Ranged Combat: Planning for the future

[Jaysensen]

My second post on this subject! Hopefully I get less uninformed feedback this time.

I think that the community needs to start thinking and planning now. And the Dev's need to really think this one through, as archery really affects the entire game balance.

First off, Id like to say this:
Ranger != Archer (Ranger does not equal Archer)

Most Archers have two Ranger levels for feats, but its not the same thing.

But wait, why are you posting this in the Ranger Forum if you dont think that they are the same? Well ... because the General Forum is quite frankly completely uninformed about the combat system overall. And the experts on archery read this board. And I believe I will get better feedback and more informed opinions on this subject by posting here.


So what does the Ranger Community think is wrong with Ranged Combat?

Bugs
First and foremost, I would think that we want all the bugs worked out of shooting. Losing attacks sucks. Lots of issues with repeaters and bows. I dont know them all, so if someone wants to summarize them, Ill update this.


Items
Raid weapons and Named items If someone says Storm and the Tortured Livewood bow I am going to stab you with my Puncturing Rapier. Many people would like to see Raid quality and Named items. Okay, the Silver Bow completely rules, but thats the only one.

Quivers and stack sizes Many people have suggested larger slayer stacks randomly dropping. Better droprates.
Let us stack ammo in larger stacks. Give us Quivers. Something to alleviate the inventory issues...


Rate of Fire
Attack Speed - Most posters on this forum believe that rate of fire needs to be increase slightly. Some think it needs to be increase a lot (such as me). But what does slightly mean? What does a lot mean?
Melee vs Archery Balance - No one wants to ruin the fun of melee. Most posters dont think that melee and ranged should be equal. But how close is fair? How close is balanced and what will be overpowering?
Manyshot - And how should Manyshot be implemented? Stance with Penalty? Faster cooldown?
Scaling attack bonus- The envy of archers everywhere...


The Relationship between Archers and Rangers
Other than the free feats, should Rangers be better at Ranged Combat than Fighters? Should Rangers get Ranged Enhancements, for example? Elves do, but Rangers dont.

I believe that one thing to separate out Ranged Combat and Rangers is to allow players to buy Bow Strength as a feat. Personally I think its ludicrous to have to dip into Ranger levels to grab Bow STR.



I intentionally wrote a lot of thought provoking questions in my post. 1) because I dont have a lot of answers 2) because this forum has so many smart people who's opinions should be heard.

Post your own thoughts. Dont just answer my questions. They are open ended to illicit responses.
DISCUSS!!!!!!!!!!

[Jaysensen]

Reserved Space!

[Humperdink]

Several frustrations that stem from my characters that use ranged combat:

-Rapid Reload no longer works with repeaters (either fix it or declare it was not supposed to work that way originally)

-Switching between a bow and a melee weapon takes WAY too long. This is a result of both archery implementation and world server lag. The issue manifests itself as you have initiated the weapon switch and yet you still fire another shot or two (*click* um...i'd like to switch now...uh, now would be nice...now!now! HELP!)

-Of course the infamous shoot an arrow and get no die roll

Those are some of the issues I'd consider most pressing outside of the discussion of ranged versus melee game balance.

Oh, forgot to add. It would be really nice if stacks of specialty arrows from chests and such came in more than bundles of 20. I mean come on, really. That's 7 pulls of the bow string with high end Many Shot. I think bundles of 100 would be more appropriate.

[KoboldKiller]

Need a better bow selection.
Attack speed needs to at least be a 2-1 ratio with melee.
Many Shot should be a stance.
Must fix attacks with no roll.

[Partymaker]

As you already know jay, I'm a Repeaters' fan, having a heavy and a light repeater build and playing them since...forever :D

I've tried many times to open Devs' eyes on the subject, unsuccessfully :( To the point I concluded that the guy in charge of the range aspects of the game.... totally didn't care about range :mad: I sincerely hope I'm wrong :o


So what does the Ranger Community think is wrong with Ranged Combat?

Bugs
First and foremost, I would think that we want all the bugs worked out of shooting. Losing attacks sucks. Lots of issues with repeaters and bows. I dont know them all, so if someone wants to summarize them, Ill update this.

Ghost Shots: When we fire, the animations seem to be unable to keep up with the rate of fire. The farther you are from your target, the best chance you have to experience it repeatedly because the reload animation is gonna start before your last shot lands on the target. And when this happens, the shot just disappear, you don't have any roll, be it hit or miss. However, the last shot rarely lands anyway, even after the reload animation is over :mad: Very occasionnally can I fire my 3 bolts without having a ghost shot, most of the time I've what looks like a 2-bolts repeater :mad: Barely better than a xbow at some points, considering the feats it takes to make it interesting to use...

The reload animation priority seems to be a big big BIG part of the problem. It's priority should be revised and it should be impossible for it to prevent a shot from getting a roll, never ever. Pre-MOD3 rate of fire and range animations were the BEST by FAR. Not even close to what it is now... Once you DEVs fix this, you'll have solve half of the problem!

All the above was with manual attack... with auto-attack, it's even worst. As the toon shots asap without any delay, the Ghost Shot bug is omnipresent while in auto-attack mode. I used to shot on auto-attack when I had to slay a mob that was blocked or that couldn't reach me, no matter why, but I no longer use that mode cuz it could now be rename "Ghost mode" :rolleyes:

Items
Raid weapons and Named items If someone says Storm and the Tortured Livewood bow I am going to stab you with my Puncturing Rapier. Many people would like to see Raid quality and Named items. Okay, the Silver Bow completely rules, but thats the only one.

Agreed, we need more. Exotic named/raid items are almost non-existent.There's only one named repeater I think, a lowbie **** lvl1 or 2 that does a +1 cold dmg/hit if I'm right lol Good definition of "useless" :p We definitely need more... there's a few khopeshes in the exotics, right, but how about the repeaters, light or heavy, the bastard swords, Dwarven axes?? And kamas? People are gonna want a few good ones when the monk comes out... Needless to say we need more bows too even if there's already 2-3 ones, it's not enough variety.

Quivers and stack sizes Many people have suggested larger slayer stacks randomly dropping. Better droprates.
(That might be worth it to collect them if the droprates was better AND the stack's size increased!)
Let us stack ammo in larger stacks. Give us Quivers. Something to alleviate the inventory issues...
(300 stacks instead of 100 would already be quite nice, improving our inventory of 33%. I would prefer 500 but would be satisfied with 300)


Rate of Fire
Attack Speed - Most posters on this forum believe that rate of fire needs to be increase slightly. Some think it needs to be increase a lot (such as me). But what does slightly mean? What does a lot mean?
I don't wanna be sarcastic but.... any DEVs saw the LOTR movies? :p Watch Legolas closely.. ;) HE is a high lvl ranger/archer and a real one! And that's exactly what we should become and we aren't even close to it at lvl 14... Melees get extra attacks/better swing animations as they level, we get nothing. The change is sooooo small it's barely visible. I really don't feel I'm shooting faster at lvl 14 than I was at lvl 6 or 8 or 10. The feats rapid reload and rapid shot are completely sc**** up. Any DEVS was aware that rapid shot works better with repeaters than rapid reload? Nonsense...

Melee vs Archery Balance - No one wants to ruin the fun of melee. Most posters dont think that melee and ranged should be equal. But how close is fair? How close is balanced and what will be overpowering?
The reload animations should be MUCH faster. The time it takes for a melee to recover (from the end of his first swing til the start of the 2nd swing) should be the same time it takes us to reload. It's not even near at the moment, by the time you shot your 2nd arrow the melee is already at his 3rd swing...:rolleyes:

Manyshot - And how should Manyshot be implemented? Stance with Penalty? Faster cooldown?
Good questions... I would definitely go with the stance with a penalty, like -1 to hit per extra arrow (-1 to hit on your 2 arrows from lvl 6-10, -2 on the 3 arrows from lvl 11-15, -3 on the 4 arrows from lvl 16+). Keep it mind most people don't care about shot on the run now... add another -4 while moving on Many Shots, a -6/-7 on your shots would hurts a LOT. That would also gives more credibility to SotR, especially as Mobility is still one of the most useless feat in the game, but this is another subject :D ). At the very least, if DEVs don't want to hear about a stance, reduce the cooldown in half for god's sake. It's so long I almost forget I've Many Shots sometimes lmao)

Scaling attack bonus- The envy of archers everywhere...


The Relationship between Archers and Rangers
Other than the free feats, should Rangers be better at Ranged Combat than Fighters? Should Rangers get Ranged Enhancements, for example? Elves do, but Rangers dont.

I believe that one thing to separate out Ranged Combat and Rangers is to allow players to buy Bow Strength as a feat. Personally I think its ludicrous to have to dip into Ranger levels to grab Bow STR.
I always found that funny too... I think they did that to give Rangers something special, to help prevent too much multi-classing but giving that feat at lvl 1 ranger makes the effort pointless.

I intentionally wrote a lot of thought provoking questions in my post. 1) because I dont have a lot of answers 2) because this forum has so many smart people who's opinions should be heard.

Post your own thoughts. Dont just answer my questions. They are open ended to illicit responses.
DISCUSS!!!!!!!!!!

Can't add anything more at the moment, break is over and I gtg back to the job *sigh* I'll make sure to read the next replys too, an interesting subject for sure...

[WeiQuinn]

I think Manyshot should be implemented as a stance with penalties. I have a pure Elven Ranger that I specced out as a Ranged toon. 20 seconds of Manyshot every 2 minutes is aggravating. Give Ranger enhancements to reduce the Manyshot penalty as a stance.

As for Bow Strength, make it a feat that anyone can pick. Leave it in as a Ranger class feat along with a selectable feat for other classes.

Oh, and fix the Ranged Attack BUG.

Thank you.

[teddok]

Intreststing thoughts there. I like what you said.

[Jaysensen]

Attack speed needs to at least be a 2-1 ratio with melee.
Many Shot should be a stance.


KK, question for ya...
You mean ranged should fire twice as fast as melee as implied in your sentence by listing melee second? Or you mean melee should be twice as fast as ranged: which is about what it is now...

[wiglin]

First I agree we need some love for the ranged fighting. As it stands Turbines idea of ranged fighting is an enlarged finger of death. I would propose a couple of things.


1. I do not think ranged fighting needs to be on par with mellee as it is in pnp. The AI in this game can only be so good, and ranged fighting gives you the benefit of hitting a mob without being hit back. I think in a real time world like ddo you have to balance this.

2. I would however like to see the rate of fire increased to mimic the swings of mellee. <ex> If mellee swings like this swing..swing..swing..swing......swing..swing..etc Let do the same for bows. Instead of Fire.....Fire.....Fire.....Fire let's bring it more in with the idea of a round and change it to fire..fire..fire..fire......fire..fire..fire..etc with an increase in the bab to equal that of mellee.

3. I would like to see manyshot stay just like it is, but with the above attack progression and slightly lower cooldown.

4. Let Rangers craft their own slaying arrows. The materials would have to be farmed like scales to balance everyone from having unlimited supplies. It may also be a good idea to keep them as an in instance item only like flame arrows.

5. I have no experiance with the ranger spells like entangle, but I assume since most rangers have low wis these spells are useless. Turbine needs to rethink these kind of spells. With such a low sp pool. I do not think it would a bad idea to give rangers spells like entangle that have no save, but only stop a mob... for say.. 4 seconds. This would allow for more kiting through twitch skills, and since most rangers use the sp primarily for buffs I do not think it would be overpowered. It would be more uh-oh I need a few more seconds to get away.

6. Give rangers real animal companions. They do not have to be overpowered, but place our little buddies on one time per shrine use and as long as we can keep them alive they stick around.

7. Finally after beefing up the ranged fighting in this game, force rangers to choose between combat styles, and allow those that want to shoot arrows truly be able to contribute to the group. I do not think the limited amount of buffs a ranger gives out balances out the fact that their ranged dps blows.

[Meriadeuc]

These observations have been made before, but I think that they're worth making again:

It would not be unbalancing to have ranged weapons fire almost as fast as melee, as long as the character is standing still. If the character doesn't move then he or she will only be able to get a few shots off before the monster gets up close and personal - at which point ranged doesn't have any safety advantages over melee (and in fact has the disadvantage of -4 AC).

Therefore, a good solution would be to have ranged weapons fire at around 80%-90% of melee speed, as long as the character doesn't move between shots. If there is any movement while reloading, the rate of fire should slow to what it is now (around 40%-50% of melee, I think).

If, however, a character has shot-on-the-run, then he or she should be able to fire at the standing still rate even when moving. This exception would make it possible to have a decent (although still not quite as good as melee) ranged-focused character providing that you are willing to make a signifcant investment in feats, and would help retrieve shot-on-the-run from the obscurity in which it is currently languishing.

[wiglin]

I like sotr like it is now. It works like spring attack for mellee. I do not think this needs to be changed.

[Partymaker]

Cmon folks.. we need more ideas/solutions here! :)

[KoboldKiller]

KK, question for ya...
You mean ranged should fire twice as fast as melee as implied in your sentence by listing melee second? Or you mean melee should be twice as fast as ranged: which is about what it is now...

Sorry I mean 2 melee attacks to one bow attack. Right now from my count most melees can get off 3 attacks to my 1 bow shot so this would at least be incrementally better.

[QuantumFX]

Ranged Combat in General:
1) Increase the attack rate to 1 per +5 BAB. (This brings it in line with P&P but not in line with DDO melee.) But only make it apply if the ranged combatant isn't moving.
2) Keep archery while running around the lowered attack speed. Or make the archer slow down like he's casting a spell. (Since all mobs are perma hasted barbarians with speed boost on 24/7 it wil make kiting on the run more interesting...)
3) Multishot would be a stance that would have 2/3 arrows in one shot with the to normal hit penalties.

Ideas to address the inate inferiority of Archer builds:
1) Make Bow Strength a bonus fighter feat. That way Archers don't have to dip 2 levels of ranger.
2) Fighter classes need "Way of" enhancements. In this case "Initate of the Bow"

[Partymaker]

2) Keep archery while running around the lowered attack speed. Or make the archer slow down like he's casting a spell. (Since all mobs are perma hasted barbarians with speed boost on 24/7 it wil make kiting on the run more interesting...)

Strongly disagree on this one. You're somehow suggesting a change to Shot on the Run and it shouldn't be. SotR requires THREE feats and one of them is completely useless. Would you like to be slowed down while moving/swinging even if you have Spring attack? ;)

Having these effects for someone who doesn't have SotR however might be appropriate, but again... you're giving them the opportunity to mess with something that is working good right now instead of improving what they broke :o

[Leftist]

What if they made Archery as deadly if not more deadly than Melee(damage, to-hit...). The way it is in real life. One or two successful shots = dead mobster. BUT(big but here) you only allow us to stack arrows in small stacks of maybe 10 or so. This would mean that you could totally take down an entire mob but if you have a series of bad attack roll numbers or you use up all your arrows early in the quest, you're forced to go Melee.

I think this might reward archers for putting a lot of emphasis on accuracy but limit us because we could only reasonably carry a hundred or so arrows on us at any given time. Not to mention being more limited by wanting to carry the special bane and effect arrows we find. There would also be no need to increase the drop rate or stack size of looted arrows because 10 +3 Bane arrows would be MORE than enough for a specific encounter.

Maybe I'm the only one that feels a little weird about the idea of carrying 5000 arrows on me. Sounds way out of proportion. Besides, I'd rather be a 1 shot 1 kill kinda toon than the way it is now. I might as well be throwing Snap-Caps at my enemies.

Before you all flame me, please take into account that I am not in favor of an UBER-IZATION of archery attacks, just want to make it more real and therefore balance it using real world limitations. You can only carry so many arrows, you can't always hit everything you want to kill but when you land a solid shot your enemy goes DOWN.

[WeiQuinn]

In my opinion, ManyShot should be changed to a stance similar to Power Attack. There should also be a penalty to hit considering the difficulty of notching multiple arrows.

I also think that once you are able to shoot multiple arrows (2 at lvl 6, 3 at lvl 11 and 4 at lvl 16) you should be able to toggle the amount of arrows you wish to fire (which will affect your penalty to hit - the more arrows, the greater the penalty).

edit:
Thanks for the correct info on additional arrows Partymaker!

[Partymaker]

Hi WeiQuinn

Just to let you know as you weren't sure, you get your 2nd arrow at lvl 6, the 3rd one at lvl 11, 4th one at lvl 16. :)

[QuantumFX]

Would you like to be slowed down while moving/swinging even if you have Spring attack? ;)

Well, considering that our attacks are slowed down with spring attack... no I don't have a problem with it at all. My suggestion either keeps SotR at it's current level or it allows more attacks but slows down our ability to kite with it.

[Jaysensen]

Sorry I mean 2 melee attacks to one bow attack. Right now from my count most melees can get off 3 attacks to my 1 bow shot so this would at least be incrementally better.

Actually, over time, if you manyshot every two minutes, you DO get about 1 attack for every two melee attacks. M-Bomb has/had the numbers linked somewhere, but its about 55%ish.


I would really like to see Ranged Power Attack. ^^

[Jaysensen]

Well, considering that our attacks are slowed down with spring attack.

There is a way to get a better first attack sequence using Spring Attack. It has to do with the way you run up to the monster. Either you get two extra attacks or a couple of your attacks are at a higher attack bonus. Something like that. My guildie was explaining it to me, but I dismissed it because I dont play Fighters. If you are interested I can find out.

[Mad_Bombardier]

Sorry I mean 2 melee attacks to one bow attack. Right now from my count most melees can get off 3 attacks to my 1 bow shot so this would at least be incrementally better.An Archer with Rapid Shot already gets 1 bow to 2 melee attacks (crossbow is slightly slower). All of my time trial postings were lost in the 'Great Purge', but 1:2 is the basic ratio. Using Manyshot (x3 arrows) for 20 out of each 120 seconds raised the ratio to about 1.2:2

[kensihin_Himura]

From what I heard as you level up the time between shots decreases, not sure if that is true. What turbine could do is make the extra attacks function like manyshot and just calculate all the shots with the one. One thing they do need to do is make bows part of raid loot, some of the named bows now are nice, but they cant compare to some of the greatswords that drop as raid loot. I would like to see certain pets in the game, even if you do have to give up one of the mastery lines for a ranger.

[QuantumFX]

There is a way to get a better first attack sequence using Spring Attack. It has to do with the way you run up to the monster. Either you get two extra attacks or a couple of your attacks are at a higher attack bonus. Something like that. My guildie was explaining it to me, but I dismissed it because I dont play Fighters. If you are interested I can find out.

I thought that tactic was stopped. Anyway I use SA defensively. (Well at least until I hit gianthold where everything has a 360 degree melee attack radius...) But in general SA slows down the number of attacks.

From what I remember in P&P you only get one attack with SotR (at your highest attack bonus.) this is where Multishot comes in handy. Since you can only make 1 attack in a round as opposed to your normal full attack number you can make that 1 shot count if you take a penalty to hit.

[Soul-Shaker]

I would really like to see Ranged Power Attack. ^^

This was listed on ddos feat section when the game released but looks like it never made it into the game :(

[Soul-Shaker]

I thought that tactic was stopped. Anyway I use SA defensively. (Well at least until I hit gianthold where everything has a 360 degree melee attack radius...) But in general SA slows down the number of attacks.

From what I remember in P&P you only get one attack with SotR (at your highest attack bonus.) this is where Multishot comes in handy. Since you can only make 1 attack in a round as opposed to your normal full attack number you can make that 1 shot count if you take a penalty to hit.

Its a little different from the old. It takes advantage of GTWF when moving gives you a 2 attacks on your first running attack animation. Although the old prereqs for this was in a release notes long ago that if you had GTWF and Spring Attack you would get this, it seems like all you need is GTWF. So if you sacrifice -4/-4 on each of your first combat swings by twitch fighting, you can get an 8 attack combat round.

[Soul-Shaker]

Since they dont seem to want to give ranged a combat round system and melee implements a progressive bonus attack chain vs PnPs degrading my thoughts are as follows to help ranged combat improve:

Every 5 or 6 bab, give ranged combat a +1 or +2 tohit with possibly a feat req like point blank shot to unlock the progression its for ranged characters only. Or just make it free.

Boost the ratio to increase to at least 3 to 4 with combat swings.

Implement a Called Shot System that uses toggles for called areas (and only on main target instead of all with improved precise shot) . Called shots have different effects if hit but are more difficult depending on whats called(maybe to much work to implement though). IE called shot eye becomes if beat ac by +15 then you blind target. Called shot Head beat ac + 10 crits(but roll confirm crit). Called shot leg beat ac by +8 to cripple. Call shot arm beat ac by +8 gives -2 tohit. etc... Mobs immune to critical(not fort 100%) would be immune to called shot.

Manyshot should be 2 different toggles with different lvl unlocks. One with a -2tohit for 2 arrows per shot and one with a -4tohit for 3 arrows for shot.

Archery needs a total upgrade from where its at currently since even in PnP bow archers and get more attacks then melee even without manyshot (1 arrow per 6 bab increase + rapid shot).

[GAULSTON]

I've tried many times to open Devs' eyes on the subject, unsuccessfully :( To the point I concluded that the guy in charge of the range aspects of the game.... totally didn't care about range :mad: I sincerely hope I'm wrong :o...

What was the name of the Dev in charge of ranged combat mechanics? Need a name to send all my heavy repeater questions to. It is still a persistant problem that needs addressing. I have a repeater user as well, and I'd like to get more attention drawn to these bugs. Keep submittin yer bugs and private messages untill they get it to work properly again, don't give up.

[Blind_Skwerl]

I watched a show on discovery channel discussing early combat and weapons. It was determined that a throwing axe (called something like a francian) was the most effectively deadly weapon pre-gunpowder, with composite bows being a close second. What's wrong with making ranged combat as or more deadly in the game? It's been king in the real world for the last 1000 years or so...

[spifflove]

1. Id like to see arrows with effects (fireball, lightning bolt, etc)

2. Id like to see arrows of wonder with random effects (pk, cloudkill, holdperson, etc)

3. Raid bows and repeaters

4. Not sure what bow strength given to fighters would do. Two levels of ranger = bow str, favored enemy, wand use, rapid shot. Two levels of fighter = bow strength. Plus I like knowing that someone isnt a tank before I mistankenly invite them to a group.

5. I think everyone here seems to think one more shot per round is warranted. Making rapid shot a stance that breaks if you move is a good idea. If sotr mitigates this it becomes that much more desired.

[Yshkabibble]

First I agree we need some love for the ranged fighting. As it stands Turbines idea of ranged fighting is an enlarged finger of death. I would propose a couple of things.

.

THis is sorta the problem right now. If you just want someone that can shoot a bow and kill things you are SOL. A sorcerer throwing around enlarged Finger of Death will likely rack up in the neighborhood of 25-35 kills per full load of mana. I would challenge any archer to try to keep up with this sort of kill rate. Now of course the arguement will be that an archer won't run out of arrows like a caster will. However, shrines are plentiful enough where this is rarely an issue.

Archers are fun to play and Rangers are generally underrated, but archery for DPS just isn't very good really.

It would be nice to see some new enhancements for Rangers. Like the way of the.... (like rogues get).

Way of the archer enhancement, 6th level ranger - reduces the manyshot refresh timer by 20%, +2 damage with ranged weapons.