1.5 Sling Archer w/ Heavy Armor Guide (2024)

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?

Have you ever been playing an Archer, and that red mark appear on your own head? You have about one turn to get out of LOS of the hostile archer before you very likely die by headshot. Unless you're wearing heavy armor. If you have 100 armor and 100% armor hardiness that headshot will take off *maybe* 20% of your health, armor is applied before multipliers and crits so it is crazy effective at neutralizing weapon attacks and heavy armor training also offers crit reduction.

Of course, you can wear heavy armor as a bow archer but you will suffer the loss of most of the Mobility tree. Without Mobility archers are not super mobile, they have Escape, Rush and Disengage from skills and uh, that's about it. Tumble is not something you have to use a lot, but if you get cornered by something nasty and are blocked from using escape and Disengage won't give a useful angle, then being able to Tumble over the enemy and bravely run away is pretty darn useful.

But the Agility tree offers Vault, an ability that works even when wearing massive armor, you can simply vault over the enemy and run away - as a bonus it'll be dazed. Vault, since it's an attack, can break grapple unlike many escape abilities.
And Rapid Shot gives you extra movement speed, extra attack speed and fractions of free turns which is all good for repositioning.
And you have Bull shot, which can be used essentially like rush, though it uses weapon range (meaning range 10 with just 1 pt investment), hits hard, and requires a target. It lets you keep Rush and Escape in reserve.
Also as a Slinger you wear a shield which enables this really fantastic ability Agile Defense which blocks a lot of damage - including spell damage! The shield can also add 20+ armor and a bunch of resists and stats.

So as a Slinger you can wear heavy armor and still be much more mobile than a concealment archer. You still deal about as much damage as a Concealment Archer. So you're gaining a bunch of durability and not missing out on much, except from lvl10 to about lvl24 you don't have the same level of firepower - you're still harder to kill, but can't obliterate stuff in the same way as a concealment archer.

Nightmare winners: Thalore, Ghoul to demonstrate viability of Slingers.

Comparing Bows and Slings:

By using a sling you lose: Concealment
By using a sling you gain: Bull shot, Rapid shot
By wearing heavy armor you lose: Tumble, Trained reactions
By wearing a shield you gain: Agile defense, Vault

Arrows and Shot have identical damage stats. They have minor differences in crit and apr. Arrows use 50% str while shot uses 50% cun.
Bows and Slings are identical in terms of stats. There is a "keeper's" ego only available for bows which is for Temporal Wardens, otherwise egos are the same/equivalent.

As such unlike with 2h vs 1h weapons, both bow and arrow and sling and shot deal the same amount of damage. Slingers are not at a disadvantage in this regard, it just comes down to skills.

However Artifact Slings and Shot are much worse than Artifact Bows and Arrows, but in either case you tend to be best served with randart anyway, as a Slinger just don't hold out for good artifacts to drop, because they won't.

Race:

I'm not going to give numeric rankings because races bring different things to the table and Archer is a remarkably flexible class. A good race is one which you play to its strengths. The ones I list are the ones I think are fun and thematic for this build. Note that I've only played Thalore and Ghoul with a build like this one so other options are theoretical or based on extrapolation from other builds.

Target races for this build:

Thalore: Immunity to disease and more resists are nice if you're going to let enemies cast spells at you. The Treants are REALLY nice, since they are instant cast and you can instantly swap places with them. You can also summon them to body-block enemies and projectiles. Probably the strongest choice if you don't want to run from anything because diseases can be very bad.
Ghoul: The +25% attack speed of bows and slings tidily negates the -20% speed penalty of Ghouls when attacking so you don't suffer double moves, later on Rapid Shot negates it for movement during combat too. You get Ghoulish Leap which is the most amazing mobility skill ever for an Archer. Brutally strong early game due to free stats, free immunities and leap. Slightly weak late game due to inability to use infusions and everyone gets lots of immunities from gear, but Archers generally don't have hard late games anyway, so if you have a problem with being squishy early on, try Ghoul.
Halfing: Halfings get crazy crit chance for free when you pump cun and slings scale off of cun, see where I'm going with this? Not as synergistic as some choices though. A decent choice for antimagic slinger because halfling talents don't need that much investment.
Dwarf: Armor is good and more armor is better and hey more saves don't hurt. But perhaps the best thing is being able to up and leave through the wall if a fight is going badly - an advantage which is hard to fully quantify. But bear in mind you will be gambling at the Merchant.
Ogre: A great choice for the buffed inscriptions. You might be tempted to try and go Bow+Shield and get both Agility and Sniper: don't be. Rapid Shot is much too useful to pass on if you've already unlocked Agility and it requires a Sling. (however until getting Rapid Shot feel free to Ogre wield Bow+Shield if you happen to find a much nicer bow and arrow than sling and shot)
Higher: A Higher can enjoy amazing visual range and limited telepathy which is simply amazing tactically. Also Slingers are very stamina constrained for most the game so Higher can frontload a bunch of expensive skills like Blinding Speed and Trueshot. The Higher's abilities are largely replaceable through equipment (for example Telepathy: All) but if you struggle early on then Higher is a very solid choice.

Non-target races:

Technique / Combat Training:

Thick Skin: 5/5 you have spare points and it's good.
Heavy Armor Training: 3/5 early and start wearing massive armor ASAP so you get used to the stamina constraints and are less likely to die of stupidity. 5/5 sooner or later. It's pretty much build defining so no skipping this one.
Combat accuracy: 5/5 when you have spare points, it's basically a point dump which will do more than nothing since some things scale off of accuracy.

Technique / Mobility: 1-3/0/0/0 - most skills simply don't work with heavy armor.

Disengage: A useful ability. Add extra points if you like.
Evasion: The stamina cost is ginormous so just don't get it.

Cunning / Survival: 1/1-5/1/1 (try to get from rogue escorts).

Heightened Senses: 1 pt is useful for see stealth & invis. It'll scale like crazy with our cun too.
Device Mastery: Very good skill if you use item skills, and you should. Probably get 5/5.
Track: 1 pt, it scales with cun so will be crazy big radius.
Danger Sense: 1pt, the additional chance at a save has at least a 5% chance to succeed and combined with other minor benefits should be worthwhile.

Locked Generic Trees:

Technique / Conditioning: 1-2/1-5/1+/3+
Unlock at lvl20 if you have no good racials to invest generics in or are unhappy with your cleansing items, otherwise get munitions at lvl20 and get this at lvl36.

Vitality: It's a nice ability that can usually regenerate about 20% of your hitpoints, which might be the difference between being alive and dead.
Unflinching Resolve: Really fantastic, getting at least 3/5 really helps with clearing stuns and confusion. Remember enemies debuff you more than for a normal archer, so probably do get this. It's especially good on normal where it's not so easy to get immunities but having it always improves gear and inscription flexibility. If you have good immunities from race/gear you can skip this.
Daunting Presence: We can actually use this, but its a super low priority place to dump points and only if not going antimagic. The main thing is it's generally more effective than skills which boost your saves (like racials).
Adrenaline Surge: This ability is super useful to help with stamina management (for when you're out of stamina but your enemy still needs killing) and a good way to solve stamina issues with generic points rather than class points. Best used followed by Trueshot and Blinding speed.

Optional Generic Skill Trees:

Antimagic: I love me arcane items too much, but it's okay to get this if the race is generally compatible. Pumping willpower gives you a big stamina pool which is nice. Most painful thing about being AM is finding an artifact shield which would double your block value: but it's Arcane infused.

Fungus: Sure, if you're antimagic. Maybe get instead of Conditioning.

Harmony/Vile Life: Probably not.

Celestial/Light: Maybe. Providence might be better than another infusion/inscription and you kind of have generics to spare.

Prodigies:

Some tough choices here!

Vital Shot: A really good skill, does heaps of damage, but it uses normal speed not combat speed so you can almost get in two normal shots in the time span of one Vital Shot and you already have tons of ways to debuff enemies. I skipped it, which was painful at the time, but I totally didn't miss it.
Spine of the World: This is really neat if you don't like retreating for anything since it gets rid of annoying things like bleeds and poisons that hamper healing. It also means that a Wild Infusion will always completely free you of physical debuffs. In the long run items can sort of obsolete it but have it improves gear flexibility.
Arcane Might: As well as more damage, the physical power helps your debuffs to stick. Highly recommended.
Superpower: A poorer alternative to Arcane Might, for Antimagic users.
Eye of the Tiger: Could be interesting especially if you fully intend to max out crit chance, much of your damage just comes from normal shoot/headshot so this is more about utility skills like Vault and Called Shots. I haven't tried it but I feel it could be really fun.
Worldly Knowledge for Celestial / Light: Mainly for Providence but you also get healing and stun fodder. This might be a better option than a status removing prodigy - obviously must go with Arcane Might since you need mag/sp (also, probably prefer to get this from an escort, but hey, RNG).

A safe choice would be Spine of the World and Arcane Might.

Inscriptions:

Regeneration
Heal early, later Heroism
Physical or physical+mental wild.
A regeneration, heal or teleport.

Or for Undead:

Shield
Heat Beam or Biting Gale to remove statuses
Teleport (or another shield - but if you have to pop 2 shields might be better to teleport out)
Another shield or nothing.

Equipment:

As soon as you can afford it (immediately, if Nightmare) go to Last Hope (and Zigur if race permits) and buy the best tier3 shot and sling you can find. This makes a huge difference to the ease of the early game. Also buy heavy/massive armor if nothing good drops, "impenetrable" is good at this stage. My usual shopping priorities for maximizing survivability are: High damage shot, upgraded infusions/inscription, good armor and last of all a long range sling - range is good but not as good as killing fast and being durable.

For your shield raw Block Value is the most useful thing by far as that determines how much damage Agile defense can deflect, if you get an artifact shield or randart with massive block value it's a keeper pretty much regardless what else it's good for. Resists are also good and so are wards if you have the diligence to set them up. The attack abilities of the shield are almost irrelevant since they are only used by Vault, though proc shields (i.e. Summertide which deals light damage) can turn Vault into a hard hitting talent.

In general armor is much better than defense - aspire to have 80+ armor. You can focus on +phys damage and penetration or crit & crit multiplier - not much triggers on crit so it's not a no-brainer. Heal mod is excellent for this build. Resists go really well with Agile defense so stack em' high. All stats are good for this build except +mag for antimagic so gear that provides a broad spectrum of stats can be good. And of course, immunities are great. Finally, Armor Penetration is worth considering, armored foes are a pain to deal with.

Gamble for Shot from the Merchant, there are only two artifact shot and both are low level and lame. Slings are another good choice since there is only one half-decent tier5 artifact sling.

For the High Peak fight bring something to remove magical effects like gloves of dispersion or Spellhunt Remnants since Archer has no real ability to do this otherwise.

Combat Tips:

A good general rotation is shoot -> shoot -> shoot -> shoot ... it's a little dull but good against trash, especially with fire or venom munitions. Save your stamina and cooldowns for enemies who deserve it. Use head shots if you can be bothered but most trash will die in 2 shoots anyway.

For hard targets the general combat rotation is explosive shot -> flare -> headshot/volley/called shots -> pin down -> shoot -> head shot/called shots -> steady shot : flare should be recharged by now, but you'll probably be out of stamina so see above.

For consuming marks, Head Shot is a reliable choice and can shoot over enemies (with a flare applied mark) to apply debuffs. Keep Called Shots in reserve to use at point blank range against enemies that really deserve it (it can be sidestepped if used from long range). Volley is hilarious for cleaning up trash and is also instant. One thing to note though, is if your attack speed is high relative to your projectile speed, you can double-consume marks, first firing a Called Shots which doesn't consume the mark until it hits, then firing a Head Shot before the Called Shot reaches the target, Called Shots will still disarm and cripple.

Against enemies that are more dangerous at long range than short range or are persistently dodging your shoots, use Bull Shot to get into melee range and use Called Shots to silence and disarm them. This should be your go-to strategy against Archer rares (against some casters, you want to be at long range so you can dodge or Shoot Down their orbs, for example try not to eat Soul Rots, but Archers are strictly less dangerous in close range because Aim stops providing a damage bonus and they're less likely to Shoot Down your attacks)

Against enemies that are dangerous in melee range, use Vault, Disengage and Pin Down to keep your distance. Since Vault is an attack talent rather than a movement talent, you can use it even when pinned and to break grapples.

In the late game when you run out of stamina in a hard fight do: Adrenaline Surge -> Blinding Speed -> Trueshot and then unload every expensive attack ability you have - you might want to wait for Called Shots to come off cooldown before activating adrenaline surge. The hitpoint loss is irrelevant and if you're using venom ammo you'll regain it anyway.

Heavily armored targets will be the biggest nuisances you encounter. Activate piercing ammo if you have it. Headshot is your best skill for punching through armor. Against enemies that actually regen health when hit (Sun Paladin, Demonologist), you might need to rotate flare, headshot and explosive shot since your normal shoots might actually heal them more than hurt them! With the right shield Vault can also become a very high damage ability, I killed a bunch of stairs guardians with Summertide which deals a crapton of pure light damage.

On the interactions of Agile Defense:

Agile Defense is applied after resistances (unlike normal block) so having good resists means you come much closer to actually deflecting half of incoming damage, since like 400 damage reduced by 70% is 120, which can be deflected entirely by a good shield.

It's applied before most shields (including shielding rune and bone shield) helping these to stay up longer.

However it's applied after antimagic shield - basically, about half the damage that antimagic shield absorbs would've been deflected by agile defense anyway at no resource cost - this means that antimagic and agile defense are kind of non-synergistic. This is not necessarily a reason to not go antimagic and AM shield still reduces the need to have resists, just saying you already have something which is better than antimagic shield which antimagic shield stacks with poorly.

1.5 Sling Archer w/ Heavy Armor Guide (2024)

References