Ok I know its not the best way to go for archers, but Im tired/bored of playing bard/tamer. I love pets though and have an archer toon I play with often. So I wanted to mess around with both. Any suggestion for a template? So far I have:

Absolute skills necessary are:

Animal Lore 100
Animal Taming 110
Veterinary 80
Archery 110

That leaves 400 points for an archer template. Whats skills are needed to maximize damage in a PvM environment?

Also need either chiv or magery to travel/heal/cure (if I don't choose anat and healing for healing/cure)

Personally, if I wanted to make an archer/tamer, I would go 110 tame/lore/vet/archer/bush 60 chiv (maybe 65ish) and then maybe 110 tactics for allowing your weapon to do more damage.

Chiv is probably best for an archer tamer imho because for 60 points you can get almost 90% of the spells. Consecrate, cures, remove curse which is amazing for pets, heals, and recall. Not to mention you can use EO at 60 pretty well and most of the damage comes from your karma and not the actual chiv skill.

I'd go with tactics because it allows you to do max weapon damage and also can increase the amount of damage when you have over 100.

Bush is nice if you want to do damage. Honoring a target with bush combined with consecrate and EO and divine fury are amazing damage boosts. On top of that, if you honor targets and get honor for killing them you can use the embrace honor skill to tame larger beasties. Confidence is also nice for healing yourself and lightning strike gives you a nice +hit bonus.

I suggested higher tame/lore/vet because this would allow you to use more powerful pets such as Greater Dragons and the new Dread Steeds. Or Rune beetles, and 110 would give you 99% control. Not to mention, if you wanted to use rings, you could get those skills to 120 pretty easily, but if they're at 110 naturally, it frees up your jewelry for other stuff, like FCR/FC and such. Also, even with 110 you could get the birds of brit talisman and be at 115 taming/lore.

Also, you can vet and cast/attack at the same time. :p