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Powerset Boost: Archery
bluhman
Posts: 2,410 Arc User
Archery is a set riddled with numerous issues, such as strange energy mechanics on some of its powers, and generally low damage output. Chiefly, the set lacks lacks real role variety, only heavily catering to stealthy, long-ranged DPS - and even in that purview, it isn't particularly powerful compared to sets such as Sorcery, Electricity, or even Munitions.
That said, Archery does have a slight knack for Control abilities, which, while sub-par, does give it a unique flavor that probably should be explored further. This tuneup will aim to make the big strengths of Archery stand out better - its mobility and long range - by further boosting what it lacks, as well as introducing more possibilities of different character-role types in the process.
Existing Power Changes
Straight Shot
New Powers
Bullseye (T1)
You're prepared for long-ranged battle, building up focus on your target over time.
Stuns your target with a blunt-headed arrow.
Tipped with a powerful sedative, the Tranq Arrow could put even an elephant to sleep. Or a giant demon dog, your choice.
Fires an arrow that splits into multiple different projectiles upon hitting its target, wreaking havoc at its point of contact.
Gathering up massive power, you unleash an arrow that can pierce straight through multiple targets.
You aim precisely at your foe, hitting the right part of the body to disable or incapacitate the target depending on the circumstances.
That said, Archery does have a slight knack for Control abilities, which, while sub-par, does give it a unique flavor that probably should be explored further. This tuneup will aim to make the big strengths of Archery stand out better - its mobility and long range - by further boosting what it lacks, as well as introducing more possibilities of different character-role types in the process.
Existing Power Changes
Straight Shot
- Applies the Armor-Piercing debuff upon hit - identical defense-debuff used by Munitions. This debuff has a 10-100% chance of applying on charge levels.
- The advantage, Split The Arrow, stacks on top of this, and remains as it used to be. It's intended to apply further debuff to the different archery attacks that use a greater variety of damage types.
- New Advantage: Barbed Head - Your arrow has a barbed tip, which Shreds the target instead of inflicting Armor Piercing (with a 100% probability regardless of charge). Upon a full-charge, your arrow also refreshes the duration of Bleeding.
- Deals hold regardless of charge levels with 100% chance.
- Hold duration scales with charge levels.
- Does not drain energy by default. This functionality is incorporated into Aftershock.
- New Advantage: See the Unseen - Inflicts all targets hit by Sonic Arrow with a stealth debuff, making them much easier to spot. Combine with high Int stat to reveal stealthed enemies to your allies.
- Boosts all damage types equally.
- Stacks its global damage buff with an extra buff to Technology Ranged damage.
- Provides its energy whenever the user either Crits with an Archery attack, or an Archery attack goes off of cooldown.
- The effect can stack.
- These bonuses scale off of Intelligence and Dexterity.
- New Advantage: Field of Arrows - Changes Storm of Arrows into a 50-ft PBAoE, while also causing a self-root. You now fire arrows into the air that land radially all around you, overall operating very similarly to Lead Tempest.
- Deals 30% extra damage by default, but trades off its boosted damage on low-health targets. This functionality is relegated to the Finish Him advantage.
- Energy cost is slightly increased to compensate.
- New Advantage: Arcane Tip - Snap Shot will Jinx the Target once every 10 seconds. It also does bonus Magic damage if the target is Hexed.
- New Advantage: Acid Arrow - The target will take Toxic Damage over Time when hit with Snap Shot.
- New Advantage: Oily Coating - Inflicts the target hit with Serpentine Fire, reducing their resistance to elemental and fire damage.
- Has the same energy cost as Sniper Rifle
- Deals more damage than Sniper Rifle, but in exchange, does not stun.
- Might also incorporate similar mechanics as discussed in my Non-Pistol Munition's redux? I.E. no requirement for full charge, recharge period?
- New Advantage: Easy Target - This 1-point advantage improves the crit rate and severity of Focused Shot upon targets that are not in combat. These bonuses are further increased (and also triggered) if you are within stealth.
- Energy cost scales with charge levels now.
- Size of explosion increases with increased charge levels (range from 10-25ft sphere). Where's the Kaboom? Advantage has the perk of automatically generating a full-size 25-ft explosion.
- No longer reduces perception of targets hit.
- Deals extra damage.
- New Advantage: Biotic Gas - Allies inside your Gas Arrow's cloud will receive healing while it's active.
- New Advantage: Narcotic - Gas Arrow now inflicts sleep on the first pulse of the attack. In addition, damage dealt by Gas Arrow does not break targets out of sleep.
New Powers
Bullseye (T1)
You're prepared for long-ranged battle, building up focus on your target over time.
- Ranged Toggle ability.
- Automatically builds up to 6-8 stacks of Bullseye over time out of battle. The number of stacks granted is determined by the rank of the power.
- Grants one stack of Bullseye every 4 seconds. In battle, the limit of Bullseye stacks is removed; any rank can reach 8 stacks, but R1 bullseye will need 8 seconds to reach full potential at the start of a fight.
- Uses up Bullseye stacks when dealing damage.
- Boosts ranged and melee damage, with twice as much effectiveness as normal than a standard toggle form.
- Scales off of Int and Dex best.
Stuns your target with a blunt-headed arrow.
- Single-target 100-ft stun and interrupt. Deals crushing damage instead of standard piercing.
- Interrupt effect triggers if stun fails.
- Advantage: Trauma - As with other stuns, this inflicts the Trauma effect to ruin healing.
Tipped with a powerful sedative, the Tranq Arrow could put even an elephant to sleep. Or a giant demon dog, your choice.
- Ranged Hold that deals out light piercing damage on hit.
- Puts the target to Sleep. Extreme-duration hold, but any other damage instantly breaks it.
- Single-target only.
- Advantage: Deep Slumber - Improves the hold strength on Tranq Arrow's sleep, allowing targets to take some damage before waking up.
Fires an arrow that splits into multiple different projectiles upon hitting its target, wreaking havoc at its point of contact.
- Ranged attack with a chain-hit component; 100 foot range, 50 foot reach after that. Deals pure Piercing Damage.
- Maximum-targets hit ranges from 3 to 5 depending on how charged the attack is.
- Deals double damage to the first target.
- Has a brief cooldown.
- Advantage: Arrow Bomb - Instead of chaining hits between enemies, Rebounding Shot now just causes arrows to rain out in a 25 foot sphere around the target, dealing equal Piercing damage to every target hit.
- Advantage: Pincushion - Inflicts armor-piercing on all targets if charged fully.
Gathering up massive power, you unleash an arrow that can pierce straight through multiple targets.
- Ranged AoE attack that hits in a narrow cylinder for high piercing damage.
- Charged attacks will knock targets down.
- Enemies within 20 feet are knocked back instead.
- Does not have a cooldown.
- Advantage: Apollo's Fury - On full charge, all targets become Illuminated.
You aim precisely at your foe, hitting the right part of the body to disable or incapacitate the target depending on the circumstances.
- Single-target click ability that does extreme piercing damage.
- Regardless of conditions, Vital Strike always inflicts the given target with Overpower, reducing all damage resistance.
- If the target is above 30% HP, Vital Strike aims for the limbs, and cripples the target by reducing their damage output and movement speed. This effect is like chill and is not resistable by high-rank targets. It can also randomly inflict hold effects during its 15 second duration.
- If the target is below 30% HP, Vital Strike aims for central organs, and has a 10% bonus to critical hit chance, and a 50% bonus to severity.
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Comments
Click here to check out my costumes/milleniumguardian (MG) in-game/We need more tights, stances and moods
Restores energy every 3 seconds over 6 seconds whenever you deal damage with an archery power.
Here's why I think this is the way to go for this powerset:
1) Basing it on crit is a bad idea because archery isn't a fast-ticking framework for the most part. If based on critical hits with archery powers, it makes the EU a slave to RNG and strongarms players into using Dex in addition to Int for concentration and Ego for its energy unlock scaling.
2) "Every 3 seconds over 6 seconds" allows this slower-ticking framework to gain a steady flow of energy from its EU. It also makes it more cross-framework friendly.
3) Basing it on fully charging archery powers excludes certain powers--Snap Shot and Storm of Arrows immediately come to mind.
Also, that form is a little weird (dealing damage consumes concentration stacks?) since you're likely going to be dealing damage more than once every 4 seconds, meaning a negative gain on stacks throughout the battle. Concentration is pretty much the Technology group's form, and it's fine (and makes a lot of sense) for Archery.
I could possibly see them revamping archery powers but I can't see them doing this....... unfortunately
Click here to check out my costumes/milleniumguardian (MG) in-game/We need more tights, stances and moods
I get where you are coming from, but there's usually a requirement attached SOMEWHERE other than 'you use your power'.
Also:
* Rebounding shot: I'd adjust the 'double damage' bit because I could see that potentially abused in places where you only have one viable target. Maybe change that to each target after the first is hit with a 15% severity increase in case of a critical, making you to WANT to hit multiple targets instead of just the first and its not grossly OP. Remove cooldown.
* I'm not a huge fan of Sniper's concentration, tbh, as a toggle. I'm not sure WHAT I would do, actually, and I understand the reasoning for it... but perhaps I would simply create an archery power (not a toggle but one offensive power) that utilized a VERY slow charge that built up concentration stacks and then released them upon the shot?
Great ideas in this thread, btw. While my main character is not an archer, I LOVE archery style characters and have a very soft spot for the power set. Hopefully some of these changes one day will make it in game.
As pallas mentions though the energy unlock likely would need something else to work off of other than literally just 'attack'. Most of the new EU's being made are tailored to work off of the specific debuff that a given powerset uses. The problem is that Archery, even after I made this tweak, still doesn't really have a global debuff to work off of and it obviously uses a ton of different damage types that makes it a bit difficult to tie down to a single... common debuff that would fit the whole set? That's likely something I'd need to figure out. The Rebounding Shot damage is more or less based off of how attacks such as Fireball or Shoulder Launcher work. In other words, good/decent damage to the first target, and average damage to the rest. The phrasing likely makes it sound like it does amazing damage to all targets and does stupid amounts to the first one. INT is such an integral stat to the archery playstyle that it kind of should have cooldowns to compensate for certain attacks, and the majority of abilities that make use of cooldowns currently use multiple arrows or specialty arrows. An arrow that splits into more arrows upon contact would probably fit both of those bills. In contrast, power shot (one arrow shot super powerfully to pierce multiple targets) would likely be the main AoE for a non-gimmick DPS archer.
I totally see the issues that could arise from the Sniper form, since I don't think just the firepower that 8 stacks of concentration would offer would really make up for the fact you can only really land strong attacks once every 4 seconds. Should probably just tweak it to use its own stacking buff instead of just Concentration again.