Please make manyshot a stance

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Originally Posted by The10man

This would actually make it fall within the status quo of the game though. Higher arcanes and clerics etc get higher/more spells because they trained more in that skillset. So higher trained RANGErs should get better ranging. I think one of the best things they could do for the subset of us who want to play (whether for fun or roleplay reasons) a ranged character is to lower the cooldown timer or raise the duration. (As an avid, my wife says rabid, archer/bowhunter in RL I want an archer in game.) Please lower the timer or raise the duration my 15 ranger 1 rogue and I would love you for it.

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I don't agree - unless you take an archery focus in PnP a ranger could be far inferior to a fighter or rogue with the feats.

d20 SRD again:

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Combat Style (Ex)
At 2nd level, a ranger must select one of two combat styles to pursue: archery or two-weapon combat. This choice affects the character’s class features but does not restrict his selection of feats or special abilities in any way.

If the ranger selects archery, he is treated as having the Rapid Shot feat, even if he does not have the normal prerequisites for that feat.

If the ranger selects two-weapon combat, he is treated as having the Two-Weapon Fighting feat, even if he does not have the normal prerequisites for that feat.

The benefits of the ranger’s chosen style apply only when he wears light or no armor. He loses all benefits of his combat style when wearing medium or heavy armor.

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Compare that to the maze of granted feats (past "Ranger Love") DDO Rangers get.

The intent of feat lines (and Prestige Classes too) was never to lock people in to a class for a given focus (other than spell-casting levels, of course). Range-spec'ed rogues and fighters should get equal time if they've bought the feats.

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Originally Posted by Borror0

That's unimportant. Would it still be a gimp if it has perma-Manyshot? No, it wouldn't. It would out-DPS every melee.

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Yes, let's put some numbers on that.

Assume that the Neo-Manyshot stance allows the player to decide if he wants 2x, 3x, or 4x shots with -4, -6, or -8 penalties. Let's say he uses 3x, which is a penalty similar to the -5 all melees accept from Power Attack. The character is a ranger attacking Sorjek with +1 Transmuting Greater Undeadbane. Like a normal ranger, he has Tempest and Power Attack, but not GTHF.

Damage per minute:
S&B: 6200
THF: 7600
TWF: 13200
Bow: 5096 (using no manyshot at all)
Bow: 7500 (4x manyshot every 2 minutes)
Neo: 15300 (using neo-manyshot stance for 3x shots at -6 attack)

Is it good for archery to put out that much damage? And I didn't even use the quad-manyshot stance at -8 attack...

PS. If the monster wasn't crit-immune, then most styles would gain about 14% DPS. S&B or TWF would gain around 34% because they get khopesh, and neo-manyshot gains just 5%. That means it trails tempest TWF a little.

I would give up the free TWF ranger feats for even a short multi-shot timer. Archer is just bad right now.

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Originally Posted by The10man

This would actually make it fall within the status quo of the game though. Higher arcanes and clerics etc get higher/more spells because they trained more in that skillset. So higher trained RANGErs should get better ranging. I think one of the best things they could do for the subset of us who want to play (whether for fun or roleplay reasons) a ranged character is to lower the cooldown timer or raise the duration. (As an avid, my wife says rabid, archer/bowhunter in RL I want an archer in game.) Please lower the timer or raise the duration my 15 ranger 1 rogue and I would love you for it.

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The only problem with this is that Rangers arent higher trained. They are better NATURAL archers but a ranged fighter is the higher trained. So gimping a ranged fighter just because he isnt a ranger makes no sense.

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Originally Posted by Angelus_dead

Yes, let's put some numbers on that.

Assume that the Neo-Manyshot stance allows the player to decide if he wants 2x, 3x, or 4x shots with -4, -6, or -8 penalties. Let's say he uses 3x, which is a penalty similar to the -5 all melees accept from Power Attack. The character is a ranger attacking Sorjek with +1 Transmuting Greater Undeadbane. Like a normal ranger, he has Tempest and Power Attack, but not GTHF.

Damage per minute:
S&B: 6200
THF: 7600
TWF: 13200
Bow: 5096 (using no manyshot at all)
Bow: 7500 (4x manyshot every 2 minutes)
Neo: 15300 (using neo-manyshot stance for 3x shots at -6 attack)

Is it good for archery to put out that much damage? And I didn't even use the quad-manyshot stance at -8 attack...

PS. If the monster wasn't crit-immune, then most styles would gain about 14% DPS. S&B or TWF would gain around 34% because they get khopesh, and neo-manyshot gains just 5%. That means it trails tempest TWF a little.

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For your numbers, did you have crits on all arrows, or just on the first arrow? (I mean the % in PS; I know the main portion of your post referred to a crit-immune target).

Going back to one of you earlier comments; what if the Manyshot RoF was lower as a trade-off for being always on? How much lower would satisfy game balance needs?

I wouldn't mind a Manyshot clicky with something like a 10 second cooldown, or the stance version that functions similarly by applying manyshot automatically once every x seconds while firing in the stance.

I would much rather gain an increased RoF than Power Attack for archery. As it stands, except when manyshotting, an archer is far less effective with weapons that have special on-hit effects than any melee is. This is mostly due to their abysmal attack speed, and partly due to the poor threat range of bows.

Adding special combat maneuvers to archery would be cool.

Archery should definitely be more open to other classes. Bow strength should be found on bows, or become available as part of the Point Blank Shot feat. Simply turning into a feat that a character must take essentially gives rangers yet another bonus feat. As it stands, rangers get 7 bonus feats in 11 levels, while fighters gain 7 in 12 levels...but the fighter does not gain any feats without having to meet their prerequisites, and does not gain any other class features.

Enhancements make up for this a little bit, but most of the fighter enhancements aren't all that much better than the ranger ones (and rangers get a lot more damage against FEs through enhancements). Rangers pay a little bit with lack of flexibility of feat taking, but that is an incredibly minor point in DDO due to how the feats they get function. Changing Bow Strength to a purchasable feat essentially grants rangers yet another bonus feat over and above fighters.

How viable is archery beyond Gianthold, currently?

Here's a Hybrid manyshot stance idea .. one shot in x is manyshotted? Every other shot, for example? So you maximum theoretical DPS (during the current 20 second duration) would drop but your sustained DPS would rise, but not double/triple/etc.

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Originally Posted by moorewr

For your numbers, did you have crits on all arrows, or just on the first arrow? (I mean the % in PS; I know the main portion of your post referred to a crit-immune target).

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First only, which is why the neo-manyshot gained less against a crit-vulnerable target than any other style. One good monster to consider is Arraetrikos, who is 50% crit-immune.

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Originally Posted by moorewr

Going back to one of you earlier comments; what if the Manyshot RoF was lower as a trade-off for being always on? How much lower would satisfy game balance needs?

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Well, you can look at the numbers and guess yourself: if Tempest TWF is 13.2k and S&B is 6.2k, then decide where along that spectrum you'd like archery to be, and use that as your ratio.

For me, I'd only like a small boost to ranged DPS, something like Power Attack. That is intentionally a boost only to DPS and not to stuff like wounding and vorpalling. Because it works like PA, it will scale the same and be easier to balance against melee combat.

The main improvement I'd want to ranged combat is what I already explained above: change how it affects monster movement so that "combined arms" fights involving PCs who are both shooting and swinging integrates more naturally. "Make them stack". I gave some specific ideas for that above, but it's much harder to evalue in the abstract (it's not something you can reduce to DPS like you can a TWF vs THF comparison, because ranged fighting depends on so much ongoing repositioning)

As for manyshot, I wouldn't want to change it before seeing how other changes work- and if it were altered, my preferred choice would be to hew closer to genre (like ROTK), which means reducing both duration and cooldown. (That would make it more useful for players who use archery as their primary combat, and less useful to a melee ranger who only wants to pull out a bow every 120 seconds)

Rotk?

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Originally Posted by moorewr

Rotk?

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Return of the King. Genre fiction that this stuff is based on. Legolas.

Fantasy archer-heros sometimes use a "manyshot" ability to launch several arrows at once, but they don't do that as a "stance" and repeat it time after time; it's an occasional thing when the opportunity presents itself.

PS. When originally introduced in AD&D 2e, Manyshot was an elf-only ability.

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Originally Posted by Angelus_dead

Return of the King. Genre fiction that this stuff is based on. Legolas.

Fantasy archer-heros sometimes use a "manyshot" ability to launch several arrows at once, but they don't do that as a "stance" and repeat it time after time; it's an occasional thing when the opportunity presents itself.

PS. When originally introduced in AD&D 2e, Manyshot was an elf-only ability.

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Ah! That was going to be my first guess.

I certainly could live with Manyshot as an attack clickie - one use, ten second cooldown. That would match the feel of a PnP game better.. where -4/6/8 to hit matters enough that manyshot is situational.

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Originally Posted by moorewr

I certainly could live with Manyshot as an attack clickie - one use, ten second cooldown.

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My inclination is to mostly avoid active attacks with such short cooldowns, because they put a lot of work on the player to keep using it: essentially, you wouldn't decide when it's best to use it, because you'd instead be trying to keep up a schedule of clicking the icon once per 10 seconds in combat.

Thus I'd give it double or triple that cooldown, along with double or triple the effect.

(Or instead of a simplistic usage limit only from cooldown, give it 10 sec cooldown but 2 charges that regen every 45 seconds)

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Originally Posted by Angelus_dead

(Or instead of a simplistic usage limit only from cooldown, give it 10 sec cooldown but 2 charges that regen every 45 seconds)

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Regenerating charges are a great idea.. there's lot of places they could be used to balance effects - for example, the x per day weapon effects from PnP that always happen on-crit in DDO.

What if instead of a loss of to hit per arrow you instead had a loss of damage per arrow over one.

Example,
first arrow 100% damage
2nd arrow -10% for 90% damage
3rd -20% for 80% damage
ect, ect.

This is not exact, but something to this effect for allowing manyshot to be a stance and could easily be tweaked.

I realize that this is not really per pnp, but there are just some things that do not translate well from paper to this game.

I would like to see manyshot be a stance, but I also understand the potential of it being broken if not implemented right.

Anyway, just a thought that I would like AD to mull over because I do respect his opinion.

Crimson.

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Originally Posted by Angelus_dead

By the way, here's how to improve ranged combat:

1. Give a way to trade attack bonus for damage, but limited and not raising attack speed. Ranged Power Attack would be perfect.

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Since archers have the highest to-hit in the game this would only help.

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3. Allow ranged characters to moderately reduce the movement speed of their targets, with abilities like Ranged Trip and Ranged Hamstring.

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I think I saw you make this sort of suggestion before. I don't have anything against this concept as a feat like ability but as a solution to the archery problem I think this is way off the mark. The game does not need more debuffs from a melee/ ranged perspective. You have certainly seen my derision of the super defensive character on these forums. In a sense these characters are all about debuffing the opponent. They stand and do damage mitigation. Last I checked generally you have to kill something to complete a quest whereas sitting there unable to contribute in the killing of something is not going to get you onto the next quest or done with the current quest in a reasonable amount of time. The solution of making archers damage mitigation specialists detracts from their ability to get through a quest in a reasonable amount of time and is not inherently power gamer or mmo friendly.

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The key insight is to see that the problem with ranged combat isn't a lack of DPS: the problem is poor cooperation between ranged and melee attacks. You could say that "Melee and ranged don't stack", although that's hyperbole: in reality, they stack some but give diminishing returns.

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I disagree with your key insight. The problem for ranged is lack of dps. The onus in an mmo should not be on players to play a certain style in order to accommodate a type of fighting because accommodation is less efficient and less practical. The onus on the makers of a game is to make it so all forms of combat useful.

There is a reason why the players have migrated to the current style just like the players when ddo was in alpha migrated to a different style (everybody used ranged weapons constantly) the current style is more efficient both in terms of speed of completion and in terms of what to expect from other players.

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That is, if we start with a solo melee guy and give him a helper also fighting melee, their DPS is doubled and combat success is more than doubled. If we take a solo archer and give him another archer player, then DPS and success also about double. But adding an archer to a solo melee doesn't improve the result that much: either the melee gets aggro first, and then is beat up while the archer inflicts low DPS, or the archer pulls aggro first, kiting the mob around so the melee can hardly get a hit in.

You see, if two melees are fighting a monster and trading aggro, they both can continue making attack rolls at the same rate regardless of who has aggro at the moment. If one shield-blocks until he loses aggro, then as soon as he does he can resume swinging. And if two archers a fighting a monster, they can also basically keep hitting the mob regardless of who in the room he's aggroed on (pillars occasionally interrupt it). But that doesn't work with mixed ranged and melee: the archers can still shoot wherever the monster goes, but the melees cannot necessarily catch someone who's being kited.

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In regards to kiting I have on my two ranged characters (both deleted and working on a third), been quite easily able to adapt to the situation. If I am kiting and a melee is chasing a mob I just stop and shoot the mob in the face maybe take a few points of damage in the process but the mob goes down fast with the melee's help. I can also keep kiting the mob forward or swap to melee. Knowing how to and when to kite comes with experience just like any other class/role in ddo..

If your going to make manshot a stance, here's what I beleive should be done.

1: Inrease rof of bows(drastically, like, double or sumthin) for all who had the rapid shot feat. Let archers be able to put out more than one shot per second ffs...

2: Make manyshot reduce the speed of your shot, and the +attack. Make it about 75% of the current rof? And, for 2 arrows, -5 attack, 3 -8, 4 -11...allow the player to choose which stance he will use.

3: Test, and test more, to balance it out a bit.

Just my opinion anywyas...

A_D, you've brought up the idea of ranged hamstring several times before. How would that feat work? Would it be a DC save vs the archers STR or DEX? How long would it last?

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Originally Posted by Turial

A_D, you've brought up the idea of ranged hamstring several times before. How would that feat work? Would it be a DC save vs the archers STR or DEX? How long would it last?

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Well, the current melee Hamstring has no save, so I wouldn't figure ranged Hamstring does either. Normal Hamstring lasts 12 seconds, which might be OK. Correspondingly, the normal Trip attack has a strength DC, so Ranged Trip (aka "Pin", as seen in the Complete Warrior D&D book) would use your dex as a DC. (Depending on itemization, the DC might instead be based on the minimum of your str/dex)

However, the big change I'd recommend for the ranged versions of those attacks is to increase their cooldown from the melee ones, or otherwise reduce the frequency you can use them. Normal hamstring lasts 12 sec and you can repeat it every 15 sec, which would be overpowered except that someone who's already in melee reach gains little by slowing a monster's movement. An archer shouldn't be allowed to easily slow a mob for 12/15 = 80% of the time.

As a first cut, then, I'd say the ranged versions of special attacks have twice the cooldown of their normal versions. That's close enough, although really I'd prefer a little more complex system than having them all on a bunch of cooldowns (I won't take the time to detail it here, especially because it's tough to evaluate outside of playtesting).

Two more notes on Hamstring implementation:
1. It's important that if monsters notice their movement rate debuffed, they put more priority on counterattacking with ranged weapons or spells, instead of continuing to charge after an opponent whom they have no prayer of catching.

2. By the D&D rules for Hamstring, creatures with 4 legs are resistant and those with more legs are immune. I'd like to see that idea included in ranged Hamstring for DDO, so that quadrupeds are less vulnerable to it, as they're less likely to have a ranged attack to use while slowed. (Also, non-legged creatures like beholders and oozes should be very immune)

I think changing the many shot in a ranger is a great idea.

Do people who are talking about dps from the ranged perspective realize a sorc can insta-death or hit over 300 from scorcing ray from across the room? YES, I'm sure you do. lol

I think rangers who take the arcane archer should be able to many-shot with no timer what-so-ever, instead using mana per shot or duration, like a caster. A ranger can not have both arcane-archer and tempest, so might aswell give the arcanes a bone.

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Originally Posted by ryejar

Do people who are talking about dps from the ranged perspective realize a sorc can insta-death or hit over 300 from scorcing ray from across the room? YES, I'm sure you do. lol

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Insta-kill effect against Arraetrikos, Suulomades, or any other boss: zero percent.
Scorching Ray effect against Arreaetrikos or Suulomades: zero.