U45 Preview 1: Balance: Ranged Combat Changes

[Garix]

Seems reasonable overall. Making doubleshot for dual crossbows have the same relative penalty as a repeater seems sensible. If the endless fusillade "charge up" time is shorter, that's a good change. -20% on IPS seems like a lot, but as long as you maneuver for at least two mobs it's still a win versus single target. Guess will have to see how it feels in practice.

I was promised the lamentations of the ranged, but this doesn't feel bad, man.

More or less my opinion. I'd just rather remove the charge up time for Endless fusilade to match current NHB.

Don't have the download quota for Lam at the moment, but if it goes Live I can live with my current reading of the changes

[barecm]

Off the top of my head, the problem I am seeing is that for longbows, we have been pushed to a paralyze / fear build over the last couple of years. The center of that play style is IPS. Now, you are nerfing that to do less damage for a build that already has to sacrifice damage for high enough DCs to be viable. Until we see what else is happening for longbows, all I can comment on is what we have. And what we have are changes that are bad across the board and particularly bad for longbows who suffer yet again because something else is too powerful. It is beyond the pale now.

Why bother having long / short bows in the game if you continue to make them more and more useless? That is a serious question.

[Vorachtin]

Ranger: Deepwood Stalker's Strikes Like Lightning now also adds 10% Ranged Alacrity with Longbows and Shortbows when you do not have Improved Precise Shot enabled.

This is meh, should remove the anti improved precise shot penalty. Bows are gimp, and you already have longbow/shortbow required for the alacrity part of the enhancment.


Change it later if/when you do a Long/Short bow pass, put it back if needed. But for now, I'd drop "when you do not have Improved Precise Shot enabled." change it rather to the whole enhancement to only work with Long/Short bows.

Edit - will this stack from 10% from bard primal song?

[barecm]

How about removing the IPS penalty for long/short bows since you have already stated they are underperforming. I am failing to see the logic behind penalizing long/short bows for the sins of crossbows. In fact it is just going to fire up an already upset base of players.

[Cantor]

Okay, this here is not an improvement to Archer's Focus, this is a HUGE, HUGE nerf and means that Archer's Focus is basically ONLY useful for killing boss mobs that you fight EXCLUSIVELY by themselves. Currently, MOVING is what resets your stacks, so as long as you hold still you can DPS an entire room of mobs at full stacks to really get the damage in. When dealing with trash you should be switching targets frequently, which means you'll never get more than a stack or two before it goes away. And what if you have to switch targets to heal someone or cast a spell or something?!

This is dumb and I can TELL it's dumb without even TESTING it. If you want to improve Archer's Focus just REMOVE the "goes away when you move" limitation. Remove ALL "goes away" except from stacks EXPIRING. That would make it actually competitive with IPS, particularly in situations where it's quite hard to line mobs up.

I agree. I saw this and said "why the nerf to archer's focus?" huge nerf that makes it only useful for bosses, while at the same time nerfing the alternative stance of IPS, please consider making a IPS a RP penalty instead of %.

[capsela]

How about removing the IPS penalty for long/short bows since you have already stated they are underperforming. I am failing to see the logic behind penalizing long/short bows for the sins of crossbows. In fact it is just going to fire up an already upset base of players.

Agreed. Just make IPS not work with Xbows. Problem solved.

[HungarianRhapsody]

Player base: "bows are underperforming and Inquisitives are overperforming"
SSG: "We hear you loud and clear. We're going to nerf IPS because we want to nerf Inquisitives and bows at the same time"

[Kielbasa]

How about removing the IPS penalty for long/short bows since you have already stated they are underperforming. I am failing to see the logic behind penalizing long/short bows for the sins of crossbows. In fact it is just going to fire up an already upset base of players.

Yeah having bonus alacrity in mechanic and inquisitive that does not have this weird stipulation but having it in dws makes no sense. Please be consistent. If you want to be really mean add it to both inquisitive and mechanic to really get the forums riled up.

Throwers in ninja spy would also like bonus alacrity in their t5 please and thanks you.

[salmag]

How about removing the IPS penalty for long/short bows since you have already stated they are underperforming. I am failing to see the logic behind penalizing long/short bows for the sins of crossbows. In fact it is just going to fire up an already upset base of players.

Agreed. Just make IPS not work with Xbows. Problem solved.

Player base: "bows are underperforming and Inquisitives are overperforming"
SSG: "We hear you loud and clear. We're going to nerf IPS because we want to nerf Inquisitives and bows at the same time"

These three quotes pretty much sum it up.

[Arkat]

From what I can see on the Character Sheet, Heavy Draw is not adding the +5 to damage.

The good news is it doesn't subtract 5 from your To-Hit, though.

20 Ranger tested on Lamannia. In Legendary Dreadnaught destiny.

[Lencrennis]

Player base: "bows are underperforming and Inquisitives are overperforming"
SSG: "We hear you loud and clear. We're going to nerf IPS because we want to nerf Inquisitives and bows at the same time"

The real question is whether or not the IPS -20% penalty applies to everything, or just the first digit damage.

[BandVP]

Does Strikes Like Lightening 10% alacrity also include the 20 ranged power still?

Also, does Strikes Like Lightening stack with Primal Hymn from Fatesinger?

[Lanttanno]

I love my Ranger but having done almost every ranged build under the sun, I can honestly say he is the worst of the ranged character I have played.

That's why when I woke up this morning being promised ranged changes I was expecting some juicy buffs to ranger to go in tandem with the inquisitive nerf but a significant ranger nerf? The buffs to compensate are insignificant and don't even stack with other goodies that rangers usually take (although im not sure if primal hymn will stack).

I would suggest:
- Heavy draw and the 18th lvl arcane archer core "If you have (Insert opposite enhancement here) grants +2 critical damage multiplier instead"
- Give doubleshot to the deepwood stalker tree capstone and make the arcane archer capstone boost imbue die (could even still give doubleshot) to give full 20 rangers a point
- If you are nerfing IPS so much, maybe make T5 or a core in deepwood focus on giving manyshot more uptime or go to the passive version that was suggested years ago

My point is, can't really just nerf the underperforming for the sake of the overpowered without ****ing off a bunch of people. At least give a +20 heart to rangers if you're gonna do this.

[droid327]

- "Repeaters are where they need to be"...yet they're getting co-nerfed all throughout this along with Inquisitive on IPS and RR. Why not boost their Doubleshot to 66% to match Inqui now? There's no way they're competitive with GXB/DXB if you're straight nerfing them. Plus they already have a disadvantage with AF since that stacks at 1/sec and they attack slower than 1/sec.

- Get ready for the Age of Stance Dance. I thought that was gameplay you didnt want to encourage...but the IPS/AF changes are going to accomplish just that, forcing players to constantly swap between ST and AOE modes

- Simple Thrown Weapon Expertise is based on DEX, but how many builds can actually get DEX to hit/dmg with throwers? Swap it to BAB maybe?

I dont think a blanket -20% damage is the right penalty for IPS. That's just creating a simple min-max paradigm where you need to be hitting at least 2 mobs 1 out of 5 hits for it to be numerically superior...or in other words any situation where you're not in pure single-target combat. You just coded the Strikethrough mechanic, why not adapt IPS to that, make it so the "% pass through" scales off some metric?

[Steelstar]

- "Repeaters are where they need to be"

Repeaters are close to where they need to be

These are not the same thing. There are a couple of important words missing from the top one that change the context of what we said to a thing we very intentionally did not say. The position of Repeaters relative to other Crossbows does not invalidate the impact that Crossbows and Ranged styles as a whole have on other parts of the game.

[Kielbasa]

I love my Ranger but having done almost every ranged build under the sun, I can honestly say he is the worst of the ranged character I have played.

That's why when I woke up this morning being promised ranged changes I was expecting some juicy buffs to ranger to go in tandem with the inquisitive nerf but a significant ranger nerf? The buffs to compensate are insignificant and don't even stack with other goodies that rangers usually take (although im not sure if primal hymn will stack).

I would suggest:
- Heavy draw and the 18th lvl arcane archer core "If you have (Insert opposite enhancement here) grants +2 critical damage multiplier instead"
- Give doubleshot to the deepwood stalker tree capstone and make the arcane archer capstone boost imbue die (could even still give doubleshot) to give full 20 rangers a point
- If you are nerfing IPS so much, maybe make T5 or a core in deepwood focus on giving manyshot more uptime or go to the passive version that was suggested years ago

My point is, can't really just nerf the underperforming for the sake of the overpowered without ****ing off a bunch of people. At least give a +20 heart to rangers if you're gonna do this.

At this point I am unsure why the devs don't have arrow expertise somewhere in the deepwood sniper tree or as a feat people can pick up with x number or ranger or fighter levels. It would go a long way towards balancing bows vs xbows and dexterity bow users versus wisdom based bow users.

Arrow Expertise: Percent chance to shot an additional projectile is equal to your Dexterity.

Problem solved devs you're welcome.

[Assassination]

[*]*What about bows???

• We recognize that some of the overall-ranged changes in this update reduce the amount of AOE damage that Bows can produce. However, between Archer's Focus (being a boon to Bow builds' single-target damage) and updated Deepwood Stalker, there are some boosts in this update as well. We recognize this is not an overall solution to Bows, as a combat style, having few options to help them become competitive DPS builds. We've got plans coming soon for that.

I hope that means a universal tree for bows. Cuz bows be terrible. Maybe check out Joerg Sprave on youtube. He has fast firing bows and even a double bow... double bow, 2 bows attached together... He might be part gnome..

Bows should have a much faster rate of fire compared to difficult to reload xbows. The rate of fire of inquisitives is INSANE!!!!

[DRoark]

*Improved Precise Shot now reduces Ranged Damage by 20% while active.*

This is s HUGE kick in the azz for ranged builds that aren't spamming shots. You may as well just drop 20% damage off every AOE/cleave in the game if it hits more than one target.
I'd LOVE to see you do that to casters, who can hit an entire swarm, but yet ranged (who can only do that in a STRAIGHT LINE) get a damage nerf to their only multi-target attack.

Yet another reason cleaving and casters are easier to play. Again.

[Xgemina]

So basically, IPS, which has been in the game since Module 3 in 2006, is suddenly OP due to a 2019 universal ranged tree so the solution is to nerf IPS?

In essence this change nerfs every ranged build, including the new focus on thrown weapons and the already sub-par bow builds - but, wait a bit and we'll somehow bring those up to par...the new par (of course)... sometime in the near-ish future.

I can understand and support the changes to the Inq tree. I even get the change to Ratcatcher, but it certainly feels like SSG is taking the hammer approach instead of a scalpel (and I'd settle for a knife, a big knife even).

[droid327]

These are not the same thing. There are a couple of important words missing from the top one that change the context of what we said to a thing we very intentionally did not say. The position of Repeaters relative to other Crossbows does not invalidate the impact that Crossbows and Ranged styles as a whole have on other parts of the game.

If you're saying Repeaters on Live right now are overperforming then I have to challenge your expectations for where you think overall ranged should be...Repeaters werent invalidating melee before Inqui or anything. If you're trying to get all ranged styles to a point weaker than Repeaters on Live, then you're going to pull another gross overshoot and make ranged unfun for everyone.

I hope you pay attention to that moving forward with testing. I doubt you will though since Lama is never open for long enough and people dont actually try things that arent part of the changes, ie Repeaters. They need help, not hindrance, especially as Throwers seem primed to become high-ROF ranged weapons now too, decreasing the rolespace for RXB. Bows too for that matter, but you seem to be acknowledging how Bows are in a bad place - even as you seem to be condemning Repeaters to join them.