Decay archer question (in General)

In my post on strategy ideas the other day Mr Chuckles brought up the decay archer strat. Somebody, I think it was Barron, did this early on in CB2. If memory serves it was a single minion with a ToJ. I also seem to think that it wasn't very successful!

My question is if you did this would your bow fire between decay shots in melee? And would the penalties for using a ranged weapon in melee apply?

Usually, one would use GA to kill the enemy during melee.

DD spells take priority over weapons in battle.

your bow would fire in ranged, but in melee it would not

Ranged weapons only fire in ranged rounds...

Unless you don't have a melee weapon or DD spell, in which case ranged weapons will fire in melee.

If you do not have a melee weapon or a DD spell, your bow will fire every other round with a 60% dex penalty. The dex penalty will be off your total dex including that given from Haste and a TOA.

Your first melee round it fires in is round 2 of melee. And then every even numbered round thereafter.

But as stated above, if you have any DD spell learned, even a base FB, the DD spell takes priority over melee/missile weapons.

well I should have said

Ranged weapons only fire worthwild in ranged rounds.

The dx penalty is horrible.

Lol... you aren't really considering this strat are you? Good luck with it but I don't know how good it is.

The reason Barron's char was good was because tats were way overpowered for the first week or two of CB2. Combining a massive tank (ToJ) with decay to back it up is usually going to be pretty effective.

If you're going to try to get this strat to work, my best advice is to only have it as a support minion. Have another tank or mage there with BL or CoC.
This may be very effective. Much more than relying on GA to finish opponents off anyway.

And in answer to your questions. No, the bow wouldn't fire in melee.
As for the ranged weapon penalty, I'm not sure but I seem to remember that you just need to be using a melee attack, weapon or DD. So I'm guessing it'll be fine. - You might want to double check that though.

No, not considering it really - unless I wouldn't to maintain a really low score!

'wouldn't' - should have been 'want' :)

Hmm... You could try it with a two minion set up.

1) Decay Archer + ToA. Big Bow, DBs etc. Dish out some ranged damage, and have some dex to dodge a couple of hits.

2) Mage. MM/CoC. + GA.

The reason for the decay would be to allow you to concentrate your weapon allowance into your Bow and dent any high AC walls or Mages.

The only problem would be seekers, if they take your mage out in ranged, you'll only have GA left to kill with, and wouldn't be able to kill attack less minions.

I could see a 4 minion all decay archer team with base decay's for hunting DM freaks (like me). AS/Small STR/ARCH-AS/S. STR/arch-GA/AMF/Med STR/Arch-Haste/Small DM[deal with GA's nasty return on Decay/Med STR.

Add an RoS on the Haste minion and you might have something...

Decay on its own doesn't kill, so it needs to be backed up with some non percentage damage dealing spell or weapon.

so GA could be added to the character to do some damage also, but at the cost of HP and AMF/DM perhaps

or you could try Cone of Cold instead of Decay and make a CoC Archer.

CoC archer is my favourite strat. I ran with one briefly early on in CB2, not long after Jon increased the damage. But at the same time Warchild started Alucard and had much better toys than me, ELB and DB's, so I didn't want to be the poor version with my compound...

then why be the poormans version by getting Decay? :p

I don't intend to do this - my mind was wandering was all... I was just trying to see how best to make something as off the wall as this work...