Lets help the devs fix ranged combat. Ideas please.

[Strumpoo]

I am hoping and keeping my fingers crossed that maybe the next mod will include some ranged fixes along with the new arcane archer goodies (fireball arrows)..

Lets post some ideas here that the devs can take to the "whiteboard" with them. Lets help them fix ranged combat.



I will start off with a few that I can think of:


1. Please get rid of the "activation" button for Deepwood's sniper shot. It doesn't work well in this game at all and really causes headaches due to it not firing when pressed. It sometimes must be hit 3-4 times before the shot goes off.


2. Please do something with manyshot. Either, make the cooldown shorter or make it a stance with a bigger penalty to hit, but something needs to be done. It is toooo long.

3. Please do not make the arcane archer "spell arrows" have a worthless DC on the spell effects. If the arrows have something like a DC15 save on them they are going to be very lackluster. Also, please don't put any HD requirements on spell effect arrows, these don't work in this game as evidenced by death to undeath and other spells.

4. Please include some new named bows in loot tables. Bows with unique effects.

5. All size 20 ammo stacks should be increased to 80 or 100.

6. Magic ammo drops should be 25%, 50%, or 75% returning.

7. Give rangers/ranged characters a chance to trip or entangle an enemy from ranged to slow them down.

8. Fix the middle mouse wheel and hold to attack button. Stop the use of these from resetting your attack chain.

9. Please please please, fix the "missing arrow" problem, where ranged shots do not register as a "miss" or a "hit"

10. Add new "thrown weapon" feats. Like two weapon throwing or halfling "rock skip"

11. Please give a boost to ranged weapon fire rate. It is currently too slow.

12. Implementation of some kind of "ranged power attack".

13. Quivers that can have their arrows "hot keyed" without having to open the quiver itself and take the arrows out manually.

14. Putting the picture of the monster that the "bane/slaying" arrows affect on the arrow icon.

15. Implement a "arrow/bolt" hotbar for ranged characters.






I will try to add your ideas to my list so that the devs can see all the ideas in one place and hopefully can address them.

Thanks!

[Beherit_Baphomar]

One thing that really irks me about ranged combat is the middle mouse wheel and the auto-attack hold down button.

I use the middle mouse wheel to rotate around my mob, to adjust my view, but when you do that combined with the hold-down auto attack while ranging it stops your attacks. This doesn't happen when hacking and slashing, only ranged.

So you twist around yer view of the mob and you have to restart your attack.
It sounds like no big deal, just hold the button back down, but it happens every time I use multishot...and those 3 secs between changing view and realising Ive stopped firing are a big deal.

[Angelus_dead]

The single most important thing to help ranged combat will come as a surprise:
Give archers the ability to reduce enemy movement.

That will give them more time to shoot targets while being less reliant on kiting, and moreover the reduced kiting makes them function better as part of a team. Too often an archer will proudly kite a mob to death, while the others sigh and remark they could have killed it 8 times faster if it stayed still.

Three ways to let archers slow their enemies:
1. Allow the existing Hamstring feat to work with ranged weapons.
2. Add the Pin feat from D&D, which lets you make Trip attacks at long range. (Importantly, it should have a pretty big cooldown, 45-60 sec)
3. Investigate Entangle or other ranger spells that help reduce movement. Maybe invent some new spells on that theme (like a spell to conjure 50 tangler arrows)

In addition to that, the other obvious way to improve range is to make magic arrow drops more meaningful:
1. All size 20 ammo stacks should be increased to 80 or 100.
2. Magic ammo drops should be 25%, 50%, or 75% returning.

1. Please get rid of the "activation" button for Deepwood's sniper shot. It doesn't work well in this game at all and really cuases headaches due to it not firing when pressed. It sometimes must be hit 3-4 times before the shot goes off.

One way to improve that would be to double the cooldown, and increase the benefit to +5 attack, +2 threat, +1 mult. That way you get just as much overall power, but don't need to press the icon as much.

[Beherit_Baphomar]

The single most important thing to help ranged combat will come as a surprise:
Give archers the ability to reduce enemy movement.

And in true DDO fashion what we'll get is Tendon Slice bows...

[GhostNull]

What I don't understand is why the Devs didn't implement Arcane Archer to offer a passive bonus to damage.

There shouldn't be any of this "summon-stack-of-100-returning-arrows" ****. The + bonuses from each tier of AA should be added as a passive bonus whenever the player equips a bow.

The only arrows an AA should summon are the current Force Arrows and any future "spell arrows" that are added.

EDIT: I do understand that the ability to summon 100 returning arrows was a way to minimize the impact of inventory space other arrows used. But, quivers were introduced as well, and solved that problem.

[Litz]

If were going to fixed ranged weapons they should start by putting strings on them.

[Angelus_dead]

Oh, here is a semi-silly low-priority suggestion to make ranged more powerful, which is pretty directly taken from D&D books.

1. New item type Halfling Skiprock, sold/drops as throwable ammo, 1d6 20/x2.
2. In addition to negating the -4 attack penalty, Exotic Proficiency Skiprock is a toggle. When activated, your attack rate with skiprocks is reduced slightly, but each throw will chain to an additional nearby enemy after striking the first target.
3. Halflings never get the -4 nonproficiency penalty for Skiprocks.
4. Halflings can gain the toggle effect of Exotic Proficiency Skiprock by spending AP instead of a feat.

[Quanefel]

4. New named Bows.
Yes please.

[Denssor]

1. Please get rid of the "activation" button for Deepwood's sniper shot. It doesn't work well in this game at all and really causes headaches due to it not firing when pressed. It sometimes must be hit 3-4 times before the shot goes off.

This also happends with monks special attacks, I hit lightning about 3-4 times before it goes off. I just wish it did a little more, or something differnt. It's nice and I still use it a lot, but would rather have it a once per rest or once per 2 minutes, and have it it be an Auto-Hit, with increased Crit Range and Crit Damage. I think that would make it more worth while, after all you are taking an AIMED shot.

[Jay203]

If were going to fixed ranged weapons they should start by putting strings on them.

low blow there

[Mithran]

A ranged version of Assassinate.

[Angelus_dead]

4. Please include some new named bows in loot tables.

That's not bad, but named bows cannot be viewed as a fix to ranged combat weakness. The best melee weapons are already available in bow form, so archery or repeater fighting styles should be acceptable on their own, without superior gear serving as a crutch.

[Bronko]

The single most important thing to help ranged combat will come as a surprise:
Give archers the ability to reduce enemy movement.

That will give them more time to shoot targets while being less reliant on kiting, and moreover the reduced kiting makes them function better as part of a team. Too often an archer will proudly kite a mob to death, while the others sigh and remark they could have killed it 8 times faster if it stayed still.

Three ways to let archers slow their enemies:
1. Allow the existing Hamstring feat to work with ranged weapons.
2. Add the Pin feat from D&D, which lets you make Trip attacks at long range. (Importantly, it should have a pretty big cooldown, 45-60 sec)
3. Investigate Entangle or other ranger spells that help reduce movement. Maybe invent some new spells on that theme (like a spell to conjure 50 tangler arrows)

In addition to that, the other obvious way to improve range is to make magic arrow drops more meaningful:
1. All size 20 ammo stacks should be increased to 80 or 100.
2. Magic ammo drops should be 25%, 50%, or 75% returning.



One way to improve that would be to double the cooldown, and increase the benefit to +5 attack, +2 threat, +1 mult. That way you get just as much overall power, but don't need to press the icon as much.

Those are all excellent and balanced suggestions that I would be happy to see implemented in DDO, but ranged combat in this game is fundamentally flawed at the coding level. How many players have observed ranged attacks that go 'missing' without a die roll and the corresponding hit or miss message, even when the projectile visibly strikes the target? Heck, there are many times when I have stood no more than one or two meters in front of a breakable that simply collects my ammunition in an invisible 'shield' surrounding the object but that happily shatters when I take a few steps towards it and whack it with a melee weapon. In a combat system already shunned for it's lack of DPS due to it's low attack rate even one of these phantom misses greatly affects the DPS contribution by ranged combatants.

Although new/improved feats and enhancements would greatly help ranged combat in this game, there are deeper issues involved that I feel would need to be addressed first before ranged combat becomes competitive with melee combat.

[maddmatt70]

It is really not that hard for the devs to make ranged combat competitive with other combat forms, but for some reason they have decided not to. The simplest fix would be to just give a certain % increase to ranged alacricty for all ranged attacks. What I think is a more important question is why have they chosen not to make ranged competitive with other forms of combat. My belief is the answer to this question is if ranged were more competitive it would likely mean that melee combat would become alot less competitive and we would see the vast majority of characters in ddo be ranged or spellcasters which is something Turbine wants to avoid.

[ChaelaAnne]

I actually think they should add a way to reduce the manyshot cooldown timer in enhancements, to prevent overpowering. That way, you CAN cut down the time, but you have to make other sacrifices to do it. I personally would trade every enhancement point I had to cut down on the cool down timer, but there are tempests out there that wouldn't/couldn't and maintain their build. Giving them a shorter period on the cooldown would certainly overpower them more then they already are.

[vainangel]

Agree with the Many Shot
I stopped playing my ranged character when Multi was not useful in faster runs.
Also agree that AA should get stuff like cripple and trip
There should be more arrows for AA to summon
Fire
Ice
Acid

possibly a special path each AA could follow that would possibly open up Banish or Disrupt to the arrows summoned.

[GrayOldDruid]

I actually think they should add a way to reduce the manyshot cooldown timer in enhancements, to prevent overpowering. That way, you CAN cut down the time, but you have to make other sacrifices to do it. I personally would trade every enhancement point I had to cut down on the cool down timer, but there are tempests out there that wouldn't/couldn't and maintain their build. Giving them a shorter period on the cooldown would certainly overpower them more then they already are.

That is a cool Idea. Kind of a "Path" for Rangers. Ranged is useful in certain situations for everyone. Rangers would have three distinct paths...

The 'general' Ranger who doesn't specialize in any one combat form, gets decent ranged and melee abilities.

The Archer concentrates on the Ranged aspect, increases the speed of their shots, decreases the cool-down of Manyshot and maybe can pick up 'trick shots' like hamstring, pin, etc. When it comes to Melee, well, maybe its best to let the pros handle that.

The Tempest concentrates on Melee, two weapon fighting, etc.

The Deepwood Sniper would be a decent idea IF all mobs in the general area didn't zero in on the sniper's location with 100% accuracy the second the shot hit - IF it hits... and the cooldown timer was shorter and it could be added into the attack chain without having to repeatedly press the button over and over and over. As it stands, DS is a frustrating waste of time.

[splinterx]

i would like to see it that when you have a bow equipt and you hold shift to block that if you 'atack' you smack them with your bow like the stupid ranger mobs do.

[sephiroth1084]

Aesop started a thread along these lines (with a wider focus than just ranged combat) that has a hearty and intelligent discussion being put forth by the various posters here:

http://forums.ddo.com/showthread.php?t=163189

[Strumpoo]

The single most important thing to help ranged combat will come as a surprise:
Give archers the ability to reduce enemy movement.

That will give them more time to shoot targets while being less reliant on kiting, and moreover the reduced kiting makes them function better as part of a team. Too often an archer will proudly kite a mob to death, while the others sigh and remark they could have killed it 8 times faster if it stayed still.

Three ways to let archers slow their enemies:
1. Allow the existing Hamstring feat to work with ranged weapons.
2. Add the Pin feat from D&D, which lets you make Trip attacks at long range. (Importantly, it should have a pretty big cooldown, 45-60 sec)
3. Investigate Entangle or other ranger spells that help reduce movement. Maybe invent some new spells on that theme (like a spell to conjure 50 tangler arrows)

In addition to that, the other obvious way to improve range is to make magic arrow drops more meaningful:
1. All size 20 ammo stacks should be increased to 80 or 100.
2. Magic ammo drops should be 25%, 50%, or 75% returning.



One way to improve that would be to double the cooldown, and increase the benefit to +5 attack, +2 threat, +1 mult. That way you get just as much overall power, but don't need to press the icon as much.

Good Ideas Angelus,

Couple questions though. I like the idea of a hamstring or a ranged "trip". By way should the ranged cooldown timer be so much longer than the melee cooldown?

The last thing that ranged characters need IMO is more insanely long cooldown timers. I could see it being maybe 15 secs or something. But, to make it a minute just seems unfair to the ranged types.


same thing with Deepwoods Sniper. The cooldown timer causes problems because it doesn't work correctly. (shots not going off). Doubling the cooldown wouldn't help this problem, it would just make the ranger wait an additional period of time before mashing the button repeatedly again.

I hate the "one shot" cooldown timers for ranged as I don't think they work properly for some reason. If we were going to do a cooldown, then it can't just be for one shot. It would need to be an active "stance" or something for say 20-30secs. With a minute cooldown after that. Just something that lets the ranger get a chance for the shot to actually go off.