Discussion on making archers useful again

AsMyliuTave - Sanctuary

Gonna state this first before anything else; this is not a thread for some person from another class to QQ about archers being OP because they're running around in g16 and losing to an r9rr archer. Shoo.

This is a thread to discuss possible small changes that could be made to make archers relevant again. Not OP, just a little more balanced.
I have a couple of ideas. I'm not necessarily saying they should ALL be implemented, but a couple of them would go a huge way to giving us that little boost we need to actually keep on playing the class instead of rolling something else.

Winged Shell:
The simple thing would be to just make it more like the cleric skill Plume Shell. Right now it's basically useless. Could even make the chi cost higher (50?) and the damage reduction a bit lower (say 50% instead of 80%) and make it work for both phys and mag damage received. Of course the mana use would have to change too, cos we just don't have that much!

Spirit Blackhole:
Raise the proc rate a few %. Not stupidly high, just a few % more.
OR
Make it work with all skills. That'd help a little too.

Increased Rage Damage:
A new passive, increasing crit damage. Maybe 1% per level.

Knockback Arrow/Wingspan:
Make the knockback work in PvP

Melee range damage nerf:
Ditch it. There's really no reason to have it anyway. I would even be happy if it was still in place for auto-attacks, but no longer effective for skills.

That's just a couple of ideas from me. Feel free to add your own, and feel free to critique mine. I've tried to make them small improvements, nothing game-changing. If you feel it would in-fact be too big a change then feel free to say so, but I'd hope you'd have a counter-idea to go with it.

Other classes are also welcome, so long as your post isn't along the lines of "QQ archers are OP, GTFO don't need anything!"
I don't want archers to become OP, I just want a little re-balancing.

freygin

Agree to most of the ideas, especially the PvP knockback, but it's either knockback or remove Melee range damage nerf, both will make archers a bit on the OP side, or proc the knockback to like 50%.

Spirit blackhole should work for all skills since other classes' unique stats on their weapons don't have limitations on which skills to proc, but not increased in proc rate. With all skills it'd be the same as increasing the proc a little bit without changing the original proc rate.

Cleric's Plume Shell depletes MP if not mp charmed, so it might be annoying even if it's scaled to archers' mp pool.

I also want to add archers need -channeling too so either put -channeling on dex based equipments or give archers -channeling skill like seekers.

Somebody should make a thread like this for cleric ! b:victory

Asterelle - Sanctuary

Damage:
I'd like to talk about archer damage. A lot of problems have arisen recently with this:

1) Inkdragon blood lowers damage from crits and archer damage is lowered the most since they have high crit with no ability to increase their rage damage to counter it. This is an overall nerf of around 10%.

2) Primal defense passives have increased base defense making purges only half as effective as they used to be. "Unbuffed" players still have 20-30k def/mres. This is an overall nerf of around 40%.

3) Spirit of defense pots make countering purge laughably easy. Now that people have figured out how to solo Puppeteer and Mask it's pretty easy to farm about 1000 of these pots in a day during 2x. Why do these pots even exist? Giving everyone the ability to regain buffs after purge lowers archer damage after purge by 40%.

4) Archer normal attacks receive no benefit from the 20% primal damage passive. Archers relied on normal attacks because their R9 gear has -int on it and their damage skills typically have low damage adds. The average archer skill base damage is only 10% higher than a normal arrow while taking over twice as long to channel. This is an overall nerf of around 20%.

5) Stormbringer is giving everyone a squad buff to lower normal arrow damage. Archer is the only class affected by this buff since melee classes no longer use normal attacks. This archer damage nerf is about 25% I think?

6) Duskblade is giving everyone a squad buff that lowers crit damage. Archers are most affected by this since nearly every attack is going to be affected and archers are not able to counter it by increasing rage damage. This will lower archer damage by around 25% overall.

Multiply those all together and you can see why archer damage is in the sorry state it is in today.

Archer used to be a "spike damage" class where you could get lucky with a string of crits but these days nearly every attack is a "crit" but those crits don't count for much anymore. There is no spike. Demons had some spike with quickshot attack speed buff but that relied on normal arrow damage. These days when people talk about spike damage they are talking about seekers using the spammable quid pro quo combo, or sins using wolf emblem + deep chill + elimination, or 50k hp barbs getting a zerk crit mire arma, etc. No one associates archers with the phrase "spike damage".

Possible solution:
This all shows it's time to switch over to GoF bows. Archer is the only class in the game without GoF or Purify spell. GoF would help address archer's ability to spike. It would increase overall damage by 20% but would increase the spike dph potential by 100%. This is warranted once you look at the effect of the above 6 recent damage nerfs.

To be honest I'm not convinced that GoF is enough to address the damage problem though and it introduces a new problem with the HP cost since archer is maybe the only class without any ability to self-heal. I'd like to see the old-fashion diminishing return damage bonuses like blazing arrow and the crit buffs switched over to modern damage bonuses like rage damage and attack level.

Close range damage deadzone:
This is an idea they had in 2008 back when archers were considered a mobile class. These days everyone has much more mobility teleports or purify proc which make it stupidly easy to abuse the dead zone. Then you have a 2015 class like stormbringer which has much more mobility, 45-meter range, and instead of having a deadzone they have a passive melee damage reduction.

Deadzone is one of the reasons archer is one of the worst 1v1 classes. It made sense in 2008 but not in 2015.

I'd like to talk about my ideas concerning updating most rarely-used archer skills like galvanic, stormrage, knockback arrow, and whisper shot but this post is already longer than I'm comfortable with.

xoinix

Asterelle - Sanctuary wrote: »

-snip-
I'd like to talk about my ideas concerning updating most rarely-used archer skills like galvanic, stormrage, knockback arrow, and whisper shot but this post is already longer than I'm comfortable with.

I'd like to see a post on that. I enjoy reading stuff like that b:victory

drcalgori87

archers are reliable, if and only if they are r9'd out. just like all classes if you arenot r9'd and maxed sharded/refined then your considered a fail. pwi has made it this way for a reason....****** greed.

Eoria - Harshlands

Skills should proc purge. Dead zone done away with as it's way too easy for any other class at this point to just sit on an archer's face and be like "lololol you do no damage!". Potentially, give them an aps-like skill like sins have (which I know is part of the thing with Frost Splash, but that's ****). Change stun to 100% instead of 90% if it hits. I kind of agree with knockback arrow being able to knockback, but possibly only if within a certain range of the archer (say...whisper shot range?).

rapazmacho

Archer And Worst class to Perfect World today !
Skills with absurd waiting time , very long casting , few skills to immobilize , ugly skills , few skills.

Sorry if there's something wrong in the text that I wrote is that I do not speak English.

TitsMcGee_ - Sanctuary

The problem with improving an archer's killing power is that archers will still be stupidly easy to kill, generally speaking. Archers these days are only really decent for 2 things:
1. killing noobs/complete idiots
2. killing each other
Without giving them some mode of defense, any aid to them is also hurtful to them.

Archers need more than just offensive boosts, they need a freaking overhaul. They are in a pretty uniquely disadvantaged situation in the game, being the only class that doesn't actually have a real strength. Just about any equal geared player of any other class can actually outdamage an archer- ESPECIALLY with the incredibly obsolete 5 meter damage nerf. Archers are in the ironic position of being a DD class will relatively crappy DD power. It'd be funny if it wasn't so sad.

I don't think we could ever have a change implemented to rectify these issues and restore some sort of balance. This is another great irony, considering how quick the devs were to restore sins to a position of complete domination when the class went on a brief intermission from that dominant position. Maybe China's gear levels and different variation of R9 mean they don't have these issues with their archers. When legit R9 was the highest gear possibility, archers had it pretty good here too. It was when our own r999 became obtainable that things got really stupid for archers.

The combination of class limits and weakness is the reason I don't even have the desire to log onto my archer anymore. I would rather play my charmless, 1 shot veno because at least she can always kamikaze purge/debuff- which feels better than playing a DD class that can't kill. She's even managed to kill some R9s with use of -100% mdef/pdef debuffs. An archer in the same position could never even hope to do this, and a veno isn't even supposed to be better at this than an archer. So at this point, that means my veno has relatively far higher potential and is a better choice for any future investment, despite the fact that I have played and geared my archer religiously for about 80% of the time that I've even played this game.

freygin

Archers really are wik for 1v1, but still in a mass PvP archers are annoying, it's like being sniped from nowhere. Even when also playing an archer.

iperen

Asterelle - Sanctuary wrote: »

Possible solution:
This all shows it's time to switch over to GoF bows. Archer is the only class in the game without GoF or Purify spell. GoF would help address archer's ability to spike. It would increase overall damage by 20% but would increase the spike dph potential by 100%. This is warranted once you look at the effect of the above 6 recent damage nerfs.

To be honest I'm not convinced that GoF is enough to address the damage problem though and it introduces a new problem with the HP cost since archer is maybe the only class without any ability to self-heal. I'd like to see the old-fashion diminishing return damage bonuses like blazing arrow and the crit buffs switched over to modern damage bonuses like rage damage and attack level.

I'm always curious about this "possible fix". As a caster, I'd sign up immediately to give you GoF in the place of purge. It might be nice for 1vs1 and pve I suppose, but in TW ... purge on a r9 weapon is on a whole other lvl then venos or r8r. Overall, I think archers are not as bad as they make themselves look these days. Purge is the most OP proc in it's effect by far even if the rate is low. Your range also gives it more potential. Range is a huge factor in mass PvP. You do have some good skills that aren't used enough mainly out of principle that archers shouldn't use skills.

Well, I can understand that archers are collatoral damage in aps/sin nerf updates, that requires to review your auto-attacks (also seen your r9 sets), skill channel+cast times and purge on skills. I can see that the half damage zone is outdated. I can understand that never have gotten rage damage makes sin-nerfs horrible for your class. Seeing a caster getting longer range is ofc ****. But complaining about purge and asking for GoF is something I really don't understand. Could anyone explain me how this would make an archer more viable ?

The main fix I think archers should get is some sort of passive increasing the power of auto-attacks, something like 1.5x the damage + rage damage increase on all normal fired arrows/bolts/peas, to make up for the massive auto-attack nerfs that never should have affected your class.

Evryn - Morai

AsMyliuTave - Sanctuary wrote: »

Melee range damage nerf:
Ditch it. There's really no reason to have it anyway. I would even be happy if it was still in place for auto-attacks, but no longer effective for skills.

Better yet, add it to ALL non-melee toons using ranged skills. Wizzies, Psys, Clers, Mysts, Stormies... Veno is debatable since fox form makes them melee capable. Kinda the odd one out. But it's odd to have a close range nerf on archers while casters get none.

XXHotXx - Morai

i used to play endgame archer a lot

was really enjoying it until all the storm of nerfs came trough starting with the NH patch that imo half-destroyed this game

All the primal passive skills are the cancer of this game.

i have to agree with the fact that archers are probably the worst class in 1on1 and might even be one of the worst in mass pvp and i have to agree archer's damage is laughable even on 3spark purged that is relegating the archer class to a purge-poke-support class

imo archers always have been The ranged DPS class, this means they need to land damage trough autoattacks, half archer skillset is built around autoattacks,

the way autoattacks are currently nerfed is indeed too much

imo archers need a boost to their auto-attack damage, i think duskblade has a skill that if procs make autoattacks land double damage,

that's what archers need, a "sa-qs proc" that will boost APS and AA damage

OR

remove primal passive skills from the game.

else they are just unrelevant pvp-wise

freygin

About archer's damage, is it true that the further archer attacks the higher the proc to spike the damage ? Or it's melee (halfed) and ranged (full damage regardless how far the attacking archer from target).

Never did any test about that but I've met quite a few archers distancing himself to max range and they said it's for getting possible max damage as often as possible.

rapazmacho

Archer needs an upgrade immediately ! b:angry

rapazmacho

Archer need to push players , best jumps , more damage , dodge to negative effects , faster movement and attack, has some archer skills should be reduced , new buffs .

ZetsumieX - Raging Tide

Asterelle - Sanctuary wrote: »

Damage:

1) Inkdragon blood lowers damage from crits and archer damage is lowered the most since they have high crit with no ability to increase their rage damage to counter it. This is an overall nerf of around 10%.

As it was discussed before, classes were not designed first to have that much crit % before so something needed to be done to sins and archer with maxed crit rate.

2) Primal defense passives have increased base defense making purges only half as effective as they used to be. "Unbuffed" players still have 20-30k def/mres. This is an overall nerf of around 40%.

people still die fast as purged

3) Spirit of defense pots make countering purge laughably easy. Now that people have figured out how to solo Puppeteer and Mask it's pretty easy to farm about 1000 of these pots in a day during 2x. Why do these pots even exist? Giving everyone the ability to regain buffs after purge lowers archer damage after purge by 40%.

True, but they still share CD with apo

4) Archer normal attacks receive no benefit from the 20% primal damage passive. Archers relied on normal attacks because their R9 gear has -int on it and their damage skills typically have low damage adds. The average archer skill base damage is only 10% higher than a normal arrow while taking over twice as long to channel. This is an overall nerf of around 20%.

this sounds as much as sins QQing cuz aps got nerfed ijs

5) Stormbringer is giving everyone a squad buff to lower normal arrow damage. Archer is the only class affected by this buff since melee classes no longer use normal attacks. This archer damage nerf is about 25% I think?

read point 4

6) Duskblade is giving everyone a squad buff that lowers crit damage. Archers are most affected by this since nearly every attack is going to be affected and archers are not able to counter it by increasing rage damage. This will lower archer damage by around 25% overall.

Multiply those all together and you can see why archer damage is in the sorry state it is in today.

Archer used to be a "spike damage" class where you could get lucky with a string of crits but these days nearly every attack is a "crit" but those crits don't count for much anymore. There is no spike. Demons had some spike with quickshot attack speed buff but that relied on normal arrow damage. These days when people talk about spike damage they are talking about seekers using the spammable quid pro quo combo, or sins using wolf emblem + deep chill + elimination, or 50k hp barbs getting a zerk crit mire arma, etc. No one associates archers with the phrase "spike damage".

read point 1

Possible solution:
This all shows it's time to switch over to GoF bows. Archer is the only class in the game without GoF or Purify spell. GoF would help address archer's ability to spike. It would increase overall damage by 20% but would increase the spike dph potential by 100%. This is warranted once you look at the effect of the above 6 recent damage nerfs.

To be honest I'm not convinced that GoF is enough to address the damage problem though and it introduces a new problem with the HP cost since archer is maybe the only class without any ability to self-heal. I'd like to see the old-fashion diminishing return damage bonuses like blazing arrow and the crit buffs switched over to modern damage bonuses like rage damage and attack level.

there is a reason ranged classes never got, and hopefully will never get GoF. The melees need GoF to decently spike damage - especially barb and bm - while they run after ranges and i'd say a ranged attacks usually 2 times more than a ranged if they are not stunned. Ranged 4x dmg would be abit too much if u ask me.


Look at this guys damage and QQ after about it being low on archer (there are enough endgames getting 10k+ from him) https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCSQMexEx3YHa6e9Cac28cFQ

Close range damage deadzone:
This is an idea they had in 2008 back when archers were considered a mobile class. These days everyone has much more mobility teleports or purify proc which make it stupidly easy to abuse the dead zone. Then you have a 2015 class like stormbringer which has much more mobility, 45-meter range, and instead of having a deadzone they have a passive melee damage reduction.

Deadzone is one of the reasons archer is one of the worst 1v1 classes. It made sense in 2008 but not in 2015.

that's why you got the leaps a few updates ago, the only non glitchy leaps i'd say. remove the dead zone, remove the leaps too, u dun need em anymore

I'd like to talk about my ideas concerning updating most rarely-used archer skills like galvanic, stormrage, knockback arrow, and whisper shot but this post is already longer than I'm comfortable with.

With the risk of being bitter in comments, and while i respect Aster's opinions, my comments in white

Asterelle - Sanctuary

Don't reply inline, it makes quoting more annoying.

Sins don't use APS anymore. They use elimination. There is no archer equivalent since archer skills are sht.

Your point that range classes shouldn't have GoF is about 4 years obsolete since apparently you forgot Seekers are a ranged class. Their GoF procs from any range and procs with both metal and physical skills. Duskblade also seems to have quite a few ranged skills as well and they get GoF. Also you say Melee classes need to spike damage but archer needs spike as well. There is no magic QPQ/HF/Elimination 'I win' button.

Your claim that people die just as fast purged is just wrong. Purged these days is much tankier than before and you can feel they still have buffs.

Even in your video at 1:44 the guy is purged and an enemy r999 archer crits on him with stun arrow for 2.1k damage. Archers critting 2.1k damage on a purged target does not seems kinda pathetic to me.

rapazmacho

Perfect World is an unbalanced game.

The new physics class will have passive skill that reduces damage the distance by almost half .
And the only class is again hampered archer who already have reduced damage close to attack now has reduced damage to atcar far .

rapazmacho

Archer needs an expansion dedicated just to him .

But unfortunately archer wins skill so that cost effective , that take a long time to load.

rapazmacho

Archer has practically not stunn .

freygin

rapazmacho wrote: »

Perfect World is an unbalanced game.

The new physics class will have passive skill that reduces damage the distance by almost half .
And the only class is again hampered archer who already have reduced damage close to attack now has reduced damage to atcar far .

and I read the magic class has a 79 skill that outrange archers, but maybe archer's galvanic aura can outrange them back.

==

About passive defense skill, isn't base attack also got increased, so isn't it only normal if defense is then boosted by a passive skill ? Nowadays gear gaps between players could be wider by a lot than before horizon and there are new variables added into play, so unless we're comparing characters at 100% equal grounds, it'd be really hard to measure.

Even though archers seem to have a lot of disadvantages on paper, archers can still be OP in their own ways that's hard to explain in numbers.

==

Another idea for increasing archers' survivability is by making evasion more effective, sure it won't have any effect on magic but at least archers can 'tank' more physical hit to compensate.

rapazmacho

freygin wrote: »

and I read the magic class has a 79 skill that outrange archers, but maybe archer's galvanic aura can outrange them back.

==

About passive defense skill, isn't base attack also got increased, so isn't it only normal if defense is then boosted by a passive skill ? Nowadays gear gaps between players could be wider by a lot than before horizon and there are new variables added into play, so unless we're comparing characters at 100% equal grounds, it'd be really hard to measure.

Even though archers seem to have a lot of disadvantages on paper, archers can still be OP in their own ways that's hard to explain in numbers.

Aura is useless galvanic three minutes of waiting , it costs 2 chi.

Aura galvanic should be a buff and not this useless junk three minutes of waiting as nearly every archer's skills are .

WannaBM - Archosaur

when i left the game 3 months ago, archers were still the top DD in the game, and that was in PvE where everyone was damaging the same enemy and purge not a factor.

I assume that hasnt changed. Sure purge got a little less OP with the passives, but i think id still prefer archers to have GOF then purge. The archer might do 20% more dmg, but EVERYONE including the archer will do 50% less good deal. (although i think if theyd change the R9 bow to GOF, we`d soon have a TW field full of archers choosing to use different purge bows most of the time)

I personally think the problem with archers is indeed the lack of spike dmg that prevents them from making kills a lot, but also the fact that they are pretty much a support class. Archers purge someone, then the caster 2 shots him. Archer feels useless, caster feels OP while they actually were equally important.

Mass PvP that is. 1v1 i think range is much less important and the mellees have the upperhand. Hard to balance that though without making the mellees too weak in mass pvp where the rangeds have the upperhand.

Also the fact that archers have always been so OP that half the TW players are playing one is probably a reason that there is much complaining when the balance shifts the other way.

freygin

rapazmacho wrote: »

Aura is useless galvanic three minutes of waiting , it costs 2 chi.

Aura galvanic should be a buff and not this useless junk three minutes of waiting as nearly every archer's skills are .

lol yea, even with 5 minutes cooldown for a skill that fills up chi to the max instantly, most of the time in a fight it's not enough to utilize most of archer's skills that's high on chi usage. What were they thinking when this skill was 15 minutes cooldown b:chuckle

I envy wizards's chi regen skill even though by doing so they're forced to come out of their insane pdef mode.

Like you said , Galvanic aura should work as a buff or I'd say a form but with penalties unable to move like stealth or halfed mobility speed in the air/water and on the ground but with chi regen or other useful effects, but it's probably given in the first place for tandem with stealth for more option while being unable to move.

Asterelle - Sanctuary

WannaBM - Archosaur wrote: »

when i left the game 3 months ago, archers were still the top DD in the game, and that was in PvE where everyone was damaging the same enemy and purge not a factor.

I assume that hasnt changed.

Nope, not even in PVE. Maybe archers were good DD a few years ago but casters reign supreme at least on Sanc. I know PVE wizards that bring their mystic and seeker alts into FSP for debuffs / buff and can solo kill FSP bosses in 1 spark (at least those that let you). Meanwhile every boss in FSP runs straight to melee range so if an archer tries to DD hard their damage gets cut in half. I've also been in heavy archer squads that have failed to out DD caster squads for primal WB just because they had a seeker to debuff. Here's an example video. Archer can't compete in end game pve damage, just take a look at the casters that dominate celestial tiger event if you need more proof.

It's even worse now that there's a duskblade skill damage pve buff that doesn't work on archer arrow damage.

While purge is useful in TW it's ultimately a support role. There are other classes that are actually made for support like venos and clerics. Archer should be a DD class but it is currently lacking in that role.

WannaBM - Archosaur

I only know it was always the archers stealing agro on mushi, never the casters.

I think the answer is in your post though. Against WB people use those items that boost skill dmg. (but true, they also use them in TW) and you talk about that skill dmg squad buff that is from after my time.

I guess thats what makes the difference.

freygin

Psychic with a bit lesser gear than an archer can hold aggro from bosses better, and even if said archer managed to steal aggro the damage penalty when the boss approaches the archer will soon put this archer behind again. Skill damage passive buff doesn't help archers, even if archers use skills I don't think archers skills' dps can catch up.

rapazmacho

The archer's skills has long casting time, waiting time of the skills are too long even though simple skills , the animation of Archer skills are the ugliest , has few skills , the speed buff is only 15% and can not accumulate .

WannaBM - Archosaur

rapazmacho wrote: »

The archer's skills has long casting time, waiting time of the skills are too long even though simple skills , the animation of Archer skills are the ugliest , has few skills , the speed buff is only 15% and can not accumulate .

Is the speed buf only 15% ?
Damn why then am i always so happy when an archer casts it on me ?

So appearently the problem is similar to what assasins faced. The game reduces the efficiency of auto attacks while these 2 classes relied mostly on those. Assasins got their skills improved to fix that. So archers need the same. And with their need to kite, i think reducing casting time on a bunch of them would be a good way to fix it. Maybe also make a skill that you can activate, lasts for 10 minutes, reduces your crit chance by 3 (original numbers over 95% will be taken into account) but increases crit damage from 200 to 400%

rapazmacho

In creating archer character does animation and when we logs our character he does not make the animação.Parece they forgot the class.

rapazmacho

The archer skills of the expansion New Horizons are regridema class.