Single Archer: DM or Not To DM (in General)

That is the question. As it stands now, I have approx. 4mil XP trained into my DM. I shut down most of the spells I come against when they're around my MPR but I'm wondering if I wouldn't be better served untraining it to boost my Str/Dx up to a better level bracket since I'm only at 230k/204k in those stats.

Opinions?

there are tons of ED teams throughout the game, from early to high levels. A big DM with good ranged damage is a good idea.

That's the million dollar question .... I never know which stat I should up .. ever.. lol. I add where I think it helps the most, but if you are trying to fizzle most spells, then the DM will have to get huge!! you will sacrifice a lot of hp, str and dex to do that.

I think its well worth keep DM up as a Single Archer, the hard thing is to know how much XP to pump into it.
Dm is a nice help against those 4/5 minion team that get tons of HP, and helps cutting down GA, which really hurt my minion...

See, the major issue is that my MsK is only at x455, so I'm hurting pretty hard on damage right now.

And I just can't decide if its worth it to keep the DM where it is or go with a smaller one.

up st does very little to dmage output its all in the weapon x i recommend keeping dm at a level that dispels as much ga and such as possible allowing u to last longer and giving u a chance to wear down your opponent

I say no DM. It isn't that DM can't farm as high, but its a point siphoning problem. You farm teams with ED, and teams 1/2 your size can eat you alive, draining the point from the top. With no ED, teams with ED still need about 3/4 or more of your MPR to farm you, that way the point isn't siphoned so quickly.

When points are siphoned quickly from your target, your challenge bonus drops.

However, if you have a big enough weapon (bigger than most at your level), your damage output might be able to be maintained and the point syphoning is not as bad. :P

Just look at me, sox, vectoid and metallic maiden - recent activity, score/PR/MPR :)
By the way, I'm getting close to a x4k +0 ELBow, archery just enough for the ST.

DM won't help against RoS+GA, since you have no chance of getting it high enough to matter... actually, I doubt it will help much against GA, period.
Also, you deal quite a lot of damage per round, so reducing AS-granted HP on "kill-slot" minions isn't much of an issue either.

Personally, I am starting to believe the ideal archer setup would be similar to what I have on right now, but with (huge) DB instead of EB.
Train ~40% HP, ~50% ST and just as much archery as needed (rest sunk into either ST or HP), with the DX coming from the ToA alone.
The bow should have a huge x (up to NW allowance if you can afford it), with the entire + coming just from the ToA too.
If you make it to the SECOND melee round, you're as good as dead anyway, so you couldn't care less about decay, SG or CoC, therefore AMF is pointless ; you couldn't care less about GA either, since you have enough HP to last that long, and you kill all killslot minions in a single round, so DM is pointless too. The only EO that would actually make any sense is EC, but only against teams sporting EXBow/AXbow, but the DB should take care of those anyway as long as you have a noticeably higher DX (and since I don't see many solo AXBow/EXbow users, that shouldn't be much of a problem either).

At least that's my viewpoint right now :)
If I could get all my DX into ST right now, and sink another 120 mil CB$ into the weapon (it's barely over 30 mil now, heh) then I'd be just peachy ;)

Well, if you insist in keeping a Mage Seeker Bow, then probably having *some* DM and a slightly higher DX might be a good idea... but if you switch to an ELB, then upping your ST as much as possible will probably be wiser.
Of course, "huge x on weapon" is self-understood in both cases ;)

I like Sick's archer. Damage, damage and more damage.

You can spend too much time worrying about cutting people's spells down when you're running a tank; then you spread your xp into areas other than those which matter most to a tank: HP/ST/Dex. Those are your important stats when you're running a physical damage dealer: the physical stats. Because as a wise man once said to me: what's the point of a wimpy tank?

Guess I'll see about trading the MsK for an ELB then...

I think this all depends about what point of the game you are in. When you have 7M ST, or 12M like AA, 2M more ST doesn't have a huge effect. Like only 14% more damage. But, through that 2M into DM, and suddenly, you're eliminating a ton of people's GA, as well as a lot of AS. This is why I have a large DM, it's slightly larger than I would like, but it's nice to eliminate almost all GA and AS.