Ranger: Arcane Archer Changes (Early Autumn Edition)

[Vargouille]

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.

---

Arcane Archer

• Action Boosts reduced to 1 AP per rank
• 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).
  
  
• 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
  
  
• Shadow Arrows (Core, 18 levels of Ranger):
  
  • Gains: "Passive: Equipped bows gain +1 Competence bonus to Critical Damage Multiplier"
  
  
• Mystical Archer (Core, 20 levels of Ranger):
  
  • Dexterity bonus increased to +4
  
  
• 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.)

---

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).
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.
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.

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!

---

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.)

---

^{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!}

[Grailhawk]

[*]Each enhancement taken grants +1 DC with Enchantment Spells.

You mean core enhancement? or is this the go to tree for a Enchantment wizard now?

O think I get it now each of Terror, Paralyzing, Banishing, and Smiting Arrow gives +1 so at total of +4?

[EllisDee37]

AA needs some kind of fletching. Any tier is fine, even Tier 5. Even if you don't add the +10 ranged power, though I'd prefer they get it.

Second, please increase the stack size of arrows in inventory. 1000, 500, even 200. It just needs to be (significantly) more than 100. With that plus fletching, AAs could then actually use arrows strategically. We could craft up a bunch of bane arrows and swap around depending on our target, much like how melee could craft a bunch of bane weapons and easily swap as needed.

Note that we simply cannot use quivers as they were intended, which I'm not even sure I can suss out what the actual intent was. They just don't work in the heat of battle. Instead, let us stack our arrows directly in inventory for easy hotbarring, and let us make any arrow 80% returning like mechanics can with their bolts.

In a perfect world, ammunition would be part of weaponset logic, so like I could choose an undead weaponset that would select Silver Slinger and Undead Slaying arrows, for example. Totally fine if it only works on arrows in inventory, not in quivers.

EDIT: If you wanted to add some kind of alternative to fletching, like say arrows never return but when your stack runs out, a new 100 of the same type is conjured for 20 spell points, fine by me. My main issue is that I draw closer to my next life -- pure ranger AA 100% bow user -- I really want ammunition to be a thing. It would be if I were doing a mechanic life. Seems wrong that AA doesn't get similar ranged coolness to a knucklehead with a crossbow.

[MrWindupBird]

Looks interesting. However: why no changes to manyshot and doubleshoot penalty? That needs to happen.

All the additions to doubleshot are meaningless without a change.

[Enoach]

First I'm coming from the perspective of Elf to access AA and not Ranger.

• Each has a saving throw of 20 + Wisdom Modifier + Enchantment Spell Bonuses

I personally enjoy a 12/8 Elf Fighter/Wizard. My primary attribute is Dexterity. While I don't ignore wisdom I'm trying to understand why Dexterity Modifier is not an OR option. To me Dexterity works well especially with Elf and leveraging Grace's Dexterity to Damage.

I understand that wisdom is a recommended attribute for Rangers but most builds only go for enough wisdom to meet spell level which is needing to hit 14.

Also the fact that most Arcane classes are either Intelligence based or Charisma based.

I would like to ask if possible to allow this to be the highest of Wisdom/Dexterity/Intelligence/Charisma.

This would open up more build options for the AA tree as well as remove the advantage a Monk AA build would have over other builds.

I do understand that Wizard AA builds do get an advantage with access to a Spell Focus Feat(s) so that might also need to be considered.

==============================
I like the elemental arrow direction - especially the spell power part, may even consider these with this type of change.

==============================
As pointed out by another poster. Are we going to see a change in the Doubleshot penalty from Manyshot/10K Stars?

[serthcore]

[*]Shadow Arrows (Core, 18 levels of Ranger):

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

18 Levels of Ranger, or elf / high elf i assume?

[Jetrule]

I love the idea of making The d.c.s relevant and the elemental damage scaleable. The cores are a bit of a concern and I wonder if the requirements could be changed to Ranger level or elf, half elf, sun elf character level?

[Enderoc]

Arcane Archer should base their DCs of spell like abilities from intelligence not wisdom if from a non physical stat at all in my opinion. Yes Rangers cast druidic spells...in flavor, but we are talking Arcane here. In fact they should be admitted to Arcane spells, or the ability to cast arcane scrolls as though they were certain levels of Arcane Casters or have spell like abilities.

[Grailhawk]

Looks interesting. However: why no changes to manyshot and doubleshoot penalty? That needs to happen.

All the additions to doubleshot are meaningless without a change.

I agree AA should have a reductions of the manyshot doubleshot penalty.

Devs can you comment on this? Is this a possibility or is it out of the question?

[Tom116]

Overall seems like a good start, but why base the DC of the special arrows on Wisdom? 20 + Wis Mod + Enchantment bonuses simply won't be high enough for epic elite unless you have Wis as your main stat, and even then it wouldn't be the best dc out there. I understand that it's a spammable ability, but to base it on Wisdom...the DC will be almost the same it is on live. If you used Dex mod instead, it would a much more viable form of CC. Assuming a decent dex (say, 50) it would be 20 + 20 + 6 (assuming 2 x SF: Enchant), and 46 isn't really a great DC for EE. It would work since it's applied to every arrow though, so at least it wouldn't be only functional when the mob rolls a 1.

[blerkington]

Hi,

I don't think WIS is a good choice of attribute as the basis for arrow effect DCs. It plays right into the hands of monkchers, yet again, rather than DEX based archers. The bonus from investing in WIS is also too small to be worthwhile as a build option in itself for non monk archers, so the effect will be to reward even further people who are already building for 10k stars while doing much less for anyone else. Additionally, the proposed DC formula looks like it will have a point where the usefulness of special effects will drop off very sharply in harder content, as it does now, but just a bit later on.

Similarly, builds which can achieve a higher RoF (like 10k stars builds) will benefit more from improved arrow effects. So by improving the imbues, you are doing more for those builds. The issue of RoF is the central problem for archers right now, both in that it is very uneven within archery builds, and also in that it compares very unfavourably to other ranged styles (throwers and particularly crossbow users). This was mentioned repeatedly by people during the DWS discussions, and it seems very much like the development team is simply ignoring the issue altogether.

Regarding those earlier discussions, some of us also made the point then that it is difficult to evaluate these changes without knowing what the dev team has in mind for the manyshot-induced doubleshot penalty and what, if anything, is happening to 10k stars. I'd like to suggest again that we be provided with some information sooner rather than later about what those plans are, so we can give you our feedback without half the information we need being missing.

Thanks.

[Mindos]

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.

---

Arcane Archer

• Action Boosts reduced to 1 AP per rank
• 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.
  
  
• This could be very overpowered. Personally, I think this is too much crowd control ability. But it depends on perspective. I also think bard CC and Warchanter are too strong. But if you compare these AA changes to them, then it appears well balanced.
• 
  
  • 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).
  
  
• 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
  
  
• This. Very good. Was needed very much. Finally, can dish out some damage compared to melee. But of course, how to balance ranged damage? Technically there's no threat from mobs, you are at range after all, and can even move when needed! (feets don't fail me now!) I don't envy you. How NOT to make an unstoppable killing machine can't be easy. Imagine, Warlocks aura at infinite range!
• Shadow Arrows (Core, 18 levels of Ranger):
  
  • Gains: "Passive: Equipped bows gain +1 Competence bonus to Critical Damage Multiplier"
  • Oh boy, hjere we go again. You know we're gonna get calls for a Tier 5 Crit threat expansion. Make it cost 5 ap?
  
  
• Mystical Archer (Core, 20 levels of Ranger):
  
  • Dexterity bonus increased to +4
  
  
• 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.)
  • I think you need to reiterate that Fury of the Wild is going to be changed to a power calculation instead of straight percentage increase. Being fully frank and forthright will be helpfull. Nothing changes in a vacuum.
    

---

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).
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.
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.

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!

I am already started to look at the combo's of this. Don't need to always have the bow equipped, do we? Paralyse, charge in, step back...

---

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...
This. Yes. Moar. I like changes to the game that apply both to the abyss as well as to ourselves. It's an ability, it doesn't say its just a good guys only ability!

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.)

---

^{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!}

Mr replies in red. One day i'll figure out multi-quote. (first time useing advanced editor :P )

[Therrias]

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.

---

Arcane Archer

• Action Boosts reduced to 1 AP per rank
• 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).
  
  
• 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
  
  
• Shadow Arrows (Core, 18 levels of Ranger):
  
  • Gains: "Passive: Equipped bows gain +1 Competence bonus to Critical Damage Multiplier"
  
  
• Mystical Archer (Core, 20 levels of Ranger):
  
  • Dexterity bonus increased to +4
  
  
• 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.)

---

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).
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.
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.

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!

---

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.)

---

^{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!}

You really need to give the capstone more attention than 2 extra dex. If you're leaving manyshot as is, then change the doubleshot to ranged power. Also make the imbuement give two or more stances full time instead of that super-annoying switch every 30 seconds.

[Spekdah_NZ]

I love the changes to elemental arrows, the hit die was unexpected but like that too. I was hoping for some more sources of passive ranged power; this being the premier archer tree. Mechanic has T5 Fletching (+3/6/10) and Reloader (+10), can AA have at least something similar? There is some ranged power in DWS, but's it's either T2 action boost with 30 seconds, or tied to a stance (T2 Impr. Archers Focus for +5RP) or at core 6 with Horizon shot (+20).

Be nice to see some Ranged Alacrity at high tiers.

I am another looking for solutions to the doubleshot penalty. Otherwise it's hard to add in any doubleshot bonuses into the tree.

Any chance of scaling summon arrows with cores, so we can have +2 to +5 arrows? (trying to adapt PnP enhance arrow).

[Natashaelle]

Can I ask the Community --

What are your ideas about how these broad principles should vary between Ranger AA and Elf AA ?

Should focus and abilities be very different between the two, identical, or simply variant ?

[FedoraSire]

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.

[HatsuharuZ]

I think that these changes are useful for Rangers by themselves.

But what about the RACIAL version of this tree? Is this going to be changed as well?


Oh, concerning the core abilities: I really, REALLY despise the bonuses to bow enhancement bonus that are specifically non-stacking. The reason being, the bonus becomes less and less useful as your character gets better and better bows. By time you reach epic levels, your character gets no benefit at all. I would suggest cutting the total bonus amount in half and making it completely stacking.

[jakeelala]

just let this work with all ranged combat styles please (aka Shuriken, I don't care about xbows they're way too OP now)

[FedoraSire]

just let this work with all ranged combat styles please (aka Shuriken, I don't care about xbows they're way too OP now)

The imbues are called ____ ARROWS for a reason. Darts and xbow bolts may be close enough to an arrow, but shuriken and the other throwers?

/Not signed

[Assassination]

I think the changes look pretty good. Some of us would like to see rangers get a bonus to run speed. Could that be put in this tree in say tier 1? Also, will rangers be getting some sort of "spell" pass? Our spells could really use a boost, revamp, redue.... Really enjoying my tempest/deepwood ranger!

Thanks