archers in need of major buffing

osamuria

lately with the primal updates archers have been indirectly nerfed into the ground. while all the other classes been receiving new and useful skills. we are stuck the old skills cause our new ones are even weaker then the old. our skills and auto attack do next to nothing anymore compare to all the other classes who been getting pretty decent upgrades for some of theirs. Also our casting and channeling time is extremely slow and not even worth using outside of stuns and Quick shot to try to take advantage of the 20% dmg increase passive from primal from already weak skills.once again compared to the other classes. now don't even get me started on our self buffs. 15 mins for one aoe buff and self buff is a joke to be honest, but it doesn't matter cause our buffs and defensive skills don't do anything anymore but eat chi when our shield only withstands only one hit from anything stronger than probably tt99 gear and when some classes have stuns that go through anti stuns without a fix. plus the evasion buff is ridiculously weak when everything can hit you still regardless of how much evasion you have.

Also, our r9rr wep is probably the weakest there is now when so many classes have strong self buffs already or have some that cant be purged and even the ones that we can purged can be reapplied instantly by yourself or by using Spirit of Defense which is so easily farmed now.

Before anyone says anything this is from someone who is a endgame archer (kinda) comparing himself and talking to other archers who are much stronger than me who are comparing to and fighting against other classes who are just as strong gear wise. I'm sure i've probably missed out on something that may help us and some that may hurt us but i think this is pretty much it without being super detailed and having a super long post no one will want to read.

discuss nicely please

ps. here's a link to a discussion my archer brethren have been discussing on how to make us useful again.
http://www.arcgames.com/en/forums/pwi/#/discussion/770044/discussion-on-making-archers-useful-again

Mod Note: Removed the tinyurl link because that's just stupid when you're linking withing the same website/forum. Not to mention that tinyurl is commonly used for malware.​​

bhaven

I will try to concisely define the problems as clearly as possible so that all those who do not understand or may never have experienced the problems can do so.

The problems:

1) The Purge
I won't lie by saying purge doesn't have its uses, but it's usefulness has been nerfed. There is now a quite satisfactory cocktail of buffs that are not purgable, most significantly primal passives which have possibly made the biggest difference in making purge less beneficial. Some others that should be purgable include; tidal/focused mind, soul of silence, ig/ad/sutra/pan gu. These are all status effects. Purge does not constitute as damage. It's the removal of beneficial status effects. Therefore if I am auto attacking someone who is expelled for example and my purge procs, it should still remove the phys immune. Does it do this? No.
Let's talk about the proc rate. Pwi has never actually defined what it is but every archer knows that it's lower than the rate of God of frenzy and purify. Let's say just for the sake of argument that it is the same as both of the other procs. Even then in reality it would still proc less because of the fact that it does not proc on status inflicting skills including frost splash despite the skill description saying it can. Does Gof proc depending on what skill you use? No. Does purify? No.
Another point I would like to raise about purge is the time after which it procs it is useful. The rewards of God of Frenzy and purify spell are instantaneous. This is not the case with purge. In fact the damage you deal on the shot you purge with does not even take the purge into account. Not only this but after the proc is fired, there is a counter measure known as spirit of defense (or for that matter, any apoth). There is no such thing for GOF because when it procs, your apoth is either already on, or you take the full force of the double damage. The only counter argument to this point would be that of mages purify proc being countered by paralyse. This is the only instance I see the archer purge proc as on par with another type of weapon effect.
Finally, when purging an already purged target, for example in the case of consecutive procs, there is absolute zero benefit. Comparing this to God of frenzy ... Well I think it speaks for itself and in the case of mages, consecutive procs simply purifies whatever debuffs may have been applied such as damage amps and resistance alterers as well as renewing the duration of the anti stun and the movement speed buff.

Solution: alternative to just "give us God of frenzy" I would like to see the mechanics of purge changed. Buffs that aren't purged should be purgable. Purge should proc on any skill, be unrelated to the type of damage dealt and damage should be calculated after purge on the same attack the weapon procs.


2) The Buffs
Generally well accepted as to how useless these are. Blazing arrow does tick magic charms (or so I believe) as well as physical when dealing phys damage but the actual buff to damage is quite negligible. It would be nice if the general lack of damage of our class was made up in fire damage. In order to avoid qq from the masses of undergeared mages who I'm sure this comment will outrage, we can omit this "damage increase" argument. Blazing arrow is not even rewritable and I don't know of many other buffs that arent except for base crit % buff (also stupid that this doesn't get overwritten).
Wings of protection evasion and movement speed buffs are also negligible. While movement speed is nice the mechanics of evasion in the game are not really representative and have no effect against magic damage (except against other archers apparently).
Compared to focused mind/tidal style of evasion that sins have, WoP is laughable.
Furthermore, 5 seconds to buff ourselves with something generically described as useless is far longer than most beneficial class buffs such as cleric, barb, seeker, bm, mystic, wizard.. You get the picture.
Solution: change the mechanics of evasion by changing the buff to a lower % chance of tidal+focus mind that lasts 15 mins and forget about the movement speed. Also change blazing arrow to crit damage buff (wolf emblem).

3) The skills
Skill for skill archer gets wrecked. Consider the 6 newest classes. All have much faster channelling and cast times in general with the exception of seekers in some cases. In all cases, comparing damage over skill time archers are clear losers when all things are equal such as gear and card sets. Mystics, dusk blades and assassins have next to instant casting. Almost all primal skills are more useful than the requisite skills and 4 out of these 6 have a "tick skill" which is absolutely worth using and some are even bread and butter of these classes. Chi management is generally not a massive issue but the chi generation of some of these classes is unrivalled. I get a lot of people saying "yeah but archers have awaken that's insta 4 sparks" conveniently forgetting that it has a 5 minute cool down. Think about when gaining 400 chi is useful.. Only in situations when you are completely out of chi - otherwise you are not gaining the maximum effect of something that takes 5 minutes to use again. Quite frankly I think every archer would rather have skills like reflection of the moon, inner harmony, rising dragon strike with lower cool downs and less chi.
There's no spike damage to be gained and even at close range it's usually better to auto attack.
Sage frost arrow should deal full damage at close range... As should all skills really..
3.2)The CC
I'll keep this simple. % chance on stunning arrow and aim low is a bit of a joke considering what other classes get and the chi cost of aim low. Whisper shot also costs a spark but psychics, Wizards and seekers can silence people relatively cheaply.

4) The Armour
With the exception of psychics who get an unpurgable self buff which is so useful people have begun to roll and gear a psy just for tw buffing all mages have a form or buff that gives them protection from physical damage often putting their resistances higher than that of archers at end game.
Some kind of gear rebalance is required.

That's all I have for now. I'll update and add based on what others say.

kittythecat2013

From personal experience fighting archers, I'd say all said here is about 1vs1. So yeah, some of it could be done but. It would have to be in a way that doesn't give too much advantage for crowd fights. I mean, strategy on those situations is huge and archers have their role as snipers.
Every time an archer attacks me, it is when I am busy with someone else.
That is too OP, tab+macro, tab+macro.

osamuria

this is crowd fighting too, this all translates into tw,nw, and mass pvp aswell. but if an archer is using macro's on you then there's a major problem to be fair. x.x they are fine in pve but in pvp you are setting yourself up set up to die in pvp depending on your class ofc since i haven't play all of them to a decent level. but getting back on topic all i find myself useful for in tw and other forms of mass pvp is boa for mass purges (which is still really good when i finally decides to purge) when its appropriate and arrows inferno cause it has a decent aoe debuff. Other than that i find that im only providing support for the other much stronger classes which isn't good when we're suppose to be a dmg dealing class too, not support.