Ranger: Arcane Archer Changes (Early Autumn Edition)

[Drevok]

Please leave multiple arrows in many shot.
Repeating xbow has 3 bolt shot all the time.
If needed for server performance, could reduce manyshot to be up to 3 arrows and adjust the range power and removal of doublwshot penalty to compensate.

[Mryal]

(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~

So you have officialy opened the pandora's box.
I can see many people raging about this as they alredy are doing, but it seems at least reasonable.Capping to 2 arrows at the time does seems odd thought, specialy for manyshot, even the name seems to indicate it should shoot more.
I think its time to allow tripleshot to happen.Doubleshot caps at 100 wich means you have to not get the max amount of double shot (and not use divine crusader) for making full use of these, and that seems rather non intuitive.

I like that this reduces the strain on having to take 6 monk levels, and the fact that beign WIS based becomes closer to doing a trade off of damage vs CC wich is what we alredy on caster classes.
Perpahs the monk ranged playstyle can finnaly be separated from the ranger ranged playstyle now, and pave the road for actualy developing ranged support for monk ON monk when monk changes come, like ranged ki regen and ranged ki strikes.

[Eddexp]

Btw pure rangers dont even need 10k stars anymore, as they can easily get 72% double shot 100% of the time:

20 deepwood tier 5
25 arcane archer cores
8 epic quiver
10 epic feat
9 epic pl stance -72%

most game quivers are buggy and giving double strike instead of double shot ... please take a look at it

[Shindoku]

• Action Boosts reduced to 1 AP per rank
  This is definately good, but are the action boosts going to change? The resistance is good in certain situations, but the to hit bonus (much like with truestrike) is pretty useless on a ranger)
• DC Based Arrow Stances: Includes Terror, Paralyzing, Banishing, and Smiting Arrows:
  
  • Each becomes one rank, 2 AP.
    I very much like this, it cuts down part of the problem of having most of the points spent in tree on passives that cannot be used at the same time.
  • Each has a saving throw of 20 + Wisdom Modifier + Enchantment Spell Bonuses
    The DC is good, and I like the idea of Enchantment Spell Bonuses (it would make me rethink what gear I need and what class I could multi-class into to get greater benefit). I understand why you put Wisdom, but why not Intelligence? An Arcane Archer is a combination of the arcane casters (Wiz/Sorc) and a ranger who, moving forward is increasing their physical ranged attacks with their arcane spells and less so their ranger ones.
  • Each enhancement taken grants +1 DC with Enchantment Spells.
    This gives a nice passive to the locked out toggles that will benefit you when not being used.
  • 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.
    Can't argue with a shorter duration on Terror!
  • Paralyzing Arrows: On save, chance to apply 3 seconds of -10% Movement and Attack speed.
    It's nice that even if your DC isn't high enough, the toggle isn't totally useless.
  • Smiting Arrows gains a chance to apply Deconstructed (slows attack speed, reduces fortification by 25%, and inflicts a 25% penalty to Repair healing)
    I will actually use this now! Banking on something to work 5% of the time is not fun, having a chance for something to happen on a roll other than a 20 with this ability is nice.
  • Banishing Arrows gains chance to inflict Pull of Reality¹ on each hit.
    The same thing I said for Smiting Arrows can be said for this.
    
    • 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).
      ...and this!
  
  
• Elemental Arrows (Corrosive, Flaming, Frost, Shock)
  
  • Increase base damage to 1d8.
    An extra one damage per hit? Alright.
  • Damage scales with Spell Power. Exact amount TBD.
    This in particular is pretty interesting. Depending on how much it scales, an action boost to spellpower could be a cool little boost to it as well.
  • Each additional Elemental Arrows increases damage by +1 die.
    Something passive to this was needed and the proposed change is awesome!
  • 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).
    This is cool but it makes me wonder if people are just going to take Acid (least resisted, I believe) and boost it, leaving out the other elements. Of course, situationally the others could be better.
  • Tier 5 Elemental Arrow damage (Improved) also scales with Spell Power.
    I assume this means the damage based on crit multiplier, which is good, but does it include the 1d6 damage from burning stacks as well?
  • Force Arrows scales number of dice with Elemental Arrows, and also scales with spellpower
    Sweet!
  
  
• Shadow Arrows (Core, 18 levels of Ranger):
  
  • Gains: "Passive: Equipped bows gain +1 Competence bonus to Critical Damage Multiplier"
    I'm probably one of the few that doesn't care for this. It was given to a few classes at the start, and it was unique. Now, it has been wedged into far too many trees and it has to stop (giving everyone the exact same thing isn't unique/balance, it's boring and it makes everything the same. You wanted to not add it into the other two trees, and players whined. Sometimes, a child needs a slap on the wrist when they get too greedy.
  
  
• Mystical Archer (Core, 20 levels of Ranger):
  
  • Dexterity bonus increased to +4
    Going with DWS dex to damage or Elf's Dex to damage, +1 is always nice.
  
  
• 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.)
    Totally understandable.

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~

Would it be possible to keep it when switching to another bow? Swapping out a damage bypass weapon because you switched to a different enemy is sometimes required and would suck to drop an important buff like Manyshot.

[Eddexp]

please do some change to improve bows ... most added buffs are generic providing BAB, AttSpeed ,+[w] for everyone. So this is not improving at all the use of bows in the game.And clearly for pure rangers w/o 10tzstars the change on Many shots will be a NERF.

[Severlin]

Good job. This is a decent way to lay it out. But if you do that with a non-10k bow build, you will see it doesn't line up so nice.

Moreover, builds like my thrower in LD with 10 stacks of blitz (basically full time) runs around with about 180 Ranged Power.

Only the gimpiest of gimps will run around at end game with 70 Ranged Power.

Please adjust your models accordingly.

~ Without 10K Stars the 50 second Doubleshot debuff that Manyshot gives isn't negated by 30 seconds of 10K Stars so that debuff is actually harsher for a Manyshot build without 10K Stars.

~ The thrower doesn't use Manyshot, so it won't be losing as much since 10K Stars only drops from 2.7 to 2 shots per attack, and 20 seconds of the 10K Stars debuff isn't negated by Manyshot.

~ Good catch on blitz - I'll have to recheck the math for people blitzing. I don't see that in my notes.

Sev~

[Severlin]

Would it be possible to keep it when switching to another bow? Swapping out a damage bypass weapon because you switched to a different enemy is sometimes required and would suck to drop an important buff like Manyshot.

Steelstar thinks he can check it when the combat style changes rather than the weapon changes. If that works then you'd be able to change bows during the buff. We will have to make sure the tech works that way though.

Sev~

[nibel]

Let's say you have 30% doubleshot, 70 Wisdom, and fire 2 times per second with a bow.

I think this is where your math breaks. Any Ranged pure ranger would be at least on 40% from AA/DWS combinations, and can easily get 60% from gear and epic feat. Unless we are talking heroics, and until you get BAB 16+, Manyshot is not a huge power boost anyway.

10k is ok with this bonus because for thrower builds they have a niche use.

What if you go to the other side of raising damage: Make Manyshot an alacrity bonus? Even a 50% alacrity bonus (that stacks with doubleshot) can end up being better than the potential loss of doubleshot above 100%.

Bows also need some alacrity bonus (might be an animation issue as well, since now the "xbow reload" animation is linked to alacrity, but not for bows). I was seriously disappointed when I took my ranger from the fridge to test out the ranger changes, was grouping with a great xbow user, and he was firing it around 30% faster than me. A fully-specced archer should fire at least as fast as a fully-specced non-repeater xbow user right now.

[Rasputin]

DDO store or platinum purchase, I don't care.

But we need a single quiver than can hold every current and future arrow type up to 10,000 or higher in each stack. I have dozens of quivers scattered all over my 29 characters all holding different arrow types.

Make the madness stop!

[Firewall]

(...)
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 big nerf to 10k stars-using thrower builds. Shuriken builds need to be centered and especially pure monk builds cannot get their Doubleshot bonuses very high because they don't have any enhancements to boost it.
With the current version they already get 25% of their meager Doubleshotbonus because Doubleshot is active 15 seconds out of every minute.

Being a completionist with the best raid gear and a +7 tome in Water Stance and in a non-WIS Epic Destiny i can have a standing 50 WIS with only guild ship buffs running with my pure monk Shuricannon build. If the formula of 10k stars on DDOWiki is correct this gives me a combined ~128% chance for additional shuriken (or 1.28 additional shuriken) over 30 seconds. So over the course of 1 minute until i can activate 10k stars again this gives me the equivalent of 64% fulltime Doubleshot equivalent.
My Doubleshot can get as high as 29% (10% from Epic lvl 28 feat, 9% from 3 Epic Past Lifes, 2% from ship buffs and 8% from the new Epic Dynamistic Quiver). Right now i can add 25% of that (=7%) to my fulltime Doubleshot chance.


This means that with the current implementation of 10k stars i have a Fulltime Doubleshot equivalent of 71%.
With the new version of 10k stars over one minute i would get 29% Doubleshot Fulltime and 50% Doubleshot for half the time meaning i will have a Fulltime Doubleshot equivalent of only 54%.


This difference becomes even bigger if i boost my WIS higher with Yugoloth/Store Pots, Bard Song, etc. and run in a WIS-based Epic Destiny like Divine Crusader (+6 WIS). For example 60 WIS in Divine Crusader with Inspire Excellence and a +2 WIS pot would be 87,5% Fulltime Doubleshot equivalent in the old version and only 59% with the new version.


That difference won't be made up by +50 ranged power in the new version because ranged power gives diminishing returns and only boosts physical damage and sneak attack damage whereas more projectiles boost all the damage procs that are the basis of most thrower builds.


Multiclass ranger/rogue/monk shuriken thrower builds can have a lot higher Doubleshot bonuses and have by far more Sneak Attack damage so they benefit more from +50 ranged power and the removal of the Doubleshot Penalty. Which means that pure monk shuriken throwers will be nerfed a lot more than the multiclass throwers.

If these changes come into place you turn 10k stars from being a monk feat meant to boost monk shuriken throwers into a feat that gives the most benefit to bow-users and high-Doubleshot, high-Sneak Attack damage multiclass thrower builds with many ranger and/or rogue levels. Pure monks will be nerfed in comparison.

Throwers need more projectiles and less ranged power.

[jakeelala]

~ Without 10K Stars the 50 second Doubleshot debuff that Manyshot gives isn't negated by 30 seconds of 10K Stars so that debuff is actually harsher for a Manyshot build without 10K Stars.
Sev~

Yes I think you misunderstand me. My point is that since there is now no doubleshot debuff, you lose out on a bow character by not having 10k, which is counter to Devs stated goals.

I will restate that I am ecstatic about the removal of Doubleshot debuff, I've personally been clamoring for it being removed on 10k and Manyshot for a LONG time on these forums.

My point however was that without the doubleshot debuff, and without any cooldown interaction between 10k and Manyshot, 10k is still additive to Manyshot, and a Ranged character would almost always be better off with 10k. This of course would be mitigated by the Multiplier to bow damage present in AA.

I would like to STRONGLY suggest that you let that multipler apply to all ranged weapons. This would allow xbow users to utilize lots of ranger levels if they want, whats the harm in that? More importantly, it would give some incentive to go BEYOND the current only realy option for throwers which is /3+ Monk. With 18 ranger levels as a Req, I could see making a thrower build without /3 monk for that extra crit multi.

Of course, you'd have to fix crit multiplers.

[jakeelala]

This is a big nerf to 10k stars-using thrower builds. Shuriken builds need to be centered and especially pure monk builds cannot get their Doubleshot bonuses very high because they don't have any enhancements to boost it.
With the current version they already get 25% of their meager Doubleshotbonus because Doubleshot is active 15 seconds out of every minute.

Being a completionist with the best raid gear and a +7 tome in Water Stance and in a non-WIS Epic Destiny i can have a standing 50 WIS with only guild ship buffs running with my pure monk Shuricannon build. If the formula of 10k stars on DDOWiki is correct this gives me a combined ~128% chance for additional shuriken (or 1.28 additional shuriken) over 30 seconds. So over the course of 1 minute until i can activate 10k stars again this gives me the equivalent of 64% fulltime Doubleshot equivalent.
My Doubleshot can get as high as 29% (10% from Epic lvl 28 feat, 9% from 3 Epic Past Lifes, 2% from ship buffs and 8% from the new Epic Dynamistic Quiver). Right now i can add 25% of that (=7%) to my fulltime Doubleshot chance.


This means that with the current implementation of 10k stars i have a Fulltime Doubleshot equivalent of 71%.
With the new version of 10k stars over one minute i would get 29% Doubleshot Fulltime and 50% Doubleshot for half the time meaning i will have a Fulltime Doubleshot equivalent of only 54%.


This difference becomes even bigger if i boost my WIS higher with Yugoloth/Store Pots, Bard Song, etc. and run in a WIS-based Epic Destiny like Divine Crusader (+6 WIS). For example 60 WIS in Divine Crusader with Inspire Excellence and a +2 WIS pot would be 87,5% Fulltime Doubleshot equivalent in the old version and only 59% with the new version.


That difference won't be made up by +50 ranged power in the new version because ranged power gives diminishing returns and only boosts physical damage and sneak attack damage whereas more projectiles boost all the damage procs that are the basis of most thrower builds.


Multiclass ranger/rogue/monk shuriken thrower builds can have a lot higher Doubleshot bonuses and have by far more Sneak Attack damage so they benefit more from +50 ranged power and the removal of the Doubleshot Penalty. Which means that pure monk shuriken throwers will be nerfed a lot more than the multiclass throwers.

If these changes come into place you turn 10k stars from being a monk feat meant to boost monk shuriken throwers into a feat that gives the most benefit to bow-users and high-Doubleshot, high-Sneak Attack damage multiclass thrower builds with many ranger and/or rogue levels. Pure monks will be nerfed in comparison.

Don't forget to mention you are taking advantage of a bugged feature with shurikens, specifically Shadowstar, which allows Pure Monks in Divine Crusader to have a 5-20 critical threat range because of Keen causing all crit threat range modifiers to be doubled. You're making this argument because you rely on lots of crits for Ninja Spy poison damage which applied full damage on every crit at 20 stacks.

This argument is not useful for any thrower builds that are not pure monks. In fact, a build without 10k and high SA damage loves the boost to RP, like my builds. I hope the devs won't rebalance these things on the basis of one build that is pure monk and takes advantage of a game bug with keen in DC.

You know, since we're trying to constructively advance the conversation here.

[Xionanx]

[/LIST]

Hey, I'm all for "viable", but what's the reasoning behind having Monks archers be "top-tier"?

Because monks melee are super weak, its the only viable monk build.

[SirValentine]

Let's re-state our stance on monkchers:

1. Monkchers should be a viable top-tier ranged DPS build.

Hey, I'm all for "viable", but what's the reasoning behind having Monks archers be "top-tier"?

[FestusHood]

It doesn't matter that a spell with the same name, description, and effect can be cast by Wizard or Sorc. Druid spells (even if they have an Arcane equivalent) are, according to every D&D source, defined as Divine spells.

This is ddo, not dnd. These effects are specific to arcane archers. A subdivision of rangers in ddo. Rangers are typed as divine casters. The specific argument i was responding to was based on the thought that the aa effects kinda sorta resembled arcane type effects, therefore should use an arcane casting stat for the dc. In the case of the druid, they don't just resemble, they precisely are the same effects as used by arcane casters. If it's not too schizophrenic that the exact same effect can be both arcane and divine, then it's not too much of a stretch that aa abilities could also match the type of the 'caster' that is delivering them.

[Thar]

This is equivalent to a level 10 Spell. Which is to say it's already slightly better DC than casters generally get. If it is not good enough for casters, then we'll look at addressing DCs/saves for everyone. There is no new problem here that doesn't exist already for casters. We certainly don't want to put AA DCs even higher than casters. Surely they shouldn't be +10 or +20 points better than a similar Wisdom-based caster?

As mentioned in the first post, Paralyze, Smiting, and Banishing are all gaining new on-save effects (or just on-hit, which is mostly the same for Smiting and Banishing -- if they didn't save vs. the vorpal they are dead!)

casters have to get their level x spell to those levels to work? my necro caster has to hit mid 50s at low 20s to 60+ at end game to make it effective. perhaps if this is a will dc it will be lower? what is your expections for saves vs these? What are common trash mobs saves vs? my lvl 25 wizard has a 43 dc with dancing ball and it works 10%-20% of the time. how will these arrows be different? how is that fun? imo adding "caster level" would help these be effective for primary ranger builds. even 1/2 caster level would help. please compare with epic mobs and advise?

just want them to be viable on EE, not necessarily no miss on ee, but if never viable at that level then what's the point for endgame? ie if you can't paralize, yes the on hit is a nice perk but wouldn't then another option be better (ie elemental arrows, etc that do some dps vs a non paralizing shot. 26 currently is useless except on a save of 1 so maybe only while your manyshotting will you see something stop, and not for long till 2nd save kicks in.


Vargouille

Quote Originally Posted by Thar View Post
most monchers are 12 monk 6 ranger.
Which means they don't get any of the Core crit bonuses from AA or DWS, unless Elven. As mentioned there are many options.


they get this a bonus of earth stance so that's ok, no? or will be reviewed with monk pass?

[Vellrad]

This is equivalent to a level 10 Spell. Which is to say it's already slightly better DC than casters generally get. If it is not good enough for casters, then we'll look at addressing DCs/saves for everyone. There is no new problem here that doesn't exist already for casters. We certainly don't want to put AA DCs even higher than casters. Surely they shouldn't be +10 or +20 points better than a similar Wisdom-based caster?

As mentioned in the first post, Paralyze, Smiting, and Banishing are all gaining new on-save effects (or just on-hit, which is mostly the same for Smiting and Banishing -- if they didn't save vs. the vorpal they are dead!)

This is 10-20 less than casters get in their prefered schools.
42 was my DC when level cap was 20.

[Vargouille]

[/LIST]

Hey, I'm all for "viable", but what's the reasoning behind having Monks archers be "top-tier"?

One reason is to not take that away from current players who have often invested years into those characters. It's something we sometimes feel necessary to do but we avoid that when we can.

Another is that it's a moderately complex build that rewards a good player who's paying attention. While monks get some bonuses other ranged characters don't, it goes the other way as well, which means we don't see a reason for it to not be top tier. Again, not everything has to be - while I would love to see an amazing Elven Occult Slayer Arcane Archer make it work, it's not a priority for us to change things to make that top tier. But we're not going to intentionally try to push down existing fun characters any more than absolutely necessary (if necessary at all).

[Vellrad]

Force Arrows remain 1d6 (but now scale with more dice and spell power).




1. Spell Critical Chance probably won't affect Elemental imbues due to technical hurdles. If we find it's easy to add that in we probably will, but my hopes for that aren't high.
2. Spell Power will affect the 5 Elemental damage enhancements and Force Arrows.
2#2: We'll certainly be keeping AA in mind for future itemization (and possibly part of random loot changes that aren't the topic of this thread =)



There's at least a few different builds that we're going to be trying to balance, and no matter what we do, It's Complicated. We are trying hard to make sure 6 monk levels are not JUST better, and we think we're getting there. We're happy to hear more ideas. We disagree that the monkcher just has a huge advantage, but we need to do more testing, and will be happy to hear about player builds and tests and math.

Here's some builds we're explicitly considering for AA and Manyshot/10K changes:

1. Pure Ranger Archer, primary AA secondary DWS
2. Pure Ranger Archer, primary DWS secondary AA
3. Monkcher 6/12 Monk/Ranger (+a couple extra levels... somewhere?) using both 10k and Manyshot. This build doesn't get +1 Critical Multiplier in AA. The development team is divided on whether or not this is enough to balance getting 10k Stars. A cage match has been scheduled (by which I mean DPS Testing). Should this not be enough, we are explicitly open to ideas. There are a lot of options on the table, most of them are undesirable for one reason or a nother.
4. Elven Pure Monk'cher AA: Gives up DWS.
5. Elven 12 Ranger 6 Monk: 31 points to get Crit in AA, 21 points to get crit in DWS, 14 points to get the Elven AA tree (so you don't need 18 Ranger for the AA Core Crit) This is potentially the worrying build!

This isn't an exhaustive list, of course. Any of the "pure" builds can probably splash at least 2 levels to do other interesting things, and we'll look at those two, but this is a good sort of "outline". Many builds will be "mostly like" one of these builds. And there's lots of other Elven builds that we expect might be fine and interesting, though for some of them you are straying from the main supported pathways (usually to get something else). Warpriest AA w/ full healing, raging Occult Slayer AA, tactical? Kensei AA, etc.

so, ingore barb/ranger or other str archers?

[Kielbasa]

I would like to STRONGLY suggest that you let that multipler apply to all ranged weapons. This would allow xbow users to utilize lots of ranger levels if they want, whats the harm in that? More importantly, it would give some incentive to go BEYOND the current only realy option for throwers which is /3+ Monk. With 18 ranger levels as a Req, I could see making a thrower build without /3 monk for that extra crit multi.

Of course, you'd have to fix crit multiplers.

I would love an extra crit multiplier on my repeater ranger but odds are named bows at 15-20 x4 with a high double shot is going to be pretty close math wise to a repeater at 15-20 x2 at high doubleshot. Both end up close to 15-20 x8 per volley. It's proper usage of active abilities and weapon procs like sneak attack where I think repeaters will always pull ahead of bow users especially with the upcoming projectile nerfs to manyshot and 10k stars.