The ENDLESS ARCHER - BG3 Astarion Honour Build Guide

all right we are going to show off this character's damage against designated punching bag the oathbreaker Knight notice that we have no pre-buff except ones that last all day no Elixir and no Buffs from an ally we're not even fully geared with a bunch of empty gear slots and yet we're still going to take this guy uh almost to from Full to zero we begin with making an ins snaring strike which cost both our action and bonus action um but we're going to get bows both back when we start combat takes a fight we don't use sneak ATT attack since we didn't get a critical hit which is somewhat unlikely we have a very high chance of getting a critical hit but against since we are now against an enemy who is surprised we are guaranteed Critical Hits we're going to be Begin by activating brace which allows us to roll our range damage of course we're doing only range damage and then we are going to fire off a hamstring shot since we missed on our in snaring strike it didn't snare him might as well get this this a hamstring shot to slow him down in case he survives our initial barrage guaranteed critical hit so we are going to land our sneak attack making so that we get our additional sneak attack damage then we get to fire off a dread ambusher attack which is also a guaranteed critical hit multiplying the dreaded ambusher damage and then yet another ranged attack yet another guaranteed critical hit putting our enemy down to 122 hit points and then finally our last attack of course if we had haste from an ally speed potions or anything like that we could continue to make these attacks but we're just going to attack um for oh just a cool 210 damage just to start off thing start things off with our opponent surprised and hamstrung so we get at least one more round of these attacks against him this will guarantee killing the oathbreaker Knight before he gets to act um obviously our party members would do it for us if I let this fight play out but you will be averaging something like 2 uh 10 200 to 250 damage in your opening round of combat plus an additional 150 every round of combat thereafter all right let's get to the build hello my friends and welcome back to another balers Gate 3 build guide I hope you're all doing well today we're covering my pick for the best sustained damage archer in balers Gate 3 where a lot of my previous Archer builds have focused on getting the highest initial burst damage possible to take one enemy out this build keeps a lot of that damage but adds in additional sustained damage throughout the rest of the fight so that if a fight goes long you have more options for continuing to do damage and continuing to to win combats even if you happen to not be able to kill all the enemies immediately the way that we do that is by adding a bunch of extra damage dice to all of our attacks which also combos extremely well with the very high critical hit chance and guaranteed critical hits that this build will get to give us a ton of additional damage we'll probably average somewhere in the mid hundreds like 150 or so damage per round with initial burst damage in the high 200s um depending on exactly what pre-buff and stuff we set up with that's an incredible amount of damage obviously that is going to take most enemies out of the fight immediately and you'll have just seen that by the time we get into this build uh as well as giving you additional options when you have to W Whittle down an extremely high Health boss or longer en counters throughout the game I'm using aaran as the example character for this build uh because I usually like to use him for Archer builds but also I think this one is extremely thematic for him because the additional necrotic damage that we are will be getting you can flavor it as him tapping into his vampiric side and of course if you go ascended asarian later on he will get even more of that and so that I think is a great flavor win for this character as well as assarian sort of Embraces his role as a vampiric Archer um channeling his vampiric Powers if you're doing this for a main character or a custom character the best races are honestly just the usual ones wood elf for the additional movement speed is incredibly powerful because of course for Archer builds additional movement speed is great this build also will almost never miss its attacks except on a natural one and so halfling to roll those natural ones is incredibly strong and dwar to start every fight invisible is good for stealth archers for obvious reasons being invisible makes you much stealthier and lets you also begin the fight from basically anywhere you want to begin it from which of course is a huge Advantage when positioning matters so much for Archer builds to begin with when building this character we need to fix uh these ability scores so let's get right in and do that and of course we are beginning with Ranger because that's going to give us the fastest access to the the class features we need the most we will take 17 dexterity 15 Constitution or 16 Constitution excuse me and 15 wisdom because we don't need any of the other stats one of the advantages to playing an Archer or dexterity based character is you only need three of the stats um Dex con and wisdom because all three of those are the important saving throws in the game and you really only need dexterity and Constitution though as a ranger we benefit some from having wisdom as well so we get to put all of our points into single stats this build like a lot of Archer builds will also benefit pretty strongly from the gloves of dexterity if you are intending to use those you can reduce your dexterity to eight and put those stats elsewhere maybe take a little bit of extra Charisma you could also take if you really want to use this for a conversation skills character you could just take a more normal stat split and go up to 12 Charisma to add in some conversation skills or some extra strength if you prefer the jump distance and carry weight but this is the sort of most optimal stat spread for the build for our skills the only important one is that we have stealth and of course since this is going to be a dexterity build you might as well grab slight of hand proficiency um stealth proficiency is of course extremely important for a stealth Archer build because it's going to allow you to hide in more dangerous locations and if you benefit from greater invisibility from an ally then you can make those checks more often asarian starting stats are also pretty good here because you just get perception which is great uh starting as a ranger allowing you to get perception is nice having perception on your stealth character and your trap disarming character which this will be is very good because it gives you it lets that character both spot traps and then disarm them so all of those together is great those are the only important stats the rest are kind uh skills the rest are kind of up to you here I'd probably just put this this last Point into Athletics um just for fun and because survival is useless but otherwise it it doesn't uh really matter for our favored enemy um we are going to go with Bounty Hunter and the reason for this is that uh this will allow you to have disadv give enemies disadvantage on ins snaring strike even though we only have 15 wisdom to start and we'll get up to 16 wisdom later on and so the save DC on our ins snaring strike will not be very high enemies who are saving against it with disadvantage are still very likely to fail and in snaring strike is an extremely powerful effect so this is often a great thing to spend your spell slots on early and having disadvantage on giving enemies disadvantage on it is really strong especially because it traps them in place allowing you to hit them with more and more Arrow attacks it also helps that none of these others are any good so we can just take Bounty Hunter without missing out on anything for our natural Explorer pick either Beast Tamer if you want the familiar um or Wasteland Wanderer fire are good fire is the most common damage type so it's typically the Wasteland Wanderer pick that you want I'm going to suggest Wasteland Wanderer for fire just by default but the familiar is also also very useful if you do take the familiar take the Raven blinding enemies can give you advantage on them allowing us to more reliably hit and Trigger sneak attacks that's our level one build let's level up the character and we're just going to continue taking levels in Ranger as an archery character of course our fighting style that we are going to pick is going to be archery and for our spell selection well we took uh Bounty Hunter for a reason so we're going to take ins snaring strike in snare is an extremely powerful condition it prevents enemies from moving entirely gives you advantage and they take damage over time the damage over time isn't that relevant but uh a lot of people will say you know this conflicts with your Hunter Mark and that is true but if they're taking 1d6 piercing damage per turn that's the same damage they would be taking from one attack with Hunter's Mark per turn um and so the concentration loss of if you can reliably land in snaring strike then it's not that bad that it conflicts with Hunter Mark we will still take Hunter mark because sometimes you don't want to even the chance of them getting out of the in uh snare but if you really feel like you're only going to use one of these two concentration spells you could of of course take something else speak with animals is very nice just to have in your party good Berry gives you all sorts of different options for healing and of course enhan sleep and long Strider are incredible long strider for additional movement speed for your whole party every party should have access to this somewhere in the in the build and we'll get this next level if we don't get it this level um and enhanced leap gives us a ton of mobility in combat which is very helpful you can use this alongside a bonus action jump to stay permanently out of range of melee enemies so all of those spells are very good for us at Ranger level three we get to take our subass and even though we are intending to B base this around sustain stained damage rather than initial burst damage we're still going to take gloomstalker as our subass dread ambusher gives you additional movement speed plus three initiative which is an insanely High bonus and um in the first round of combat you can make an attack that deals an additional 1d8 damage this is one of the worst written tool tips in the game I had been hoping they would fix it in patch six but they didn't because what it doesn't tell you about dread ambusher is that this attack is an extra attack that doesn't take an action so we get a whole EXT ra attack in the opening round of combat um very few characters in the game get to make two attacks at level three gloomstalker Berserker Barbarian monk um only there's only a few that get multiple attacks at the be in uh starting at level three and that allows us to double our damage in the opening round of combat which is incredible and most combats won't go much longer than like three rounds so this is basically plus 33% damage to your character for your typical combat that's an enormous buff to your character so think of it that way and you understand why this class feature is so good we also get Superior dark vision which is not super relevant but does come up occasionally and bonus action hide which is incredible for an Archer allowing us to fire an attack and then re-hide to gain advantage on our next attack we also get umbrell shroud which lets you become invisible so even if you aren't a dwar you can start a lot of combats by turning invisible moving to the optimal location and then beginning the combat from there for our spell selection here we're going to take enhanced leap or long Strider um if you have long Strider elsewhere in the party take enhanced leap if you have if you don't then definitely take long Strider and then we are ready to go on to the next level at Ranger level four we get to take a feat and the first feat that we are going to take is Sharpshooter a lot of people will say that you shouldn't take Sharpshooter early because your hit chance won't be good enough to use it um and I am here to tell you that that is mathematically speaking not correct Sharpshooter will be higher average damage um up to the point where uh will be higher average damage on almost every attack unless you need an extremely high hit chance so against an enemy with like at this level something like 20 or 22 AC you would be better off with an ASI compared to Sharpshooter otherwise Sharpshooter will always be more average damage um against those enemies A good rule of thumb is turn off Sharpshooter if your attack has a 25% chance to hit or less but that is going to be extremely rare because we've mitigated the Sharpshooter penalty the minus five attack penalty with um or the archery fighting style and we're going to have advantage on just about every uh attack that we're making because we're easily able to jump back into hiding uh using our bonus action hides so you're going to hit with your Sharpshooter attacks extremely reliably with this character and do way more average damage and average damage per attack also isn't the only thing you have to consider because average damage is only it's really a standin for average number of actions taken to kill an enemy Sharpshooter by increasing the maximum damage that you can do with a single attack makes the average number of actions you take to kill a specific enemy even more uh increases it even more than um the average damage which it already increases significantly so Sharpshooter is really good you should use it regularly and of course it also gives you the ability to shoot up from low ground though you shouldn't typically start fights on low ground because you have such easy positioning with your invisibility and Stealth at Ranger level five we get extra attack and we also get Misty step which is incredible one of the best reasons to go gloomstalker as well getting access to Misty step is obviously Awesome every single character should have this and a positioning B based character like this benefits extremely strongly from it as well this lets you get up onto High Ground to make your arrow attacks very easily or get away from enemies who've gotten Too Close extra attack of course just doubles our damage output which is needless to say an enormous boost to your damage and for our spell selection here we're going to take Spike growth Spike growth is a great thing to concentrate on it wins a lot of encounters entirely by itself by trapping enemies and enemies will have to move towards you over it so you can use it to gain lots of distance from melee enemies this is an incredibly powerful effect that will be very useful to have access to throughout your uh adventuring career yes we one thing that you might be wondering is why do we have so many concentration spells um that's because typically we just want to cast whatever the best concentration spell for that fight is and then just concentrate on it rather than spending our actions on spells our actions are going to be used for weapon attacks not spells so it's better for us to just have a really strong concentration spell use whichever the best one for the fight is and then win the fight as a result of our weapon attacks now at this point you may be wondering this is just kind of a a standard gloomstalker Ranger build where's the spice so let's add in some spice we are going to take a multiclass now that we've gotten our feet and our extra attack feature which are what we really wanted out of Ranger and we're going to multiclass into a somewhat unusual combination Druid this gives us access to a bunch of canri of great Druid cantrips most notably in this case uh resistance or guidance and resistance um both of which are excellent and will allow it give you a lot of better options for skill checks and in dialogue being able to guidance yourself is going to help you with your ability to disarm traps also note that you can cast guidance before hiding and then you get the guidance bonus on your stealth checks which is very useful um and then you just break concentration on the guidance with whatever concentration spell you want for the fight uh and we also get a bunch of additional spells here so we can fill out our spell list with whatever we didn't take before we're also wisdom based on our Druid spells so while our save DC isn't incredible on these spells it's still very useful um we're going to take whichever of enhanced leap or long Strider we didn't take earlier definitely grab healing word which gives you a defensive option and gives this character a little bit of extra utility and then a couple other options here are you could take ice knife just to create ice surfaces always a great option very powerful to be able to create ice surfaces create water is also just a very good spell that you should have somewhere in your party so if you don't have access to it elsewhere this character can pick it up and fog Cloud you can also grab to cast uh and then hide in if you use a bonus action to hide in fog Cloud because it provides heavy obscurement enemies won't be able to see you and it guarantees you an area to hide in you can then step out of it fire an arrow and then step back into it and hide making yourself effectively immune to ranged attacks as long as you spend a bonus action hiding every turn you've effectively got a pseudo Darkness with fog cloud and of course you can also cast it on enemies to Blind them gaining advantage on attacks against them enemies who are held in place uh will not be able to get out of it so this is very powerful as well but the real reason that we're here is for Druid level two where we can take the circle of the spores Druid give giving us access to a bunch of wild shaped forms which also aren't irrelevant I'll talk about that in a second but more importantly symbiotic entity symbiotic entity gives us eight temp hit points and you deal an additional 1d6 necrotic damage with every single attack while you have them it's very easy for this character to preserve these temporary hit points because you're a range stealth Archer so you basically won't be taking attacks from enemies and having an additional D6 necrotic damage on every single attack when we're making so many attacks is a lot of extra damage especially because all of our attacks are made with advantage and we'll be using critical hit gear and later on guaranteeing that we're getting Critical Hits this these extra d6s will also be doubled very frequently which will add a lot of sustained damage to this character you also get um Halo of spores as a reaction which since this character doesn't have a lot of uses for its reaction this is actually like a not irrelevant way to add just a tiny bit of extra damage to your character you also get the the really cool trick that uh somebody pointed out in the comments of a previous uh Spore Druid video of mine so shout out to you sorry I'm I'm blanking on who it was but this was just a cool trick where you can drop a healing potion at your feet or other potion at your feet as a free action then use your reaction Halo of spores to break that potion and get a a heal that uses your reaction or a buff buff potion that uses your reaction without having to waste your bonus action drinking the potion just a really cool little effect that you can have to drink a potion of speed or a healing potion in the middle of combat without having to spend an action on it um for our additional prepared spells we're just going to stick with all the the ones that we wanted from earlier that are just the powerful spells that we have and so we've now added a bunch of extra damage to every single attack but let's of course not stop here and see if we can continue to increase our damage we are going to at this next character level dip into a third class and take a level of rogue rogue gives us sneak attack I mean we're hiding every single combat uh so we should be able to trigger the sneak attack damage every turn this is just an extra D6 of damage every turn um and it also gives us a bunch of uh extra uh skill expertise so we can now have expertise in slight of hand and stealth and be extremely good at both of these things if you really want those earlier you could put you could move the Rogue level earlier in the build you could even uh take it at level one if you want to have slight of hand and stealth expertise earlier on in the build but this is just a a great way to add some additional proficiencies to your party and make sure that you are always passing your stealth checks this character is also one of the best possible characters to cast greater invisibility on because our stealth checks will be so good at Rogue level two we get uh cunning action hide Dash and disengage now cutting action hide we already have effectively from our gloomstalker levels but the action Dash and disengage are still very good to have on archers just gives you a lot of extra mobility throughout the the game and at oh don't want to add a class at the next character level just a little misclick there my apologies and at Rogue level three we are going to dip into Assassin Rogue this means that when we start combat every single attack that we make uh is going to have Advantage which is going to trigger our make our Sharpshooter attacks much more likely to hit and Trigger our additional um uh sneake attack damage and we get guaranteed Critical Hits against surprised enemies since this character has the gloomstalker invisibility super high hide checks and is an Archer we should be able to start every single fight by surprising enemies meaning that you will get two full rounds of attacks against them while they're surprised um and you'll almost always win initiative thanks to being a dexterity based character with the gloomstalker initiative bonus so you're going to have uh several turns of attacks with advantage and guaranteed Critical Hits those guaranteed Critical Hits multiply our sneak attack damage and multiply the additional damage from our circle of the spores Druids meaning that you are going to gain an enormous amount of burst this is less burst damage than the fighter version of this build that uses Assassin Rogue gloomstalker Ranger and two levels of fighter because you don't get action surge but the the burst damage is pretty comparable to that version of the build it's only a little bit less and we get much more sustained damage throughout the rest of the fight thanks to the additional Druid uh Druid damage dice finally at character level four we get to or at Rogue level four excuse me uh we get to add an additional feat we get to take our ability Improvement and even our ability scores going up to 16 wisdom and 18 dexterity of course you don't have to have carried these odd numbers throughout the whole game you can start with different numbers and then Respec to this once you actually reach the ability score uh Improvement but this will let you get to 18 decks and 16 wisdom 18 decks is enough on this build although like I said you can if you want to use the gloves of dexterity dump this and put these points elsewhere get higher Charisma or something like that um all which would definitely be an option as well finally at character level 12 we could take an additional level of Rogue for uncanny Dodge and which uh makes this character a little more defensive and a little extra sneak attack but I think there's an even better option because our each of our attacks every single attack we make represents so much damage we'd rather just get more attacks so let's go ahead and take a level of cleric take war war domain cleric which also gets us heavy armor proficiency if we want to wear Grim's Helmet or something like that and War domain cleric will three times per day give us an extra additional attack as a bonus action this is going to let us massively increase our damage uh even further so our opening rounds of combat we're going to get um our initial attack before combat starts then our action will get refreshed by being uh an Assassin Rogue and then we get two actions two attacks with our main action one from our gloomstalker Ranger attack and one from our cleric attack for five attacks in our opening round of combat that's only one fewer than a the fighter version of this build would get and each of those attacks is dealing an extra D6 so the damage is very comparable to a fighter version of the Archer build and then continues to be high throughout the rest of the encounter for our spells here we already have the best Druid can trips so we can take something like blade Ward um just as an additional uh panic button and then light or something like that these the cantrip selections really don't matter at this point but we do get to prepare a couple spells you can have bless which is still good even at this point in the game um but for the most part you are not are not going to use your cleric spells that much but having access to Sanctuary is just really good great panic button to have at the end of the game um Creator destroy water is still relevant at this point and bless is still good to cast on allies though this character will have other uses for its concentration protect uh protection from evil and good can be some Advantage the spell selection here is not particularly relevant but grabbing Sanctuary with a one Lev dip into this character is really good um and we just are here for the extra attacks primarily more than the Spells one thing that's also really nice about this build is because we took just uh a bunch of wisdom Focus wisdom based characters we still use wisdom for any spells we cast from items or scroll so we will be able to use our our much higher wisdom safety C in order to uh use our elid powers if we have those or items and Scrolls and Etc this character with only 16 wisdom isn't going to have amazing DCS on those but it is very relevant that we're we've kept our wisdom overall this character is going to do just massive ranged damage and be uh a huge threat it has incredible Mobility thanks to Misty step and hide and invisibility so you can always start combat from where you want to start it and the amount of damage that you output is simply absurd for items the name of the game is Just increasing our damage we're looking for anything that has additional damage dice added to our weapon attacks like the flawed hell dusk gloves and then the best bow that you have access to at any point in the game I personally am actually quite partial to the Deadshot because it's Keen attack makes you more likely to hit and I really like reliability in my um weapons but so this makes you just more likely to land your attacks the highest damage setup for your bow is going to be to use the Titan string bow here that adds additional damage equal to your strength modifier and then drink an elixir of cloud giant strength or Hill giant strength earlier in the game this is available for ma one and gives you um is going to be the highest damage output possible throughout the entire game so that's just a great setup to have uh the gloves of dexterity can replace taking dexterity though I I like just building dexterity and then having gloves that add damage and then any items that you can get that increase your critical hit chance like the shade Slayer cloak like the covert cowl or others in those vein um make you more likely to critically hit the number of damage dice that we do per attack is very high so critical hits doubling our damage dice is going to be a massive increase to our damage output also as always remember with uh Archer builds that you can have melee weapons equipped and benefit from any passive effects that you have have for example the Knight of the knife of the undermountain king decreases the chance that you need uh decreases the role you need to critically hit and also allows you to roll roll any damage dice that roll two or less massively increasing your damage so just having this equipped not even if you're using it is really good um you can also benefit from the AC bonus of a shield even while you have a ranged weapon equipped so you can always have a shield equipped and have great AC and in fact this build can be one of the highest AC Poss AC builds in the game possible if you equip one of the medium armors with uncapped dexterity so you can benefit from something like the armor of agility which allows you to add your full uh Dex modifier to your armor class and have some of the highest possible AC in the game thanks to benefiting from a shield and uh your full dexterity and medium armor while always using a ranged weapon so those options are all very good in terms of itemization for jewelry you're just looking for anything that e either gives you defensive utility that you might need in a panic or gives you additional damage anything that increases your spell DC can also make your snaring strikes more likely to land that's not a huge bonus but if you don't need those for another party member you can benefit from that um and then anything that increases your initiative is of course incredibly good winning initiative is very important to this character although you're very good at it thanks to being a Gloom stalker with 18 dexterity um but winning initiative is super important to this character so items like even the elegant studded leather that gives you initiative bonus is very good as well this also gives you uh with Shield a great defensive option so it's just a great item even on into the late game um those initiative bonuses will be very powerful this character is pretty item independent though all you really need is need is a good bow and you'll be doing great and of course uh like all archers this character benefits very heavily from using the special arrows that you can find throughout the game um all of these are incredible and you should use the appropriate ones for different situations being able to light things on fire freeze them attack multiple targets and so on uh create Darkness or silence enemies all of those are incredibly powerful effects and this character also does really well thanks to your very reliable hit chance and numerous weapon attacks with poisons and weapon codings so definitely keep an eye out you're one of the best characters to use those all right my friends I hope you've enjoyed this look at the sustained damage Archer and of course as always if you have feel free to leave a comment uh like the video both of those things help me out a ton with the algorithm so I really appreciate people taking the time to do it and you can subscribe to my channel for more Boulders Gate 3 builds and other strategy game videos cheers folks I'll catch you next time

Channel: Cephalopocalypse

Views: 54,157

Keywords: Etarran, Cephalopocalypse, Baldur's Gate 3, Larian, D&D, Dungeons and Dragons, Build, Guide, Strategy, Tactics, Tutorial, Jaheira, Minsc, Astarion, Gale, Karlach, Shadowheart, Minthara, Wyll, Halsin, Lae'zel

Id: 8SEaa82Q5WI

Length: 30min 17sec (1817 seconds)

Published: Thu Feb 29 2024