have no knowledge about hunters but i want to have a hunter that is great in pvp, taking healers and casters out f.e.

I see that many people rely on higher spear but i wonder, why should i drop power with my bow, just for meleeing. Wouldnt it be better to have bow very strong, so you can make points with it well, better then 2 halfstrong skills like bow and spear then ?
I mean what about having bow at 50 and stealth at 50, as the prime skills for a good rvr-hunter ?

Hunter has the lowest damage bows and the lowest range of all the three realm archer classes. On top of that it appears archery damage is broken on this server so you won't be dong much damage. Add in that in this patch level assassins get a realm ability that makes archers visible from a long range (if you aren't using camoulflage skill) and you have a recipe for disaster.

You never want to spec 50 stealth. You want to have it add to 50, but over 50 is little benefit (or none at all?).

50 = 38+12

You want some BC for self buffs and pet interruption. Spear is definitely needed as well. I use to play a melee hunter on Mordred, that was fantastic.

50 sword
3x stealth (depends on RR to add to 50)
Rest in BC (I think low 40's)

learn to strafe/run through enemies to use your spear backstyle stun infight. it's the only way to stay viable as hunter.

Sounds about right. I wouldn't bother speccing into bow at all either .

(I'll apologise now, I couldn't resist)

Thanks for the informations. Sneaking around and making trouble with my bow would have been great fun, not interested in melee-hunters unfortunately.

Hunter master race!

Don't let abuncha nancy-boys on here get you down. Hunter bow dmg is plenty to pick off soft targets. You just gotta be selective in who you target, and make sure you are using arrow types that have a bonus (if any) to their armor type.

Ultimately it really depends on what style of play you are looking for. If you are interested in keep siege/defense, then spec more into bow. If you are looking for roaming around ganking, then you will want to put more into spear to give yourself a chance against assassins.

Hunters definitely are not ez-mode. If you play smart, you can be plenty effective.

Muggsi is the hero every hunter needs

I pulled this from one of my other posts. I've been down that road and trust me they're unplayable:

"Now my hunter is level 12 and as I was grouping I started more and more to realize and to obsess about how under-powered they are; Gimp might be a better word. My SM was doing 60 INSTANT damage AoE (at level 8. ) but my hunter is only doing 10-15 (20 if i'm lucky) damage per mob and some mobs die before i can even get a shot off...

I was in a group last night and I honestly felt bad because I wasn't hitting anything and when I did hit it it was for 10 maybe 15 and was only once per mob something nothing (total miss). I backed off and watched everybody else mow the mobs down without me and was like crap... This class is useless. I "Aquired" 10 gold, I have all the best obtainable gear and weapons and arrows but holy cow = gimp.. Idk if i've ever played such a underpowered class in any game. I mean in EQ, yes the Ranger was meh but this hunter is meeeeeeeeehhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh."

If you wanna snipe n Midgard then go SM.
Highest range DD in game = Eldritch

But hunters are a broken class at this patch level thats why games have patches. But this game is permafrost at 1.65 and so hunters rather PvP or PvE = useless.

If 2nd to last place was #10 the hunters would #90.

Archers in general have it pretty rough at this patch level and some folks think that there's something wrong with archery damage on this server as well. There's a reason archery was revamped eventually. However, don't let that stop you from playing one if you truly want to. You can be useful to a PvE group as a puller or a peeler. We used a Ranger the other day in a Treibh group as a puller/tank and it worked great. Sometimes it's not that you do damage, but keep mobs from smacking your healers or squishies around.

Pop wrote:
If you wanna snipe n Midgard then go SM.
Highest range DD in game = Eldritch

Just wanted to add some info to this part of Pop's post. The highest spec DD in the game is shared by Runies and Wizards at 219 delve; Eldritch is 209. There is no difference in range either if that's what he was alluding to instead.

If it's bolts, then Wizards have the highest hands down. For bolt damage: Wizard > Runie > Eld.

Rynzer wrote:Archers in general have it pretty rough at this patch level and some folks think that there's something wrong with archery damage on this server as well. There's a reason archery was revamped eventually. However, don't let that stop you from playing one if you truly want to. You can be useful to a PvE group as a puller or a peeler. We used a Ranger the other day in a Treibh group as a puller/tank and it worked great. Sometimes it's not that you do damage, but keep mobs from smacking your healers or squishies around.

Pop wrote:
If you wanna snipe n Midgard then go SM.
Highest range DD in game = Eldritch

Just wanted to add some info to this part of Pop's post. The highest spec DD in the game is shared by Runies and Wizards at 219 delve; Eldritch is 209. There is no difference in range either if that's what he was alluding to instead.

If it's bolts, then Wizards have the highest hands down. For bolt damage: Wizard > Runie > Eld.

Ahh good to know ty.

The old school 'fotm' build was: 43beast, 33stealth, 39spear, 36bow - I cannot see why this wouldn't still be the absolute optimal build to go for as a Hunter (especially considering no buffbots)

Daxt wrote:The old school 'fotm' build was: 43beast, 33stealth, 39spear, 36bow - I cannot see why this wouldn't still be the absolute optimal build to go for as a Hunter (especially considering no buffbots)

Wasn´t that

42 Beast
36 Stealth
39 Spear
35 Bow

36 Bow makes no sense... Maybe the last Speed in 43 BC... but i don´t think, it´s more important than a little bit more in Stealth.

Just my 5 Cents

Nogi wrote:

Daxt wrote:The old school 'fotm' build was: 43beast, 33stealth, 39spear, 36bow - I cannot see why this wouldn't still be the absolute optimal build to go for as a Hunter (especially considering no buffbots)

Wasn´t that

42 Beast
36 Stealth
39 Spear
35 Bow

36 Bow makes no sense... Maybe the last Speed in 43 BC... but i don´t think, it´s more important than a little bit more in Stealth.

Just my 5 Cents

This spec's fine too. You sacrifice the best speed and cap out bow later, in return you cap stealth sooner. Personally I would say that a 'Ranged stealther' will always be spotted cause of Mastery of Stealth, by a melee anyhow, so personally I'd value the things included in my suggested spec over 3 points in stealth.

Rynzer wrote:Archers in general have it pretty rough at this patch level and some folks think that there's something wrong with archery damage on this server as well. There's a reason archery was revamped eventually.

Define revamped? If you are talking about the steaming pile of crap that archery became in 1.88 (IIRC) then you would actually be talking about the decline of DAOC. Archers became casters at that patch and broke a whole bunch of stuff in spite of the archer class TLs pleading for them not to push that patch thru, and then a half hearted "maybe this wasnt such a good idea" after the fact from Mythic...

Archers in 1.65 do fine damage. They were never meant to be a one shot killer. They always worked best as a duo in RvR, one to pop bubble, the other to Crit shot, and follow up. The real issue with Archery is that the damage didnt really increase enough as spec increased and that is why we saw the rise of the melee archer.