Solving the Archery Dilemma - PVE Close Range Archery-Combat Hybrid Build

typo

@tohopka#8661 I'm really glad to hear that you've found a reason to come back to playing HR again. Tweaking the build to your specific needs is definitely to be expected, as there is such a wide range of experience and capabilities among players. So I intentionally wrote the guide to allow for more variety and choice in how each player can set up their toon. I continue to enjoy playing the build myself and, just tonight, I ran a bunch of hunts in Barovia. Here is a photo of me next to Ras Manca, who seems to be resting on a log pile.

wdj40

Ah ha... but can your HR solo Night Terror? https://xboxdvr.com/gamer/wdj40/video/60672746

Or Sister of Fury? https://xboxdvr.com/gamer/wdj40/video/60672782

He he lol... although I have not quite managed Sister of Fury without dying a couple of times... usually stick a DoT on her just at the wrong time and all the damage smacks me right back and boom dead

typo

Nice job @wdj40. I have successfully soloed the Terror as a combat but not yet as an archer. Finding him is part of the challenge, or at least him not showing up while I'm in the middle of something else, haha. I've not actually tried to solo the Sister... yet. Mostly been running in parties on these hunts. Those Tarokka cards are loads of fun, especially if you set down some really difficult ones to cause a lot aggro and mayhem. Lots of laughs doing those!

One thing your videos remind me about. Sometimes HRs get hung up in a stance because, even though we did indeed select a stance change, the game just ignores our selection. The problem then becomes we're now trying to speed thru the next part of our rotation and we end up firing blanks. This is due of course to the current stance being in cooldown. I'm not sure there is anything we can do about this other than just visually looking at the tray to ensure our stance did in fact change.

I get it that the game sometimes doesn't allow us to take certain actions because maybe for example we are stunned, but sometimes I think the game tends to prioritize actions of a target over the actions of the player. It would be nice if the developers would fix that so that player input does not always get overridden. I see this with powers sometimes too. For instance, I'll drop a PG and the animation will have already mostly completed but then the game cancels the power because it decides instead to prioritize some action being taken by the target. A funny thing too, even though targets can apparently cancel our animations/powers, it often does not go in reverse. In fact, we can outright kill a target and some power they were trying to use will still take effect after they are dead.

wdj40

typo#6563 said:

Nice job @wdj40. I have successfully soloed the Terror as a combat but not yet as an archer. Finding him is part of the challenge, or at least him not showing up while I'm in the middle of something else, haha. I've not actually tried to solo the Sister... yet. Mostly been running in parties on these hunts. Those Tarokka cards are loads of fun, especially if you set down some really difficult ones to cause a lot aggro and mayhem. Lots of laughs doing those!

One thing your videos remind me about. Sometimes HRs get hung up in a stance because, even though we did indeed select a stance change, the game just ignores our selection. The problem then becomes we're now trying to speed thru the next part of our rotation and we end up firing blanks. This is due of course to the current stance being in cooldown. I'm not sure there is anything we can do about this other than just visually looking at the tray to ensure our stance did in fact change.

I get it that the game sometimes doesn't allow us to take certain actions because maybe for example we are stunned, but sometimes I think the game tends to prioritize actions of a target over the actions of the player. It would be nice if the developers would fix that so that player input does not always get overridden. I see this with powers sometimes too. For instance, I'll drop a PG and the animation will have already mostly completed but then the game cancels the power because it decides instead to prioritize some action being taken by the target. A funny thing too, even though targets can apparently cancel our animations/powers, it often does not go in reverse. In fact, we can outright kill a target and some power they were trying to use will still take effect after they are dead.

Ha ha yeah you noticed... any kind of stun/daze in PvE completely ruins the flow of the Trapper and other paths that use Longstriders etc. The amount of times a power has gone off completely but somehow gets cancelled is nuts. I am not sure it is something they can really do much about apart from changing animations a bit and that is a nightmare for them.

When I am in a flow without any interuptions the damage numbers start going crazy

typo

Looks like big changes are coming at last for archery! Read this post from a developer. Could make my build obsolete, but I'd be ok with that if a pure path archery build could essentially accomplish everything that this hybrid archery build was designed to do. Excited for archery! I posted a comment to the developer about their changes.

https://www.arcgames.com/en/forums/neverwinter#/discussion/1242644/m15-hunter-ranger-class-changes

wdj40

I'm not... they clearly have no idea how some of their own game works. They seem to think that at 3 stacks of Aspect of the Serpent it would only take 3 Encounters and 1 At-Will to max out stacks of the opposite.

Completely wrong and unless they change things they will completely ruin Longstrider Trapper builds like mine

typo

wdj40 said:

I'm not... they clearly have no idea how some of their own game works. They seem to think that at 3 stacks of Aspect of the Serpent it would only take 3 Encounters and 1 At-Will to max out stacks of the opposite.

Completely wrong and unless they change things they will completely ruin Longstrider Trapper builds like mine

Well, I was not really commenting on Trapper. I do hear you on that and you are not the only one to raise a concern about this from a Trapper perspective. And yes there seem to be some problems, as reported thru-out the comments on that post. But I'm hopeful at least for some of the kinks will get worked out before the changes go live.

As far as Archery, this path was already dysfunctional, so if the end result of these changes is less dysfunction and, dare we hope, something that helps archery to actually shine (beyond PVP already), then this will be movement in the right direction, at least for archery anyway.

wdj40

typo#6563 said:

wdj40 said:

I'm not... they clearly have no idea how some of their own game works. They seem to think that at 3 stacks of Aspect of the Serpent it would only take 3 Encounters and 1 At-Will to max out stacks of the opposite.

Completely wrong and unless they change things they will completely ruin Longstrider Trapper builds like mine

Well, I was not really commenting on Trapper. I do hear you on that and you are not the only one to raise a concern about this from a Trapper perspective. And yes there seem to be some problems, as reported thru-out the comments on that post. But I'm hopeful at least for some of the kinks will get worked out before the changes go live.

As far as Archery, this path was already dysfunctional, so if the end result of these changes is less dysfunction and, dare we hope, something that helps archery to actually shine (beyond PVP already), then this will be movement in the right direction, at least for archery anyway.

On paper it looks like my PvP Archer will still shine and may be able to dish out more damage than I currently am... but I am not sure about that Stillness of the Forest changes. Also ANY change that involves us staying still in 1 place is actually really poor design.

I am never staying still no matter what path or paragon I take. Plus a few other things that I am unsure about... some of the changes look half decent though

Anyhoo I use Aspect of the Serpent for my Archer in PvP... I drop it in PvE mind you. But it will be next to useless in PvP if you have to make 7 attacks from Melee to build up 3 ranged stacks.

typo

@wdj40 I actually commented to the developer about the standing still part to express some concerns. As an aside, I don't think "Stillness" of the Forest was ever meant to be about the HR being still physically. I think it is in reference to achieving internal stillness or calm. When you consider that historically archers could ride a horse and fire with great precision - for example the legendary Mongol and Native American archers - the idea that an archer has to stand still is not entirely true. They can move, but they just have to maintain poise. How that translates into the game... I'd just like to be able to stance change and reposition as needed. Some bosses do move around. In some Barovia hunts, the boss teleports all over the place.

wdj40

Stilness of the Forest just should have stayed as it is... just added to it a buff that allows you to receive and give buffs at double the normal range. Therefore only the Archer path can utilize it and be able to be part of the group at double the normal distance.

They try to make things better without actually realising most of the mechanics already in place. Some of the changes baffle me whilst some seem needed and others not needed at all... I mean have you ever seen Plant Growth tick or plant someone in place for 20 seconds? So they change it to 10, pointless as a HAMSTER (edit, didnt realise bottom burp was a swear) in the direction of the enemy frees them from the grasp.

typo

@wdj40 LOL, "hamster," that totally made your argument! I will agree that I think retaining the option for range would be nice. But how that would even be coded to allow for party buffs, I've no idea. It might be a real tangled mess to work that one out, depending on the current structure of the coding for this game. I think sometimes the changes that happen, and the ones that people tend to complain about, are in part a function of what is simply going to be a manageable amount of coding work and how efficiently that code is going to be able to run on their server architecture.

wdj40

typo#6563 said:

@wdj40 LOL, "hamster," that totally made your argument! I will agree that I think retaining the option for range would be nice. But how that would even be coded to allow for party buffs, I've no idea. It might be a real tangled mess to work that one out, depending on the current structure of the coding for this game. I think sometimes the changes that happen, and the ones that people tend to complain about, are in part a function of what is simply going to be a manageable amount of coding work and how efficiently that code is going to be able to run on their server architecture.

Seems pretty easy to implement my idea if you ask me... They already have a mechanic in place which increases our Range anyway in Aspect of the Falcon so we know range can be extended or dropped, they have also increased range of Constricting Arrow so another range thing that can be ammended.

Then you have things like Longstrider which buff every player in a huge radius, not just players but every friendly NPC. The mechanics we need for this are already there and just need tweaking.

typo

@wdj40 Don't get me wrong, if they can do it, I'm for it.

typo

For those of you using "Yarrow's Ridiculously Idiotic but Kind of Amazing Archery Build," I've made a few recent updates, including both substantive and cosmetic changes. As far as Mod 15's revamp of archery, we'll have to see what the future holds, but very likely, at a minimum, there will need to be some kind of updates. I was also in the midst of a PVP archery build, but I think with such significant changes now coming, I am just going to put the wrapper back on that for now and hold off on any newer HR builds until everything settles out from Mod 15. Exciting times for HR!

http://bit.ly/Yarrows-Hybrid-Archery-Build

typo

A recent commenter on Eagle Eye's True Archery Build on MMOminds criticizes the build for recommending the use of Split the Sky because it is an AoE. The commenter takes strong issue with any archer using any kind of AoE and he recommends instead to use other powers, like Rain of Arrows and Cordon of Arrows.

Mmmm, K...

The author himself has yet to respond, so I responded the other day to correct this commenter's obvious misconceptions about AoEs. For one, RoA and CoA are in fact AoEs too, LOL! And even though this is a competitive archery build to mine, both our builds do recommend Split the Sky. (Besides here, you can also find my build on the PVE Archery tab of Elven Archers guide on MMOminds.)

I think it is important to know that Archers can indeed excel with ranged attacks and that this includes the AoE forms of ranged attacks. Split the Sky is just a wonderful example and even Combat HRs regularly use this power.

Here is a little impromptu video demonstration from last night which provides a nice perspective on the effect that Split the Sky can have. I just happened to be doodling around late in the evening in Well of Dragons yesterday and noticed a player running for his life from the Bone Ritual heroic encounter. Feeling sympathetic, I stopped to help him out. Split the Sky is awesome!


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AcrY1sSUXcY

jonkoca

I'm afraid the changes to stillness blow my pvp archer build out of the water. Hope they fit your build better typo.

Taking a break from my HR for the forseeable. Depression.

maximus

Archery aside. The trapper support train is just one I can't ride. Combat gets all the goodies and trapper gets HAMSTER over, yet again. Serpent changes are awful,ancient roots decreased duration, CA not fixed etc etc. They want to end trappers, I see no trappers around. Everyone plays
kid difficulty combat. Sad

wdj40

maximus#5077 said:

Archery aside. The trapper support train is just one I can't ride. Combat gets all the goodies and trapper gets HAMSTER over, yet again. Serpent changes are awful,ancient roots decreased duration, CA not fixed etc etc. They want to end trappers, I see no trappers around. Everyone plays

kid difficulty combat. Sad

Not me

If you check out any of my video clips you will only find Trapper clips in PvE and Archer clips in PvP

But I am only in Mod 14 still and Pathfinder Trapper still knocks out some serious DPS etc... not sure how much Mod 15 will effect that yet but I am very concerned about it.

typo

jonkoca said:

I'm afraid the changes to stillness blow my pvp archer build out of the water. Hope they fit your build better typo.

Taking a break from my HR for the forseeable. Depression.

Hey @jonkoca I totally understand, but would also suggest that you do keep your eye on the changes to archery since they are still just on preview. I may even take a crack at a PVP archer build once the dust settles. Would be happy to involve you in that, since you have such a good understanding of the current way PVP archery is done.

typo

maximus#5077 said:

Archery aside. The trapper support train is just one I can't ride. Combat gets all the goodies and trapper gets HAMSTER over, yet again. Serpent changes are awful,ancient roots decreased duration, CA not fixed etc etc. They want to end trappers, I see no trappers around. Everyone plays

kid difficulty combat. Sad

Hi @maximus#5077 If you really like Trapper, while it may not top Combat on DPS in many situations, it still can win out in certain long-fight scenarios. It still basically works and you should play what you enjoy!

You might also consider adding a loadout for a Hybrid Trapper. One of the problems with Trapper is that DOT doesn't get to do much since mobs die so fast. A Hybrid Trapper, much like my Hybrid Archery build, takes Skirmisher's Gambit. SG works with roots, just like Dread does. And by doing that, you also gain the option of either sticking with your current Dread enchantment or opting for a Trans Feytouched so that your attacks can be buffed by the party, same as Combat HRs. I don't think a Hybrid Trapper would beat a Pure Trapper on bosses, but it's roots are more quick acting and thus helps you claim more DPS from the mob portion of dungeons. You play it just like you do a normal Trapper and then change at the campfire before the boss.

If you really like Trapper, I think using a Hybrid Trapper loadout for mobs would boost your overall results on the pain giver chart. The only downside is that you do need more recovery than a typical Trapper due to the tradeoffs of making a hybrid build like this.

As far as support roles, having loadouts for this might not be so bad. Pathfinder is viable for archery too and some of the buff powers getting reworked for Mod 15 are truly classic archery powers. In particular, the flip side of Hawkeye is Hawkshot and, in the hands of an archer, this will hit hard like a 18-wheeler truck. No brakes! So you may soon see some archers doing this in boss fights.

patcherrkm

I absolutely love pathfinder and hate storm warden. But let me be clear, storm warden has throw caution. Throw caution buffs your damage by 45% and is up 100% of the time. Anyone playing pathfinder combat right now is missing the mark.

typo

patcherrkm said:

I absolutely love pathfinder and hate storm warden. But let me be clear, storm warden has throw caution. Throw caution buffs your damage by 45% and is up 100% of the time. Anyone playing pathfinder combat right now is missing the mark.

I agree. Well, maybe not quite with the hating storm warden part, haha, but I do think pathfinder is a lot of fun. I mean, who wouldn't love using slasher's mark to jump 80 feet through the air and leave a big slash mark on your target!

wdj40

typo#6563 said:

patcherrkm said:

I absolutely love pathfinder and hate storm warden. But let me be clear, storm warden has throw caution. Throw caution buffs your damage by 45% and is up 100% of the time. Anyone playing pathfinder combat right now is missing the mark.

I agree. Well, maybe not quite with the hating storm warden part, haha, but I do think pathfinder is a lot of fun. I mean, who wouldn't love using slasher's mark to jump 80 feet threw the air and leave a big slash mark on your target!

Ha ha funny you should say that... the actual main reason I prefer Pathfinder over Stormwarden is the ability to jump miles and have unlimited Stamina too

kangkeok

typo#6563 said:

Who knows, maybe there's a developer out there who has been reading this and is now thinking, "Gosh, we need to make some changes to Archer soon!"

And they did. They change it into some kind of static point blank archer. I cant believe they did this, I mean peoples in these forum has already pointed the buff range issue with archer for years. Yet they did not fix it but they shift the whole gameplay into point blank archer.

Guess maybe they did it because they assume its what the community wants since the only guide about archery is either point blank or support build. I hope the developer realize that those guide exist because of the buff range issue archer is facing for years now. Do the developer ever wonder that, despite the entire feat of archery tree are design to revolve around range dps, there are no range dps build out there that are viable? Well, no range dps build can be thought out by the player when the problem with archer isn't because of its feat but the buff range issue of other class. If its other game developer, they would have seen this from miles and probably would have solve it within a year. It isn't hard to figure when the whole forum knows about it.

Frankly, the dedication of this game developer towards class balance are questionable. Its been 2years now that this archer buff range issue was brought up. Instead of fixing the real issue, they choose the easiest way around and eliminate the very incentive for archer to play at range. Job nicely done.


*Sorry for venting it here. Was looking for people who knows the issue to talk to.

typo

kangkeok said:

typo#6563 said:

Who knows, maybe there's a developer out there who has been reading this and is now thinking, "Gosh, we need to make some changes to Archer soon!"

And they did. They change it into some kind of static point blank archer. I cant believe they did this, I mean peoples in these forum has already pointed the buff range issue with archer for years. Yet they did not fix it but they shift the whole gameplay into point blank archer.

Guess maybe they did it because they assume its what the community wants since the only guide about archery is either point blank or support build. I hope the developer realize that those guide exist because of the buff range issue archer is facing for years now. Do the developer ever wonder that, despite the entire feat of archery tree are design to revolve around range dps, there are no range dps build out there that are viable? Well, no range dps build can be thought out by the player when the problem with archer isn't because of its feat but the buff range issue of other class. If its other game developer, they would have seen this from miles and probably would have solve it within a year. It isn't hard to figure when the whole forum knows about it.

Frankly, the dedication of this game developer towards class balance are questionable. Its been 2years now that this archer buff range issue was brought up. Instead of fixing the real issue, they choose the easiest way around and eliminate the very incentive for archer to play at range. Job nicely done.


*Sorry for venting it here. Was looking for people who knows the issue to talk to.

@kangkeok No problem at all with the venting. I think Archery in Neverwinter has pretty much been in a weird state since the path was first created. It should still be possible though to fire from a greater range than most classes via Aspect of the Falcon, but perhaps they could beef up AotF to make it more potent than it currently is when at range. Perhaps they will read this too!

kangkeok

typo#6563 said:

kangkeok said:

typo#6563 said:

Who knows, maybe there's a developer out there who has been reading this and is now thinking, "Gosh, we need to make some changes to Archer soon!"

And they did. They change it into some kind of static point blank archer. I cant believe they did this, I mean peoples in these forum has already pointed the buff range issue with archer for years. Yet they did not fix it but they shift the whole gameplay into point blank archer.

Guess maybe they did it because they assume its what the community wants since the only guide about archery is either point blank or support build. I hope the developer realize that those guide exist because of the buff range issue archer is facing for years now. Do the developer ever wonder that, despite the entire feat of archery tree are design to revolve around range dps, there are no range dps build out there that are viable? Well, no range dps build can be thought out by the player when the problem with archer isn't because of its feat but the buff range issue of other class. If its other game developer, they would have seen this from miles and probably would have solve it within a year. It isn't hard to figure when the whole forum knows about it.

Frankly, the dedication of this game developer towards class balance are questionable. Its been 2years now that this archer buff range issue was brought up. Instead of fixing the real issue, they choose the easiest way around and eliminate the very incentive for archer to play at range. Job nicely done.


*Sorry for venting it here. Was looking for people who knows the issue to talk to.

@kangkeok No problem at all with the venting. I think Archery in Neverwinter has pretty much been in a weird state since the path was first created. It should still be possible though to fire from a greater range than most classes via Aspect of the Falcon, but perhaps they could beef up AotF to make it more potent than it currently is when at range. Perhaps they will read this too!

Thanks. But frankly, I don't want them to change anything in archery tree or AotF. Just want them to fix the buff range issue so archer could play at equal ground as other melee class. Only by that way could we know what archery are still lacking or overperform.

patcherrkm

Even if you fix the buff range issue, the archer dps cannot remotely keep up with the combat HR. as long as thats the case then itll be gimp.

typo

Well, if we're fixing archery issues at the core, then in addition to the buff range problem, there is an issue with the rate of fire on a lot of attacks. If cast times were simply shortened for a number of powers, DPS would go up noticeably. For example, Aimed Shot is really not all that bad, but the current rate of fire is too slow for it to be very practical to use. Hawkshot and Commanding Shot are also slow. Even Archery AoEs are super slow. Look at StS, RoA, and CoA. The improvement to bottomless quiver should help a little with rotation, but there is still a problem with archery animations just being the longest by far of all three HR paths. So this is a good example of something being out of balance.

kangkeok

Yes and they can fix all that after they fix the buff range issue. It will give a much better picture how archer is going to perform. It will give the developer a better idea on how much 'the long animation of archery encounter' need to be adjust or the appropriate amount of buff to archery so that it does not over buff it. IMO, we need to get the buff into archery 1st before we are able to accurately make any further adjustment.

patcherrkm

The dev in charge of class balance just quite. So good luck. Lol