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Voting closed: January 14, 2012, 06:17:21 pm

[majikero]

Seeing all those dowra guns and staffs for 400k kills my motivation to rank crafting skill and just grind the money.

[SirAaronIII]

I'm hoping they touch Archery.  It hasn't been updated at all since the Elves were added...

I agree. They've added 3 counters for archery (charge, evade, defend with a shield) while magic is pretty much invulnerable since evasion is so bad. Monster Hunter this ain't.

Seeing all those dowra guns and staffs for 400k kills my motivation to rank crafting skill and just grind the money.

To be honest, it kind of does for me too. You can't even get signatures on your own crafted items so you can't brag about it.

I'm so poor though

[Seriyu]

I do agree archery needs a buff, but when I played very briefly before the "defense blocks archery" change, let me tell you, against an archer (3 in the cases of dungeons which I'm using as an example), you had two options, move towards it and get half your max HP wounded off if you were lucky, or run into the center of the room and hope windmill crits and kills more then one or two of them before they all aggro. If it didn't you loaded windmill again and prayed to god you killed another before the storm of arrows started.

I do agree it needs a buff, don't get me wrong, I just think that they're being a little careful around archery, because it really does have the significant potential to just ruin any room with more then two or three archers in it for new people. Hopefully that luck = passive range avoidance change doesn't neuter player archers too much.

The most boring solution would just to raise the damage and leave enemy damage alone (have them using the old formula or something), which is probably honestly the best solution, because outside of magnum and crash shot archery really doesn't do reasonable damage, and it loses utility as melee people slowly turn into gods.

Another option that would be kind've neat is make critical damage significantly higher for bows. Like, crit normal shot just takes an enormous chunk out of most things that aren't super tanky, crit magnum just murders everything that doesn't have natural shield. This is honestly something I'd like to see on melee weapons too, I've always thought it was odd that for all the modifiers on weapons there's not a "crit damage" percentage.

Besides this, I'm not really sure what they could do that doesn't involve adding new skills. I'm sure they'll figure something out eventually, because ranged is rapidly looking less and less good compared to every other skillset out there.

[Girlinhat]

Bow combat has 3 skills.  Magnum, Crash, and Mirage.  Mirage is barely viable because it doesn't get much damage increase over ranks - the 'shock' damage is VERY slow to rise, and not influenced by your weapon or dex, so it's always very small.  It's only real use is slow killing, where you want to conserve arrows, or against liches.

Crash will MURDER whole rooms, but is ineffective against single enemies.  It also has a fairly high cost to use, in terms of SP and MP, and if you don't trigger the splash damage just right then it totally fails.

Magnum is the REAL ranged skill.  Especially since the change from charge-up to cool-down it's possible to magnum spam, which is highly effective.  The problem is the terribly long aim time and the miss chance.  Most of the time, by the time I'm able to get a shot off, the melee monkies have already done a Smash and knocked the enemy out of range.  Then it's impossible to follow through with anything.  The damage output isn't as high as melee either, though it's close enough that it still works.

What the game REALLY needs, I think, is a large nerf to melee damage, and some skill or buff for archers to be able to aim faster or use luck to turn a missed shot into a hit.  It's just absurd when regular attacks can get over 1k damage, without trans or crit or smash, while a high-ranked critical magnum scores about 1,500.

As for new archery skills, I'd like to see some sort of 'pinning shot' where a magnum shot hits hard enough to impale the enemy to the ground, various poisons like sleep, slowness, or enraging, and some sort of skill that would help to shake aggro or raise defense...  Being able to burn MP to charge arrows with elemental damage would also be sublime.  One thing I'd REALLY love to see, would be Greatbows.  Massive things that need to be braced on the ground to fire spear-sized bolts of raw power, turning archers into balistae.

[alexwazer]

Archery is actually really good. It could use a bit more love, but it certainly doesn't need a full revamp.

Sure, it has lower damage output than close combat, but honestly not that much. The main issue is that it draws its damage from completely unrelated skills. Sheep shearing making you a better archer? Weaving? Refining? Ranged skills need to give better dexterity. Increasing the weapon's damage wouldn't help all that much except early on.

What the game REALLY needs, I think, is a large nerf to melee damage, and some skill or buff for archers to be able to aim faster or use luck to turn a missed shot into a hit.  It's just absurd when regular attacks can get over 1k damage, without trans or crit or smash, while a high-ranked critical magnum scores about 1,500.

I have always been against nerfing, unless it's simply a rollback after patching something seriously overpowered. Don't take away from your players the toys they have had for months or even years. They will hate you and rightfully so. Archery could use a buff to aiming speed and I personally wouldn't mind seeing the missing chance completely gone. They could adjust damage, knock back and stun effects so that it is reduced if you don't take time to aim.

No one mentioned spider shot by the way, it's somewhat lackluster due to it's cooldown, but it is still a very useful extra tool in the archers' boxes. The talents required to get it aren't too hard to rank either, although somewhat grindy, and are even useful for archers.

[Girlinhat]

Melee damage is simply absurd though...  DevCat is constantly releasing bigger and better two-handed swords, which further divides archery and melee, and further divides humans from elves.  The demonic infinite bow is the first new bow in like years.  Even the almighty highlander longbow was available as a rare reward for Peaca, it just got more available with the ancients.  (Well they added the Masterpiece, but good luck actually getting that one...)

Not that there's too many choices on bows.  It's essentially Composite Bow (which is really freakin' awesome), Leather Longbow, one of the Exotics (HLB, Ring, Wing, etc.), or Demonic.

But yeah, you probably hit it most accurately.  Dex is a difficult stat to obtain.  Str comes from everything combat and carpentry, while dex mainly comes from life skills.

[alexwazer]

There is relatively few people that use two handers on a regular basis. Dual wielding tend to be better for humans and a human 2-hander with shield is usually better for giants. Also, most of these new weapons are sidegrades rather than upgrades. HLC remains one of the best 2 handed sword. Although, the mere fact that melees have a choice between using 2 hander, dual wielding or 1 hander with shield is already an advantage (except for inventory issues ) Each of these combinations comes with it's own perks.

A few bows were released recently, but they were event only and nearly impossible to get. It's even worse than Eweca weapons. A few extra bows would be great. A few elves exclusives would be awesome and a few more differentiation between short and long bows could be good too.

Talents at least made it slightly easier to get dexterity. Archer talent is a huge source of Dex, it gives more Dex than close combat give Str. Most of the life talents also give Dex, so even a few ranks in some of these skills can add up to some decent improvement to your total damage.

[Seriyu]

Don makes a good point with the dex vs strength argument, strength is more centralized which is the real reason close combat seems great initially. Are the damage formulas for melee and ranged the same? I know magic's is gimped but I never looked into ranged.

[Kaitol]

Didn't they release a powerful bow and quiver in magic craft that has pierce 1-2, and the range of a longbow and speed of a shortbow? Plus infinite arrows with big boosts?

Made me consider trying archery again. Then I said fuck it, I'll branch out into archery maybe if/when I get regular combat leveled out.

[alexwazer]

Yeah, both Str and Dex adds 1 max damage for every 2.5 point according to the wiki. It's easier to get Str from just doing your thing (ranking the skills you use for fighting), but if you go into crafting, Dex is much more AP efficient to get. The talents are also much better for Dex than Str.

Although I have to give Girl a point concerning weapon damage. I hadn't checked for bows upgrades in a while. Max damage on those is abysmal compared to 2 handers and even at a disadvantage compared to 1 handers. While stats do matter more, some base weapon damage doesn't hurt. Elves should get something better for what is supposedly their main thing. One thing however, is that bows count as 2 handers for special upgrades. Blue special upgrades are really really good for those.

[SirAaronIII]

It's true, the ring bow, "one of the most powerful bows in the entire game" has at best 53 max. Meanwhile the dragon fang, highest max sword in the game (only using regular upgrades) has double that.

And the Bhafel Hunter/ress combo is absurdly difficult to get considering that nobody goes to black dragon raids anymore because white is so much easier (but also laggier), so I wouldn't count on ever laying hands on one. Just like demon bows.

[Kaitol]

Do they spawn at the same time or something? You'd think with cash, exp, dragon parts and dye up for grabs people'd hit both for the rewards.

[Girlinhat]

Black dragon is absurdly difficult, most people don't bother because kills are infrequent.  White dragon spawns 1-60 minutes later (it's in the next 30 minute frame, but spawn times vary wildly) so most people just skip the black and go for the white.  Considering the white gives you a demonic material for scoring a mere 1,000 points, and similar rewards with an easier damage rate, then yeah why bother?

Although I did see ONE person with a Hunter.  He'd recently crafted it and was showing it off in Shylien.  I've never heard a whisper of it again...

Bows in general are absurdly difficult to maintain.  There's usually no Wing Bows on sale period, or else it's a few of the bright green event ones - no one can reliably obtain a regular Wing.  Ring is even more difficult to obtain.  Highlander Longbow is easier simply because it drops from ancients but is still pretty rare, and expensive.  Meanwhile everyone and their mother has a dragon fang or highlander claymore...

So while a scant few new bows are in, they're virtually non-existent due to their rarity and difficulty to find...

[Kaitol]

To be fair, all weapons not a sword are in pretty much the same boat. A weapon update patch seems to be in order. I mean theres boatloads of clothes and swords. A patch with weapons and giant equipment seems necessary. Some giant only two-handed swords that worked with giant full swing would be nice too.

[Girlinhat]

This is the exact problem.  Everything is fashion + swords.