Official Thread: The State of Archers III

Guys, can we STOP the "PBT needs to be nerfed"
nonsense? Fix the other archer problems. Dont worry about PBT, it is not the end all be all bane to our existance.

In the early days shooting a bow took little to no endurance.
That was changed to keep archers from "rapid firing" on enemies. Same with increasing our draw times.
In the origional literature it stated that each skill point in your bow increased your crit shot time, until your crit shot would be as fast as a normal shot. Thats also been changed.
It appears that Mythic adjusted archers some.
Our bows are on the caster table, with all the problems that brings and none of the benafits <QC comes to mind>
Our melee damage is on the rogues damage table. Blade styles are fairly uselss since we have to block or parry, and rangers cant parry.
We can sacrifice our off hand damage and be shield bearers, but a small shield does not block many attacks, and we can not train in it.
Celtic Duel increases our chance to hit with an off hand weapon, but once again many styles are useless since they are side or rear attacks. I use the bleed/slow chain when I evade, but in RvR I am usually dead BEFORE I ever evade.
We wear reinforced type armor thats a little better then leather.
We get NONE of the rogue abilities, beyond the basic stealth.
Our primary attack is negated or minimized by so many in game factors that it ridiculous.
Our secondary ability (stealth) is rendered useless by assasins who pay 8 pts for a passive ability. Sure, we can pay 14 pts <or is it 10?> for true sight, and we can use it once every half hour. If I ignore my class specific RA's, namely master of archery and falcon eye, I can have a chance to see an assasin or archer once every half hour.
Even if I see the assasin I still die since they evade most of my arrows, and will parralyze/debuff/slow with their first round of attacks. If I spend 14 points on IP I can get my health back, but I would have to be highly specced in melee to kill them. This assumes that they are not buff bot'ed <many on Percival keep a buff bot in the PK) if they have the full range of buffs on them they will mow me down, and probaly one or two more people near me.

Group up?
Sure, great solution. We get the buffs and PBT, but in a fight we are interupted by a stiff breeze (read that as a fart from a troll) and can not use our bow. If we go into melee we have the potential to do MORE damage per second then with our bow, and that is also idiotic. but we dies ina few hits or 2 casts. (must be why we are called "Rangers" we fight from range!

All the archers are affected as above, who use shield and must train it, who use spear and pet.. but everyone miss/flumbe/dies against who evade arrows (and he's just in combat)

Rob

Just a thought, but I would like to hear what the rest of you think.

How would the fate of the archer classes change if there was a significant increase in the range of bows? I am thinking a range a bit longer than nearsight.

I often feel like there is no optimum distance to initiate a combat. If I am too close to the target I get charged. If I am too far from the target he just takes a few steps back and I am out or range.

OR

How would the fate of archers change if they were not required to plant their feet to shoot? Bows could still be interupted by combat, and would still have draw times, but the archer could move and still use his primary weapon.

Leave the issues of BT, PBT, (ad nauseum) so that the other classes are not effected, but archers have a difference.

So, I'd like to hear your thoughts. How would this effect the role of archers and how would the state of RvR change?

Changing our range would cause casters to scream, since blind was put in with a greater range then ours to prevent us from killing them.
Being able to run and shoot is interesting. But we should take an accuracy hit (IE make it the same as our curent accuracy) or run a little slower since we are now moving. It would have limited usefullness since we rarely run after a solo target... unless the solo target is bait

"The melee fumble rate is not the same as the archery fumble rate. It is not.

It is not.

It is not.

IT IS NOT.

The rate of fumbles on archery is much, much higher. And *I* play a tank too now, so trust me on this. My Champion hardly EVER fumbles, while fumbles on my Ranger using his bow are a common occurence and something I come to expect. I have NEVER seen my Champion fumble twice in a row as my Ranger has (and he has practically twice the Dexterity! Go figure!)."


I don't trust you, period.

I have never seen ANY evidence that what you state is true. My experience is that my warrior and ranger miss and fumble at approximately the same rate (this is based soley on my casual observation).

My warrior can and does fumble multiple times in a single battle, and sometimes has long streaks of misses. My warrior also have 312 dex fully buffed btw (level 50 kobold warrior, with +15 dex at creation, and aug dex 2), so dex is not a significant factor in my warrior's high fumble rate.

Point us to a threat with some evidence to back your claim, or simply agree that we differ in our perception, and stop stating as a FACT, something that is unproven.

Adder...just because you dont feel like doing the homework that quite a few other archers have, doesnt mean that the facts havent been presented.

Search the vault and other sites for logs of miss/fumble rate and read the team lead reports. I routinely fumble 1 or 2 times in a fight...PER FIGHT! This thread is for discussion of archery issues. Theres dozens of other threads listing logs for you to read...go find them, but stop saying the info hasnt been shown or doesnt exist, simply because your too lazy to go look for it.

Read Oaklief's reports and Taco's as well. If you dont trust the team leads info on it then go run a test of your own and log the results if you feel like wasting your own time. But dont come here refuting someones claim because you personally havent seen it.

"Search the vault and other sites for logs of miss/fumble rate and read the team lead reports. I routinely fumble 1 or 2 times in a fight...PER FIGHT! This thread is for discussion of archery issues. Theres dozens of other threads listing logs for you to read...go find them, but stop saying the info hasnt been shown or doesnt exist, simply because your too lazy to go look for it.

Read Oaklief's reports and Taco's as well. If you dont trust the team leads info on it then go run a test of your own and log the results if you feel like wasting your own time. But dont come here refuting someones claim because you personally havent seen it."


I have yet to see ANY evidence that archery miss and fumble rate exceeds the rate suffered by melee characters. I follow the treads and read the TL reports. Lots of good and useful data is posted, but no direct test that compares melee and archery.

I have not expressed any opionion as to if the miss and fumble rates are too high/low, only that it is my perception from playing both classes is that the rates are the same for everyone.

I have looked, I just don't see any evidence, and was asking for the assistance of the people who claim to know for sure (I assumed it was because that had seen proof) so I can satisfy my curiosity.

Since I am not campaigning for changes in miss/fumble rates why would I run tests? If some of you care so much, maybe you should.

If it could be shown that archery miss/fumble rates exceed the melee rate, I would be the 1st to state that is unfair and needs to be fixed....problem is I don't belive it.

"I have yet to see ANY evidence that archery miss and fumble rate exceeds the rate suffered by melee characters. I follow the treads and read the TL reports. Lots of good and useful data is posted, but no direct test that compares melee and archery. "

Logs and test data posted on Critshot.com

My warden with crap equipment and half the dex of my archer fumbles 10 times less frequently than does my archer.

Another ahol assasin who wants to keep ganking archers...

Bluebury, interesting ideas and, at least to me, fresh ones.

Increased range - Sure, I dont think it would be overpowering.

Remove glue while shooting - Well, perhaps. But then make it so that our chances to hit are reduced...ahrm, now where would that leave us

Another thing that bothers me is the following scenario:

You target something/someone, wait several seconds to release, but before you fire they either die or stealth. You end up cancelling your shot. Why? You should be able to select another target without having to wait.

"With out a self bladeturn I will die 9 out of ten times to an archer. "

Errwyn, you would only die to an archer if you were alone, and it's because of the casters who thought they could run around in a robe by themselves and not be killed that archers were so horribly nerfed. I would never attack a caster in a group of more than 5 even if he didn't have bladeturn, unless I was suiciding. Remember we have to pick our targets carefully because we only get one every 10 minutes, see: See Hidden.

BT isn't the biggest problem IMO, granted it is annoying that our only bow style is nullified almost every time, it's that once we break a Bt we can't land an arrow on the second or third try.

"My warden with crap equipment and half the dex of my archer fumbles 10 times less frequently than does my archer. "

You are a liar, if you had say 50% more I would of been polite and said you exagerate.

"Another ahol assasin who wants to keep ganking archers...

A: Not played by SB in 2 months, except one time to go on a dragon raid so I could qualify for loot. Now my warrior is 50, I used him on the last 2 raids.

B: My SB does not have SH, and rarely got into 1-1 fights with archers. Casters and other assassins supplied 99% of Adder's RPs.

C: In the few fights with archers he had they where far from insta wins, especially if they had similar rank (RR 5.6) and equipment. Infact a high rank ranger with IP and purge was a good fight, and by no means an assured victory, despite having all 3 str relics in my favor.

I want archers to be able to perform their intended roll well (to dominate casters at range), and IMO they are not doing so. As I have stated 3 times in this tread, I think quickshot (some temporary way of shooting a bow without being interupted is required).

However making crap up, like extream fumble rates relative to other classes, will just get your case IGNORED, because the Devs will look at your posts and say "they're so full of %$@@", because frankly they know better, play the game themselves, and have all kinds of tools to quickly test "obvious" flaws in game mechanics.

I quote the scout TL, Oakleif.

"And fumbles are appearing at the correct amount. However, it must be noted that the random number generator is indeed streaky, and there were individual chatlog sessions where my fumble rate was three times the expected amount. Those bad evenings stand out in players’ minds more than an unusually good night does, giving rise to the concerns that our accuracy and fumble rate are too high."

"Logs and test data posted on Critshot.com "

Been searching for over an hour, still can't find a hint of any melee vrs archer tests. Can you steer me in the right direction please?

Well, regarding the 1.60b patch notes, at least they have set the reuse timers for longshot and volley to something reasonable.

Now all they need to do is take these realm abilities and make them bow styles. *sigh*

Yeah, and I guess sonar sweeps were making it too difficult for all the assassins to completely dominate us.

/boggle

I guess it would not be a patch if they didn't find another way to screw archers.

its time to celebrate fellow archers we are now fixed we have lower times on volley and long shot!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

thank you mythic for finally fixing the archery problems

They nerfed us again!

Now it takes two seconds to stealth and restealth. Cool, huh? No more telling when we're going to get PAed.

Cheap it may be, but it's better than guessing when we're going to die.

Yeah, just ignore the fact that they improved Long Shot and Volley. Don't you see how that type of behavior makes you seem like a cry baby to the rest of the community?

I too have concern about the miss/fumble rates. Since I hadn't really made any observations about archer/tank miss fumble rates I took what I read on these forums at face value. After playing a Hero to 47 and thinking back about my Warden's miss/fumble rates I really can't say that I have seen a difference. This is of course based on casual observation. I would love to see some logs myself. I'll try to capture some logs of both my Hero and Ranger in the near future.

Rahe:

Think about spending 24 RA point for an ability that lets you stand stationary for 7.5 seconds, in the LOS of your targets, for the chance to shoot 5 arrows that will still miss.

Guess what?

This is not "archer loving". This will not help archers any more than the removal of trees in Odin's got people out of Emain. Virtually nobody got it before, and I can not see a great big race to get it now. Any rational designer would look at how many people get a skill and measure the value based on popularity. Unfortunately, this kind of logic escapes them.

Think about it. Every minute you get one volley. No target will be hit by more than one arrow. Everyone and their brother has some form of ablative armor or BT.

I might get longshot and volley in the form they were proposing if it cost 2 or 3 RA point total, but 24 is laughable.

The sad part is that they will pound their chest and say "see? we listen to the archer community"

"Yeah, just ignore the fact that they improved Long Shot and Volley. Don't you see how that type of behavior makes you seem like a cry baby to the rest of the community?"

If the majority of archers actually had these two realm abilities, then I would consider this an archery fix.

"Yeah, just ignore the fact that they improved Long Shot and Volley. Don't you see how that type of behavior makes you seem like a cry baby to the rest of the community?"

This is a joke, at 24RSPs, volley is really not worth it considering every shot will be BT and PBTed.

lmfao... i love volley
[18:31:04] You target [the dullahan]
[18:31:04] You examine the dullahan. He is aggressive towards you!
[18:31:04] You examine the dullahan. He is aggressive towards you!
[18:31:16] You prepare to fire. (6.6s to fire)
[18:31:22] You are ready to fire!
[18:31:26] Your shot arcs into the sky!
[18:31:26] Your shot sails clear of all targets!
[18:31:27] You are ready to fire!
[18:31:35] Your shot arcs into the sky!
[18:31:35] Your shot sails clear of all targets!
[18:31:37] You are ready to fire!
[18:31:42] Your shot arcs into the sky!
[18:31:42] Your shot sails clear of all targets!
[18:31:43] You are ready to fire!
[18:31:50] Your shot arcs into the sky!
[18:31:50] Your shot sails clear of all targets!
[18:31:51] You are ready to fire!
[18:31:56] Your shot arcs into the sky!
[18:31:56] Your shot sails clear of all targets!

I MISSED ALL 5 ARROWS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!







now i can do it twice as often.. yipeee!

grimple, was the GT set?

Yeah, volley and longshot... woo hoo, now the number of archers that have those RAs went from... oh wait, its still at 0

"Yeah, just ignore the fact that they improved Long Shot and Volley. Don't you see how that type of behavior makes you seem like a cry baby to the rest of the community?"
--Rahe

==================================


If *anyone* had either of these 2 overpriced & overgimped RAs,
I would call it an archer fix.

Right now I call it at best a smokescreen, at worst an insult.

Basically, Mythic is trying to keep us from cancelling for another month
without actually *changing* a thing.

yah.. GT was set.

yeah i think oak (the Scout TL) has adviced archer folk to just lvl their alts... he didn't foresee any changes until 1.62.



take it whatever value you want.

/shrug

AddrMLF,

Of all things to challenge archers on Miss/Fumle is not one of them. There have been many logs/test to show the ultimate miss rate beyond 35%

I think something my have been done not to recently as far as fumbles..i don't think I fumble as much as I did. But misses are still outright ridiculous...when you combine that with the fact we have more ways for our arrow to go astray than any other class it really becomes silly i.e. (Miss, Fumble, Interrupted, PBT, Block, Evade)...worst of caster and melee world combined.

The other night I happened to get into a group of 7 NightShades and myself a lev 50 ranger, lev 51 bow, 99 quality, best arrows at or near 300+ dex.. We were outside of alb PK waiting...doors opened...it was a reaver...we waited...when he was about 60 paces from me running by I shot from stealth...the following is what occured:

Block
Miss
Block
Block
Miss

Reaver killed by the Night shades. That's just great..I fire at him from Stealth no less he's to the side when the shot goes of and he blocks it! Followed by all blocks and misses...THAT'S RIDICULOUS!!!

Yes, this was one occasion...yes this is a frequent occurrance..i've gone hand to hand more recently than using my bow becuase it's so gimped!

What does Mythic do...they decrease the reset rate on the 2 worst RA's in the game...longshot and Volley! Give me a break...these things should be part of the normal skillset attached to recurve bow level. Mythic bites.

yes they blow. SWB and SB on their way.

bump

Just imagine... an archer using volley... from optimum distance... no BT/PBT... every single arrow hits... and every one of them triggers a reactive proc which hits the archer from max range... hilarious!!

We should be thankful volley is broken... a realm ability with build-in suicide option!

the RA changes are nothing more than a complete insult, Volly costs 24 RSP and is still inferior to GT AoE spells and is on a 1 min timer?

long shot on a 5 min timer....ROFL

enjoying playing my theurg anyway

Mythic put Volley and Longshot in Bow spec give each archer a unique RA that YOU WOULD BUY AND USE, not some useless RA than no one will get.

24 realm skill points (10 for Longshot and 14 for Volley) are a lot of points for skills that should be in all 3 bow specs to begin with.

I agree, Volley and Longshot should be in the bow spec, maybe at 33 and 37 or something. As it is right now, there is no compelling reason to spec higher than 27 in bow other than the small damage increase you get per spec level. Those all too precious spec points are badly needed elsewhere right now.

Fix miss/fumble rates for archers....ALL archers.

Let us play around with that for awhile to see how this affects the game.

I never said nor implied that the volley/longshot changes were all empowering guys. I just pointed out that some of you are completely ignoring positive changes. That is unfair and misleading to anyone reading these threads. If you are going to cry about a nerf in a patch that also has a boost then at least mention that there was a boost but it was too little or something. That paints a far more realistic picture of the situation and keeps people from perceiving us as a bunch of cry babies that only focus on the negatives and only want more.

I don't have longshot and volley for the very reason that you guys pointed out. 14 RSP's for an volley is completely sick and 10 RSP's for longshot is sick too. To have longshot be the pre-req. for volley makes it so I would never get volley. I might be tempted to go for volley if it were 7 RSP's and had no pre-req but even then it would be a bit steep. I don't know if I would ever go for longshot regardless of cost.

Put Longshot and Volley in Bow Specline.

Give Scouts:

Shot on the Run -- Allows a scout, once per five minutes, to make a regular arrow shot while moving.

Give Rangers:

Tracking -- Allows a Ranger, once per 30 minutes, to select a target and hit the track button. For the next 5 minutes, the ranger will be able to autoface that target, no matter their distance, stealth status, or location.

Give Hunters:

Hunter's Camoflage -- Allows a Hunter to triple the rate of getting back camo WHEN SHE IS SITTING DOWN. Essentially the Hunter is creating a hunting blind (any real hunters out there? ).

Last night was a great example - less than 15% of my arrows hit. One scene was particularly pathetic:

2 albs approach our PK in Hadrians. One is a blue con caster one is a shield bearing tank. The run in and the caster begins to cast. Archers let loose. Shield bearer blocks ALL arrows. Both on the caster and on himself. NOTHING got through. He continued to taunt us and laugh at us. Proof that archers are a joke. When we finally had sufficient archers to get around the mezz/root bullcrap, we charged and meleed them to death. It takes 8 archers to kill one shield bearer protecting a caster. What a joke.

God, I never thought about volley and reactive procs... That would be painfull. Lucky me, I didnt waste my hard earned Rp's buying that

Rahe - I don't care what they think of us. I hate them with a passion for ruining my class and I want them to know it. They can now claim that they "fixed" archers with this pathetic excuse of an archer fix. This is the most corrupt company with whom I have ever had the displeasure to do business.

Reactive procs that go off when you shoot someone at range seems wrong. I hope that is a bug and not working as intended.

2 things

kill see hidden

kill true sight

mythic screwed themselves in the begenning by making archers godlike, then balancing them, then adding bs RA's

In case you guys didn't notice, we just got hugely nerfed again.

1. Con change. Now we can't select the few targets we WERE actually able to kill.

2. Ablative song. Not only do we deliver the weakest physical attack in the game, but now albion groups will be essentially immune to all of our attacks. All archer attacks are now at half damage AGAIN what they were against albion groups.

3. Longshot and Volley changes were a joke, but I guess they think we are "fixed" now.

All in all, this class just got a whole hell of a lot worse. I just can't wait until I run into a group that can mez me all the way across the map, bts all of my shots, and the one in 5 that gets through does half damage because of an ablative song.

Yayay!

Idiots.

/hugs,

Huna

I'd have to agree with Rahe. You archers are complaining when Mythic's obviously addressed our groupability issues. Look what they gave us:


- Three new emotes have been added - beg, induct, and dismiss. Use /beg to plead, /induct when inducting a new guild member (or other ceremonial occasion), and /dismiss to visually show someone that you're done with them.


We can now add animation when having to beg for groups. Thanks, Mythic!

/dismiss

LOL

What a rediculous fix: I think another nerf would have been less of a slap in the face than this crap............... TOTAL CRAP

The number of threads started by archers, and supported by numerous other classes, about the pitiful condition we are in are numerous, logical (for the most part), and well documented in pointing out all the intentional and stealth nerfs that archers have received.

And it leads me to wonder - nay - know that Mythic does not care.

Look at the Battleground changes proposed in 1.60B. This was based off the two threads entitled "Battlegrounds - Out of the Box". I may be wrong, but I don't think so, when I say that there were far less total posts in the two of those threads than in the "State of the Archer" threads.

Look at the changes Alb has received in the past patch and this one. All based off the threads that cropped up all over the Dev Boards after 1.58.

I'm not saying that these changes are without merit (for the most part). But I find it more than hard to swallow that we can _see_ that Mythic listens to its player base. There are numerous other examples of this - if you care to do the looking you can see where changes were incorporated into the game based off threads on this board.

However, I don't think that any of those threads could possible equal the volume of posts from all the different Archer threads where legitimate issues have been raised.

If we exclude the fanatical from both sides of the argument - we are still left with a huge volume of real issues that Archers suffer from. Yet, this particular "community" voice remains unheard. Regardless of all the support archers receive from other classes _including_ casters. When our "prey" agrees that we suck, we have real issues that need to be looked at folks.

Lets' leave BT and PBT out of our "wish list" of fixes. Or at least PBT, because Wardens are right. I think we can admit it - back in the day PBT wasn't a real concern to archers, only after we started spiraling down in our effectiveness did we focus on PBT as a real bane. I think Enkidu has the right of it when he says, "Focus on the miss/fumble rates. Improve bow accuracy." I know that missing and fumbling are the true aggravation source, and when you get the BT message it just makes it just adds to the bile rising in your throat - to think you _might_ have actually hit something if it weren't for that damn PBT.

We all agree that stealth is now useless. Utterly useless now that you can no longer ghetto-detect hidden as effectively as before. Can no longer really rely on it protecting you from mez, have to wait 10 secs after combat to re-stealth, have to rely on camo to protect you from SH, cannot fire from stealth, the list is endless. And I know there are arguments against us having an effective stealth. Each point I raised has its detractors.

We all agree that the cost of being an archer is damn near prohibitive. The money spent in ammo alone, over the lifetime of an archer, is insane. Unless you're a twink or have generous friends your equipment sucks because you forced to buy/craft the high quality arrows to even be close to effective in PvE, let alone RvR.

We all agree that the CS line offers no real value to the archer. The damage variance is the only thing that makes speccing bow to a certain point worth it. As CS is too damn hard to get off in an RvR environment, offers no other function, and is frequently negated for a variety of reason - our primary skill is essentially a joke.

Bow styles would be nice. So would a reduced End cost for normal shots. Out unique RAs are a joke. And reactive procs are scary.

I shan't rehash all that the archer community faces in trying to find some fun in playing a class that appeals to them. It would be time consuming and depressing, and this post is long enough as it is.

What will it take to make Mythic listen, and react compassionately?
/shrugs

Your guess is as good as mine. Maybe if we toned down the vehemence of our voices, showed less bitterness and hatred towards Mythic, and spoke in reasonable voices?

Who knows - one can only hope that ere too much longer passes, Mythic will respond positively to the many voices of the orphaned archers.

I can see only one solution to the archer problem:

Let every archer out there commit ritual suicide in-game and be reborn as any other character in the game, with all spec points waiting to be spent.

Then delete the class and be done with it.

We're not going to get any help, guys. Face it - Three huge (must be 10,000 posts + right now) threads later, daily bumps and even ASASSINS agreeing that See Hidden and True Sight should never have been in the game in the first place has done nothing.

So, let us go out with a bang and be reborn into something useful for our realms.

If anyone cant see that an AOE mez from 1800 range is not going to hurt us, you should really stand near an archer in a keep defence. Yet another great tool to own an archer. Keep defence is suppose to be one of our great strenghts may I add. Well, it just became harder for mids and hibs. This spell will kill many archers...trust me.

Not ready to throw in the towel yet. If Mythic will fix our stealth and archery issues, things will be better.

evade 5, 200 hps, fix the streaky miss fumble rates make reg bow shots use no endurance. Good enough for me. If I gotta shoot 4 + arrows on most targets now we need some more defensive skill.

How about self magic resists in the pf line?