Thread to discuss Archery improvements!

[pip]

Just give more bow range with archers imo with fz, ip, ph, phase shift,they got their toys.Let's face it, if you can't kill casters with an archer you need to do a bit more pve, baggarts charge + hunters pet+rapid fire+purge+ sure shot, but this is more a midgard class, no doubt rangers/scouts must find it harder
Imo I think range+timer on nearsight is retarded, gimp that shit.
p.s in all truth if you're not high rr+high ml the class is /wank

 

[xxManiacxx]

To try and get it on topic again.

I do feel that archery as a skill line needs work. Both in high bow specc and low bow specc.

I have always been fond of the idea of putting bow styles in the bow line.

 

[Eyres]

And who are you?
I don't have trouble with the solo scout. The high rank, melee based scouts are usually a good fight. It's rare to find solo scouts though, but that's another story. Notice my previous suggestion was meant to help scout melee as well.

I have no trouble admitting I have an extremely tough fight against RR5+ melee based rangers. Just the mere fact I see those go toe to toe with mercs tells something about how much melee rangers needs a nerf.
Yeah, I have... granted, prior to 1.82. And yeah, SB's were free RP, infils not so much, but still possible targets.

Yeah, one would -think- assassin melee is far superior. Afterall, ain't the archer supposed to be the ranged stealther?

How is artifact choises an assassin advantage? Where is the studded for archers?

A dot ticking for 80-100? So that's an assassin with lifebane and viper2+. And next patch RoTA will be a 20min buff, cutting that dotmine heavily.
Assassins and Archers in general have the same weapon skill. Exception is hunters that have slightly more than all of them.


And the thing is... he -can- use IP/FZ, which lands him the win. Where is the assassin counter to this?

Remedy doesn't stop procs, so no effect for archers. SB's have PHN, no assassin got WH. In fact, it's the archers that got WH.

Please get your facts straight before starting to spout nonsense kid.

And yeah, you can use a legendary to bypass PD. But guess what? The archer can also got AoM and have buffbot resists / champion resists.



No, I was suggesting improving archery which this thread was about. Turning archers into ... well, archers again! And yes, the problem is most profound with melee rangers and a slightly lesser degree melee hunters.

In my opinion, the melee ranger is king of the hill for the stealther melee (ignoring mincers here).


Considering you lack getting basic facts straight, yeah... I do.

You havnt actually argued any points there just picked on slight details that i said sbs get phn/wh..... that means either or in my languedge

besides picking on stupid pointless details

malice or battler is easily usable when in FZ to survive plus IP will only earn back around as much HP as is lost from an initial assassin debuff, difference is IP is on a 15 minute timer

Yes archers do have range, but for any archer to be successful in melee they are going to have to give up so much bow thats you will probabaly hit more on your sb with throwing daggers

And id personally give up a hell of a lot for evade 7 on an archer... gives a hell of a lot more defense than an archer which causes archers to spec high in PD/AOM to try and balence it out costing a lot of RA points

But at the moment i think the stealth classes are very close together in terms of balence, yes maybe the ranger is slightly ahead but that just highlights the power of dual weild.... and also highlights the power of evade 7 that it cuts in half. Thats what gives the balence really, archers getting defense thats not affected by DW and assassins having evade 7 not cut by archers. So both are on equal terms when fighting each other and when fighting each other both have there forms of defense intact. Ranger breaks that so thats why it overperforms. But then again different classes perform well against some and not so well against others, its how its always been

but to have the classes quite close in balence and to suggest such a massive nerf is stupidity and thats what ive been trying to make you understand but you just seem to be going off on one, so wont post anymore as its a waste of time

and as mani said back to topic

and would suck to have bow styles because it would neglect a) cd b) shield and well..... be a bit silly, i liked censis first ideas

 

[Elrandhir]

If you havent played 1 in the Fronts you shouldent comment tbh, from some of these clueless posts I see there are many just answering without knowing sh*t tbh.

 

[Jeriraa]

Ok, this is gonna be a long one...

1st one to all the people crying about archers atm and their current playstyle (camping towers and bridges in packs and leeching): The issues people bring up here are the cause to this. A bow spec'd archer has no other way to play this game.
If you engage a melee class from range he will either run up to you and kill you or run out of range. In both becases you lose cause you are not getting rp's.
If you engage a caster from range your 1st hit is negated by a brittle, your 2nd by bladeturn. By that time your target has either moved almost out of range or turned and is doing a qc cc on you wich will put you out of the game. Either way you lose.

The occassions on wich a bow spec'd archer is able to kill something solo are so rare that they have no other chance than to gang up and leech.

What can be done to change this?

I am all against increasing bow dps! They are nasty when they hit. Not as nasty as casters but they got stealth and better armor so that is ok.


The 1st thing a bow spec archer needs is a way to continiue fights that currently end as draws because the target gets out of reach. My idea would a rear positional bowstyle that has no or very low drawtime, does little to no damage but cripples the target.

Crippling shot - position rear, drawtime very low, damage very low, effect: 10sec movement reduction 50% unaffected by resists, determination and unbreakable by combat.


The 2nd thing, they need a chance to disengage from melee fights. I like the idea of melee bow styles. Perhaps a short duration snare or root again. Not enough to kite and shoot. Just enough to get out of melee range should you decide so. And ofc it should be blockable, parryable and evadeable.


3rd, make bow in general a more fun spec. Allow bow spec archers to do more than just shoot. I suggest implementing an additional spec line for this and link the strenght of effects to the level of bow spec to avoid hybrid type archers becomming too strong. That way an archer who wants to make use of these toys has to sacrifice points from another line like melee, stealth or beastcraft/pathfinding/shield.
This line could contain stuff like debuffs, elemental arrows, weak forms of single target cc and perhaps even some kind of bow melee.

 

[Void959]

If you havent played 1 in the Fronts you shouldent comment tbh, from some of these clueless posts I see there are many just answering without knowing sh*t tbh.

All we know is that the great majority of bow specced archers including yours do nothing but leech off 1v1s, 8v8s and when none of those are to be found, camp a tower, hang around the zerg and run from 1v1s blowing every RA and ML just to escape rather than win, when the player you attack gets within 500 units.

Yes it may be a flaw of the class design that encourages this, but it won't really get you sympathy.

 

[Succi]

No MoS and no IP means guaranteed dead for any archer when some assassin is around. No way of avoiding PA, no way of finding the assassin, the assassin will be the top dog (once again).

The archer should get ARCHERY love , but no way should it be able to stand toe to toe with an ASSASSIN thats why giving archers mos seems so silly to me

having said that , archery love would encourage leaching on both 1v1's and 8v8's which makes it painful to reccomend.

I think archers should have more means to be able to kite (timered shooting while moving + traps) , their melee should be ok but they shouldnt spec ra's around it (similar to hunters in wow)

 

[censi]

my experience of assasins is that they are infinetly better killers than rangers.

asassins are like little sticks of dynamic ready to explode on their target. bang you hit target (maybe PA chain cough), bang they are debuffed, bang they have DOT poison ripping through their health, and u keep slapping the shots in. Anything that purges gets a dot spike and a poison weapon recycle, if u get a bad ass opponent u dump malice or battler. if it goes tits up u vanish

that to me is the assasin class. Like you pa a caster its in deep shit its lovely, u kill them so friggin fast. Versus good melee classes u dump when required. Versus other assasins is nice skill fights that can go any way.

-------------

As an archer its completly different. You basically are awefull versus mages, awefull versus other visual melee classes. But you can grind people, but the problem with being a grinder is you use these OP timers to counter natural class defense (like block and parry, or DT etc) and these other classes have exactly the same timers as you if not better (I mean Banelord timers are awsome same with warguard)

this is the only option though. id like to see reasons to actually spec bow tbh. there are none (maybe rapid fire but i dont really miss that)

 

[Raven]

you get to pick and chose your fights, you find it hard kill casters, join the club, only difference is, if i see a caster i have no other option than to engage, you can just stealth on by, you strugle vs heavy tanks, again, nobody finds them easy, you can just stealth on by. you can still ping arrows into light tanks, some casters, hybrids from range, thats ofc if you feel like it, if you dont you can just move on unseen.

for archers.
fix crit shot
remove PD
fix the block/stealth crap that scouts have, blocking should be considered combat imo
improve the beastcraft line a bit more
improve path finding a bit, maybe a str/con buff rather than just str, though in reality i guess there arent many unbuffed rangers around.

oh and the ability to piss off that fg that just zerged you 20 minutes ago by taking out a healer mid fight is just ace

 

[Jeriraa]

you can still ping arrows into light tanks, some casters, hybrids from range, thats ofc if you feel like it, if you dont you can just move on unseen.

Light tanks, 360° evade, charge - dead archer.
Casters, no matter wich: If awake they qc and you are toast.
Hybrids, engage and proceed to melee or move out of range.

Put it any way you want. There is nothing for bow spec archers to kill solo.

Sure, I can stealth around all day and be happy how often I didnt get pwnd but I don't get rp's from that nor is it very enjoyable.

So I gang up with others or leech. If you want me to stop that give me better tools.

 

[Puppet]

Sure, I can stealth around all day and be happy how often I didnt get pwnd but I don't get rp's from that nor is it very enjoyable.

So I gang up with others or leech. If you want me to stop that give me better tools.

Exactly, the 'you got stealth so u can pick ur fights, therefore we lower ur performance' is really bollocks. With that argument, u can nerf everything down: Hey, ur a hero, u can stay in Druim Ligen and you wont die!

I dont exactly see how they wanna nerf our melee-damage, and especially not without boosting our archery SUBSTANTIAL. My melee aint really that good, a typical RR3 assassin can outdamage me. I win with timers, better gear (armour) and more bought defense in the form of RA's and such.

 

[Tuorin]

its a very clueless post tbh.

Sorry its you the guy without a clue, only posts I ever seen from you are whine period, not one post non whine. You perma whine about not being able to kill shield tanks, so get a clue yourself, dont fucking shoot one?


Did you get the point yet????

I illustrated my point , I cant kill casters unless I land on top of them, you work out why you can't kill a shield tank and come back to me...

 

[Raven]

Light tanks, 360° evade, charge - dead archer.

you mean savages, the other 3 light tanks dont get 360 degree evade.
regardless, not having to fight everything you see on clip range is an advantage over any other solo player.
speed shouts, insta stun (in the case of rangers, RR5) run off stealth, so you can even get out if it goes tits up.
as for archery, all it needs is a fix to crit shot, if they improved over all bow DPS it would make them OP. having stealth and ranged attacks also has its disadvantages, as it should do.

 

[Tuthmes]

Ranger needs a nerf tbh... Removing PD/MoS would be an idea, removing ip is just stupid. It's the combination of PD (some might say AoM too!), MoS, IP, and the available artifacts (cba to mention them all) + the sojourner line that makes them OP in every fking way possible.
Somehow a Hunter can't compete (and lets not mention his bowskills) on the same level in melee and lets not even start on the Scout.
Saying well removing MoS would make us funerable against assasins, well where have you bin in OF and with the toy's you got, you should be able to eat a PA or 2.

 

[Manisch Depressiv]

Remove stealth and archers are fixed.

 

[censi]

the reasoning that its ok if you struggle versus a class u can just not attack it doesnt wash really. Or why adjust assasin for example versus mages? I mean assasins struggled versus mages and now in this patch u PA a caster and its toast. mythic could just say hey dont attack them dudes whats the problem. doesnt work like that.

they need to balance the classes against each other so that its roughly competative and fun. Fighting certain classes (in fact a lot) as an archer is like a bit ridiculous.

its different for an archery specced archer (which is what im trying to focus on), u attack with bow, it does nothing, u get qc CC'd (stun, mezz, nearsight, or just DD), bang bang bang dead in 4 seconds. Its a bit like that. Its infinetly better to open from melee in their face, running through, FZ if needed, side stun etc.... Thats just wrong, u should be using bow on mages it should hurt them. I mean every class apparently has a role, but archery has no class which it actually does well against and its like the bane of that class (it used to be mages a long long time ago )

note: I dont buy that heros have problem with mages. U got like an ability to boost your magic resists combined with like IP, moose, WG heal. I mean u crack that resist thing and u can /dance in front of them while they nuke u for 10 seconds. when u get bored slam and 3 shot them with annihilate. no way, I dont think heros struggle with anything 1v1 tbh.

 

[Azathrim]

As I already posted, I am all for improving archers archery.

But, it should be at the cost of their melee. Can't have it both ways.

 

[Eyres]

Remove stealth and archers are fixed.

hahaha an other priceless comment from manisch <3

 

[Jeriraa]

you mean savages, the other 3 light tanks dont get 360 degree evade.

I suggest you get your facts straight...

Mercenary lvl 35 Advanced Evade
Blademaster lvl 35 Advanced Evade
Berkserker lvl 35 Advanced Evade
Savage lvl 35 Advanced Evade


Advanced Evade
Certain classes have learned to evade attacks even when they cannot physically see their opponent. Advanced Evade allows evasion from attacks on you occurring from any direction.

 

[Meradesh]

interesting to see:
-tanks are too hard to an archer, yes, but you can stealth and avoid them
-mages are too much to an archer atm?, yes but you can stealth and avoid them
-no way an archer should win vs an assasin at melee!
-whines about archers being tower hugers, zergers and leechers

Looks like mythic should give archers a new passive ability, RP Cow: archers gives always 100% rps regardless of rezz illness, or maybe just delete archers and give them an assasin rerroll.

 

[Alhanna]

Ok, So we all know there is a problem with the archery system. I list what I feel are the main problem.

a) Miss rates.
b) Interupt system (and sure shots lack of effectiveness)
c) Inherant archery class defenses
d) Crit shot system is pretty poor when its should be the archers main foil.
e) Volley, quite possibly the most pathetic ability in the game.

----------------------

What I would NOT like to see is mythic addressing the issue my significantly increasing archery dps and defense pentration. I feel archers would become too much of an overpowered pest if they could consistently rip through HP from range. (and even more annoying in siege)

Generally speaking I think archery needs help versus face to face scenario with casters, where I honestly feel it can be suicide to even try and take a mage down this way. I think they need to also look at shield and block rates.

Some suggestions:

a) Remove crit shot as we know it. In the bow line there should be 4 Special Bow opening styles (20 30 40 50). These bow styles can only be done from stealth so they are opening attacks. At 20 give a Stun shot opener with reduced damage (half or summin) and short stun (3 seconds maybe). At 30 give a snare shot opener with a 4 second 35% snare (damage reduced by 25%). At 40 give Power shot (crit shot) make the draw time on this large (like 9 secs+) and when you draw you destealth (this is the compramise, this power shot you are really focusing all your attention on, standing unstealthed for this long aint gonna be pretty) but for this when you fire the crit it penetrates all forms of defense (shield, BT, PBT, evade anything), the hit bonus should be extremely high so that missing a crit is rare thing, and it isnt effected by your target moving or whatever. I think a crit system where you literally have your arse out in the wind for 10 seconds but if you manage to do this your shot is gonna "hurt" your target is a good thing. The 50 Bow opening style should be something very nice and something that really tempts people to go this high. I would perhaps suggest putting "sure shot" here but reworking sure shot so that simply it doesnt get a damage reduction penalty. IE if you have 50 bow you get auto matic sure shot. This would be very nice versus casters. I still personally wouldnt spec 50 bow to get it, but those that do I think would get some use out of this versus casters. (extreme use it would be good)

b) Volley. The dps on this is a tab comical. Raise it and increase the range. I reckon you would need about 10 archery volleying the same GT before they even noticed anything

c) interupts. The higher your bow spec the quicker you recover from an interupt. If you got bugger all bow then it should take like a loonnng time to recover (4-5 secs) If you got 50 bow then it should take you a tiny negliable amount of time to recover, almost to the point where you could whip a shot in between swing V a slow 2hand user (even though it wouldnt be practical).

d) Introduce a bow style that chains off of Ice storm or diamond back (or hunter rear stun, or slam) so that a hybrid can actually like stun, whip out the bow and fire off this style and then go back to the melee. (legolas style in LOTR). Make this style do decent damage because it will be reasonable hard to pull this off, put a bleed on it or summin.

e) positional bow shots. IE if a target is running you get a "back buster" style that could do something usefull (slow them down). Chest buster front arc shot for small damage increase. dunno.

-----------------------------------------------------------

Ok thats prolly enough or we will all be little john rambos. please quit with nerf melee rangers! this is really about solving the melee ranger "problem" give rangers a reason to spec bow and all those fotm blade rangers with like 50 cd and 13bow will be gone and you will have proper hybrids and full snipers, who feel they can no longer neglect archer in their spec template and playstyle.

just thought it would be a decent discussion, what would you like to see happen?

This all sounds wonderful but I think the main problem with Archers from hib mostly is that they are prefend infs with FZ/IP. If they fixed all of the above issues I very much doubt you and others would be an archer anyway.

 

[Azathrim]

Looks like mythic should give archers a new passive ability, RP Cow: archers gives always 100% rps regardless of rezz illness, or maybe just delete archers and give them an assasin rerroll.

That wouldn't be a bad idea... merge assassin and archer classes.

 

[Betrayal]

As I already posted, I am all for improving archers archery.

But, it should be at the cost of their melee. Can't have it both ways.

Scouts who spec bow into 40-50 allready have an almost non-existant melee Trying to hit something with melee is allready hard, and the damage is like a tickle, even a dot proc will do more consistent damage :>
A good addition would be snareshot, similar to sureshot, 50% damage, but 30-50% snare.
As a caster if your target is trying to run to you or away, you can root / snare / stun / mezz it. As archer you have..... *poof*
I am all for upgrading archery to the level where archers of all 3 realms will try use their range and terrain in advantage to maximise the use of bow / archery skills, instead of meleeing peeps down like light tanks. There are many effects that could be added to arrows / bow styles like disease, stun / mezz / dot (allready in but as arti proc) / LW damage / snare / NS / stats debuffs and so on. I am sure they could be implementing to add a bonus to archery without making it IWIN style, but adding utility and pushing toward balancing the class.
For sure there is something coming for all 3 realm archers, let's just hope wont screw things or balances worse than it is allready, but will improve and redefine the ranged attacker role of an archer.
Happy playing all :>

 

[Dukat]

This thread was a painfull read indeed.

Some of the comments by people who either havent played an archer class or are just fucking clueless to begin with are classic, blowing archery's advantages out of proportion, and ignoring the massive flaws in it.

Censi's posts have mostly been spot on in my opinion, archery at present is just not good enough. The bonuses for speccing above 35 are just not worth it, the few abilities we do get are a joke.

I'm not saying its hopeless and that the class is broken, just that archery is THE most lacking main specline in the game. Yes its annoying to get shot from a keep, we all know this, but thats all it is, annoying. stun-nuke anyone? chambers anyone? I mean christ a CLERIC is nearly as much of a threat at range as an archer.

Archers are SUPPOSED to be caster killers. FACT. Its what we were built to do. As it as atm we're better off attacking heavy tanks in melee than trying to bow down most casters.

There are several ways to fix it, no doubt mythic will ignore all of the most logical options and just give us something that appeals the usual FoTM re-roller crew.

 

[Puppet]

As I already posted, I am all for improving archers archery.

But, it should be at the cost of their melee. Can't have it both ways.

It's impossible to have both ways. Archers only get 2.0x spec-points, in order to excel in melee you already give up archery for the major part, and vice-versa.

If you improve archery at 35+ bow-spec, there's no need to nerf their melee, as the melee-archers wont get the archery-love.

Then there's still the point if archers should be the melee'ers like they are now. Personally, I think archers should be fine in melee *IF* they give up their archery-traits. My ranger for example is full melee-spec, and has 1(+8) Recurve Bow.

I dont think archers should be *FORCED* into archery if they dont want to. However, I also think archery needs a massive improvement for the people who picked an archer-class to shoot stuff.

Blame me for being sceptical, but dont nerf my melee-damage BEFORE I've seen the archery-love.

 

[Matmardigan]

1st one to all the people crying about archers atm and their current playstyle (camping towers and bridges in packs and leeching): The issues people bring up here are the cause to this. A bow spec'd archer has no other way to play this game.
If you engage a caster from range your 1st hit is negated by a brittle, your 2nd by bladeturn. By that time your target has either moved almost out of range or turned and is doing a qc cc on you wich will put you out of the game. Either way you lose.
The occassions on wich a bow spec'd archer is able to kill something solo are so rare that they have no other chance than to gang up and leech.

correct

Archers are SUPPOSED to be caster killers. FACT. Its what we were built to do. As it as atm we're better off attacking heavy tanks in melee than trying to bow down most casters.

correct

What need fixing though is the myriad of bugs lowering the archers effectivness. like line of sight issues.

correct

Improve archery , remove WH IP MOS and PD
The archer should get ARCHERY love , but no way should it be able to stand toe to toe with an ASSASSIN thats why giving archers mos seems so silly to me

not correct


edit:
I would pay 3 times more sup than i do now 4 a Sever with the 1.62 patch

 

[Kagato]

Ok, So we all know there is a problem with the archery system.

Actually no, we don't. Seem's quite fine to me as it is, and i've been crit shot for 900+ before in plate armour. Just because the latest fad is for rangers not to use their bows doesn't mean theres anything wrong with Archery in general.

 

[Puppet]

Actually no, we don't. Seem's quite fine to me as it is, and i've been crit shot for 900+ before in plate armour. Just because the latest fad is for rangers not to use their bows doesn't mean theres anything wrong with Archery in general.

Just because u got hit for 900 once doesnt mean its fine. You got the option for a minimal investment to be immune to archery. You choose not to, I wonder why?

Oh I know the answer: Because archery sucks so much you dont see it as a thread big enough to bother and prefer the 0.5% chance to parry.

 

[Dalilama]

well i cba to read it all but my 2 cent to archer nerf/improvment

well all i know a ranger should not whine at all thay are to good to be a archer class as thay dont spec in archery as thay have Cd to spec so q0q0,

and scouts and hunters well still have there cons and pros but still fare from beeing good as ranger


as i have played hunter (and infil) i whould change

1. remove SL on nonstealthing class (ex skald,hero,sorc ezt) if thay now have a Sl item in temp many do
2. as hunter cant use malice, and giving them hammer spec is to Op(i whould hope thay do tho ) give em axe or smth or abel to activate malice as 2h slash spear or smth as it is the best and most annoying wep to meet as it fucking always proc on first swing.
3. and the camo abilty is just lol is it what 7-10 min timer and it always start over as when you goes to combat, get mezzed walk on a stone or whatever, but the abilty is damn good tho

 

[xxManiacxx]

What needs to be fixed is the hunter seeing "xxxx evades your attack!" all the time tbh