Archer Strat switch (in General)

Hey guys so I have a 65k ncb single archer currently equipped with

Elven Long Bow, Beleg's, TofA, HofC, it will be with a AofM and BoM when I find them but until then...

I am considering switching the strategy by un-training archery,switching to a ex/ax crossbow buying a Halidon instead of TofA and using Junction.

Any thoughts.

Pros/Cons

Should I stay with the single TofA archer or a junction Halidon archer?

Without the ToA, your max encumbrance will drop so plan accordingly. Also, if you switch to Halidon with a single minion, it'll be difficult to keep it close to Max Tattoo.

With that said, minion + familiar has greater survivability than a single minion.

I can tell you already that you can do MASSIVE more damage with an archer rather than a junctioned halidon... however, it all comes down to just how much CB$ you're willing and able to sink into your weapon x.
If you can't afford to pump serious amounts of cash into the weapon x, you might as well switch to a halidon or even a DD familiar soon.

As examples, look at my character (+114 on bow from ToA alone, my current bow is only at x3577 but going slowly up, and the weapon is at +0) and look at Vectoid (he's a much smaller MPR character, but carries a x8600 +157 bow, plus whatever weapon + he gets from the ToA) - just look at the damages of "most powerful blow".
Those are melee hits, obviously, but still, with a high enough upgrade on the BGs, the ranged damage is similar (well, for Vectoid maybe it is, he has +16 named BG, I only have +13 unnamed ones).
Then imagine the fact you sometimes hit up to 4 times per ranged round (well, Vectoid almost certainly does, I usually only hit 3 times).

"if you switch to Halidon with a single minion, it'll be difficult to keep it close to Max Tattoo"

The tattoo grows at the same rate compared to MPR, regardless of you being a single minion or a 4-minion team, and nowadays single minions grow at the same rate as 4-minion teams (no XP bonus for multi-minion teams, at least as far as I know from what I read, I head before I started playing there used to be such a bonus but no more).

"minion + familiar has greater survivability than a single minion"

Slightly higher survivability, and only if you use Ablative Shield while enemy has no DM at all. Other than that, it can at most provide at most one extra round from the killslot, nothing else - familiars only have 1/4 of tattoo level in HP, so if you simply used a ToA (1/2 of level in ST and aprox 1/3 of level in DX, so roughly 83.33% of tattoo level in stats on main damage dealer) and pushed all that difference XP into HP, you'd be better off with total HP on team rather than adding a minion.