Archery viable at all?

brick · January 2017

Hey guys and gals, so far you have been great help with my combat hr!! So thanks for that.

I am a little interested in the archery tree though. But i can't really find any relevant info. Just calls for a buff to the talent tree.

Is it at all viable? Tried playing around with it, it seems it's best encounters are WAY to slow to cast, the long animation times are what is making the tree so weak in group content.

But what are the best encounters for the tree?

Any info is appreciated and helpful, thanks again Rangers!

lievcocijo · January 2017

playing archery now, what you say is true, many of the encounters have a too long casting time, those that do however are more team helpers than actual damaging ones; as for DPS here are some other pointers

Archery relies way less on roots than trapper for obvious reasons, archer is more a support/debuffer than straight out DPS, but there are some perks that can help with the latter; Rain of arrows, Cordon, Ward Longstrider's, Hindering and (on counted occasions) Split the sky are good

There is some perks that focus on distance = damage; on the practical note will say, stay away from these, Stillness of the forest and Aspect of the Hawk seem nice on paper, but you will find yourself isolated and running behind the party or struggling to find the optimal range, often casting thiese powers (aspect of the hawk for example) at about the same time your party steamrolls through a mob; good feats instead are those that increase your ranged damage, your crit, and -of all things- critical severity. Combat Tree has this feat called Skirmisher's Gambit, which will increase your critical sev up to 50% in exchange for 10% crit chance. Since its a tier 3 in the combat tree might seem a bit excesive to invest 15 points there, but have found it more worth it than Stillness or a 5/5 endless quiver, not to mention Bloodletting is a good healer when switching to melee for a couple of seconds (my endless quiver is currently 3/5 i think, BTW)

This takes me to the second point: Archers rely way more on cooldowns and Recovery than Trapper. As a Trapper i found that getting any recovery from gear pieces was near useless, as an Archer now have to rely on things like StormstepAction, EndlessQuiver (personally not so much but others do) and/or using AimShot with UnflinchingAim.

Third, forget the notion youre going to completelly forget about melee stance. Every now and then youll find yourself with space to pop out some PlantGrowth, GushingWound or ThornStrike, not to mention some party buffs. This is where the whole distance=damage concept goes out the window. All the powers that grant these bonuses are no match for HR's ability to pop 6 encounters (including buffs) and if this isnt enough, staying in range for Aspect of the Pack alone does more for you and your team that hanging and catching up while being in the back.

In short Archery not only does DPS (though, probably less than Trapper) but also helps your party in ways the raw numbers cant show, being a buff/debuff (in truth, many of these will help others in your party higher up on the Paingiver chart) but also shines moire in drawn out battles like bosses and in single target, where Prey comes into play more.

Have to also mention that I play my archer in PVP pretty much as I used to play trapper in slotting encounters, dailies and passives (Constricting, Hindering, Disruptive, Aimshot, CrushingRoots) with the difference that its not as much as a node holder, but rather a sniper to support the team. Stay away from the main fights (Marauter's is good for this) pop dead the other team's own supports like warlocks and wizards and proceed to annoy the hell out of tanks, healers and GWFs that your team is trying to take head on with CrushingRoots. Either one of two things happen in this situation, the target gets annoyed enough to come after you (and your team gets the node or at least stops supporting their team) or stays there and gets interrupted so often your team eats him up. Remember, Archery is way more focused on single target, so if you keep discipline you can do wonders in PVP with that premise. It has gotten to a point where i have V key as a toggle for target lock. Of course if youre a 2.8 IL and your target is a 3.5 IL you cant expect miracles, but *have* won pvp battles against higher IL than me by killing TRs/other HR/casters and harrassing tanks/healers while my team complains to me why im running away and not standing on the node... with that 4k GWF chasing me away from the fight.

brick · January 2017

Ok, so as far as powers go should i just run the following?

Aimed shot
Electric shot

Commanding shot
Longstriders
Hawk

Seismic shot
Disruptive shot

Aspect of the pack
Lone Wolf

divectore · February 2017

brick#6890 said:
Ok, so as far as powers go should i just run the following?

Aimed shot

Electric shot

Commanding shot

Longstriders

Hawk

Seismic shot

Disruptive shot

Aspect of the pack

Lone Wolf

For pvp yes, tho i would exchange hawk with another encounter since hawk deals about the same damage as aimed shot, just with sllightly more damage and cast time.
Aspect of the pack have no use in pvp or pve, you won't find yourself that close to allies to activate this class feature, i would recommend you to exchange it for stormstep action.

For pve you want more AoE, rain of arrows it's usefull for multi and single target, cordon can deal millions if there are 5 mobs (i have done 500k each to 5 mobs even though im combat) the third encounter can be either: split the sky, longstrider's shot or hawk shot. For someone wondering, hawk shot have a cilinder-type attack so in a place like the zombies bridge in cn is a perfect power, because it can kill all the mobs in a line plus the melee buff, you can deal a lot of damage with hawk and cordon.
Split the sky have a special effect: when a enemy attack an ally, the cloud will deal an additional lightning. This mean in places like tiamat, where the heads attack constantly all the players and their companions, the cloud will deal from 10 to 40 lightning strikes every time the head attack, and every lighning in my case as a combat hr, deals from 10k damage up to 400k, so 400k x 30 = 12million damage, it's a insane damage, so 12 million damage everytime a head attacks.
But if a single enemy attacks a single ally you won't get that much damage so use it only when enemies attack most of allies multiple times.

kydavi · February 2017

When I ran Archer I generally used:

Aimed Shot, Electric Shot

Longstrider, Binding Arrow / Hawk Shot, Commanding Shot

Disruptive Shot, Forest Ghost

Aspect of the Falcon, Aspect of the Lone Wolf / Stormstep Action

This gave me a good spread of ranged dps along with multiple types of buffs and debuffs in both stances and it effectively changes the Ranger from a striker to a leader (but an effective one). Also, resist the urge to use Split the Sky on trash mobs, they WILL be dead before you get the cast animation over with.

aaramis75 · February 2017

I tested the HR changes pretty well back when they first came out, and played a fair bit with Archery. I haven't touched my HR much since, so take this with a grain of salt as some things have changed (i.e. Plant Growth being bugged), but I found dps was fantastic. Survivability, however, was pretty weak - you need to adopt a "shoot and scoot" mentality and always be on the move. You can't tank anything worth beans.

But if you want to see 100+k crits every 1.5 seconds or so, then Archery is fantastic for that (the highest I saw was about 160ish k).
Aimed Shot + high crit build + Vorpal + Prey + Longstriders was silly good. Throw in a Wheel of the Elements for more goodness, and group buffs, and it gets downright disgusting. If you can swing the points, also go into the Combat tree for Skirmisher's Gambit to further boost this.

Combine Gladiator's Guile mount insignia power (+15% movement speed) with Hasty Retreat and the artifact power for Aimed Shot, and you're a VERY fast mover on the battlefield.

Also consider using a tank companion if solo. It will make a huge difference.

kangkeok · March 2017

Archery is pretty weak at 3k ilvl above. Dont be tricked by the big number. Its not that big without party buff and its very slow. Trapper dot and gushing wound could add up more than the number archer can deliver without party buff. U can play at close range to have full party buff but if thats the case, u might as well play trapper or combat as it isnt efficient for archer to play that close. Archery used to be onpar with trapper before mod 6 when there is soft cap for crit. Now, Archery is obsolete and need rework and the developer need to determine how archery should be played in this new group content before planning the rework. I can say recent archery rework in mod 10 is a fail as it did not address the core issue of archery.

ghoulz66 · March 2017

I think we should keep pressure on the devs in preview about this. Move long shot further down the tree, adjust it, allow it to scale. Make capstone NOT a debuff. That's all they need to do to make it much better. Such a quick fix, there's no excuse to leave this gathering dust for a year.

wizardlvl80 · March 2017

I think that archery is great for buff and debuff while still doing some damage but still falls of to CW MOF or DC'S on buffs.

I would happily play support HR but class isn't made for this I guess. I would like do try something other than trapper but can't afford Vorpal at the moment and sticking to my trans dread.

Altough I think that archery stormwarden can do amazing single-target dps with hybrid build and the crit chance/severity feat from Combat path.

jhpnw · March 2017

Straight up Combat works quite well with trans dread I get more out of dread than vorpal on my combat due to 100% crit full time

Unknown · March 2017

This content has been removed.

jhpnw · March 2017

krazydog#1509 said:
Yeah with combat I'm blasting huge numbers with my transvorpal. @jhpnw seems like most of the bis Rangers are combat now.

Combat is so versatile you have multiple encounter and at will options so depending you can get the most from vorpal one way and dread another.

kangkeok · March 2017

wizardlvl80#5963 said:
I think that archery is great for buff and debuff while still doing some damage but still falls of to CW MOF or DC'S on buffs.

I would happily play support HR but class isn't made for this I guess. I would like do try something other than trapper but can't afford Vorpal at the moment and sticking to my trans dread.

Altough I think that archery stormwarden can do amazing single-target dps with hybrid build and the crit chance/severity feat from Combat path.

Combat and trapper path could do the same buff/debuff while dps too. Its not solely falls on archery. By looking at archery feat, we are meant to be a crit base dps class. But that has become obsolete since the removal of soft cap on crit which makes anyone could be crit base dps. That rob off archer specialty and leaving us very far behind compare to combat & trapper. Archer used to rely on the double damage crit provide to compensate its slow and range encounter only rotation. Now we are self compensating with 25% dmg provided by power stacking. Together with other problem (like group buff etc) archer is facing, we lose our direction as a dps class. Developer need to re-evaluate our direction again.

I think someone proves me wrong somewhere in the forum that skirmisher gambit build increase a fraction of dps and it get worse as ur power increase.

aaramis75 · March 2017

kangkeok said:
Combat and trapper path could do the same buff/debuff while dps too. Its not solely falls on archery.

This is very true. No matter what spec I'm in, I almost always run Longstrider's. Less so in Trapper outside of bosses, but I still run it.
Thorn Ward I tend to run often in Archery / Combat; again, less so in Trapper, but still use it on occasion. Same with Fox's.
So any spec can play the B/D role, really.

The thing is, AoE is the real failing with Archery.
AoE is king in a lot of Neverwinter. Daily quests are full of mobs to AoE; dungeons are full of mobs to AoE; HEs are full of mobs to AoE. Single-target builds only shine a very small fraction of the time. And this has been quite apparent in the latest mod.

I can tackle duos of mobs (i.e. nothic eye + bulette) with 0 difficulty. I can tackle the big heavy hitters with 0 difficulty, perhaps even killing them easier than I could as a Trapper or Combat. I can tackle those irritating teleporting seers/wizards with 0 difficulty too, with just Aimed Shot crits.

But throw a pack of rogues or the other leap-at-you mobs that cling to you like....well, nevermind... and suddenly you have a serious problem. And you can very quickly find yourself with not just 3 or 4 of these stuck to you, but a dozen or so. And Archery simply has no real tools to deal with this. Trapper can root the lot, step back, and watch them die; Combat can pop a melee encounter and then blade flurry the lot in 2-3 hits; but Archery? Archery just runs around trying to buy time to AoE everything and hoping not to die in the process. The Plant Growth fix will help alleviate this somewhat.... PG + Cordon the lot, but still it's tricky, especially when things are on cooldown or you're out of Cordon charges.

The unfortunate part is that the Ranger class evaluation a while ago was on track for some amazing changes, but then the dev in charge left and things just kind of got left the way they were left.....half-finished. And who knows when they'll look at an overhaul again.

kangkeok · March 2017

Yup. Trapper got roots, combat has flurry, Archer longshot need to scale with power and crit. After that, it will leave only one problem, group party buff. Its like the game wanted player to play archery from range else u wont get full tree benefit, and at the same time, they design party buff so everyone needs to be close to the mob. Aura of courage is a good example. U cant yell a tanking paladin, "Hey, i need ur aura of courage. Come to me." and he bring the whole lot of mob to u as well. Annointed army is another buff that is often exclude archer except if archer comes melee range which loses the point of playing archer. Might as well play a melee class. Then there is CW buff and etc. The only fix i can think of without touching the balance of other classes is to give Archery an ability to mimic party buff that is within its firing range. If both of this is fix, archery might see a silver lining.

kleineryoda · April 2017

In my eyes the simplest fix to that issue would be, to have party buffs go to the party - why is there a range at all? If you're in a group with said pala/CW/DC you get his buffs.
Now I see that this could make difficulties in demo/tiamat, but there are few buffs that pass over the group anyway. Most: you have to be in the group AND in range.

You might guess - I play archer since the beginning (3.2k now) and I have exactly the range issue, but I like role-playing the archer, hence it's a green-armored wood elf, a bronzewood and a barkshield enchantment, a boar companion and an owlbear in the potion slot

. I usually stay within 50-60', that get's me our tanks Knights Valor and still gives me sufficient range but I am often trailing behind (little weathervane). My guildmates do value me more for the buff/debuff capabilites than for dmg - I want to say, you will be appreciated in groups - but probably not so much in random pugs (IT WOULD BE GREAT IF OTHERS DID SEE THE BUFFS YOU APPLY TO THEM). My personal main focus lies on having fun, being helpful and playing my role - I don't mind the paingiver chart (although it hurts a bit getting passed by a DC) it's overrated and when frequently topped by GFs then something's wrong with it anyway.

For info I use (Trash/Boss):

Hunter's Teamwork + Weapon Feature
Split Shot / Aimed Shot

Commanding Shot / Fox's Cunning
Cordon of Arrows / Longstriders Shot
Rain of Arrows

Disruptive Shot (people love it: "Why didn't the Ice-Troll explode?", "Because I stopped it!"

)
Slasher's Mark

Aspect of the Falcon
Cruel Recovery + Weapon Feature

My rotation is Cordon - Rain - Cordon - Split Shot, by then trash mob is either dead, or close, which means plant growth , getting away and starting again. Small and almost dead are killed with HT for the small bag

I'll only get like 10% crit off my companion (talking final build, if I ever get there), so the active companion is power stacking, which is when I hope to catch up on damage (because most classes are stacking crit on their active). For Defense I rely on temp HP (stag heart, cruel recovery) and shielding, like the barks, as well as small amounts of healing, havent stacked deflect / life steal although deflect is naturally high.

With the loadouts coming, I'm going to try a blue colored, lightning rooter. Means a trapper buld with lots of grasping roots but according to guildmates testing the lightning weapon enchantment isn't proccing very good on a lot of encounters (thorn ward being the best). And the thundehead might not procc often - because, when does trash mob ever crit? I don't see the point of the combat ranger, because I have a TR twink (not saying it isn't powerful - I just wouldn't have fun playing it).

Have Fun!

kangkeok · April 2017

kleineryoda#3363 said:
In my eyes the simplest fix to that issue would be, to have party buffs go to the party - why is there a range at all?

Because of PVP. They dont want a GF's ITF to buff u across the map. Though they could have make all party buff to behave like KV or terrifying insight did. TI is a good change that really help archer.

alastor · April 2017

Well, I was browsing to see if Indeed playing an Archer was worth (I rolled a HR as my second character because I loved the magic archer that he could be), but from what I read the melee ranger is way better and there is no point in weilding a bow... pretty sad, I hope that new updates will give bow users some love.

eliybeats · April 2017

That's not true. I've seen really good but few archery hrs. They attack high amounts of power in order to compensate. I even try archery every now and then. My personal opinion is archery with combats 50% crit sev feat his the hardest. But either way, your really gonna have to build your Archer out in order to keep up with the rest

kangkeok · April 2017

eliybeats said:
That's not true. I've seen really good but few archery hrs. They attack high amounts of power in order to compensate. I even try archery every now and then. My personal opinion is archery with combats 50% crit sev feat his the hardest. But either way, your really gonna have to build your Archer out in order to keep up with the rest

U wont say that if u really familiar with archery. U will only see archery perform when the party doesnt melt things in seconds or the mob has high enough hp for archery to pull off its rotation. No matter how hard u hit, as long as it doesnt land, u wont be performing with archery even at BIS level. Even then, a well built and played archer performance is still far from a well build and played combat or trapper. In addition, archery has problem with many big buff the party provide, so party composition has a huge impact on archery performance as well.

Btw combat 50% crit sev is a bad built for archery. The dps difference is marginal in exchange of some crucial archery feat. For reference, as Mayday pointed out in https://www.arcgames.com/en/forums/neverwinter#/discussion/1214188/stormwarden-archery-crit-build/p5

eliybeats · May 2017

Those extra feats from archery when it comes to distance and the CD reduction I don't get them. CD reduction is nothing major for me, using two +5 krig rings on companion and +5 riding focus on myself. Also, I have other methods of CD reduction as well as using from party cd reduction from dc/op. I don't even use aspect of the falcon as a feast unless necessary. As archery, I'm always within the mist of the battle getting every buff I can because I believe they're worth more than what our feats gives us. Yes survivability sucks at first but you get used to it. It's actual kind of fun in my opinion. Also, just to prove my point, if you watch Sume's HR video of him soloing etos boss, and you read the comments, you'll see where I asked him if he thought about using the skirmisher's gambit feat in combat and he even said that it does more damage than full archery. Even Mayday said that in the thread your referred so not sure why you referred it. Plan on getting a trans fey as well as for specifically my archery build when I do use it. Here's the video that Sume commented that on btw,

https://youtu.be/hIqh7LlLH6Q I can't embed it on my phone. Not sure if this goes against forum rules.

eliybeats · May 2017

Ah nvm it posts as embedded. Awesome.

eliybeats · May 2017

Your right archery is still pretty far off but Ive seen a couple of highly over built archery users before that made me experiment. Not as much dmg as I am full combat but they were close surprisingly. I think at the point they were playing they took the build as close to as far as it could go which in my opinion is not bad at all. I'll have to find the one in my friends list to see if I can refer him to this thread that I talked with a while ago on this subject after running with him.

dragonsbane3 · May 2017

"ARCHERY VIABLE AT ALL?" Viable,... that is a very loose term to use. What is your definition of it?

Something to take into thought on this game is this.

Are you a casual player that just tinkers around or do you put some time and effort into the game?
What is your goal?
Do you play in a set group of guild mates/ friends or do you plan on doing PuG's?

I am not sure what the current Ilvl numbers equal out to but with the old system if you were not inept and had 3500+ilvl/gs the game was a utter joke with a group that knew how to play.

Anything below FBI dies without effort and face-rolling the keyboard. FBI and MSP have no dmg or time caps you need to hit so just follow mechanics and they are a win. Tiamat runs require zero effort and even in MSVA mechanics can still be ignored with a few decent healers. What I am getting at is with this game there is no current content that requires you to min/max or push builds to be VIABLE as a damage class since they have built it to cater to casual players so all of the content can be seen by everyone.

You may catch some heat from people doing pugs, who cares like their opinions matter. As long as you are running with your guild and are completing the content then over all your dmg numbers are irrelevant.

If you want to compare all the builds then you have to compare apples to apples. Companions/ BiS gear/ Boons/ Rotations etc etc etc. I have never played any of the archer builds myself. I have played Trapper, SW Combat and PF Combat. Trash packs in all dungeons die in 1/4 of a rotation so it's a matter of who gets to them first.

I built my HR way different than the mainstream has. I play a lot with eliybeats and he can attest to it

pick a build that you enjoy playing. Learn it inside and out so you don't have to think about what you are doing, it all just becomes muscle movements and you will be surprised at what you end up doing.

stefoid · May 2017

Cant wait for the multiple loadout slots for PS4 so I can experiment with my HR70

Currently I have a combat tree specialist, which means archery is virtually useless, or so I thought. Which is a little annoying because a ranger has a bow, thats the whole deal right? If you want straight up melee there are other classes and if you want to AoE and control there are other classes. The defining characteristic of a ranger should be that he can shoot things up on occasion, and smash things up on other occasions. I will definitely loadout a pure archery build when available for PS4, but that hybrid playstyle...will it work?

The way I see it is that the combat ranger -currently - is the 'trashman' Nobody takes out a group of adds like a combat ranger. Most of the feats in combat tree are geared to thrashing mobs in a small AoE with 1000 cuts, and much of your damage and defence (thru deflection) scales with the number of mobs - Scything blades, battle crazed and Blade hurricane synergise very well with Clear the Ground. Against single target DPS the combat ranger is going to struggle - that when you have to shift dance around and wear the sucker down without being one-shotted. Which you can do, and it requires skill and is not boring. But you arent going to out DPS a single target in group content - better to get your DPS by clearing the adds and letting the GWF and TR take down the big guy.

But when I got my artifact set, I randomly got the '40% speed increase for aimed shot' which is kind of like a mini-longstriders, just for you, but at-will. So I played around with it and I thought, if I could get some more damage out of this, it could open up a lot of options for the 'trashman' and bring out the latent ranger in him. Still formidable at taking out the trash, but also a stick and move ranged option.

So to more experienced players than I, how viable would this be?

Get rid of Wild medicine, lucky blades and scything blades from the combat tree. Yes, I know, sychting blades is like 10% damage against a single target and an extra 5% for each add surrounding him. It really stacks up in a crowd. Buuut, if we take twin blade storm it kind of makes up for the loss of group punch that defines the trashman. At 3+ mobs he gets some of it back.

Having lost something, we gain Longshot in the archery tree. The theory is that now that a critical aimed shot actually packs a punch, particularly if you are running skirmishers gambit from the combat tree. Any kind of critical +100% plus another 100% piercing damage? OK! Then you can run around for a few seconds at +40% movement speed while your stamina regenerates for melee. Bonus points if you can get interrupting shot to critical for +100% +500% piercing.....

Thoughts?

ghoulz66 · May 2017

Really wish trans lightning proc'd on more HR powers. It's so much fun to use on a SW archer.

stefoid · May 2017

ALSO when I played DDO all those years back I played a ranger and there was a feat you got pretty early on that played really nicely which was 'running shot'. i.e. shooting on the run like this guy:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BEG-ly9tQGk

(really nice if you are drinking a cup of coffee and two mannequin surprise you)

So devs, how about some ability to shoot on the move. Keep an aimed shot and other heavy DP encounters as stationary shots, but give us rapid shot on the run maybe, and also maybe make rapid shot more rapid with a later feat or 3rd and 4th rank of rapid?

stefoid · May 2017

Lastly, while I am having a whinge there are two lost opportunities I think with combat

1) - there is not a lot of interesting terrain in fights - all mobs seem to congregate in flat areas and bosses live in sports arenas
and concert halls for the most part. If there was blocking and semi blocking low terrain that you could shoot over and rough terrain that was hard to move through? It would make things a lot more interesting than the current 'dogpile the boss in the middle of the sports arena' style that we have now.

2) related to terrain - nobody can JUMP over a jam tin except the GWF. Being able to climb and jump high and/or long would literally open a whole new dimension to fights. I found it really hard to kill the prison guard in WoD until I found a ledge 'exploit' on youtube where you stand on a ledge and range him to death without getting a scratch. that would be an interesting type of tactic to explore in general on unbroken ground with running and jumping and blocking mobs IF the mobs could also negotiate the terrain which I guess is the hard part?

I think the devs have the progression addiction down to a fine art but Id like to see some new content that is different in nature to the old content - not just the same thing re-served on a different plate.

stefoid · June 2017

Longshot: This is nowhere near as good as I thought it would be. I misunderstood 'weapon damage' - it literally means only the 1300 or so from the longbow itself, which accounts for only an extra 20-25% of an aimed shot, for instance. Which means Interrupting shot is still just a tickle even when it crits, as it hardly has any non-weapon damage component.

Ill play around with this 'hybrid' using AotS to see if it makes my squishy HR more survivable soloing big mofos, but Im a bit disapointed. If you want to experiment with it, Id drop battle-crazed rather than scything blades as battlecrazed takes a few seconds to stack (is it 1 sec per stack?) and then take advantage of - something you might not be able to do if you cant stand next to an opponent for long periods. Whereas scything blades is always there for you with at least 10%

stefoid · June 2017

yeah, nah. Dropping a bunch of high tier combat skills to pickup longshot is nowhere near worth it.

FWIW, here is my take on archery and the ranger.

1) feat trees are too exponential - they restrict choice rather than encourage it....giving up high tier feats to take on lower tier feats is not worth it, so once you commit to a tree there is no viable choice except to take all the skills in that tree.

2) archery is too static. there are two main probs with archery
a)pulling unwanted agro and
b) getting smacked while casting ranged powers because you are standing still.

both of these could be solved by increasing the shot speed - hitting more often means you arent rooted to the spot so much, and you can maintain DPS without a huge hit drawing agro...which by the way surely there is some distance component to agro? the guy in your face should be drawing more agro proportionally than some guy 50 feet away. And I think there should be something that lets you shoot on the run.

like heres an idea for rapid shot - you can shoot it on the run, and the extra power points increase the movement cap while drawing, like 25/50/75/100% of your movement speed while casting it.

And aimed shot should be like aimed strike - should be able to control the drawback for damage vs speed, mainly for the reason that you can abandon a full draw if someone is getting in your face. The maximum draw could still be a mighty hit, but make spamming aimed shot at minimum draw do 2/3rds of that in terms of DPS

this is unrelated, but controlling the target reticule on the PS4 is hard for things like aimed strike and split strike - its very easy for the reticule to flick up too high and when you want to do a power, it refuses to work. I mean, if I am spamming the button to do something, chances are I want that something to happen, particularly in melee range. If there are no mobs in range, then sure, but if there are mobs in range, how about it just choose the closest one as the target, rather than 'nope sorry, your reticule is slightly off'.

ghoulz66 · June 2017

Need some investment in survivability before you roll archery. A lot of fighting is right up in their face along with the agro of hitting mobs that are all so far apart from each other.

Been enjoying it though. Feels nice that they fixed split the sky, it's surprisingly damn good, especially going down into combat and getting gambit and the 5% buff for throw caution.

Archery viable at all?

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