Archers rejoice! <cries>

[Tranquil-]

The developers have agreed that archers in general have some issues that need to be looked at, and that scouts are indeed a bit under balanced.

This comes from the Scout TL which has been in contact with the Devs.

<manically bursts into tears and laughter>

 

[-dewey-]

don't get too excited, the devs tend to lie alot to the TL's, Hunter TL was guarnteed evade 3 by a dev and we got evade 2, sure there are plenty more examples. I'm not saying we won't get help, but don't expect anything massive like a full range of archery styles etc, I think a + to hit at higher bow levels and maybe a few minor tweaks is all we will get Plus I read somewhere that the next 1-3 patches will be SI balance only and will not have any old world class fixes in them :/

 

[old.Charonel]

Originally posted by The Scout TL-
The developers have agreed that archers in general have some issues that need to be looked at, and that scouts are indeed a bit under balanced.

Originally posted on The Herald 08/12/02 -
We have, after long discussions with the Scout TL, decided that the Scout needs a long awaited overhaul, and we've decided upon the following:

1) Weapons:

we've realised that a large part of the problem comes from scouts using bows rather than other weapon types, since bows aren't actually a good weapon to use as a primary, we've decided to remove this ability from the class entirely and replace it with a completely new specline, to be in keeping with their rogue roots.

we have also decided to make the shield unspeccable, this is to benefit the scout by allowing them spec points to spend on other things rather than "having" to take shield spec to level 42. Please note, using these specpoints in other places will be a great benefit when combined with the new specline.

2) Armour:

Since the Scout can now do considerable damage and utility with the new specline, we've had to revise their armour and hitpoints issues, and have decided, after long discussion, to reduce their hitpoints to the robed caster table and drop their armour down to leather, of a type weak to thrust 17%. however, to reflect the lighter armour, we've also given them the "move unhindered" skill from level 20 onwards, allowing them a faster attackspeed.

This skill will increase to level 5 on scouts (we're looking at other classes to perhaps have it also, at differing effectiveness per class), and should, give approximately 0.01s meelee speed increase per level, in tests this has shown to give the edge needed to balance them in this respect, making them a good tank class by bringing their meelee into line with classes such as the Warden and Skald.

3) General Spec:

since the addition of the new specline, having scouts with the ability to also stealth has been considered overpowered, and is therefore removed, but dont worry, the new specline balances it out very favourably for the scout, and we dont think any of you will miss your stealth skill when you see what new abilities you get in it's place.

4) PvE:

for a long time now, scouts have complained of not having enough use in PvE grouping, we've decided to address this issue by giving them a new thrust style at level 49, the style is:

"Impending Doom of The Unwanted" level 49 Thrust style, bonus damage none, large penalty to hit, extremely large penalty to defence, 70% snare effect for 10 second duration on self, give the target an unresistable urge to attack you for a duration of 30 seconds.

we feel that this, along with the other changes, will allow scouts a direct and beneficial role in groups while leveling, since it will allow them (if used correctly) to out "aggro" a paladin, and keep that "aggro" entirely unbreakably for a full 30 seconds with just one use, no other class has this extreme benefit for PvE groups, and should therefore make leveling a Scout a much easier prospect that it previously was.

5) Additions:

well obviously there's the new specline, but not just that, there's also the new emotes that scouts are getting to give them a sense of being "roguish", these include /dice, /sneak, /hide, /cower, /beg, /call

/dice: you roll some dice on the floor.

/sneak: reduces movement rate by 50% and can be used for a maximum of 60 seconds, makes you look like your sneaking (note, we have had reports of this being bugged on pendragon, there are certain circumstances when targetting enemy players where the /sneak animation and effects seem to "proc", and cannot be turned off (because they're technically not turned on) for the full 60 second duration, but this is a small chance, and has been reported as only a mere 15% chance or so, and we're confident that we can fix this in the near future.

/hide: plays a hiding animation.

/cower: you cower for your life, rogues afterall, aren't meant to be fighters, but opportunists, living on whichever side fortune takes them.

/beg: you put your hand first to your mouth, and then use it to make begging motions to the targetted player, rogues afterall, are supposed to be poor.

/call: you make a waving motion with your arms and cry for help in all directions while running in a small circle, approximate duration 7 seconds, again, rogue's aren't supposed to be fighters, and would get someone else to help when at all possible.

New Specline:

this is the new scout specline called "Bâtard Rusé", giving many more "roguish" talents to a class that was hardly roguish before, there are three main skills in this specline, and were quite sure you'll be more than happy with them:

Pickpoket: levels of upgrade: 3, 6, 9, 12, 15, 18, 21, 24, 27.

allows you to pick the pockets of your realm mates, but only in special circumstances, those being when grouped with them and then, only on items that were dropped while you were in the group leveling with them, each level increases the chance to pick a players pocket without them knowing about it, and also increases the chance to make a successfull "lift".

upon success an inventory window will open, just like if you access your vault, you can then select one item and deposit it into your own inventory, that finishes the successful lift, if successfull there will a %chance of messages to the group alerting them to your activity, with the level of the skill, the %chance of them being alerted reduces, to a minimum at 27 Bâtard Rusé of around 50%, at 27 skill however you should be able to make a successfull lift about 75% of the time, it's just the chance of doing it secerately that is lower.

upon an unsuccessfull lift, the player your lifting from, and the whole group will get a message in red saying that you tried to steal from them, including who specifically you tried to steal from, nothing more than that.

Feign Death: levels of upgrade 17, 24, 38

this is a unique skill that allows you to "play dead" if you will, upon use your character will collapse to the floor dead, or look like it, because upon re-using the skill you can get up once again, therefore avoiding death at the hands of enemies who thought you just died with everyone else, whereupon you can resume your business after they leave.

each of the three levels add another element of the disguise, the first level of it merely has you collapse on the ground, you will still display with a "blue" name rather than red, and your health bar will display at whatever it is at to enemies.

at the second level your name displayes red, like a dead player, your health bar however, remains the same.

at the final level, even enemies using F8 will not find you, since your health bar also displays as empty, note there is currently a bug with the final level of this skill in that Pendragon testers have reported it giving an actual xp death each time it is used, we're confident that we can fix this however, as it's merely down to the use of the actual death coding for making you display as dead, were confident it wont be a problem for too long.

Steps of Evasion: levels of upgrade, 19, 24, 29, 36, 45, 49.

this is a timered ability, on a 15 minuit timer and allows you to make enemies miss you for a five second period, each level of the skill allows more enemies to be affected by this, at level 19 for example, 1 enemy only will be affected, whereas at level 49, 6 enemies will miss you for 5 a five second period of time, please note that this affects meelee attcks only, spells etc. remain unaffected by this.

 

[Melodic]

going to ignore the last long post sorry, but yes vey funny.

What will rangers be getting? we have been hit with the same frigging nerfbat (to quote Blood) as the other archer classes yet Hunters are already getting their melee damage increased and an insta cast pet and now they decide that scouts are unbalanced. Yeah and rangers are so fucking uber

Just give a me a frigging class respec and be done with it

 

[Sigurd]

My God they completely buggered scouts, I feel really sorry for you guys

 

[Chenuba]

They gotta be kidding, pick pocket !?!
Been hard getting group as scout, now they'll gonna make it impossible. Who would group with someone with a chance of getting lifted for something by that person ?

 

[old.Lianuchta]

Hmm... too easy

 

[AbPoon]

lol aye very

 

[old.Cyric]

Any archer who hasn't read this page should find this a pretty good read. It's by Oakleif, the Scout TL, but the changes suggested in here that look the best to me would be to all archers.

Especially check out the titles:

• Counter for Bladeturn aka. Quickshot
• Archery Styles above 27 Spec
• Camouflage
• Stealth Subskills

Right at the end there is a comparison between rangers and scouts that answers some of Melodic's points. Personally I'm not too worried about that, rangers are a lil better off than scouts at the moment in the points that Oakleif raises, but we rarely, if ever fight each other. The archer wide changes above would be the ones for Mythic to look at, and if not adopt straight from that page, at least use them as ideas to look into.

Obviously implementing all the fixes that he raises would overpower the class, but it's some inspiration for Mythic about areas to add to slowly until we're a bit more useful again.
Also, I tend to agree with a point made about the only class that is useful against stealthing rogues at the moment, is other rogues. Would be cool if the role of anti-stealther was a bit more spread about, making you wonder whether your target has seen you coming, rather than creeping around a bit then suddenly finding yourself in a no-win situation against a couple of shadowblades.

I don't consider scouts to be that gimped at the moment, just would be cool if there was more to us than crit shot and amythest slash

 

[Tasans]

Feign Death looks cool though

 

[angrysquirrel]

laughs out loud

 

[old.Glendower]

Gret one!

That was great, Char

Thanks

 

[old.Cyric]

Can't wait for /sneak

 

[Molten Lava]

Hehe

/hide: plays a hiding animation. This animation will be the scout putting his hands before his eyes pretending not to be seen by the zerg incomming.

 

[nju]

Originally posted by old.Charonel


Feign Death: levels of upgrade 17, 24, 38

this is a unique skill that allows you to "play dead" if you will, upon use your character will collapse to the floor dead, or look like it, because upon re-using the skill you can get up once again, therefore avoiding death at the hands of enemies who thought you just died with everyone else, whereupon you can resume your business after they leave.

each of the three levels add another element of the disguise, the first level of it merely has you collapse on the ground, you will still display with a "blue" name rather than red, and your health bar will display at whatever it is at to enemies.

at the second level your name displayes red, like a dead player, your health bar however, remains the same.

at the final level, even enemies using F8 will not find you, since your health bar also displays as empty, note there is currently a bug with the final level of this skill in that Pendragon testers have reported it giving an actual xp death each time it is used, we're confident that we can fix this however, as it's merely down to the use of the actual death coding for making you display as dead, were confident it wont be a problem for too long.

hey! i thought the sb were supposed to get the disguise skill

 

[madferrit]

Re: Re: Archers rejoice! <cries>

Originally posted by old.Charonel

4) PvE:

for a long time now, scouts have complained of not having enough use in PvE grouping, we've decided to address this issue by giving them a new thrust style at level 49, the style is:......

..... and should therefore make leveling a Scout a much easier prospect that it previously was.

Um if this is even remotely true (i doubt it) how is this going to help scouts PvE then? At lvl 49 u get this nice style.... but how is that going to help leveling? from 49-50 only... WOW! i might be wrong but pants.

 

[old.Carnak]

lol superb post, nice one

PS: i might be wrong, but some replies seem to show that people take this seriously, where it is obviously complete bs

 

[Gef]

Originally posted by old.Carnak
but some replies seem to show that people take this seriously, where it is obviously complete bs

Quite worrying really isnt it ..

 

[old.Charonel]

Re: Re: Re: Archers rejoice! <cries>

Originally posted by madferrit


Um if this is even remotely true (i doubt it) how is this going to help scouts PvE then? At lvl 49 u get this nice style.... but how is that going to help leveling? from 49-50 only... WOW! i might be wrong but pants.

omg , and omg@a lot of other reply's too

at least you didnt think it was real (or at least not convinced ), but ffs i'd thought everyone would figure it was a joke!

i mean seriously, i named the damn style "impending doom of the unwanted" , not hard to see what i was hinting at, mythic give a class caster hit points and armour (cloth is the same as leather when you dont have the af buffs and damage absorb buffs casters get), then give them a style to take and absolutely keep aggro, which 70% snare's them for longer than it takes for them to die!

and of course it was meant to immitate one of mythics little jokes (read torture ) by something there to help xping...right at the end of the xp treadmill, and something where if you use it you have an almost guaranteed xp death.

add to that the instacast xp death on self that is the top level feign death ability , it'd be fairly obvious what i was getting at with regards to mythics nasty ability to be bastards to a class they dont like , lvl 50 scouts? Nooooooooo! stop THAT

still can't believe nobody caught the "Bâtard Rusé" skill name, it's french for "tricky bastard"

lol@the people who were taken in, <rolls around giggling uncontrollably>

 

[Dagalush]

still, god himself (me) says... NERF SCOUTS, still overpowered gay class.

 

[-dewey-]

still, god himself (me) says... NERF SCOUTS, still overpowered gay class.

hehe good one, scouts (Along with all other archer classes) REALLY need to be nerfed, you seen the damage this guys fail to do agaisnt practically every target???

 

[old.Charonel]

hehe shocking isnt it, the way they go around trying to shoot everyone

get hit by a mage and you see a difference , happened last night at bled and the lucky sod of a runnie got a crit, hit me for 1587 damage

<----has about 680ish hit points

 

[Sarnat]

Yes. A scout failed to hit me for 1k and only hit for 700dmg. God damn they're underpowered (and I wear fecking chain!). Should be able to hit for 2k at least, better make it 3k.

 

[old.Charonel]

omg you let an archer crit you?!

ffs you gimp!

all you have to do is run...not at them, not anywhere, just run, and their crit becomes a shot doing normal damage, or have a bubble up, or have pbt runnign in the group, or be in combat, or be over lvl 1 , or generally even if you ignore all that advice they'll just miss anyway , what the hell did you do? sit there and stick a sign up saying:

<------RP HERE! SHOOT MEH!!!1!111!

 

[-dewey-]

Originally posted by old.Charonel
omg you let an archer crit you?!

ffs you gimp!

all you have to do is run...not at them, not anywhere, just run, and their crit becomes a shot doing normal damage, or have a bubble up, or have pbt runnign in the group, or be in combat, or be over lvl 1 , or generally even if you ignore all that advice they'll just miss anyway , what the hell did you do? sit there and stick a sign up saying:

<------RP HERE! SHOOT MEH!!!1!111!

hehe couldn't have said it better myself

archers have the highest fumble and miss rate in the game, as the put more points into bow they actually fumble MORE. Archers are the only physical damage dealers that can be interuppted, archers are the only physical damage dealers that have to stand still to attack, a level 1 spellcaster can cast as fast as a level 50 scout can shoot a longbow. There is no archery style with a too hit bonus, hell there ain't even any archery styles. An archers main form of surprise (crit) is negated by the target running, in combat or the target having bt which could have been cast by a mage who died and logged 2 hours ago. ANYONE who specs 7 shield can block 99% of an archers arrows after the first one, which is usually bted anyway, healers block our arrows more than we evade..... I could go on for alot longer.......

 

[angrysquirrel]

Originally posted by angrysquirrel
laughs out loud

ive said it before and ill say it again


LOL !!!!!!!!!!!!

 

[Tranquil-]

Originally posted by Sarnat
Stupid is as stupid dies

Guess he died

 

[Tranquil-]

Originally posted by -dewey-


hehe couldn't have said it better myself

archers have the highest fumble and miss rate in the game, as the put more points into bow they actually fumble MORE. Archers are the only physical damage dealers that can be interuppted, archers are the only physical damage dealers that have to stand still to attack, a level 1 spellcaster can cast as fast as a level 50 scout can shoot a longbow. There is no archery style with a too hit bonus, hell there ain't even any archery styles. An archers main form of surprise (crit) is negated by the target running, in combat or the target having bt which could have been cast by a mage who died and logged 2 hours ago. ANYONE who specs 7 shield can block 99% of an archers arrows after the first one, which is usually bted anyway, healers block our arrows more than we evade..... I could go on for alot longer.......

You don't fumble MORE as you lvl, but fumblerate doesn't decrease and is higher than any other form of attack.

Archers are also the only ranged physical damage dealers and SHOULD be treated as casters when it comes to interrupts.

There is 1 style that progresses as CritShot 1 through 9, from LB specclvl 3 to 27. No styles after 27 though. So there is 1 style atleast The rest is correct though. Just had to clear some of it

 

[Tranquil-]

This is a quote from a post on VNboards
The following tests were conducted over the course of the last three weeks.

Lurikeen Ranger

Recurve Bow: 41
Pathfinding: 42
Blades: 31
Celtic Duel: 14
Stealth: 6

Bow: Great Recurve player crafted. Various bows.

Arrows: Keen

In excess of 2000 arrows fired at varying targets. All ranging from blue to yellow. I rarely manage to get a group so it was easy to eliminate shots on purple mobs while grouped.

Total Arrows Counted: 2041
Total Fumbles: 169
Percent of Fumbles: 8.28%

Total Arrows Counted: 2041
Total Misses: 195
Percent Missed: 9.55%

Total Arrows Counted: 2041
Total Attacks not doing damage: 364
Percent Wasted Attack: 17.83%

Note that none of the counted arrows were against other players. These are only PvE statistics.

In RvR the following conditions all compound this base 17% chance to not damage a target:

Personal Bladeturn. Nullifies archer primary attack on single target. Nullifies archer unique realm ability, Longshot, on single target.

Pulsing Bladeturn. Nullifies archer primary attack on mulitple targets. Further nullifies archer primary attack in subsequent attempts. Nullifies archer unique realm ability, Longshot, on single and multiple targets. Nullifies archer unique realm ability, volley, on mulitple targets.

Engage. Nullifies archer primary attack and unique realm ability.

Evade. Nullifies archer primary attack and unique realm ability.

See Hidden. Greatly diminishes the value of one archer spec skill. Most archers no longer even bother with much stealth.

RvR:

To the best of my knowledge, most arrows were fired at yellow - blue targets.

Total Arrows Counted: 645
Total Fumbles: 77
Percent of Fumbles: 7.90%

Total Arrows Counted: 645
Total Misses: 251
Percent Missed: 38.91%

Total Arrows Counted: 645
Total Attacks not doing damage: 328
Percent Wasted Attack: 46.81%

These numbers of course do not also reflect the minuses applied to the actual hits. For example:

You hit! for 350(-200)

I wonder if this is indeed working as intended?

Notice the % of wasted attacks and % of misses

 

[stu]

I'd like to see scouts (well, all archers really) getting improved ranged abilities, in exchange for losing some melee capability (although that doesn't sit too well with hunters getting improved spear damage soonish). They should be a less extreme mage - ie from range they are deadly (although less so, but from higher range and better concealment), up close they should lose to a tank (although be able to contribute more than a mage). Speccable Shield on Scouts is a joke. The fact that a Ranger can melee a Skald to death is a joke. Hunters... well, they're just a joke