Archer changes including two new categories

[jenx]

great suggestions here. i am trying to win regular campaign on insane RL and it is boooring and close to impossible. lol

[Razakai]

great suggestions here. i am trying to win regular campaign on insane RL and it is boooring and close to impossible. lol

I imagine their issues on higher diffs are a combo of no debuff mitigation, weakness to elemental damage and overall poor defences vs stuff you can't shoot down/intuitive shots away?

[HammyHamster]

I think you'll have to come up with some imaginative boost to archer features.


Temporal warden, imho, seems to combine ~a very good combo of both archer and shadowblade. After meticulously playing Shadowblades and finding Archers bleh, the TW was surprisingly forgiving and well-rounded surprise. Range, melee, movement, shielding, escape, defence, and speed with little or no intensive resource management. There were some minor neat tricks that I missed from shadowblades, but it was rare. I didn't miss any archer features.

Therefore, I think the TW can be used as a sort of comparison for the two.

Archer should move away from melee more, but needs compensating abilities or perhaps wider area damage bursts. And some more protective features.

Shadow blade moves away from ranged, but need inherent traps and maybe even inherent invisibility. Shadowblade and basic trap rogue perhaps consolidated. (I see that's on another thread, yes)

[jenx]

great suggestions here. i am trying to win regular campaign on insane RL and it is boooring and close to impossible. lol

I imagine their issues on higher diffs are a combo of no debuff mitigation, weakness to elemental damage and overall poor defences vs stuff you can't shoot down/intuitive shots away?

Yes. The best strategy I've found is lots of armour, lots of life and rapid shot. The furthest I've got is actually with a yeek! Speed makes huge difference.

Total lack of debuffs is biggest problem.

[HammyHamster]

Bumping this, as I thought recently to myself "I'll try an Archer insane win attempt".

After 8 levels and analyzing the expected play once more and knowing the next 42 levels will be just more of the same cycling....that pretty much killed my motivation.

I think either modify the class or remove it. It can't be a nice introduction for new players, either. Imagine basing your opinion on the game with this class as a starter - that would be a shame.



EDIT:

I was going to elaborate more, but Blakmane's earlier post summed up the Archer class shortcomings.

Although I think talent stamina costs and cooldowns seem to need some reductions, if the intention is to not force hit and run tactics as per rogues and skill/stamina management.

[astralInferno]

...I DID actually start with an archer. It was kinda fun. I died a lot.

[Nagyhal]

Great thread!

I've been enjoying the Gunslinger class in Embers of Rage, and it's a shame how much more powerful and more interesting the basic gunner class is compared to the basic bow- and sling-using class. Based on these experiences, I have designed a possible new talent category for Archers:

Technique / Arrowdance

Bristling with Arrows
Cover your body with a seamless structure of tiny, sharp arrowheads that provides X flat damage reduction and deals X physical damage to attackers.

Cloud of Arrows
Firing at improbable speeds, you let out a series of curved shots that circle wildly around an area of radius X, blocking sight and damaging all enemies that pass through it for 6%→15% weapon damage each turn.

Embedded Quiver: Restoration Systems
Your quiver embeds into your body, ready to infuse your blood with a healing stream of tiny, healing arrows whenever you most need it. When you are injured, you will automatically activate it to recover XX life, but it is only safe enough to activate the complex mechanism if no enemies are visible. This system can only activate once every X turns.

To the Eyes!
You fire specially sharpened arrows at the eyes of all enemies in range. striking them in both eyes for 55→80% weapon damage and blinding them for X turns if both arrows hit. If no enemies remain to see you within range X, you quietly slip into stealth mode (power X) for 10 turns.

[Razakai]

I really like some of those ideas. I'm about halfway through making a large scale Archer rework mod that's implementing a few of those. Some highlights:

- Adding a Mark system where weaker shots apply a mark debuff, unlocking the use of stronger shots. Attempt to make it a bit more interesting as you have to set up your stronger attacks and pick which one to trigger your mark, rather than just cycling through shots in any order.
- Making Archery Excellence unlocked, restructuring it so it's a purely defensive tree. Shoot Down (with protection from self-damage), Intuitive Shots, Countershot (similar to Disrupting Shot from bpat) and Deterrence (similar to Escape from bpat). Gives Archers a fairly well rounded way to mitigate damage from a variety of threats.
- Conditioning as a locked generic, a reworked Mobility as an unlocked generic (buffed Disengage, Tumble, Trained Reactions, Evasion, basically a best-of from Acrobatics/Mobility/Field Control). Means that Archer actually has some generic sinks which provide better mobility and defense.
- Some more interesting trees. One which gives ammo type sustains and shots which interact with them, an advanced stealth/bow cat and a sling/shield cat based on whether you go bow or sling.
- Probably removing the ammo counter/reloading entirely because it's bad.

[InabaYap]

I really like some of those ideas. I'm about halfway through making a large scale Archer rework mod that's implementing a few of those. Some highlights:

- Adding a Mark system where weaker shots apply a mark debuff, unlocking the use of stronger shots. Attempt to make it a bit more interesting as you have to set up your stronger attacks and pick which one to trigger your mark, rather than just cycling through shots in any order.
- Making Archery Excellence unlocked, restructuring it so it's a purely defensive tree. Shoot Down (with protection from self-damage), Intuitive Shots, Countershot (similar to Disrupting Shot from bpat) and Deterrence (similar to Escape from bpat). Gives Archers a fairly well rounded way to mitigate damage from a variety of threats.
- Conditioning as a locked generic, a reworked Mobility as an unlocked generic (buffed Disengage, Tumble, Trained Reactions, Evasion, basically a best-of from Acrobatics/Mobility/Field Control). Means that Archer actually has some generic sinks which provide better mobility and defense.
- Some more interesting trees. One which gives ammo type sustains and shots which interact with them, an advanced stealth/bow cat and a sling/shield cat based on whether you go bow or sling.
- Probably removing the ammo counter/reloading entirely because it's bad.

-Rework Mobility sounds perfect! But does that mean archers lose track and slow motion? Slow motion especially works well in tandem with shoot down.

-Since currently ammo and launches already boasts massive debuff potential on top of active talents, it'd be great if there is a way for a special ammo sustain or Mark to circumvent talents like slow motion and projectile deflection, or remove sustains (though that might be a bit extreme as Archers are already great at debuffing). Maybe throw in some physical penetration as well while you're at it?

-RE: Removal of ammo mechanics. So, buff Void Quiver in return?

IMO Archer should be in between TW, a perfect all-rounder type and a gunslinger, an extreme burst damage type. Rather than shoring up all the holes in archer's defense (the new defensive tree should be enough survival, without making archer look like some tank), a way to engage the projectile counters so that they don't completely cripple the archer would be awesome.

Archer enemies also already hit like a truck but are suitable easy to kill, so the rework should also take that into consideration. We don't wanna end up with more of those terrifying gunslinger rares, do we?

[Razakai]

-Rework Mobility sounds perfect! But does that mean archers lose track and slow motion? Slow motion especially works well in tandem with shoot down.

Shoot Down scales kinda badly at the moment anyway as you rarely need to shoot down 5 shots in 1 go, so it's usually a 1-2 point investment. So my version combines Shoot Down with Slow Motion's passive bonus, as Archer is the class that really gets the most use out of it. Also gives a passive that makes you auto-evade your own shots because getting bone grabbed into a vital shot is horrible.
I want to reshuffle Survival around as well - the current plan is that Track goes into T2 Survival, Piercing Sight/Heightened Senses get merged to make room. As current Survival is a bit underwhelming except for Charm Mastery. For addon purposes, Archer would be given cloned versions of each tree, so other classes wouldn't be changed.

-Since currently ammo and launches already boasts massive debuff potential on top of active talents, it'd be great if there is a way for a special ammo sustain or Mark to circumvent talents like slow motion and projectile deflection, or remove sustains (though that might be a bit extreme as Archers are already great at debuffing). Maybe throw in some physical penetration as well while you're at it?

One talent in the ammo sustain tree is a piercing shot that strips debuffs when used with the armor piercing ammo type. And a few of the special marked shots travel instantly and can't be dodged, but only some. They will have a general way to gain some physical penetration as well, yes.

-RE: Removal of ammo mechanics. So, buff Void Quiver in return?

Yeah, I'd change Void Quiver and the ammo egos if I went ahead with it. Probably give it some more fun procs.

IMO Archer should be in between TW, a perfect all-rounder type and a gunslinger, an extreme burst damage type. Rather than shoring up all the holes in archer's defense (the new defensive tree should be enough survival, without making archer look like some tank), a way to engage the projectile counters so that they don't completely cripple the archer would be awesome.

Archer enemies also already hit like a truck but are suitable easy to kill, so the rework should also take that into consideration. We don't wanna end up with more of those terrifying gunslinger rares, do we?

Except for Trained Reactions, Archer won't have any passive tankiness talents. Deterrence gives massive resists, but you can't attack so it's a pure escape. Intuitive Shots, Shoot Down, Countershot, the defensive talents in the sniping and sling/shield trees are all evasive stuff or chance based. Archer's way of defending will be to disable stuff rather than sit there tanking.
More of Archer's damage would shift into marking stuff and other attacks that have setup, so you'd get a bit of warning and time to try and disable or pop defensive cooldowns. I don't particularly want to buff Archer's overall damage, and I'd make some of their truly nasty disables no_npc.

[HousePet]

I'd prefer some effort put into the ammo system rather than just removing it.
The main issue is that you can't do much if you run out, but there also isn't any emergency sources.
Skipping turns to recover ammo is too slow.

[Razakai]

You're probably right, especially as it'd require changing stuff on Gunslinger etc which I doubt DG would accept. Think I'll leave ammo back in and add a couple of additional sources - newly buffed Disengage triggers a bonus reload, and Trueshot (Archer's super damage cooldown) gives infinite ammo for the duration. Should be enoguh.

[jenx]

I've always liked the idea of crafting arrows as an Archer.

Could a talent tree that does this be added?

[Razakai]

Not quite crafting ammo, but I've added a new locked tree for Archer that lets you use customized ammo sustains - armor piercing, poisonous, flaming etc.