As I said, I do think cannoner is the 2nd aoe DPS for archers right now, still worst by a huge margin from an SR.
To give you an idea how much SR is good with meltis, at R8 I was able to clean the whole ET with a manamana +7 (yes, +7) and 75 retreat shot enhance.
This is absurd considering that suboptimal set up have still problem with practo weaps at floor 12, and if u have a fixed grp, I strongly advice against anything that is not your standard (retarded) meltis set up with 1 guy running in retreat shoot forever and the 3 DPS having infinite glassmole /chapparition.
Still, since I chosed to quit my SR couz I’m sick of it, I will try cannoner.
That said, I don’t know if falconer is needed, at least in our set up pass is always given to meltis (and if doppel will ever work again, cyclone), since buff 100% uptime are much better then anything else, and I do prefear linear damave over spikes vs waves (reason since mergen sucks, basically).
The 3 builds I have in mind
A2-> must have
Ranger 1-> there is simply nothing else, even if steady aim will be hard to keep up even with meltis ( the nono with ranger is the 1st huge slop of the build)
Wugu2
Wugu3/falco/rogue -> wugu 3 100% uptitime, rogue for feint combo + capture, falconer for cyclone
Canno 2
On stats:
How much con to put depends on gear (specially headslots), but for dexterity your sweet spot is always around 770/780 crit rate with swift step (to achieve 100% crit rate vs 150 crit rate resist mobs with quicken, is basically 100% crit rate vs whole game) and then str.
Since you are more str hungry then usuall and cannoner double only your basic AAR ratio, I think that stacking crit rate items over anything else is the way to go.
Gloves: Red veris gloves (23 crit rate) or Eaglestar eagle Gloves (19crit rate)
Main hand: silver hawk+++ (28 crit rate)
Rings: 2x sissels (74 crit rate)
Amulet: max peta (14 crit rate)
And if you are into endgame already, lolo leather top// bottom (46crit rate) and emengard cannon (12 crit rate) if you can craft it.
Considering I will prob use eaglestar gloves (no really reason, red veris gloves are still better, but just in case they will ever rework accuracy in PvE), this is a total of
19+28+74+14+46+12= 193 crit rate
780/1.25(swift step)= 624 crit rate naked -193 crit rate from items = 431 crit rate needed from dex.
90 free points to allocate
31 con/59str/431crit rate (pre items)
With following gear:
Windrunner
Lolo chest // bottom
Eaglestar eagle gloves
2x Sissel
Max peta
Silver hawk
Emengard cannon
I had to do the math no matter what, your question just gived me the motivation to do it
On a side note, if u don’t run with meltis, you can consider elleganos stacking for +80 free crit rate over glassmole, in that case the math change.
Anyway, to easily calculate your needed crit rate
780/1.25(swist step)-crit rate from items= Crit rate needed from your dex
Once you are used to this math the calculation is simple and you will never screw up your archer crit rate!