Ask a Bowman Thread.

1) Id say Bow/Xbow -> Gloves -> Overall -> Earrings -> Cape -> Helm -> Shoes
2) All depends on what you're going to use as an end game bow/xbow, and your funding.

Thanks for the response Worthy. here comes a few more questions:
1) What's the order of things to upgrade?
2) Str bonus equips or dex bonus equips? An explanation of why would be helpful as well.

1. above answered nicely.
2. Generally Archers weren't as much of damage hoes as the other classes, and we had a lot of pride and respect for that, which is why the era of "stat-less classes" really didn't affect archers in that way (str also adds to our damage ). str-less isn't as effective as the dexless a lot of classes. Normal str is actually really decent and average damage. Like every other class, it just depends on what equipments you can get and how shiny of a x/bow you want to keep (personally thinkn x/bows are the awesomest weapons for looks). For example, if i wanted to hold a reverse x/bow i'd just get as many equips as i felt necessary and then just added base strength. I have 90 base strength right now and have WAY over the amount of str needed if i ever wanted to equip a reverse bow. Low-strength is generally the path new archers should go. It's a perfect balance between the normal and statless.

So.. seeing as the date of BB is currently unknown. Here's a list of questions I would love to have answered:
1) Should I wait it out and make a BM/XBM then or should I start now?
2) Can I make a decent BM with 50m at the most for funding?

1) I'd wait till post-BB since it's 70% easier then. Lower class skills were also improved greatly. Right now BM sucks till fourth job and CBM sucks afterwards.
2) If you plan on HP washing, you'd need enough to have a set of INT equips. Otherwise, doesn't matter.

Thanks for the response Worthy. here comes a few more questions:
1) What's the order of things to upgrade?
2) Str bonus equips or dex bonus equips? An explanation of why would be helpful as well.

1) I saw somewhere that weapons are statistically the most important equipment to buy/scroll. The odds of getting +1 ATK is much better than the odds of getting the equivalent (5.4?) on your primary stat (in this case DEX)
2) If you plan on going statless, it might be cheaper going stat bonus till you can get (potential) equips that gives tons of bonus stats. Otherwise, doesn't really matter. Again ATK>>>STR/DEX/LUK (INT post-BB)

Thanks on all the answers and time for some more.
1) If I were to start anew in a new world, which world should it be in?
2) Which one would be more rewarding in terms of bossing? Prior to advancing to fourth job.
Again thanks for answering my questions.

Thanks on all the answers and time for some more.
1) If I were to start anew in a new world, which world should it be in?
2) Which one would be more rewarding in terms of bossing? Prior to advancing to fourth job.
Again thanks for answering my questions.

I've heard good thinga about starting a new in Windia, but Im not too sure. Can any Windians confirm this?

I wouldnt go to Bello all they do is sit in FM harldy ever boss there. Scania -> lol Khain-> Lol I dont know too much about other servers. Yello is kinda ok? From my time there its Belloish but less people and more bossing iirc.

1. Theoretically would strafe outdo pierce in a mob of 2+ in terms of dps/dpm or would pierce do better in terms of dps/dpm?
2. Will it change after big bang with ul strafe+FA.vs.Pierce+FA?

1. Theoretically would strafe outdo pierce in a mob of 2+ in terms of dps/dpm or would pierce do better in terms of dps/dpm?
2. Will it change after big bang with ul strafe+FA.vs.Pierce+FA?

1. Strafe is 100%x4 every 0.7 to 0.8 seconds (normal crossbow w/booster but no wind booster) while pierce is 850% per mob (plus 1.2x multiplier per mob) and takes 1 second to charge. You'll get 400% to 800% with strafe while pierce does 1700% so no, it's not even close.
Usually you wouldn't use strafe against two or more enemies unless you can down it in two shots. Strafe is a single target attack, not a mobbing skill.
2. If you get FA on both your ustrafe shots (which takes 0.6 seconds w/ new booster) you'd get 1350% per shot or 2700% total. Pierce does 1150% to the first enemy and 1380% to the second plus 150% FA for 2680% total. Since you take a mob defense penalty for each shot, pierce will outdamage ustrafe.
Post-BB, pierce will still be better than ustrafe for multiple mobs unless the mobs are not in a straight line.

1. Strafe is 100%x4 every 0.7 to 0.8 seconds (normal crossbow w/booster but no wind booster) while pierce is 850% per mob (plus 1.2x multiplier per mob) and takes 1 second to charge. You'll get 400% to 800% with strafe while pierce does 1700% so no, it's not even close.
Usually you wouldn't use strafe against two or more enemies unless you can down it in two shots. Strafe is a single target attack, not a mobbing skill.
2. If you get FA on both your ustrafe shots (which takes 0.6 seconds w/ new booster) you'd get 1350% per shot or 2700% total. Pierce does 1150% to the first enemy and 1380% to the second plus 150% FA for 2680% total. Since you take a mob defense penalty for each shot, pierce will outdamage ustrafe.
Post-BB, pierce will still be better than ustrafe for multiple mobs unless the mobs are not in a straight line.

There's no such thing as 0.7 to 0.8 seconds for Strafe. It's plain 720ms. Pierce does not take 1 second to charge. I believe it is now only 540ms to charge. I don't know why you would make some assumption like Ultimate Strafe always hitting Final Attack. It doesn't matter that you take a defense penalty for each shot of Ultimate Strafe, because you take the exact same penalty for each shot of Pierce. And there is no such thing as this "new booster" that reduces Strafe's speed to 600ms. Please refrain from making baseless assumptions in the future.

Strafe does 1288.8%/s with maxed Sharp Eyes. Pierce does 779.4%/s on the first monster and 935.28%/s on the second monster. If it does still take one second to charge, it does 561.9%/s on the first monster and 674.3%/s on the second monster and Strafe is marginally better for mobs of two in terms of DPS but completely and absolutely irrelevant for training efficiency which is dependent on positioning and hits to kill, not DPS.
Maxed Ultimate Strafe does 2353.75%/s with maxed Sharp Eyes, Marksman's Boost, and Final Attack. Maxed Pierce does 1308.3%/s on the first monster and 1473.1%/s on the second monster. If they have reverted the charge reduction on Pierce in Big Bang, which I do not believe they have, Pierce would only do 958.4%/s on the first monster and 1079.1%/s on the second monster, making Ultimate Strafe marginally better in terms of DPS but still irrelevant to training efficiency.

The only situation where DPS on mobs compared to single target is truly worthwhile in noting is in a bossing scenario where targets will take minutes to kill. It is otherwise more efficient to count the average hits to kill and rate of killing on monsters to be trained on; the %/s difference is so insignificantly small, that it will almost never make a real difference in hits to kill with either skill. Strafe will likely take as much time to kill two monsters as it does for Pierce, unless you are over killing with one of the skills.

There's no such thing as 0.7 to 0.8 seconds for Strafe. It's plain 720ms. Pierce does not take 1 second to charge. I believe it is now only 540ms to charge. I don't know why you would make some assumption like Ultimate Strafe always hitting Final Attack. It doesn't matter that you take a defense penalty for each shot of Ultimate Strafe, because you take the exact same penalty for each shot of Pierce. And there is no such thing as this "new booster" that reduces Strafe's speed to 600ms. Please refrain from making baseless assumptions in the future.

Strafe does 1288.8%/s with maxed Sharp Eyes. Pierce does 779.4%/s on the first monster and 935.28%/s on the second monster. If it does still take one second to charge, it does 561.9%/s on the first monster and 674.3%/s on the second monster and Strafe is marginally better for mobs of two in terms of DPS but completely and absolutely irrelevant for training efficiency which is dependent on positioning and hits to kill, not DPS.
Maxed Ultimate Strafe does 2353.75%/s with maxed Sharp Eyes, Marksman's Boost, and Final Attack. Maxed Pierce does 1308.3%/s on the first monster and 1473.1%/s on the second monster. If they have reverted the charge reduction on Pierce in Big Bang, which I do not believe they have, Pierce would only do 958.4%/s on the first monster and 1079.1%/s on the second monster, making Ultimate Strafe marginally better in terms of DPS but still irrelevant to training efficiency.

The only situation where DPS on mobs compared to single target is truly worthwhile in noting is in a bossing scenario where targets will take minutes to kill. It is otherwise more efficient to count the average hits to kill and rate of killing on monsters to be trained on; the %/s difference is so insignificantly small, that it will almost never make a real difference in hits to kill with either skill. Strafe will likely take as much time to kill two monsters as it does for Pierce, unless you are over killing with one of the skills.

Hm, I took like twenty minutes double checking my pomegranate.

Strafe's speed - First shot has a slight delay which makes it around 0.8 secs. Since you're spamming it twice, it makes sense to include the initial delay. Not that it's even relevant; you can never match up strafe to pierce unless you spam it for a couple of seconds

Pierce's speed - Again you forgot the initial skill delay / the delay on releasing the arrow. Unless you can spam three or just one strafe while you shoot pierce, the exact delay is irrelevant. A 0.1 sec delay would mess up the calculation in-game.

Defense penalty: You take a defense penalty for each shot of strafe/ustrafe versus just one for pierce.

"New Booster": Crossbow Booster (formerly known as Booster) now raises your attack speed by 2.

Including buffs: Since buffs apply to both, they're irrelevant. If you take critical into account then strafe might be better in terms of damage stability, but that's not the question being asked.

Pierce reduction: Opomegranate


If I'm going to be exact, I would plot a probability spread of how many shots it takes to down two enemies. If strafe and pierce does the same percent damage (or even strafe doing slightly better) they have the same odds of not downing an enemy in one shot. Since we have the option to use iron arrow or arrow eruption, if pierce fails to take down both enemies we could take them both down on the second shot but strafe will require four shots. I've seen analyses like these and they're very complex so I'm not even going to attempt it.

Reference: http://jisworld.blog18.fc2.com/blog-entry-391.html

Hm, I took like twenty minutes double checking my pomegranate.

Strafe's speed - First shot has a slight delay which makes it around 0.8 secs. Since you're spamming it twice, it makes sense to include the initial delay. Not that it's even relevant; you can never match up strafe to pierce unless you spam it for a couple of seconds

Pierce's speed - Again you forgot the initial skill delay / the delay on releasing the arrow. Unless you can spam three or just one strafe while you shoot pierce, the exact delay is irrelevant. A 0.1 sec delay would mess up the calculation in-game.

Defense penalty: You take a defense penalty for each shot of strafe/ustrafe versus just one for pierce.

"New Booster": Crossbow Booster (formerly known as Booster) now raises your attack speed by 2.

Including buffs: Since buffs apply to both, they're irrelevant. If you take critical into account then strafe might be better in terms of damage stability, but that's not the question being asked.

Pierce reduction: Opomegranate


If I'm going to be exact, I would plot a probability spread of how many shots it takes to down two enemies. If strafe and pierce does the same percent damage (or even strafe doing slightly better) they have the same odds of not downing an enemy in one shot. Since we have the option to use iron arrow or arrow eruption, if pierce fails to take down both enemies we could take them both down on the second shot but strafe will require four shots. I've seen analyses like these and they're very complex so I'm not even going to attempt it.

Reference: http://jisworld.blog18.fc2.com/blog-entry-391.html

I have no idea where you're getting this information from, but every shot of Strafe is identical in speed. Any variation is at the fault of the user or lag. And I obviously did consider the attack delay of Pierce itself. Pierce has a base attack speed of 840ms, which is affected by booster and reduced to 720ms on standard weapon speeds, and an additional 540ms charge time that is unaffected by booster.

Defense reduction occurs for two monsters on Pierce. There is no such thing as x skill will do less DPS because it attacks faster and thus gets defense reduced from its damage faster. By that logic, Hurricane is the shittiest skill in the game because it gets damage reduced on five hundred shots per minute compared to Strafe's eighty-four.

And there is no such thing as a new Booster. It's identical in Big Bang as to pre-Big Bang. They both reduce attack speed by 2.

with the advent of the Bing time travel medal and its uber watk buff, i now longer have over 5k HP making my honsters very inefficient for potions now. What would be the next best HP potion to use for me if i have 4854 hp?

I can't stand having to mass barbs again. just needing to use 2 pots per 1/1 would suck.

I know if i had HB, honsters are far better, but since i don't =/ thanks in advance.

with the advent of the Bing time travel medal and its uber watk buff, i now longer have over 5k HP making my honsters very inefficient for potions now. What would be the next best HP potion to use for me if i have 4854 hp?

I can't stand having to mass barbs again. just needing to use 2 pots per 1/1 would suck.

I know if i had HB, honsters are far better, but since i don't =/ thanks in advance.

I have about that much HP and I've been using cheeses since I went over 4k.

Hey, just a quick question on MM after Big Bang. What skills should I be putting points into? I know to do Ultimate Strafe, but I'm not sure about Marksmenship. Help please?

Hey, just a quick question on MM after Big Bang. What skills should I be putting points into? I know to do Ultimate Strafe, but I'm not sure about Marksmenship. Help please?

This thread should contain everything you need: http://www.southperry.net/showthread.php?t=32673.
I'm sure there will be different approaches to the build, but Ultimate strafe seems like a good start. SE is probably not top priority anymore either.

I would consider SE somewhat of a higher priority. People aren't as well coordinated as we are at SP, so they may be out of the loop. Nubs will most likely go "NUB HAS NO SE LOLOL FAIL MM/BM NUB GTFO" But then again, you wouldn't be bossing with these people now would you?

I would consider SE somewhat of a higher priority. People aren't as well coordinated as we are at SP, so they may be out of the loop. Nubs will most likely go "NUB HAS NO SE LOLOL FAIL MM/BM NUB GTFO" But then again, you wouldn't be bossing with these people now would you?

won't be bossing at all if you use vista/7.

with the advent of the Bing time travel medal and its uber watk buff, i now longer have over 5k HP making my honsters very inefficient for potions now. What would be the next best HP potion to use for me if i have 4854 hp?

I can't stand having to mass barbs again. just needing to use 2 pots per 1/1 would suck.

I know if i had HB, honsters are far better, but since i don't =/ thanks in advance.

We never had CWK pots till last year and bowmen could never take advantage of it (can't tank). I'd go with milk but if you don't mind dying, spam honster (I die all the time using milk b/c I can't get off mounts fast enough to spam pots)

Hey, just a quick question on MM after Big Bang. What skills should I be putting points into? I know to do Ultimate Strafe, but I'm not sure about Marksmenship. Help please?

Depending on how ignore defense works, marksmenship might be top priority. I'd still suggest getting SE early if you have a hard time getting into parties (esp. boss runs).

You'd probably get 1 Snipe, 1 US and 1 FP at 120. Then US, MMB, Pierce and then Marksmanship. SE is low priority now afaik. I guess you'd want a point or so in Dragon's Breath early too. Snipe doesn't need to be maxed right away because it's actually useful at level one now.

won't be bossing at all if you use vista/7.

I use W7 and I never dc in boss runs! :T

I use W7 and I never dc in boss runs! :T

But I do!

OT:

What should I work on in terms of upgrading/cubing? Right now, my options are... [click]

This is somewhat old, so replace the PAC with a 3% DEX, 3 line Green Gaia Cape.

I'm working on getting 3 line Rex earrings and cubing until I get at least 3% DEX. Also need to recube my Specs but I'm not sure if I should really worry about that. Chaos Zak helm I'll worry about later, I have a 3% DEX Blue Falcon until then. But once that's done, what should I work on getting/cubing?

Also, should I buy MW20 (I have the money for it) or wait until BB where I worry about adding my 9 saved SP elsewhere?