PvM Hotswapping Bow MA guide 0.6 beta ;)
Contents
1. Introduction and justification
2. Skill allocation
3. Weapon choice
4. Equipment of note
5. AS Technique
Thanks To;
Zirrian for reminding me about the perception buffs and the power puller, and that the guide should probably specify it's aiming for tl5 titlecap level players fighting level 210 hecklers (or mobs of similiar difficulty, setup)
Engelen for putting up with me charging headlong to the very edge of the brink surrounded by angry hecklers and then charging back into the group, often enough trailing said angry hecklers, all in the name of experimentation :D
Introduction and justification
This guide is intended to inform those of you interested in pursuing the hotswap bow option for MA's, not as the regular PvP only path, but as a supplement to already impressive damage for PvM purposes.
You'll likely not have the IP required to pursue this path and make a significant impact on your regular play until the Tl5 titlecap in all your primary MA skills and nanoskills, abilities, etc, once you have a glut of IP though, it's quite a handy thing to have as backup, and as an extra big hit on your alpha strike.
In my opinion it's nice to have a big high damage special attack to start off the fight, I think this should have been dimach, but as we all know, this special is *far* from adequate for that purpose with it's absurd cycle time, Aimed Shot on the other hand, due to many factors at current, is an ideal candidate for this position, the damage dealt by an AS is dependant upon 3 things as far as I am aware, your base damage (decent enough for bow MA) the crit chance (very good for MA, perhaps the best) and the AS Multiplier, the AS multiplier is dictated by the amount you have in the AimedShot skill, I've been told 200 AS = an extra multiplier to the skill to a maximum of 7 (I'm not sure as to the accuracy of that, but with 1056 AS, I am getting an average damage of 7k per AS, and all the way up to 13k ocasionally, 10k+ being not that rare.
There are issues with going this route however, and I guess I should outline them here, it takes quite a bit of effort to pull this off reliably without putting your team in danger, I've accidentally pulled adds a few times due to pathing issues when I hadn't yet perfected my AS technique, that said, I believe I've figured out a way to negate, or at least minimise this risk, which I will explain in the AS technique section later on.
All over then, on to the meat of the issue :)