Skills - Archer - Buffs can't be properly refreshed

Asterelle - Sanctuary_1381265973

A few months ago the cleric magic defense buff "Magic Shell" was fixed twice so that:
1) It can be refreshed by casting the skill again
2) It can stack properly with temporary effects like Dew of Star Protection

A couple of archer buffs have this exact same issue:

1) Blazing arrow cannot be refreshed.
This is true for both level 1-10 and sage / demon variants. If you recast the buff while the buff is still up you end up losing your MP and it is possible for the buff to disappear a few seconds later.
This can be confusing for new players since people expect casting a self-buff to extend the duration of that buff but it can have no effect at all.

Proposed Fix: Blazing arrow should be changed so that its duration can be refreshed when recasted.

2) Both the speed increase and the evasion increase from the archer squad buff "Wings of Protection" are often overridden with temporary effects
This is a 30 minute squad buff that gets overwritten by a temporary effect which lasts a few seconds. The most frequent culprit is the genie skill Holy Path which removes the speed buff from Wings of Protection.

The evasion buff is also often overridden by short term effects such as the BM skill "Will of Bodhivista" or the archer skill "Blessing of the Condor". While casting these skills is supposed to increase evasion, they actually decrease your evasion to lower than it was before. This is counter intuitive for new and old players.

Other class squad buffs almost never have this problem:
- The temporary HP buff from the genie skill "Tree of Protection" stacks with the long-term HP buff from a barb's Beast King's Inspiration
- The temporary Pdef buff from apothecary stacks with the long-term pdef squad buffs of BM's "Bell of the Golden Aura"
- Temporary defense buffs can never remove cleric's "Vanguard Spirit" or "Magic Shell"
- Mystic verdant shell can't be removed by any temporary pdef / mres buff

These are the only exceptions I am aware of but they just don't happen very often:
- The genie skill "Alpha Male" and a veno's self-buff "Bramble Hood" overrides the veno single target buff "Bramble Guard"
- The assassin level 79 skill "Condensed Thorn" overrides the wizard single target buff "Frostblade"
- The assassin level 100 skill "Blood Frenzy" overrides their own class-limited buff "Blood Paint"
- Regenerative Apothecary items override Cleric HP/MP regeneration buff from "Exalted Renewal"

By all means those exceptions should be fixed too but the problems with the archer buff are much more frequent.

A temporary buff that lasts a few seconds should never override a longer-term squad buff.

Proposed Fix: The speed buff and evasion buff of the level 1-10 and sage / demon variants of the archer buff "Wings of Protection" should be given unique icons that can't be overridden by short-term effects.

I'd go so far as to say they should be combined into a single icon but the duration of each effect is different (though they are both long-term).

Mayfly - Dreamweaver

The short term Bramble Hood veno self-buff also overrides Bramble Guard.

Asterelle - Sanctuary_1381265973

Mayfly - Dreamweaver wrote: »

The short term Bramble Hood veno self-buff also overrides Bramble Guard.

Added but I don't want this to be a comprehensive list of exceptions as a comprehensive list of non-exceptions would be ridiculously longer and distract from the issue.

It's not quite as big an issue when a class's self buff overrides their own squad buff since they can rebuff themselves. It's more of an issue when a class's temporary self buff remove squad buffs of other classes since they can't regain that buff.

A large reason why Archer buffs are regarded as ineffective is because of how frequently they get discarded by temporary effects and other squad buffs don't have that reputation.

There are dozens of speed skills across the classes that last only a few seconds including the very common genie skill Holy Path. All of them remove the long term speed squad buff from archer. There is also a smattering of evasion buffs across the classes such as BM Will of Bodhivista and Assasin Demon Maze Steps that remove the archer evasion buff.

Annalyse - Heavens Tear

Definitely would love to see these things fixed.

Really irks me when Blazing Arrow runs out just after I start killing a boss. >.>

Bhavyy - Raging Tide

The problem you mentioned about the single icon solution is that both buffs last different times. This could easily be solved by making it so both buffs last the same amount of time. I don't really see the point of them having different duration times in the first place. What made the creators of the buff think that it was necessary to have half of the buff last for less than the rest of it? What impact does this have other than having to rebuff more frequently anyway?

So I think I'm more in favour of the new icon solution than the making the buffs stackable with others like what was done to the dew stars magic buff and demon bell/ base buff.

I know this is a separate issue but ideally the whole evasion mechanism in the game needs a revamp. I'm not really sure how useful making the buffs unoverwriteable is going to be when it's so limited as a buff already anyway. The only useful part I can think of is the fact that the movement buff will be stackable with other movement buffs and won't be removed when holy path or a charger orb or some other speed apoth is used which makes it nice for flag carriers and pvp in general I guess.

Blazing arrow definitely needs to be fixed as well I agree.

All in all a good motion, it's about time this stuff got fixed.

Heartz - Dreamweaver

Agree, both are pretty annoying ;x

Especially blazing arrow, as I tend to rebuff it right before first spark on bosses for more dmg.. But then when the temporary buff goes off, so does the blazing arrow itself sometimes, it's so annoying..

_dblazen_ - Dreamweaver

Problem is how would they fix the blood frenzy and bramblehood one?

If bramblehood doesnt override bramble, it means you'll have 275% reflect (375% when the veno has blazing barrier up as well), as if 200% isn't more than enough already?

If bloodpaint wouldn't be overwritten by bloodfrenzy seems kind of a less deal (either 20% or 22~23%, it wouldn't make much of a difference since the hp recovery is too damn high either way), though I guess you could consider it to be a last act of desperation where bloodsuck intensifies by a lot and then wears off and you need to repaint, it is a skill you'd use in a desperate situation after all, but that's my logic on that.

Asterelle - Sanctuary_1381265973

_dblazen_ - Dreamweaver wrote: »

Problem is how would they fix the blood frenzy and bramblehood one?

If bramblehood doesnt override bramble, it means you'll have 275% reflect (375% when the veno has blazing barrier up as well), as if 200% isn't more than enough already?

Again self buffs can be recasted but the problems with archer buffs are found in more cases and happen more frequently (especially holy path overbuffing the speed squad buff).

I don't think we need to slippery slope this by saying "if you fix these archer skills then you have to fix every obscure example I can think of".

The cleric buff was fixed because it was a common problem and the archer buff problems are just as prevalent.
Bump

genotypist

I'll pass this to the devs, thanks.

skaitavia

Demon Bloodpaint overwrites the archer's evasion buff as well. :I It sucks. Because as a high dex class, the evasion buff helps a lot, and my own buff overwrites it for 15 seconds q.q