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Message: <blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 4729708" data-attributes="member: 82106">Tsk tsk, be nice.People don't always agree with your logic, and there is only so much time in the day to spend going back and forth on these things.I get that everyone else in the world seems to think defense is worthless for archers. I humbly submit they are at least partly wrong, and sometimes very badly wrong. If you have a party consisting of 4 melee characters and an archer, then you have the situation where the archer's defenses are of the least value they can be. Even so there are a wide variety of situations where those defenses are of primary importance. Such as the case where the archer is the only character who can effectively attack certain monsters that have to be defeated, or anything analogous to that. If the archer goes down or is locked up by status effects constantly then the party is in trouble.In cases where ranged attack capability predominates then the defenses of the ranged attack capable characters becomes a critical factor. More important than raw offensive capability per round. In these situations the party's ranged attack capability outmatches that of the monsters almost certainly, and thus the equation of success is which side can overall dish out and take damage at a rate that results in their victory, just the same as is the case of melee combat. Again, status effects are pretty important here and defense is the only real response to those.From an overall tactics standpoint I maintain that the most effective kind of party is one that destroys its enemies from range, and the optimum setup to do that are ranged attackers that can shrug off whatever ranged attacks the enemy has and keep hitting back. The second part of the formula is control, the ability to force the enemy to remain at range and prevent them from easily closing or push them away. So overall if you consider the most effective party tactics defense for archers is a critical part of the mix. Not that it makes a razorclaw some kind of vastly better archer, or even better than an elf, nor even always as good as an elf. But the way the players in my neck of the woods think, it is a pretty good way to go.</blockquote>

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