headless Horseman, but you can't use dragon pulse to push him back. Is anyone crazy enough to PKB bigfoot or anego?

In answer only to your questions in bold: If you plan on going Snipe first, don't bother with any other skill (well, maybe a point into Frostprey). That being said, you should probably either train with an archer that has SE or leech to 130. My grind was bad with SE; I can't imagine how bad you'll have it without.

I believe PKB does work on bosses, but it's a bad idea. You might get lucky with Bigfoot, but Anego will still give you the pimpsmack of death if you try getting that close. But there's no reason to not max it. PKB was extremely useful for me through late 2nd and 3rd job.