Make archers less annoying to play, please

[ohioastro]

I have an archer winner. The reload mechanic does nothing one way or another at high levels. It's a massive annoyance for a starting archer and favors random luck on drops in the first few zones. This makes it a significant net negative relative to a model where you default to (weak) arrows and the quivers are for better ammo, for instance. The dirty truth is that resources are rarely limiting factors for any TOME class at high levels; if you're using autoexplore (which I find practically mandatory) you refill all resources between fights and almost never run out of resources during a fight.

I see the comparisons with other classes and it's a bit puzzling....because melee classes have unlimited basic attacks and their individual attacks are comparable in power to those of archers.
Archers are a decent class once you have a good launcher and have accumulated a few quivers to pop in and out depending on your needs. They're very frustrating and limited with the tiny starter quivers and the crummy starting launchers.

[HousePet]

You can bump with a bow, its just not very good. Like bumping with a staff on an archmage.

[Orangeflame]

Doesn't bumping with a bow do an unarmed attack that can proc glove abilities?

[HousePet]

Yep

[Zizzo]

if we could use a more moderate language we could communicate better,[...]

*blink* ...So, for reference, then, this:

I just wanted to see this post dead I am going to be a a spiteful necromancer and revive this abomination.

is "moderate language"? I ask merely for information.

I am just trying to make a point or two, first archers are not weak, [...]

(shrug) I don't recall claiming Archers were weak per se, just that they had an unnecessarily annoying game mechanic.

(back then Archers were just bad Temporal Wardens).

...? Odd; I've always viewed Temporal Wardens as bad Archers, lacking most of the high-damage Archery talents. I mean, sure, in theory they can quickly bust out the melee weapons for up-close fighting, but in my experience they're not particularly good at it, and they're fragile enough that you don't really want to do it all that much anyway.

How does this add-on work? Dies it make quivers have endless arrows or just automate reloading stuff?

[sound F/X: source diving] As I read the code, it basically just increases your ammo count by one every time you use an Archery talent.

Archers with endless arrows on my opinion sounds laughable. Sure I'd like a Berserker with range 9

(shrug) Beats the heck out of a Berzerker that suddenly is completely unable to attack for a handful of turns in the middle of a fight.

or an Archmage with infinite mana,

I can't even remember the last time my Archmage actually ran out of mana, even at low levels. [A crucial difference there, of course, is that you can cast offensive spells while your Manasurge rune is "reloading" your mana without interrupting it and ruining its effect.]

but it'd be boring to play.

See, I genuinely don't get this. How is being able to attack more boring that not being able to attack?

Honestly? I think I generally prefer T2's approach to Archers:

• They have a straightforward and effective technique for mitigating of the "quiver-size" problem: Running out of ammo more often than you'd like? You can literally make more out of junk you find lying around on the ground.
• They have strong fallback for cases when you genuinely do run out of ammo, or are facing, say, a large monster pit with more targets than you have ammo: T2 characters can wield a weapon and a bow at the same time without swapping, and as an Archer you're going to be pushing your Combat skill anyway, so you can usually hold your own fairly well in melee until you can gather your arrows.

Kind of like Temporal Wardens, I guess, now that I look at it, except with actually good archery and generally better melee.

[Faeryan]

Archers with endless arrows on my opinion sounds laughable. Sure I'd like a Berserker with range 9

(shrug) Beats the heck out of a Berzerker that suddenly is completely unable to attack for a handful of turns in the middle of a fight.

or an Archmage with infinite mana,

I can't even remember the last time my Archmage actually ran out of mana, even at low levels. [A crucial difference there, of course, is that you can cast offensive spells while your Manasurge rune is "reloading" your mana without interrupting it and ruining its effect.]

but it'd be boring to play.

See, I genuinely don't get this. How is being able to attack more boring that not being able to attack?

What I meant with this is mages have mana, and while it might not be an issue for you it is for many others. Berserker does melee where he's more in harm's way than ranged. Archers have ammo they have to manage.

Ranged Berserker, infinite mana Archmage and infinite arrows Archer are taking the balancing factors away making the game boring. Why not give infinite HP too?

I liked T2 ammo approach, though I'm still thinking the current Archer is nicely balanced with other classes, with the reloading thing that is.

[RandomKesaranPasaran]

Ammo capacity may have been intended as such, but it's basically failed at being a postive example of one. I've cleared two archers and a pure-archery TW and at no point did I find myself thinking oh man this would be overpowered and/or boring if I didn't have to stop and reload in the middle of combat, let alone to the extent where it would be even remotely comparable to giving infinite HP or even Unstoppable, and I like to think I've played the game enough to have a fair idea of what constitutes overpowered and/or boring by now.

In the earlygame, where this issue is most prevalent, casters simply do more damage then and they pretty much all can get some form of multitarget capability up and running fairly quickly that has a better CD than what the archer can get in that department, as well as better range and projectile speed so they don't whiff against snakes that decided to sidestep you as often (I mean, even oozemancer slime spit does better at avoiding that), bump attacks are free and pure melee tends to have easy access to Rush as a distance closer (and even at Lv1, that's on par with a T1 bow rangewise), to say nothing of the fact that they can readily stun earlygame bosses, phys/mag or phys/mind classes also tend to have some sort of not-completely-laughable-early on sort of ranged capability for fairly cheap. In short, pretty much every class makes better use of their available resources than archers do and I'm struggling to think of an example where this isn't true. Meanwhile lategame archers, like many other classes, are restricted more by CDs and (at least potentially) their actual do things resource (stamina) than they are by their actual ammo capacity due to having better damage, better capacity, and better ability to reload (whether from relative saftey or not), so I'm not really sure where the "balance" in this decision actually is, and if it really is creating a situation where people are carting around a dozen quivers to swap in and tediously reload after combat, then it really should be, if not scrapped, then seriously re-examined.

Also Berserkers have Archery Training as a locked category and can shell out 8 gold to buy Shoot like anyone else (though to be honest I'm not sure why you'd do that considering you don't get a relevent mastery there, making it some offbeat niche build) and I'm pretty sure there's some Archmage build out there that renders mana a complete non-issue even if it's not *actually* infinite so even *those* comparisons don't hold much water.

[nogardark]

Ammo capacity may have been intended as such, but it's basically failed at being a postive example of one. I've cleared two archers and a pure-archery TW and at no point did I find myself thinking oh man this would be overpowered and/or boring if I didn't have to stop and reload in the middle of combat, let alone to the extent where it would be even remotely comparable to giving infinite HP or even Unstoppable, and I like to think I've played the game enough to have a fair idea of what constitutes overpowered and/or boring by now.

In the earlygame, where this issue is most prevalent, casters simply do more damage then and they pretty much all can get some form of multitarget capability up and running fairly quickly that has a better CD than what the archer can get in that department, as well as better range and projectile speed so they don't whiff against snakes that decided to sidestep you as often (I mean, even oozemancer slime spit does better at avoiding that), bump attacks are free and pure melee tends to have easy access to Rush as a distance closer (and even at Lv1, that's on par with a T1 bow rangewise), to say nothing of the fact that they can readily stun earlygame bosses, phys/mag or phys/mind classes also tend to have some sort of not-completely-laughable-early on sort of ranged capability for fairly cheap. In short, pretty much every class makes better use of their available resources than archers do and I'm struggling to think of an example where this isn't true. Meanwhile lategame archers, like many other classes, are restricted more by CDs and (at least potentially) their actual do things resource (stamina) than they are by their actual ammo capacity due to having better damage, better capacity, and better ability to reload (whether from relative saftey or not), so I'm not really sure where the "balance" in this decision actually is, and if it really is creating a situation where people are carting around a dozen quivers to swap in and tediously reload after combat, then it really should be, if not scrapped, then seriously re-examined.

Also Berserkers have Archery Training as a locked category and can shell out 8 gold to buy Shoot like anyone else (though to be honest I'm not sure why you'd do that considering you don't get a relevent mastery there, making it some offbeat niche build) and I'm pretty sure there's some Archmage build out there that renders mana a complete non-issue even if it's not *actually* infinite so even *those* comparisons don't hold much water.

Man if you think that melee has an easy time with the game you have no idea about anything (I could be more diplomatic but - everyone).

People, believe whatever you want, the discussion is not centered around any logical or game design framework. In the end what everyone's input translates to is: I PERSONALLY dislike this mechanic while others say I PERSONALLY have no problem with it.


A case could be made with people saying that they refuse to play archers because they are boring, if enough people cry about them the most likely scenario is that the main dev will change them, cause his main concern is sales and not game balance or character variety(or whatever primary concern was taken into account when the class was created).

[RandomKesaranPasaran]

Maybe next time before you accuse anyone of not understanding anything you could actually bother to read and understand what they've written. I said melee classes make more efficient useage of their existing resources than archers do in the earlygame, not that they do so over the entire game and certainly not that they have it easier overall or easy at all.

But hey good to know that rather than actually debate what people are actually saying in good faith you're just going to insult people and hide behind the good ol' "well that's just your opinion" excuse.

[nogardark]

Maybe next time before you accuse anyone of not understanding anything you could actually bother to read and understand what they've written. I said melee classes make more efficient useage of their existing resources than archers do in the earlygame, not that they do so over the entire game and certainly not that they have it easier overall or easy at all.

But hey good to know that rather than actually debate what people are actually saying in good faith you're just going to insult people and hide behind the good ol' "well that's just your opinion" excuse.

I love to pick fights on the internet, oh wait, actually no, but that is the deal they have a more efficient use of resources cause they are freaking melee, and archers need some way to limit their output cause they are never in danger .

[RandomKesaranPasaran]

Yeah totally man archers are totally never in danger what with their ability to get outsniped by skeleton mages until getting a range 10 bow or rushed from out of nowhere and never have to face large mobs or super-durable enemies and the dungeon layout always works in their favor. Uh huh. Sure.

I know what never in danger looks like in this game. Archers are nowhere close to that.

[nogardark]

Yeah totally man archers are totally never in danger what with their ability to get outsniped by skeleton mages until getting a range 10 bow or rushed from out of nowhere and never have to face large mobs or super-durable enemies and the dungeon layout always works in their favor. Uh huh. Sure.

I know what never in danger looks like in this game. Archers are nowhere close to that.

Man I hate having to spell things when people do that for me I feel stupid, you are comparing pears with oranges I made an effort to try to explain in your logic how melee users need to have more efficient use of resources because they are in the heat of the battle COMPARATIVELY archers are not as exposed as MELEE warriors.

You try to compare magic users with archers cause they get Area of effect, well let me tell you this archers have an hp modifier of +0 while MOST magic users get a negative HP modifier, does that make them suck? well, no because they have a set of tools that allows them to work around their penalties, you as the player are rewarded for making the best use of these tools according to each situation.

you personally think that magic users never run out of mana, well I can make a case saying that for me they do, do you know why I do not do that? because that leads nowhere, If I try to talk in those terms the discussion is over, until we do not agree to use a metric to measure which characters are powerful or which characters are useful it will be my opinion against yours and everyone else who come to this thread to voice their concerns.

I do not know how else to say it, I keep replying because I care about the class, not about what you say(until you make a well grounded argument).

[RandomKesaranPasaran]

I do not know how else to say it, I keep replying because I care about the class, not about what you say

I think it's been fairly obvious that you don't care about what anyone who disagrees with you has to say, what with your accusing people of not playing your favorite class or understanding the game simply because they don't share your opinion on the reloading mechanic. I mean seriously, who even does that. I was even willing to admit that accusing you of bad faith was going a little overboard, but come on, this little thing here?:

you personally think that magic users never run out of mana

I made an offhand throwaway comment about the likelyhood of an archmage build that can potentially render mana not a concern existing and you turn it into *that*? Really? How do you get that from this?:

and I'm pretty sure there's some Archmage build out there that renders mana a complete non-issue even if it's not *actually* infinite

Yeah I got nothing here. You keep on not caring, because I'm not interested in making you care.

[Faeryan]

Having read that many times over you guys have made me see the error of my ways. Archers definitely need infinite arrows.
Also mages shoot harder and mana is no issue to them they're clearly more powerful than archers. I will have none of that. A powerful warrior HAS to be more powerful than a pajamas wearing bearded old guy. Make slings and bows twice as fast. Maybe 1Dex = 1% combat speed bonus. Also the projectiles are slow. With high strength you should be able to shoot harder so 1Str = 5% projectile speed would be in order.

I also like the arcane blade proc thing. Wouldn't it be nice to infuse arrows to do Stone Missiles on hit or Flame, whatever magic you put on them. Arcane Archer add-on anyone?

TW gets a free offhand switch so why not give archers the ability to automatically equip new quiver when the current one runs out? You could inscribe numbers on quivers to make a loading order. Resting would then reload all the quivers at the same time.
Would it be too heavy a strain to lug around extra quivers?

[malboro_urchin]

An archmage with a simple tribeam setup can and will outdamage (and outrange) an archer in the early and midgame, not to mention that their beams can hit multiple targets, and have such a low mana cost (and a much higher resource pool) that the mana cost is really quite negligible.

Reloading as a balancing mechanic is rather ridiculous. In the endgame, sure, quivers can get large enough that you don't have to worry about reloading. In the earlygame, reloading is a much bigger problem, because your quiver/shot pouch can hold 14-20ish arrows/stones, as opposed to an archmage's higher-damage beams, which also cost a significantly lower percentage of their resource pool