Ranger: Arcane Archer Changes (Early Autumn Edition)

[EllisDee37]

Add alacrity into the tree, but make it work only if the toon is wearing light, medium, or heavy armor. You have other examples of this type of exclusion in the other trees as well, so it can certainly be done. I'd prefer that over not adding it to the racial tree, because that would hurt non-monk-non-ranger builds, which doesn't make sense.

Actually, for lore purposes it would be fine if it only worked with light armor. Regardless if it's just light, or light+medium+heavy, this is a clever solution to balancing pure rangers with monkchers. Just sprinkle in armor requirements and voila, problem mitigated.

3. Please fix arrow stacking or quiver hotkeying so that archers can actually effectively use their various arrows.

Stack size in inventory is a superior solution to quiver hotkeying for a simple reason: You can hover your mouse over a hotbarred stack of arrows to remind yourself what it is.

I could envision having 10 different stacks of 300 bane arrows (from inventory) on a hotbar, and could then easily refresh my memory as to which is which by either hovering over them, or in the case of holy arrows just see it by the different icon.

By contrast, if we could hotbar quivers for fast switching, you'd end up with a bunch of identical quiver icons with no way to easily remind yourself which one was which.

However, and I can't stress this enough, it's all irrelevant if we don't get some kind of fletching. If we can't make ammo returnable, all anyone will ever use are the boring AA returners.

[EllisDee37]

Another quality of life change I would go for is tie conjure arrows to core one so that as soon as you put 1 ap into AA you can conjure +1 arcane arrows. This gives tempest deepwood rangers an easier time for having unlimited arrows. I have a tempest ranger and cannot find 3 ap free to spend for conjure arrows. For only 1 ap I may find that worthy of taking from elsewhere...

Meh. For 0 AP you can buy 75% returners from house deneith favor.

[UurlockYgmeov]

Repeaters divide Doubleshot by 3 before they check to see if the crossbow got another shot. If that's not working it's a bug. I'll test it.

Edit: It was indeed not working. Should be fixed in the next build.

Sev~

[Mindos]

Repeaters divide Doubleshot by 3 before they check to see if the crossbow got another shot. If that's not working it's a bug. I'll test it.

Edit: It was indeed not working. Should be fixed in the next build.

Sev~

http://ddowiki.com/page/Doubleshot
"Some descriptions say that repeating crossbows receive a reduced benefit from Doubleshot but testing seems to refute the claim of reduced effectiveness with repeaters as of March 7, 2014 (Update 20.1). (See the talk page.)"

Known broken since first quarter 2014. When was the Rogue pass again? Why didn't dps testing discover this? Why didn't anyone on the Players Council tell you it was broken?

Sorry to be a stick in the mud, but these are important questions and you are the producer. How can we change the game forward if we don't know how it stands to begin with?

[CrackedIce]

Since this is the AA enhancement pass, and you are adding spell power to imbues and sharadi champion is supposed to be AA epic destiny, will you be allowing spell power to scale with sharadi stances as well?

[CelticTrojan]

Hi Vargouille,
Thanks for the preview and detailed feedback on the community concerns. This is going to be controversial and difficult to balance. Comments below and my contributions.

WIS for DC.
Ok I can see the Ranger fit for this, and it is appropriate within the ranger AA tree. I get that you want it to be the "caster" tree, at least in part, and have some support for that. However ....

Rangers have traditionally dumped WIS. Now they will have some reason to rethink that path (good more diversity) but this change will require more than an enhancment reset (bad) Cue the cries of free hearts to change the builds.

Ranger spells suck is the common cry, and there is some point to that. There are only 4 spells (per wiki) that have WIS DC saves - Charm/Hold Animal, Entangle, Snare and these are L1 and L2. Not much for a WIS based ranger there. I would propose Mass Charm/Hold Animal (needs new spells) at L3 and L4 respectively or better add Charm Monster (L3) and Dominate Monster (L4) (Much less work needed and great improvement to Ranger casting). As it is there are too few L3 L4 useful spells to even fill the slots we get. Another consideration would be higher level versions of Entangle/Snare as well. And yes high WIS gives better will saves but that can be achieved elsewhere.

Racial AA using WIS DC is less appropriate IMHO. Is it intended to make it more difficult for a Wiz/Sorc/Bard Racial AA to compete with a Monk/Cleric/Fvs/Druid Racial AA on the DC part of AA? For the racial AA I would propose highest stat of WIS/INT/CHA for the DC as lore wise and game wise being more suitable. Leave the Ranger AA as proposed as the 14 AP penalty for Racial AA will balance that out.

Would it be possible to take into account these builds in your calculations? -
Racial AA - Pure Druid / Cleric / FvS - Naturally high DC's for some versions of these, leading to Upper limit DC breaking gameplay ie. Fail on 1 Terror, Paralyzing, Banishing, and Smiting Arrows ?

Hmm Pure Druid Racial AA .... now there is another ALT character if ever I saw one ,hmmmmm strokes goatee beard .....

Elemental/Force Damage improvements
Excellllllleeennnnntttttt :-)

+1 Competence bonus to Critical Damage Multiplier
Likewise great and excellent synergy with DWS (the hybrid tree - I like that idea, should be used elsewhere, looking at Fighter / FvS/ Arti)

Mystical Archer cap needs love; + 2 WIS , + 2 DEX gets my vote, more appropriate and perhaps + 1 DC Enchantment ?

I have to say I find all the T5 AA Enhancements to lack a little, will need to review after this partial pass, roll on Lammania testing.

Footnote 2 - Hell yes, whats good for PC's is just as good for Mobs.

Footnote PS. - I see what you did there lol love it.

Manyshot and 10k redesign I like so far, lag is bad and anything to reduce is good. And doubleshot cooldown must die in a hail of many AA arrows lol

Hope the above is interesting and useful,

CelticTrojan

[Certon]

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[*]Each has a saving throw of 20 + Wisdom Modifier + Enchantment Spell Bonuses

Wisdom? How about CHA, INT, or WIS, whichever is greater? At least then you cover all types of casters becoming AAs.

[Xionanx]

http://ddowiki.com/page/Doubleshot
"Some descriptions say that repeating crossbows receive a reduced benefit from Doubleshot but testing seems to refute the claim of reduced effectiveness with repeaters as of March 7, 2014 (Update 20.1). (See the talk page.)"

Known broken since first quarter 2014. When was the Rogue pass again? Why didn't dps testing discover this? Why didn't anyone on the Players Council tell you it was broken?

Sorry to be a stick in the mud, but these are important questions and you are the producer. How can we change the game forward if we don't know how it stands to begin with?

Willing to be it doesn't actually get fixed due to some "technical limitation" that prevents them from adjusting repeaters since it will affect non-repeaters too or some other non-sense.

The fact they weren't aware is testament to the devs "head in the sand" style of development. They claim they "play the game" be it boggles my mind how time and time again they make wrong statements about things that are common knowledge to the community.

I dont even know why I am still reading these forums, I deleted DDO from my computer last week... and these changes to AA are too little too late, plus the non-sense nerf to manyshot...

BOWS need:
1. Increased BASE Rate of fire - regardless of class
2. Manyshot needs to be a passive that gives enough doubleshot that its not a "nerf" (been saying this for YEARS)
3. Doubleshot above 100% needs to have a chance of procing a 3rd arrow
4. RP/MP needs to apply to weapon effects/procs, not just base damage. 1d6 "Energy" damage on your weapon wouldn't suck as much with RP/MP buffing it.
5. 10k Stars needs to work with throwing weapons only
6. Manyshot needs to work with Bows Only (Monkchers just need to suck it up and reroll, it won't be the first time a munchkin build was made invalid by mechanics changes and it SHOULDN'T be the last.)
7. The Combat Log needs to be made available for DPS parsing so players have actual RAW DATA to look at and compare. (seriously, its about time this was made available)
8. Lamania needs to be up 24/7 for testing purposes.
9. Dungeon Alert needs to be removed
10. Dungeon Scaling needs to be removed
11. Over Level penalties need to be removed
12. Power level penalties need to be removed (these last 4 just make since at this point in the game lifespan, open up the game so people can PLAY TOGETHER)

The AA Elemental Imbues getting better at higher ranks is a good thing, its something that I was suggesting WAY back months ago. Its a good start.

I am not a fan of the way the "DC's" are going to be calculated, I think they need to be based on total AA core abilities and NOT a stat, leaving them tied to "Wisdom" just makes "Monkcher" the default bow build since low and behold.. its primary stat is wisdom. This does NOTHING towards making a pure ranger "more viable".

The proposed manyshot changes are a huge nerf to:
Proc Chances - Have a 7% chance to proc an ability on hit? Well guess what, you now have 300% less chance of it going off
Elemental Imbues - Since these are NOT affected by RP, that nice little 7d8 Damage WOULD have been multiplied by x4 during manyshot... now its only x2.. HUGE NERF
So on and so forth.

It boggles the mind that the devs DONT SEE THIS AS A PROBLEM.

Its all good tho, I am probably on their ignore list since I constantly make fun of them, but at this point I am just so fed up and frustrated with the state of this game that its a CHORE to be civil.

[maddong]

Repeaters divide Doubleshot by 3 before they check to see if the crossbow got another shot. If that's not working it's a bug. I'll test it.

Edit: It was indeed not working. Should be fixed in the next build.

Sev~

It was pointed out repeatedly in the mechanic threads during their revamp....

[maddong]

I think the manyshot/10k stars changes seem balanced with the removal of the doubleshot penalty. Good job.

I still think "bow people" are going to stay elf monkchers (the ranger 12/monk 6 split sounds good).
Because when manyshot is on timer you are better off switching to a repeater or melee if you don't have 10k stars (if you have 10k stars then shurikens may be better than bows after the 10k stars changes).
You can't have tier 5 DWS 20% doubleshot and slaying arrow... You can use slaying arrow with repeaters or shurikens.

My solution would be to add a tier 5 arcane archer stance that turns off when 10k stars is activated and won't turn on when 10k stars is on cooldown with some additional doubleshot when using bows only.

[the_one_dwarfforged]

as far as the presented changes go, i like them mostly.

i think the dc stat should not be wis, or at least not wis and only wis. doesnt have to be dex (though i personally dont see why not, i think id still be building a pure aa as str to dmg, or probably int now for the extra ranks in spellpower), but at least int. wis is only going to affect dcs. do you really think that pure rangers will find investing sufficient amounts of wisdom to get good dcs to be cost effective? personally if after looking at the numbers i felt that i was going to have to invest more than just tomes and gear into wis to get the dcs to work decently, id just skip them entirely. if ranger spells also got buffed and were useful, i could accept the wis only, otherwise i think its just bad.

i find the proposed manyshot change to be horrifying, whether its a buff (to specific builds in specific situations) or not.
according to sevs math it would be a few hundred points of extra damage. ok, thats fine, but it will be 1000% more boring. seeing loads of arrows fly followed by tons of numbers is the most fun part of manyshot (the fact that you go from 0 dps to more than 0 dps is only the 2nd best part of manyshot). instead you get a fairly redundant ability (nobody likes wasting a huge chunk of their build because of poor design...) that is boring and becomes less useful for the melees and hybrids. this is not a good change. all you have to do to make manyshot work for pures without also buffing monkchers is is add to the 20 core and effect that removes the doubleshot penalty once the duration of the effect expires. simply, effective at buffing aa sustained dps without powercreep, doesnt hurt any other play styles, doesnt cause any redundancy in stats that are necessary, doesnt kill the fun of using manyshot. and you can stop trying to sell the "omg attackspeed = lag!@!?@!1", not buying it. crossbows got a straight up rof buff, swf and vanguard have significant attack speed buffs. so why is it that rangers cant be given their old alacrity bonus back (tempest) and have to have many shot nerfed and cant get a rof buff either? i dont see the logic here, and its pretty crappy that this isnt being dealt with evenly and for no good apparent reason.


personally i dont think rangers need additional run speed (most definitely not aas, that is part of the point of being ranged, right?). in fact i think the runspeed craze needs to be reeled in hard. class run speed buffs should cap out at 10% except for monks, acrobat should only gain it while using a staff, swash only while swashing, etc. and we are going to indulge peoples desire to run faster with every build, just increase the base runspeed of all character for free, instead of rolling a d100 and plugging the result into the t1 of every tree as a runspeed increase.

[Thar]

This is a lot to process and comment on, but there are some pretty serious issues to be addressed. Hopefully I won't have missed anything. Though, sine my comments and questions to the devs seem to almost never be answered...

I very much agree with Varg that the really difficult part is balancing non-monk archers with ranger archers in a way that doesn't completely ruin everyone's build but makes both viable. I just don't think that what has been proposed addresses that. There are a couple major factors in those two archer versions that need to be addressed: Manyshot/10K Stars (and thank you, Sev, for beginning that conversation), and rate of fire.

Problem: Manyshot/10K Stars

The problem is that if one of those groups has access to both, they inherently have more power available than the other group. While I'm aware that there are other things you can factor in, they are both big bursts of damage either way. The proposed changes don't fix this; they are a nerf to both types of archers and throwers on top of it.

The assumptions that archers are starting from maybe 30% doubleshot is a big part of that problem. As many have pointed out, most archers have a lot more than that. On my ranger I can easily get: 25% from AA, 20% from DWS, 10% from doubleshot feat, and 20% from Pinion (and Pinion isn't so uncommon since the raider's reward boxes). That's 75% without even trying. It also doesn't count the huge doubleshot bonuses in Divine Crusader (because not everyone runs in Fury). By making this particular change to Manyshot and 10K Stars, you are basically negating the usefulness of all other sources of doubleshot.

Proposed solution:

As you have already said, it would be awfully tough to boost everything at the same time. We will likely end up with archers that are more DC focused and ones that are more sustained damage focused. It would be nice if we could also retain ones that are burst focused as well. So what about changing the Manyshot feat to work similarly to the 10K Stars feat?

Currently, 10K Stars shoots more projectiles depending on how high your wisdom is. Can we simply change Manyshot to do the same but dependent on the dex stat? While some people can certainly get each stat high, you can really only full-****** invest in one of them. As you take away from one to put into the other, it establishes a balance between them. And, if you don't have the 10K Stars option because you don't have monk levels, you can dump lots into dex if you so choose and make up for that loss.

And drop the doubleshot penalties entirely. They don't fit with the current enhancement/feat/destiny landscape.

Problem: Rate of Fire

Archers lag way, way, waaaay behind everyone else on this. Attack speed for melee is much faster. Attack speed for throwers is faster (thanks to either monk levels or alacrity from mechanic). I also find it hard to believe your assumption of an attack rate of two arrows per second. I am not seeing that. It's very frustrating to plink away slowly at things when anyone else - even other ranged builds like crossbow users or throwers - can zoom out their attacks faster. I don't understand the resistance to an alacrity increase for archers, and though it has been brought up by lots of people in many of these official threads, it still has not been discussed by a dev.

Of course, an archer with monk levels can attack much faster. So the balancing act for that is the tricky part as well.

Proposed solution:

Add alacrity into the tree, but make it work only if the toon is wearing light, medium, or heavy armor. You have other examples of this type of exclusion in the other trees as well, so it can certainly be done. I'd prefer that over not adding it to the racial tree, because that would hurt non-monk-non-ranger builds, which doesn't make sense.

Problem: Arrows causing lag

Sev cited the "expense" of multiple arrows. We have all seen the lag caused by archer mobs for sure. The problem is that the archer lag still exists for every other archer, player or mob, even with a manyshot/10K nerf. So by nerfing (and it is a nerf, the math carries that out), all you are doing is putting archers behind without actually solving the lag issue.

Proposed solution:

I don't have one, because you guys haven't really addressed or discussed it in enough detail to do so. We don't know why the archers cause so much lag. But realistically, if you wanted to fairly address it in game, you would have to do one of the following:

1. Fix the lag, or
2. Do a pass that removes the doubleshot from the entire game.

One of those is something you could do but would make everyone incredibly angry (even more than the fabled TWF nerf of yore), and one of those is, admittedly, not exactly easy. But the fact remains that you can't keep classes relatively balanced by removing a huge amount of dps from just one or two classes and leaving that dps in for everyone else. Manyshot/10K Stars makes up for a comparative lack of DPS on bows and throwing weapons. Nerfing it just makes them nonviable.

Problem: Proposed capstone doesn't fit with tree options

If the options are to offer either a strong DPS archer (dex) or a DC-based archer (wis), then wis should appear in the capstone as well.

Proposed solution:

Instead of +4 dex, add +2 dex and +2 wis.

Other comments and questions:

1. Slaying arrows are tier 5. They are the heroic equivalent of an epic moment. Don't pull back their power. If you make tier 5 abilities meh, there's no point in taking them at all, as you give up other tier 5 abilities in other trees for them. Anything you wait for, build for, and give up other options for should be powerful.

2. Still waiting to find out if the imbue stances will be affected by metamagics. I would like it if the elemental and force stances were affected by maximize and empower, and the DC stances were affected by heighten. I think it makes sense from a thematic standpoint, it is consistent with the rest of the spells and abilities in the game, and it also forces some more choices as well as giving options in the way of feat selection. It also gives a bit of a boost to ranger AA since they have a bit more feat space than others, which I think is perfectly fair given the other options other classes might get (holy sword, better defenses, etc.).

3. Please fix arrow stacking or quiver hotkeying so that archers can actually effectively use their various arrows.

how about +4 dex or +4 wisdom instead of cutting it to 2 for builds that don't care about the other. then the capstone is at least comparible stat wise to others. then the topic of the rest of the capstone can come into play...

[Thar]

Willing to be it doesn't actually get fixed due to some "technical limitation" that prevents them from adjusting repeaters since it will affect non-repeaters too or some other non-sense.

The fact they weren't aware is testament to the devs "head in the sand" style of development. They claim they "play the game" be it boggles my mind how time and time again they make wrong statements about things that are common knowledge to the community.

I dont even know why I am still reading these forums, I deleted DDO from my computer last week... and these changes to AA are too little too late, plus the non-sense nerf to manyshot...

BOWS need:
1. Increased BASE Rate of fire - regardless of class
2. Manyshot needs to be a passive that gives enough doubleshot that its not a "nerf" (been saying this for YEARS)
3. Doubleshot above 100% needs to have a chance of procing a 3rd arrow
4. RP/MP needs to apply to weapon effects/procs, not just base damage. 1d6 "Energy" damage on your weapon wouldn't suck as much with RP/MP buffing it.
5. 10k Stars needs to work with throwing weapons only
6. Manyshot needs to work with Bows Only (Monkchers just need to suck it up and reroll, it won't be the first time a munchkin build was made invalid by mechanics changes and it SHOULDN'T be the last.)
7. The Combat Log needs to be made available for DPS parsing so players have actual RAW DATA to look at and compare. (seriously, its about time this was made available)
8. Lamania needs to be up 24/7 for testing purposes.
9. Dungeon Alert needs to be removed
10. Dungeon Scaling needs to be removed
11. Over Level penalties need to be removed
12. Power level penalties need to be removed (these last 4 just make since at this point in the game lifespan, open up the game so people can PLAY TOGETHER)

The AA Elemental Imbues getting better at higher ranks is a good thing, its something that I was suggesting WAY back months ago. Its a good start.

I am not a fan of the way the "DC's" are going to be calculated, I think they need to be based on total AA core abilities and NOT a stat, leaving them tied to "Wisdom" just makes "Monkcher" the default bow build since low and behold.. its primary stat is wisdom. This does NOTHING towards making a pure ranger "more viable".

The proposed manyshot changes are a huge nerf to:
Proc Chances - Have a 7% chance to proc an ability on hit? Well guess what, you now have 300% less chance of it going off
Elemental Imbues - Since these are NOT affected by RP, that nice little 7d8 Damage WOULD have been multiplied by x4 during manyshot... now its only x2.. HUGE NERF
So on and so forth.

It boggles the mind that the devs DONT SEE THIS AS A PROBLEM.

Its all good tho, I am probably on their ignore list since I constantly make fun of them, but at this point I am just so fed up and frustrated with the state of this game that its a CHORE to be civil.

BOWS need:
1. Increased BASE Rate of fire - regardless of class

agreed, the lag arguement may be real, but if you can't then crossbows need to be redesigned as they shouldn't shoot faster than bows.

2. Manyshot needs to be a passive that gives enough doubleshot that its not a "nerf" (been saying this for YEARS)

a burst alternative should be available. we've used this for 9 years like this. make it mutually exclusive with 10k ie same cooldown and if you have both the cooldown is cut by 50% or some like number. then monks are good with 10k only, rangers are good with manyshot only and if you have both you don't have a "nerf" as you get the cooldown reduction.

3. Doubleshot above 100% needs to have a chance of procing a 3rd arrow

agreed

4. RP/MP needs to apply to weapon effects/procs, not just base damage. 1d6 "Energy" damage on your weapon wouldn't suck as much with RP/MP buffing it.

not sure this is needed, but bows need some dps help. it's rather boring doing archery. i switched to tempest a year ago because it was that boring and low dps if not in manyshot.

5. 10k Stars needs to work with throwing weapons only

disagree, you spend the feat to use the bow as a ki weapon for this purpose.

6. Manyshot needs to work with Bows Only (Monkchers just need to suck it up and reroll, it won't be the first time a munchkin build was made invalid by mechanics changes and it SHOULDN'T be the last.)

disagree more build options for throwers, etc the better.

7. The Combat Log needs to be made available for DPS parsing so players have actual RAW DATA to look at and compare. (seriously, its about time this was made available)
not sure this is worth the time. you can statistically come up with the range/averages.

8. Lamania needs to be up 24/7 for testing purposes.

probably unreasonable as they work on a new build. perhaps leaving the last lamania up is doable but what would that accomplish as the same is on live usually.

9. Dungeon Alert needs to be removed
never should have been put in the first place as it can't be set correctly for many quests.

10. Dungeon Scaling needs to be removed

nah, this is ok

11. Over Level penalties need to be removed

for bravery bonus? perhaps but then you may have people dragging lowbies through bb quests. i don't really care just saying.

12. Power level penalties need to be removed (these last 4 just make since at this point in the game lifespan, open up the game so people can PLAY TOGETHER)

AT LEAST remove whatever stops us from having a lowbie in group and we can't zone into or out of an epic quest. why can't we chat with friends! sooooo fustrating.

[Ultramaetche1]

Repeaters divide Doubleshot by 3 before they check to see if the crossbow got another shot. If that's not working it's a bug. I'll test it.

Edit: It was indeed not working. Should be fixed in the next build.

Sev~

With this change, you will be nerfing Rogue Mechanics who have chosen to use repeating crossbows as the mechanic enhancement pass was conducted while the doubleshot on repeaters was broken. If you bring this change forward, please redo your DPS tests for mechanic (comparing repeaters to greats) and look at the potential of adding the sneak attack dice from the tree to repeating crossbows in addition to the other weapon types or at the very least putting the sneak attack in for repeaters at tiers One, Three and Five.

[blerkington]

Hi,

If any developers are still reading this thread, it might be a good time to pause and consider the impressive amount of ill will that certain parts of this discussion have generated in such a short time.

Then perhaps think about why that is (hint: it's not just player hysteria and/or ignorance), and then change direction.

* Non WIS based rangers upset about 10k stars builds getting more out of this pass than they do, ie, higher arrow DCs AND more damage from imbues due to higher RoF.

* Ineffective attempts to redress the power difference between archery builds which use 10k stars and those without.

* People concerned about the weakness of the AA capstone relative to those of the other trees.

* Reduction in usefulness of and damage output from manyshot, particularly for melee/ranged hybrids that aren't ranging all the time and for burst damage builds like FOTW archers.

* Ignoring concerns about the negative consequences arising from lower RoF during manyshot, such as imbue damage, on hit weapon effects, on hit ED abilities etc, which will be halved by the proposed model.

* Invoking the spectre of lag by hinting that missiles are expensive in terms of server resources, apparently in an attempt to justify the change to manyshot. Yet no mention made of why throwers and repeating crossbow builds with higher rates of fire are somehow not problematic.

* Attempt to reduce power of slayer arrows, which will affect a number of archery builds, not just FoTW builds. I would really like to see someone make a case that slayer arrow is overpowered as it is when used with any other ED. I certainly can't recall ever seeing one on these forums before.

Do I really need to go on? Because I, and a number of other people here, certainly could.

This ranger pass is in real danger of being one that gives with one hand while taking away with the other.

Please do yourselves and the community a favour by not sticking to your guns with some of these terrible proposals; instead rework them to address the issues which get raised time and time again when archery is discussed.

Thanks.

[Wongar]

I did some simple tests on rate of fire for a heavy repeater and a longbow. These were done on live 7 Oct 15 so are as current as can be.

The raw data is presented so everyone can draw their own conclusions. They make no attempt to represent DPS as that will depend heavily on other factors.

My opinion - this is the biggest reason bows are so far behind repeaters - you would need to get about 50% more damage per shot from the Longbow for it to catch up to the heavy repeater and I don't see how to do this.
I think these numbers also show that the proposed changes to manyshot will put bows even further behind in rate of fire - don't know if the RP boost will make up the difference or not. Notice with the proposed changes (1/2 Manyshot ROF) Bows will not even keep up with Repeaters when Manyshot is active.

Level 28
DC Destiny (Full BAB)
Feats: Blinding Speed, Rapid Reload, Rapid Shot, Longbow, Heavy Repeater

Weapons from Hammer & Chain

Method of test: Conjer a stack of 500 ammo with Flame Arrow Scroll
Run keyboard macro that holds the attack button for given time
For test with Manyshot, macro hits Manyshot then holds attack button for time
Subtract arrows left from 500 to get arrows shot
Shooting into air off ship
3 Runs of each setup were done
Results are xx/xx/xx where xx is one run

2 Minute duration was chosen to match Manyshot cool down
20 Sec duration was chosen to match Manyshot uptime


Double Shot 49%, Heavy Repeater: 2 Minutes
(No Double Shot Penalty)
421 / 406 / 395
Average: 3.39/sec

Double Shot 49%, NO manyshot Longbow: 2 Minutes
(No Double Shot Penalty)
216 / 217 / 221
Average: 1.82/sec

Double Shot 49%, WITH manyshot Longbow: 2 Minutes
(With Double Shot Penalty)
251 / 255 / 256
Average: 2.12/sec



Double Shot 49%, Heavy Repeater: 20 Seconds
71 / 74 / 68
Average: 3.55/sec

Double Shot 49%, NO manyshot Longbow: 20 Seconds
36 / 31 / 34
Average: 1.68/sec

Double Shot 49%, WITH manyshot Longbow: 20 Seconds
104 / 100 / 104
Average: 5.13/sec


Would be great if someone could do similar tests with a 10k/Manyshot build...

[bbqzor]

Sorry, I must be tired because I am missing your logic. I apologize. Let me lay out some math and see where we are.

Yeah you missed it. It doesnt work on a straight 100% uptime end to end like that in practicality. Only in the vacuum of math numbers.

if you do that with a non-10k bow build, you will see it doesn't line up so nice.

Exactly. If you pull a 100% arrow-shooting situation off the table, and consider the alternatives, the value of manyshot takes a giant nose dive.

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.

No, its negated by not trying to shoot arrows at all. Look.

If you shoot 2 arrows/second as a base rate (your value), with 50% doubleshot, and say 100 melee power, with no 10k on the table. Assume the same values for melee, as that is relatively easy to do on a Ranger. And this is a ranger tree, as part of a ranger pass, so thats pretty fair.

Current:

Manyshot for 20s (fire 160 arrows), Bow with penalty for 50s (fire 100 arrows), Bow with DS for 50s (150 arrows) = 410 arrows over 2 mins, doing 820 hits worth of damage after melee power.

Manyshot for 20s (fire 160 arrows), Melee with TWF 50s (swing 100 times, generate 80 offhands and 50 doublestrikes), Bow with DS for 50s (150 arrows) = 310 arrows over 2 mins along with 230 melee attacks, doing 540 hits or 1080 hits worth of damage after melee power.

Your proposed changes [RE: 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.)]. For these purposes lets assume that gets you to 100% doubleshot for the 20s:

Manyshot for 20s (fire 80 arrows), Bow without penalty for 100s (fire 300 arrows) = 380 arrows over 2 mins, doing 760 hits worth of damage after mp.

Manyshot for 20s (fire 80 arrows), Melee with TWF 50s (swing 100 times, generate 80 offhands and 50 doublestrikes), Bow with DS for 50s (150 arrows) = 230 arrows over 2 mins along with 230 melee attacks, doing 460 hits or 920 hits worth of damage after mp.

Conclusions:

In all cases its less arrows fired per unit time. In all cases its less total hits per unit time. It is most significantly less for a ranger trying to use bow and twf together... they lose the biggest proportion of ranged attacks (even more so if they melee 100% of the time when MS is down). It essentially forces you to go into a bow-only build in order to make the changes pay off even to the tiniest fraction, which is then less good unless you also have 10k. Which is basically the exact same situation there is now.

What it should do is continue to support rangers busting out the bow to use and mix in with their weapons (for rangers who want to build that way, like when using the deepwood tree). There is no reason to nerf them into the ground by taking an ability with shoots arrows at 4:1 and making it shoot at 2:1, with the only trade off being a "bonus" by removing a penalty they never suffered to begin with.

Thats just plain less arrows fired, and perhaps even worse is less arrows when they might actually NEED the damage in favor of a better passive attack. I mean this completely ignores things like using MS on a red named, where afterwards you pause and/or shrine and/or run to the next quest. In those cases its just flat out less period... there is no meaningful period of use afterwards in which it comes "back up on average".

Look I get wanting to change it, or lower the arrow count. But how about something like, for 20s you get +400 Ranged Power. Thats like 4 arrows at once. And just let DS be whatever it is. Its still a relative loss (that 400 isnt then effected by the rest of your ranged power) but its a lot less of a hit than halving the arrows fired. AND it doesnt get completely washed out by having your DS value run over 100%.

A change is fine. But use one that makes sense, not one that just lowers burst dps and minimizes build options to try and save some lag. Its a nerf for anyone not using a bow full time or not using 10k, and thats a LOT of the people with the feat out there. Throwing them under the bus just to put AA and Monkcher on closer footing is bad design. Thanks.

[Xionanx]

I did some simple tests on rate of fire for a heavy repeater and a longbow. These were done on live 7 Oct 15 so are as current as can be.

The raw data is presented so everyone can draw their own conclusions. They make no attempt to represent DPS as that will depend heavily on other factors.

My opinion - this is the biggest reason bows are so far behind repeaters - you would need to get about 50% more damage per shot from the Longbow for it to catch up to the heavy repeater and I don't see how to do this.
I think these numbers also show that the proposed changes to manyshot will put bows even further behind in rate of fire - don't know if the RP boost will make up the difference or not. Notice with the proposed changes (1/2 Manyshot ROF) Bows will not even keep up with Repeaters when Manyshot is active.

Level 28
DC Destiny (Full BAB)
Feats: Blinding Speed, Rapid Reload, Rapid Shot, Longbow, Heavy Repeater

Weapons from Hammer & Chain

Method of test: Conjer a stack of 500 ammo with Flame Arrow Scroll
Run keyboard macro that holds the attack button for given time
For test with Manyshot, macro hits Manyshot then holds attack button for time
Subtract arrows left from 500 to get arrows shot
Shooting into air off ship
3 Runs of each setup were done
Results are xx/xx/xx where xx is one run

2 Minute duration was chosen to match Manyshot cool down
20 Sec duration was chosen to match Manyshot uptime


Double Shot 49%, Heavy Repeater: 2 Minutes
(No Double Shot Penalty)
421 / 406 / 395
Average: 3.39/sec

Double Shot 49%, NO manyshot Longbow: 2 Minutes
(No Double Shot Penalty)
216 / 217 / 221
Average: 1.82/sec

Double Shot 49%, WITH manyshot Longbow: 2 Minutes
(With Double Shot Penalty)
251 / 255 / 256
Average: 2.12/sec



Double Shot 49%, Heavy Repeater: 20 Seconds
71 / 74 / 68
Average: 3.55/sec

Double Shot 49%, NO manyshot Longbow: 20 Seconds
36 / 31 / 34
Average: 1.68/sec

Double Shot 49%, WITH manyshot Longbow: 20 Seconds
104 / 100 / 104
Average: 5.13/sec


Would be great if someone could do similar tests with a 10k/Manyshot build...

Thank you!

The fact that you have a 49% Doubleshot combined with the proposed Manyshot Nerf, you will only get the benefit of +51% doubleshot during manyshot, resulting in such a nerf. By your tests you are getting currently

APM = Arrows Per Minute

109 APM at 49% Doubleshot, which means you average 73 APM with NO DOUBLESHOT, or roughly 1.21 Arrows/Sec. I will use that as my "BASE ROF" that I asked the devs for but they didn't provide.

Current System 1.21 Arrows/Sec, over the course of 2 Minutes:
96.8 = 1.21 x 4 x 20 Seconds of Manyshot for Four Additional Arrows Shot, MS CD Starts
36.3 = 1.21 x 30 Seconds of Cooldown for MS/10K Stars and -100% Doubleshot
95.4 = 1.21 x 2.63 x 30 Seconds of 10k Stars Assuming a Wisdom of 58 ( 2.63 = ((100/(1 - 1.00 - 0.52 - 0.09))/100) + 1 ... trust me, this is the exact arrow percent )
48.4 = 1.21 x 40 Seconds of Cooldown for MS/10k Stars and -100% Doubleshot, MS CD is UP, repeat the process.
--------------------------------------
276.9 Total Arrows Fired over 2 Minutes (seems about right, still way behind XBOWs)

For reference here are the proposed changes.
Manyshot, for the next 20 seconds you add your BAB * 4 to your Doubleshot and Ranged Power, using this ability places 10k Stars on a 30 Second Cooldown. Cooldown 2 Minutes.
10k Stars, for the next 30 seconds you add your WISDOM to your Doubleshot and Ranged Power, using this ability places Manyshot on a 30 second Cooldown. Cooldown 1 Minute.
There is no longer a Doubleshot Penalty on either of these.

Proposed Manyshot/10K Stars Changes, over the course of 2 Minutes.
48.4 = 1.21 x 2 x 20 Seconds, manyshot with a 25+ BaB caps out at 100% doubleshot
36.3 = 1.21 x 30 Seconds, Cooldown for 10k Stars
57.3 = 1.21 x 1.58 x 30 Seconds, assuming the exact same 58 Wisdom used in the previous calculation you get 58% more Doublshot
48.4 = 1.21 x 40 Seconds of cooldown before you can use MS again.
----------------------------------------
190.4 Total Arrows Fired over 2 Minutes
20 Seconds of +100 RP
30 Seconds of +58 RP

Now, lets assume you have the the 49% Doublshot that Wongar Has, I will inject it into the "Cooldown" areas and add it to the wisdom granted Doubleshot.

48.4 = 1.21 x 2 x 20 Seconds, manyshot with a 25+ BaB caps out at 100% doubleshot
54.0 = 1.21 x 1.49 x 30 Seconds, Cooldown for 10k Stars
72.6 = 1.21 x 2 x 30 Seconds, assuming the exact same 58 Wisdom used in the previous calculation you get 58% more Doublshot 58+49 Caps you at 100%
72.1 = 1.21 x 1.49 x 40 Seconds of cooldown before you can use MS again.
----------------------------------------
247.1 Total Arrows Fired over 2 Minutes
20 Seconds of +100 RP
30 Seconds of +58 RP

Now one could argue that the extra RP granted more then makes up for the loss of 30 Arrows over 2 minutes, but I say, why even make Manyshot an activated ability at this point, just make it a passive +RP +Doubleshot and call it done. Why? because if you have "low" doubleshot, this is a MAJOR nerf to you, if you have "High" doubleshot.. this is also a nerf to you, as you get less benefit from Manyshot/10k stars.

If you make it just a passive +50% Doubleshot:
217 = 1.21 x 1.5 x 120 Seconds for two minutes of "Passive" doubleshot.

But the benefit of making it passive is that players could BUILD to have 100% double shot constantly in effect

Granted this would be an entirely pointless debate if BOWS ATTACKED AS FAST AS XBOWS LIKE THEY SHOULD HAVE SINCE DAY 1. Because as it is now, you are still better off TR'ing your monkcher into Rogue Mechanic. INT to HIT/DAM, INT for Rogue Skills/Skillpoints, Know the Angles, Faster Attack Speed, Blitz.. WHY ARE YOU STILL PLAYING A RANGER?

EDIT: Apparently my "Rotation" is wrong in that it should be 10k Stars, Manyshot, 10kStars again. So while the arrows/sec are accurate, the total arrows/min are not accurate when I account for 10k Stars and Manyshot rotations.

[PsychoBlonde]

I really, really, REALLY like the +enchantment DC on certain abilities because this brings back some serious interest to elf/half elf granting of this tree to mix with actual caster builds. (esp. since this tree is the ONLY way to get a capstone on a multi-classed character). I'm super-duper-mega tempted to try this out with a bard build or something equally peculiar. Lotta possible synergies on casters there and the ability to generate temp sp becomes valuable. This alone makes this tree substantially different from other ranged trees. Really like the scaling of things with spellpower.

I would seriously suggest just making this a sorcerer-available tree to help flesh out that class a bit more. If you could make it less bow-specific, arti also. I really don't see any reason why it shouldn't work with crossbows as well as bows. Maybe even throwers.

Is Inferno Shot gonna scale with spellpower? Needs to. Badly. Maybe consider making this a multiselector that goes with the other damaging arrow types (force/fire/acid/electric/cold) and have it get extra dice from upgrading your basic arrows? Some cool synergy there if so.

Dispelling Shot suggestions:

1. Make the dispel an AOE from point of origin--should dispel all hostile effects in that area, such as walls of fire, etc.
2. Make it work on spell wards
3. 3rd rank temporarily prevents spellcasting on the main target

Shattermantle Shot:

1. Base effect -10/20/30 SR and 20/40/60 MRR on main target (so it makes the main target vulnerable to elemental damage, which would have some ossum synergies with the rest of the tree and also elemental spellcasting in general.
2. AOE around main target that drops SR by 5/10/15 on all other targets.
3. Consider also -saves for AOE targets.

I think something like that could be very interesting, because it'd open up CASTER builds using bows with this tree (SORCERER!!! ARTI!!! BARD!!!!) that instead of relying on manyshot would use the elemental damage vulnerability stuff and DC boosts/save penalties and SP generation. It'd actually be an ARCANE archer.

What about adding spell crit instead of the +1 crit multiplier? Could the elemental damage abilities be made to crit like spells do?

I dunno, maybe that's getting a bit far-fetched.

[Xionanx]

While I am thinking about:

The AA Tree NEEDS a "Returning" Imbue - Why not get rid of "Conjure Arrows" and replace it with "Imbue Returning" so that any arrows you fire are 100% returning. Maybe then I could actually care about "Specialty" arrows, and suddenly AA has a GREAT ability in its tree. Make it a Tier 5 Ability. I would happily replace my secondary imbues for the ability to have 100% returning arrows. It would certainly make playing an AA a "Strategic" choice at that point, making its lack of attack speed not as terrible. (it'll still be terrible)

TELEPORT SHOT - Seriously, get on this one. A "Shot" that teleports the archer to the point of impact of the arrow... OH THE FUN I COULD HAVE WITH THIS!!!