Ranger: Arcane Archer Changes (Early Autumn Edition)

[Thar]

Here's some changes we'd like to make to Arcane Archer sooner rather than later. We expect we may come back to Arcane Archer in the not-distant future to address additional issues we'd like to get to. We consider this a strong basis for improvement in some of the primary Arcane Archer features. There are some specific abilities that we consider underperforming that we want to address but may not have time to get in very soon¹.

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Arcane Archer

• Action Boosts reduced to 1 AP per rank - good and common pass adjustment.
• DC Based Arrow Stances: Includes Terror, Paralyzing, Banishing, and Smiting Arrows:
  
  • Each becomes one rank, 2 AP. - good ap reduction.
  • Each has a saving throw of 20 + Wisdom Modifier + Enchantment Spell Bonuses - being that rangers are well rangers not casters, this is a common problem with the class and related spells. wisdom mod will be in the single digits and enhancement bonus will be limited on related gear, etc. i'd suggest 20 + Ranger level + wisdom mod + enchantment bonus if you don't want to use dex. yes moncher haters, this will boost monchers a bit but seriously dc's in epic are more than 50s that you obtain here anyway. if you want this to be useful, you need to add more to it somehow.
    
  • Each enhancement taken grants +1 DC with Enchantment Spells.
    why not evocation or a blanket to all spells which would help the useless ranger dc spells? that seems more in line with the class. i'm not charming monsters with my arrows or even hypnotizing? Is there any enchantment spell class on the tree? yes they are enchanting arrows but to do spell effects that hurt more or do other spell scoll effects.
    
  • Paralyze and Terror become short durations, but no additional save after the initial save. Short in this case is about 6 seconds. If you keep shooting one target, it can continue to be Paralyzed or Terrored. If you can keep a line going for Improved Precise Shot, you can keep this going on multiple enemies. To control maximum enemies, you'll need to frequently switch targets.
    
    boooo but whatever, it's still hardly going to work for a ranger in epics.
    
  • Paralyzing Arrows: On save, chance to apply 3 seconds of -10% Movement and Attack speed.
    
    good addition, a -1 to enchantment save would be nice if you insist on keeping the saving throw enchantment.
    
  • Smiting Arrows gains a chance to apply Deconstructed (slows attack speed, reduces fortification by 25%, and inflicts a 25% penalty to Repair healing)
    interesting
    
  • Banishing Arrows gains chance to inflict Pull of Reality¹ on each hit.
    
    • Pull of Reality¹: -1 PRR, -1 MRR. Stacks up to 25 times. 5 stacks fade away every 3 seconds (if no new stacks were added).
    
    
    interesting...
  
  
• Elemental Arrows (Corrosive, Flaming, Frost, Shock)
  
  • Increase base damage to 1d8.
  • Damage scales with Spell Power. Exact amount TBD.
  • Each additional Elemental Arrows increases damage by +1 die.
  • Each enhancement tier from 2-5 has a new multiple choice option, "Elemental Damage", that increases damage by +2 dice (for a maximum of 7 dice if you select only one damage type).
  • Tier 5 Elemental Arrow damage (Improved) also scales with Spell Power.
  • Force Arrows scales number of dice with Elemental Arrows, and also scales with spellpower
  
  
  good change here, these were always too costly for minimal useage since only one could be active at a time. will the force arrows tier up by +1 or 2 die too?
  
• Shadow Arrows (Core, 18 levels of Ranger):
  
  • Gains: "Passive: Equipped bows gain +1 Competence bonus to Critical Damage Multiplier"
  
  
  excellent. although since level 18, could be both threat and damage. keeps this out of moncher discussion which is good.
  
• Mystical Archer (Core, 20 levels of Ranger):
  
  • Dexterity bonus increased to +4
  
  
  appropriate but without manyshot changes the 20% doubleshot is less than it seems. 10k should have the penalty, manyshot shouldn't. put both on the same timer if you need to.
  
• Slaying Arrow:
  
  • Depending on DPS testing, this may be decreased or increased in power. Yes, if we've injected too much power into Arcane Archer, this is where we will probably pull back on some of it. We don't expect to fundamentally change the design of this ability, but it's not healthy or good design for so much of the power of one enhancement tree or build to be in a single ability like this. (And yes, we understand just how powerful and vital it is for certain builds, but that's part of the problem.)
  
  touching slayer arrow weakens ranger greatly with lesser arrows not working in epics. (changes above aren't sufficient to make dc's work in epics) and after 3 lives in primal, what then. if this is reduced then some other buffs to the tree are needed to keep ranged combat viable.
  

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This accomplishes a few goals:

1. DC based abilities² have long been a bane of Arcane Archers. They were often extremely strong when obtained, but had no way at all to scale up towards higher levels, which has only gotten worse over time and higher levels. Reworking these abilities was a key feature we wanted to get to sooner rather than later. This has meant we've wanted to adjust how some of those abilities work as well, and in particular wanted Smiting and Banishing Arrows to feel more impactful on attacks that were not criticals (while not simply adding damage).
   
   rework per ranger level or a stat the class uses. dex, int would be appropriate. maybe cha
   
2. Elemental Arrows were simply too weak, and also didn't scale into Epic levels. These changes should make them feel pretty powerful in heroic while also having some good options to scale into Epic. The addition of multiple choice options gives players some meaningful choices on how to progress.
   
   good move
   
3. Those two changes, especially focusing on Spell DCs and Spell Power, help with the lore and flavor of Arcane Archer as well. While not strictly necessary for gameplay, we like to support this when we can. It also gives us a means of differentiating Arcane Archer from other potential bow users. We know this isn't a large and fully realized group of build choices, but we certainly want that open as a development path, and hopefully they won't look all that similar when we get there. Fighters focusing on bows should be viable, for instance, and wouldn't be likely to invest heavily in Spell Power or Enchantment DCs.
4. Some of the other changes are really quality of life, keeping up with the Joneses, and things we can quickly and easily do.

how are you helping the ranger spells? wisdom based does not help damage or to hit unless your monk. those spells snare, etc need a revamp to add ranger level into the dc and account for the bonus your providing here. that will make them useful, i would hope. saved in epic are into the 50-60s? how do you see a ranger building for this and maintaining a viable dex?

Again, we want to say that we don't think this is a perfect or even a complete pass for Arcane Archer. As an example, it pains us to leave Dispelling and Shattermantle shot as-is, and we've been discussing some other possibilities with the Player's Council. Those abilities really need a larger redesign - potentially touching on things like a redesign of Dispels across DDO, for instance, which we just don't have time for right now. But some of us having been pushing to get some of this came out sooner rather than later!

This is, of course, a design-in-progress, subject to change from testing, math, deep insights of wisdom, a million kobolds with typewriters, or designers unscrupulously trying to fit a bit more improvement in when they should probably get on with Level 30 work.



Thanks for your thoughts and feedback, and may you always be fighting in the shade!

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Footnotes, Vargouille? That's so outdated. Do you think you're in the module years?

1. (TM)

2. I'm going to recommend that when you fight in other planes, some enemy monsters should inflict Pull of Reality on player characters...

3. Developer Trivia: Some of the choices here in particular relate to technical hurdles that we've spent some time investigating working around but are probably not worth (even more) time. If you look carefully across DDO, you may note a relative lack of saving throws on most player abilities which are triggered passively. (Shiradi's Nerve Venom, for instance, was always intended to have a saving throw... it just didn't actually work, so got redesigned some at the last minute!) It's not that it's 100% impossible to do some of this kind of thing, but the amount of extra work is staggering (compared to even moderately simple abilities, can take 20-40 times as long to create). Even getting the saving throws we do have here is a bunch of extra work that doesn't really help anywhere else in the game, but at least applies to four abilities. This is also part of why they all use Enchantment Spell DC bonuses, rather than Terror Arrows using Necro... err, I mean, you are clearly enchanting your arrows in any case. So it's a lore reason! That sounds better, right? And therefore part of the flavor is that Arcane Archers specialize in Enchantment. It all comes together, somehow. (No, we're not going to base monster saves assuming you have 4 levels of Arcane Archer to get better Enchantment DCs... but if some Elf Wizard wants to go for it, well, we love somewhat crazy builds.)

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^{P.S. I probably ramble on too much even when I don't give a Trivia warning. Maybe I shouldn't use that. Maybe I shouldn't post hours after everyone else has gone home and no one can stop me. Bwahahahaha!}

see some notes in the original note above.

Too little for the poor archers. In heroic it's fine, if not a slow and agonizing combat style. Some alaracy would be nice higher in the tree to make it feel like action not pew....pew... pew... while rogue artificers are running around going pew.pew.pew...pew.pew.pew...pew.pew.pew in the same time. attack speed needs a boost. the crit range is still pityful compared to melee so a speed boost seems still ok here. much like crossbows got. bows can shoot faster in real life than a crossbow as was the original intent of pen and paper speeds of the weapons. somehow it morf'd in ddo to make crossbows king with uber crit ranges and speed.

the problem still related to not buffing monchers too much at the same time. put caps for the buff tied to ranger level. ie core adds 1 enchangement to the weapon (does not stack) what use is this with epic bows being +6 or more???. change to adds 3% alaracy ranged and 3 range power per core tier capped at ranger level or dex bonus

yes archery is safer but when you agro something and the tank can't pull it back, it's run straight at you and splat your dead as you can't cc or kill 10k mob in epic. if your the first to shoot before melee gets agro... good luck kiting. not saying this is not possible, but outside of the 7 furyshots you have how can you go any reasonable dps to kill something chasing you? some sla spells like -25% damage bubble like arty would be nice.

spells see above... need some +ranger level love

defense - cores are weak especially since you can't use all at once. add some passive mage like ability to each. core 2 - add 5 prr/mrr to leather armor or haste as sla, core 3 add globe of inv as sla core 4 add prr/mrr on his for 5 sec capped at ranger level. core 5 adds blur as sla core 6 adds 5 prr/mrr capstone adds 10% dodge or displacement as a sla or something defensive like displacement.

+1/2 die increases for the elementals - i like it as it fixes the limited usefulness of taking all 4.

main issue is the doublestrike penalty hurting rangers more than monchers which it seems it was intended for. it needs to move to 10k only or be removed. why would builds that favor doublestrike and never use manyshot be better than a normal class ability? you shouldn't want to negate a powerful abillity for rangers like that. make both to mutually exclusive toggle that gives ranger double shot and 10k gives monks some extra arrows at a longer interval but never turns off. so you get a bonus for using but can't use both at once. no? want that burst dps? then timers that impact both. no? want to keep that moncher build uber? then add in bonus to double shot at higher levels. ie 1% per ranger level at different cores so the doubleshot penalty can be overcome for rangers only.

[Grailhawk]

Incorrect.

Arcane Archers are INT based. They are Arcane. The DC should be INT-based as well.

I can get behind Int or Cha based but making it Dex bothers me.

[blerkington]

• Is the cooldown on these abilities changing?
• Can Doubleshot go above 100% to provide a third arrow or more?

Hi,

These are really good questions, and I would also like to see an answer to them.

The justification that large numbers of projectiles is costly of server resources is an interesting assertion too. Is manyshot in its current form that much more demanding than constant repeating crossbow fire?

Thanks.

[CeltEireson]

Yea, of course...DEX is alredy favored on other ranger trees, and INT isnt even a stat for ranger, wis IS the obvious choice.If youre not using high wis theres elemental stances to use instead wich got a HUGE boost, people are failing to see that.
IF the devs are open to allow a multiselector between dex/wis or best of dex/wis then i'd agree, but replacing WIS with another stat would be completly stupid, for reasons i mentioned before.

Ignoring for the moment the issue of elven racial AA. Given the current formula dex would be too strong, certainly for the paralysis one - it would be okay it was a single shot affair with a timer but as a stance I don't think it would work. With a little work you'd be able to get DCs into the 70s and given that they have to make a save against every single arrow, including doubleshots I assume even mobs on high epic elite would be failing regularly - compare that to how often a mage is able to cast crowd control. Even if you don't make any investment at all 1 in 20 times a mob will fail the save and be guaranteed to be paralysed for 6 seconds.

But as someone pointed out the problem is that getting a 'correct' DC for effects like this is very difficult - most times it will either underpowered or overpowered, especially as sooner or later someone will figure out a way to get practically no fail DCs. Thinking about it I think it would be better off with just a small chance to proc rather than DC based. or a single shot with a timer and higher DC. But if you allow other stats to apply rather than wisdom I think you need to look at the formula again.

And of course theres the issue of monkchers - not sure how this one would go to be honest - yes wisdom is their primary attribute so if you go down the route of wisdom as the stat for DCs they benefit a lot from it. On the other hand unless they go 18 ranger they're losing damage from the increased crit multiplier and I suspect you'll have issues maxing out both the elemental lines and the stances. From what I can see if you want to max out just DPS you'll need to invest fairly heavily in DWS as well to get the extra crit range and other benefits. So whilst monkchers will possibly be better at the DC stances (in their current state) they may not have the DPS of someone who focuses just on the damage options in AA and DWS.

I assume they didn't include ranger levels in the DC calculation because it would cause problems for elven AA - but if they could have separate formulas for AA and racial AA they could include some form of ranger level in the calculation which would offset any benefit monks gained from their higher wisdom.

[Thar]

Seriously? Wisdom as a primary stat? Are you deliberately trying to make people play monkchers as the only viable longbow class? This is, by far, the most disgusting thing I've ever heard you guys come up with. There's no excuse for this. Words simply cannot express my irritation, right now.

Are you deliberately trying to make me quit DDO?

should add ranger level to the dc which would help primary rangers more than monchers and still keep this wisdom trend if they feel that's appropriate.

[Starla70]

Not so sure about the wisdom, I think Int would be better. The paralyzing arrows don't work well in higher content. I am not sure how that will help. I agree, I don't want them to become over powered and be a AOE thing. I also agree that my account will most likely never see a monkcher. I think having wisdom as a main stat for AA will just strengthen Monkchers again. I think the summon arrows should be more then 100 and should scale.

[Grailhawk]

• Is the cooldown on these abilities changing?
• Can Doubleshot go above 100% to provide a third arrow or more?

Would love to comment on this, but these are really important points when considering these changes.

Edit: Thanks for teasing these changes, there very relevant to the ranged players out there.

Ya there's too much double shot spill over with this proposal you can get a good 40-60% Doubleshot before manyshot making the Doubleshot portion of the buff really week. If this is what they are going for they should be looking at adding 400 Ranged power.

Hi,

These are really good questions, and I would also like to see an answer to them.

The justification that large numbers of projectiles is costly of server resources is an interesting assertion too. Is manyshot in its current form that much more demanding than constant repeating crossbow fire?

Thanks.

Its the same thing they told us when they nerfed two weapon fighting and alacrity in U5.

[Lonnbeimnech]

Not so sure about the wisdom, I think Int would be better. The paralyzing arrows don't work well in higher content. I am not sure how that will help. I agree, I don't want them to become over powered and be a AOE thing. I also agree that my account will most likely never see a monkcher. I think having wisdom as a main stat for AA will just strengthen Monkchers again. I think the summon arrows should be more then 100 and should scale.

They are 100% returning. It makes no difference if you have 1 arrow or a billion.

[Severlin]

• Is the cooldown on these abilities changing?
• Can Doubleshot go above 100% to provide a third arrow or more?

Would love to comment on this, but these are really important points when considering these changes.

Edit: Thanks for teasing these changes, there very relevant to the ranged players out there.

The cooldown doesn't change.

Doubleshot will only provide one extra projectile, even if it goes over 100%. At the higher end this will mean that the ability essentially just rounds out your Doubleshot to 100%.

Sev~

[Aletys]

This. Definitely. TWF gets two slots so should bows.

Also, I am not understanding the uproar about using the wisdom mod for paralyzing. You can now max dex, ignore str, in, char, put a decent amount into con and dump into wis. Using that method I am still at 40 wis or so at lvl 28. and either 58 or 64 dex depending on which ED I am in and just at or over 1000 hps. So, 40 wis would be 20+15+ band immaterial (+6) and whatever other spell focus enchantment feats you take... so like 41 being a conservative estimate? That is higher than that? Better than the original 37. Also, you can craft a enchantment focus bow instead of paralyze at tier 2.

I plan on going the elemental arrows route, but need clarification on exactly what sources of spell power will boost it.

I believe that except for PDK's, Paladins use Charisma for their spells. Perhaps they should be changed so that their melee damage is based entirely off Charisma as well, rather than using strength. That argument is nuts.

Thought I saw some one complain about having to give up proc effects on a Thunderforged bow to put elemental spell power on it for Elemental Arrows. Can't find the post now but here is math to compare 150 spell power vs the other Thunderforged effects.


1st Degree Burns: 5d6 Fire, and Vulnerable, 5*3.5 = 17.5 avg damage per hit, and vulnerable which only maters if no one else is putting it on.

Touch of Flames: 10d6 Fire. 10*3.5 = 35 avg damage.


Elemental Arrows + Dwarvencrft Elemental Spell Power 7d8 scaling with 100% spell power. 7*4.5 = 31.5 base
let x be spell power not from Dwarvencraft effect.
31.5(100+x+150)/100 = 31.5 + 0.315x + 47.25

47.25 extra damage from the 150 spell power that's better then Touch of Flames and better then 1st degree burns if with out the vulnerability part which you can let some one else handle and isn't as good against trash. IMO 150 Spell power is competitive in this instance. 47.25 avg damage is roughly 13.5d6

And if you're soloing? And you forgot c) Dragon's Edge: Passive: Armor-Piercing 35%. On Crit: 33 to 105 Bleeding Damage. Armor-Piercing is a very important property for a toon using physical weapons.

And what does an AA do before they get to level 26 and can use a thunderforged bow? Or, while they're farming all those ingots and scales to make/upgrade your TF bow? Where are the sources of spell power going to come from? Not every bow in the game has a red slot. And, they only get one. So, am I going to be changing augments with a tool kit in the middle of a fight to get the right spellpower on my bow? Do I need four versions of every bow to cover the 4 possible spellpowers? Inventory in DDO is already a pain. This will be a nightmare.

Wisdom for the DC is the right call.

Rangers spells are wisdom based.

Making them Dex based is just playing into the 4e concept that all abilities from one class should be driven by the same same stat this was garbage there and is garbage where DDO has implemented it (Blood Strength should not scale with Melee Power but Devotion, and there are other examples of this 4e concept)

Yes, and Paladin spells are Charisma based. Perhaps their melee damage should be based on Charisma instead of Strength, based on your reasoning.

Yea, of course...DEX is alredy favored on other ranger trees, and INT isnt even a stat for ranger, wis IS the obvious choice.If youre not using high wis theres elemental stances to use instead wich got a HUGE boost, people are failing to see that.
IF the devs are open to allow a multiselector between dex/wis or best of dex/wis then i'd agree, but replacing WIS with another stat would be completly stupid, for reasons i mentioned before.

Yes, and Dex SHOULD be favored for ALL the ranger trees. That is how it is done for every other class in the game. I could live with a multi-selector, but frankly I'm against that as it will make Monkchers even more powerful than they are now, and there will still be no reason to play an AA instead of a Moncher.

Yeah, without a solution to the double shot penalty for rangers the capstone is weak. With no double shot penalty capstone is reasonable.

The scaling of arrows is not really any use past low levels as its only the higher of bow enhancement bonus or arrows that counts and most epic bows are in the range +5 - +12.

Agreed, it is ridiculously weak. Make the bow/arrow core enhancements stacking, rather than replacements. Right now, as soon as an AA gets into epics, they lose one of the main benefits of ALL their cores. What other class is this done to? And add something more. Look at the capstones for the other recently added/revised classes. They have capstones that make sense, and which reward you for sticking to the class. This does not. No one is going to bother with this capstone the way it is written.

If the goal is to make monkchers better... Success. If the goal was to make a viable ranger tree you have some work to do. As much as I can see the argument for wisdom based dc abilities most people will go dex for their primary stat through dws and for more reflex save. Wisdom based just overly complicates things. So does scaling the imbues with spell power and not ranged power. The capstone needs some help something like advanced ninja training; extra arrows based off your dex score would help the ranger version of the tree tremendously.

Now if you want to have wisdom/intelligence based abilities and scaling imbues based off spell power in the elf version of the tree I would be all for that.

The ranger version of the tree needs to synergize with the other two ranger trees.

Not sure I would want this stuff just moved to the elf tree, but you are absolutely correct on your other points.

Other 2h TF weapons get to pick all 3 tiers of effects AND get two red slots. Bows get 3 tiers + 1 red slot. Its really a no-brainer that Bows as 2h weapons should get 2 red slots. As for what to actually slot in the 3 tiers and the 2 red slots - thats a different matter but it has no real bearing on Bows needing another red slot.

This. Absolutely. And it applies to all bows, not just long bows.

[Grailhawk]

(We are still talking with the player's council about balance changes, but I wanted to give a teaser on what we are looking at for Manyshot and Ten Thousand Stars since it is relevant to this thread.)


We are considering changes to Many Shot and 10K Stars. We want a design that throws out fewer projectiles for server and client performance as missiles are actually expensive. We also want a design that doesn't require a doubleshot debuff.

Manyshot redesign: For the next 20 seconds you add your base attack bonus * 4 to your Doubleshot and Ranged Power. Using this ability places Ten Thousand Stars on a 30 second cool-down. (You no longer have a Doubleshot penalty applied.)

Ten Thousand Stars redesign: For the 30 seconds you add your Wisdom to your Doubleshot and Ranged Power. Using this ability places Manyshot on a 30 second cool-down. (You no longer have a Doubleshot penalty applied.)

Our goal is to make these abilities more efficient without reducing the overall DPS of ranged characters using one or both of these abilities.

Sev~

This is a HUGE nerf to manyshot

Manyshot on live is a x4 multiplier

1.8*1.8 = 3.24 damage multiplier and that's best case assuming you have 0 DS and 0 RP once you have more then 2 the total multiplier will go down.

Simple example 
    
base damage is 100 
assuming we fire 50 attacks in 20 secods base 
total damage in 20 seconds is 5000 

manyshot meanswe fire 4 arrows instead of one so 50*4 = 200 
200*100 = 20000 damage in 20 seconds of many shot 

80 mp and 80 doublestrike 
180 damge per hit 
50*1.8 = 90 
90*180 = 16200 damage 

1 - 16200/20000 = 0.19 or a 19% reduction in power

Thats a nerf on base. Note that since manyshot multplies Ranged Power this was the best case since 80 RP isn't going to be as much of an total increase to damage done when you have a base RP already

Now example assuing you already have 100 RP 
base is 100 
50 arrows per 20 second base 

100 * (100+100)/100 = 200 
200 * 50 = 10000 damge in 20 base 

with live manyshot 
200*4*50 = 40000 damage in 20 seconds 

with new manyshot 
100 * (100+180)/100 = 280
280*1.8*50 = 25200

1- 25200/40000 = 37% reduction

You need to add a ton of damage to the tree to come close to the damage you would loose from this kind of a nerf to manyshot.

[Arlathen]

The cooldown doesn't change.

Doubleshot will only provide one extra projectile, even if it goes over 100%. At the higher end this will mean that the ability essentially just rounds out your Doubleshot to 100%.

Sev~

Thanks for the answer, Sev. I'll formulate some feedback based on this.

[Grailhawk]

And if you're soloing? And you forgot c) Dragon's Edge: Passive: Armor-Piercing 35%. On Crit: 33 to 105 Bleeding Damage. Armor-Piercing is a very important property for a toon using physical weapons.

Dragons Edge is a Tier 2 effect Spell Power is a Tier 1 I didn't forget anything but you don't know what you are talking about.

Yes, and Paladin spells are Charisma based. Perhaps their melee damage should be based on Charisma instead of Strength, based on your reasoning.

That's exactly what 4e does makes spell and melee damage and everything else based on one stat. I'm saying not to do that.

[Severlin]

This is a HUGE nerf to manyshot

Manyshot on live is a x4 multiplier

1.8*1.8 = 3.24 damage multiplier and that's best case assuming you have 0 DS and 0 RP once you have more then 2 the total multiplier will go down.

Simple example 
    
base damage is 100 
assuming we fire 50 attacks in 20 secods base 
total damage in 20 seconds is 5000 

manyshot meanswe fire 4 arrows instead of one so 50*4 = 200 
200*100 = 20000 damage in 20 seconds of many shot 

80 mp and 80 doublestrike 
180 damge per hit 
50*1.8 = 90 
90*180 = 16200 damage 

1 - 16200/20000 = 0.19 or a 19% reduction in power

Thats a nerf on base. Note that since manyshot multplies Ranged Power this was the best case since 80 RP isn't going to be as much of an total increase to damage done when you have a base RP already

Now example assuing you already have 100 RP 
base is 100 
50 arrows per 20 second base 

100 * (100+100)/100 = 200 
200 * 50 = 10000 damge in 20 base 

with live manyshot 
200*4*50 = 40000 damage in 20 seconds 

with new manyshot 
100 * (100+180)/100 = 280
280*1.8*50 = 25200

1- 25200/40000 = 37% reduction

You need to add a ton of damage to the tree to come close to the damage you would loose from this kind of a nerf to manyshot.

You need to take into account that DPS after these abilities are finished will be increased by your Doubleshot since there is no longer a debuff.

Sev~

[barecm]

I believe that except for PDK's, Paladins use Charisma for their spells. Perhaps they should be changed so that their melee damage is based entirely off Charisma as well, rather than using strength. That argument is nuts.



And if you're soloing? And you forgot c) Dragon's Edge: Passive: Armor-Piercing 35%. On Crit: 33 to 105 Bleeding Damage. Armor-Piercing is a very important property for a toon using physical weapons.

And what does an AA do before they get to level 26 and can use a thunderforged bow? Or, while they're farming all those ingots and scales to make/upgrade your TF bow? Where are the sources of spell power going to come from? Not every bow in the game has a red slot. And, they only get one. So, am I going to be changing augments with a tool kit in the middle of a fight to get the right spellpower on my bow? Do I need four versions of every bow to cover the 4 possible spellpowers? Inventory in DDO is already a pain. This will be a nightmare.



Yes, and Paladin spells are Charisma based. Perhaps their melee damage should be based on Charisma instead of Strength, based on your reasoning.



Yes, and Dex SHOULD be favored for ALL the ranger trees. That is how it is done for every other class in the game. I could live with a multi-selector, but frankly I'm against that as it will make Monkchers even more powerful than they are now, and there will still be no reason to play an AA instead of a Moncher.



Agreed, it is ridiculously weak. Make the bow/arrow core enhancements stacking, rather than replacements. Right now, as soon as an AA gets into epics, they lose one of the main benefits of ALL their cores. What other class is this done to? And add something more. Look at the capstones for the other recently added/revised classes. They have capstones that make sense, and which reward you for sticking to the class. This does not. No one is going to bother with this capstone the way it is written.



Not sure I would want this stuff just moved to the elf tree, but you are absolutely correct on your other points.



This. Absolutely. And it applies to all bows, not just long bows.

Once this hits Lamannia for testing and you can see how much more damage the elemental arrows are giving, this whole dialogue will be a moot point. Without anything beyond what is being proposed here by the devs, I can safely say I will be going the elemental route only putting enough into the other side of the tree to get Slayer arrows. My ask is that they break the requirements to get slayer arrow since having to sink points into paralyzing and terror arrows will be a waste.

[Kielbasa]

You need to add a ton of damage to the tree to come close to the damage you would loose from this kind of a nerf to manyshot.

This. With this suggested nerf to manyshot you are going to need to put some massive boosts to bows in here to get people to use them over shurikens or repeaters. If the change goes through you will have relegated manyshot to a swap to bow ability activate then swap back to shuriken or repeater for the ranged power boost.

All I've seen so far with with the changes is that the devs are unsure of how to make bow combat viable versus other ranged combat styles. This is not encouraging.

[Severlin]

This. With this suggested nerf to manyshot you are going to need to put some massive boosts to bows in here to get people to use them over shurikens or repeaters. If the change goes through you will have relegated manyshot to a swap to bow ability activate then swap back to shuriken or repeater for the ranged power boost.

All I've seen so far with with the changes is that the devs are unsure of how to make bow combat viable versus other ranged combat styles. This is not encouraging.

There is a large potential increase in DPS with the loss of the Doubleshot debuff. We have to account for that.

Good point on the weapon switch. Our plan is that the short term buffs end if you unequip your weapon during Manyshot or Ten Thousand Stars.

Sev~

[btolson]

Manyshot redesign: For the next 20 seconds you add your base attack bonus * 4 to your Doubleshot and Ranged Power. Using this ability places Ten Thousand Stars on a 30 second cool-down. (You no longer have a Doubleshot penalty applied.)

Sev~

Kinda still makes gearing/speccing for doubleshot an awkward/bad thing, unless you want to change doubleshot > 100 to have a chance to fire a third shot.

Maybe this can be 3-dimensional instead?

BAB*2 to Doubleshot
BAB*2 to Alacrity (edit: actually should probably be BAB*3 to Alacrity, since bows have reload animation unaffected by it)
BAB*4 to RP

[nibel]

Here's some changes we'd like to make to Arcane Archer sooner rather than later. We expect we may come back to Arcane Archer in the not-distant future to address additional issues we'd like to get to. We consider this a strong basis for improvement in some of the primary Arcane Archer features. There are some specific abilities that we consider underperforming that we want to address but may not have time to get in very soon¹.

I know this is a lost cause, but I still want to voice that I would heavily prefer that AA was removed as a Ranger tree, and become an elf-only tree, like it is supposed to be. This way, you can balance this tree against a 66 AP pool maximum (since unlocking AA requires at least 14) instead of 80 like it is currently.

Action Boosts reduced to 1 AP per rank

Neat. Any chance to make Energy Resistance Boost also apply a very large elemental absorption bonus for the same time, like 20/30/50% absorption?

DC Based Arrow Stances: Includes Terror, Paralyzing, Banishing, and Smiting Arrows:

• Each becomes one rank, 2 AP.
• Each has a saving throw of 20 + Wisdom Modifier + Enchantment Spell Bonuses
• Each enhancement taken grants +1 DC with Enchantment Spells.
• Paralyze and Terror become short durations, but no additional save after the initial save. Short in this case is about 6 seconds. If you keep shooting one target, it can continue to be Paralyzed or Terrored. If you can keep a line going for Improved Precise Shot, you can keep this going on multiple enemies. To control maximum enemies, you'll need to frequently switch targets.
• Paralyzing Arrows: On save, chance to apply 3 seconds of -10% Movement and Attack speed.
• Smiting Arrows gains a chance to apply Deconstructed (slows attack speed, reduces fortification by 25%, and inflicts a 25% penalty to Repair healing)
• Banishing Arrows gains chance to inflict Pull of Reality¹ on each hit.
  
  • Pull of Reality¹: -1 PRR, -1 MRR. Stacks up to 25 times. 5 stacks fade away every 3 seconds (if no new stacks were added).

Except by the wis-based DC (I think it should be Int because arcane), I like all proposed changes. Pull of Reality should not be a "chance" to proc, however, since the stacks fade fast (5 stacks every 3 seconds).

About the DC, small suggestion: 10 + half ranger level + Dex|Wis modifier on Ranger tree, and 20 + Int modifier on Elf tree? Both keep adding Enchantment bonus. Monkchers that use Elf AA to get access to higher cores lose the synergy, and ranger splashes are inherently weaker than pure rangers.

Elemental Arrows (Corrosive, Flaming, Frost, Shock)

• Increase base damage to 1d8.
• Damage scales with Spell Power. Exact amount TBD.
• Each additional Elemental Arrows increases damage by +1 die.
• Each enhancement tier from 2-5 has a new multiple choice option, "Elemental Damage", that increases damage by +2 dice (for a maximum of 7 dice if you select only one damage type).
• Tier 5 Elemental Arrow damage (Improved) also scales with Spell Power.
• Force Arrows scales number of dice with Elemental Arrows, and also scales with spellpower

Since the arrows scale with Spell Power, and neither ranger tree gives inherent non-positive spellpower (and the class don't have Spellcraft as a class skill), add +10~20 specific elemental spell power on each Elemental Arrow (eg, Acid Arrow gives +10~20 Acid spell power), and +5~10 Universal Spell Power to "Elemental Damage" option.

Will Force Arrows stay as 1d6 damage, since Force is less resistible than other elements (which I actually encourage), or will it also be bumped to 1d8?

Shadow Arrows (Core, 18 levels of Ranger):

• Gains: "Passive: Equipped bows gain +1 Competence bonus to Critical Damage Multiplier"

I would HEAVILY ask for that benefit to be only on Ranger AA, and not on Elf AA.

Mystical Archer (Core, 20 levels of Ranger):

• Dexterity bonus increased to +4

Since you made the tree depend on Wisdom for their DCs, and nothing on the tree actually benefits from Dexterity beyond basic bow to hit (dex to damage is on DWS tree), change that to +4 Wisdom, or +2 Dex and Wis (and if following my suggestion of Elf AA being int-based, then +4 Int or +2 Dex and Int there).

Slaying Arrow:

• Depending on DPS testing, this may be decreased or increased in power. Yes, if we've injected too much power into Arcane Archer, this is where we will probably pull back on some of it. We don't expect to fundamentally change the design of this ability, but it's not healthy or good design for so much of the power of one enhancement tree or build to be in a single ability like this. (And yes, we understand just how powerful and vital it is for certain builds, but that's part of the problem.)

Slaying Arrow is on par with "finishing" abilities like Merciful Shot on DWS or Execute on Assassin, but it lack a conditional situation (on the other hand, have a SP cost that can be adjusted for balance, and a longer cooldown). The main problem is the synergy with Manyshot AND Adrenaline. If one of those two abilities suddenly stop working with Slaying Arrow as it works today, Slaying Arrow remain powerful, but not a game breaker.

Things like Manyshot only allowing Adrenaline to empower the first hit (like it does with cleave-like abilities), or Adrenaline adds Melee Power instead of percentage damage boost, or if the ways to recover Adrenaline only works with melee attacks (Fury Eternal, Unbridled Fury counter) should be enough to keep Slaying Arrow as is.

[Vellrad]

As monkchers are mostly the only build with WIS as a main stat, having ONLY Wisdom is unfair to the class AA is made for. To satisfy multiple parties, the DCs should work like this:

Base DC+ Stat modifer that your bow's to-hit uses + the other bonuses

This way, three options are available for AA:
Int-based using Harper, to the boon of ARCANE casters
Dex-based using DWS' Improved Finesse/Elven Grace, for elven ____, and the ranger in general
Wis-based (maybe add enhancement that allows WIS to damage, possibly to-hit for pure ranger w/o ki compatability portion?), so the monkchers don't destroy the forums in rage at nerfs.


There's no reason it couldn't be coded, as assassins get the option of INT or DEX for their DCs.

Make it to damage, so people with bow str can use str for something.

Who got bow str feat? oh, IDK, maybe 100% people with at least 1 ranger level?