Short: Buff Archery

[Bastrii]

I'll keep it short: Archery is the weakest core skill in the game, by far.

Please buff the damage by around 20%, minimum, to even consider keeping it in line with anything else. Just change the evasion passive to a flat out damage buff, change double recurve into a short Ranged Critical buff on a cooldown, and increase the base damage of attacks by about 10%.

Please. Make it somewhat viable. I've heard nothing but people insulting me, and my class choice, because it incorporates archery, and my poor damage output in a lot of situations show for it.

Also, change the "bonus damage on poison" to bonus damage on bleed. Please. For the love of God. Give us something.

 

[lucaonegri]

I agree, i'm playing primeval and i cant even do damage to people with same gs

 

[Sjinderson]

Archery is a fine class as it is. I play prime myself. The issue with archery is that you require a much higher stage of gear to be effective. The class is not weak.
archery is not a dualing class. It's a raid class. There's a lot of mechanics to being an effective archer

 

[khaise]

I never understood why people support the current archery state. Like Sjinderson said, "you require a much higher stage of gear to be effective." If they nerfed darkrunner/abolisher/enigmatist damage by 40 or 50% would it still be a good class provided you have that much higher stage of gear?
Shouldn't need legendary gear to be on par with lower geared players.

 

[lucaonegri]

Archery is a fine class as it is. I play prime myself. The issue with archery is that you require a much higher stage of gear to be effective. The class is not weak.
archery is not a dualing class. It's a raid class. There's a lot of mechanics to being an effective archer

As you said, the class is not a par against other classes. 3.5k primeval just CAN'T kill an afk abolisher with the same GS due to the difference of the balance system. this is the issue, the class need a balance to try to compete with other classes without high gear.

 

[Sjinderson]

An archer isn't meant to kill abolishers of other tank classes. Archers shine against cloth usesers.
And a 3.5k prime can't kill really anything because you lack everything you need.
There are 4 core items to be an effective archer
Strong bow, divine obs or vengeful wings is good enough.
T4 falcon shortspear atleast celestial.
Defence pen accessories. Gale rings lightning necklace.
T3 focus gems.
You can have these at 4k Gs. And once you achieve this you will notice how effective you can be

 

[Bastrii]

An archer isn't meant to kill abolishers of other tank classes. Archers shine against cloth usesers.
And a 3.5k prime can't kill really anything because you lack everything you need.
There are 4 core items to be an effective archer
Strong bow, divine obs or vengeful wings is good enough.
T4 falcon shortspear atleast celestial.
Defence pen accessories. Gale rings lightning necklace.
T3 focus gems.
You can have these at 4k Gs. And once you achieve this you will notice how effective you can be

So what you're saying is... you need powerful gear to be effective. But only against classes who don't have Defense as one of their talent trees. And on top of that, you need to have all of your gem slots filled. By then, you're only effective late game, when you're hundreds of hours into ArcheAge and you're already losing interest just trying to seize enough power to even "think" about being viable.

But let's not talk about the fact that Archery has no stuns, has the worst forms of CC in the game, its primary rotation incorporates a move that has a fire rate that fluctuates based entirely on your Ping. Sure, that could probably be excusable, if its damage was good. But... it's not. And a lot of its vital abilities are lodged in the Shadowplay tree - which is great, I guess, if you really want shadowplay. But the fact that a lot of damage comes from targets being poisoned is pitiful. A 5 second debuff on a 7 second cooldown to deal an extra 40%+ or so damage with an attack that fluctuates wildly is terrible.

In the original Tier List for ArcheAge 3.0, the >best< classes in the game, that were over tuned, were as follows: (S+ Rating, highest rating)

Darkrunner – Bat/Sdw/Aur

Nightcloak – Wit/Occ/Aur

Hierophant – Wit/Vit/Aur

Skullknight – Def/Occ/Aur

Revenant – Sor/Occ/Aur

Soothsayer – Sdw/Vit/Aur

Spellsinger – Sor/Sgc/Sdw

Cleric – Sgc/Vit/Aur

Primeval – Arc/Sdw/Aur

Spellsong – Sor/Sgc/Aur

There's only 1 Class in here that's viable for Archery - Primeval.

But lets go farther. What does the S tier look like?

Bastion – Def/Arc/Aur

Templar – Def/Vit/Aur

Enigmatist – Sor/Sdw/Aur

Argent – Bat/Vit/Aur

Bloodreaver – Bat/Occ/Aur

Abolisher – Bat/Def/Aur

Blighter – Bat/Def/Sdw

Hex Warden - Bat/Wit/Aur

Shadowblade – Bat/Wit/Sdw

Blade Dancer – Bat/Sdw/Sgc

Defiler – Def/Wit/Occ

There's one more class that uses Archery, which is a core skill tree. But out of these listed classes, let's note something here.

>6 of these classes have Defense as one of their Talent Trees. This makes them really hard to challenge as an Archer because of your pitiful damage against their massive HP pools, self recovery, and high armor. Even with really high defense penetration, they will outdamage you 9 times out of 10 because the base damage is so poor. Of these six, four are magic focused, meaning they nullify Archer's advantage against them.

>7 of these classes are melee classes, five of which do NOT have Defense in their tree. Meaning that these classes still counter Archery because they will have a flat 20% damage reduction in close range, on top of the fact that most of them have more CC options and gap closers that rip Archers to shreds.

>Melee classes are nearly immune to Ranger damage, while Magic classes have such powerful gear late game that even with cloth armor, their damage absorption is high against low damage attacks. Which Archery suffers from.

>Archery has few CC and stun options, and less combos than most classes.

>16 of these 21 classes have Auramancy. Auramancy is pretty much a required class because of the utility it offers to everything... except Archery. It has no class combos with Archery. It offers no Ranged damage buffs. It simply gives CC breaking abilities and Magic Damage absorption, which is incredibly useful for taking down Clothies. But since anyone can have a tree built for CC or utility in their build, it's often the third tree taken.

Okay cool, so you have an Anti Magic thing. But a lot of people say that melee is a counter to Ranged. And it's 100% true. Battlerage is given the ability to shrug off 90% of all CC, jump over obstacles, and pretty much ignores snare. On top of that, they have the ability to parry ranged attack with an offhand weapon. And they have increased parry chance when dual wielding. Additionally, parrying an attack resets all of their cooldowns. And a lot of their abilities inflict trip.

So even if you Snare them for 10 minutes straight, endless arrows can be parried, resetting their cooldown on their abilities that break snare. Then they can cast a free gap closer.

And Magic users can still CC Archers to death, often giving them no time to do anything about it.

And Archery, Shadowplay, and Auramancy give 0 Stun/Trip immunities.

So if you REALLY think it's fair and balanced, no. It's not.

 

[kit]

An archer isn't meant to kill abolishers of other tank classes. Archers shine against cloth usesers.
And a 3.5k prime can't kill really anything because you lack everything you need.
There are 4 core items to be an effective archer
Strong bow, divine obs or vengeful wings is good enough.
T4 falcon shortspear atleast celestial.
Defence pen accessories. Gale rings lightning necklace.
T3 focus gems.
You can have these at 4k Gs. And once you achieve this you will notice how effective you can be

Sorry, Ill have to disagree with you, Before the patch on live with new skills/gems, I was a 6.5k Prime. I had everything you said if not more and still had issues doing dps on classes same GS as me. To say that Archer isnt meant to kill a class is just silly.

Every class should be balanced to kill one another. I've played prime since alpha, and they are always under-balanced. I can agree to say if, if you have 30k hp you shouldnt be doing DR DPS. That being said, Prime does not offer HP,nor does it offer "good" dps or defense, nor does it offer stuns. It does need a buff, even if its slight, the archer class base needs a rework. You shouldn't need to be legendary (TOP TIER) gear to be "Viable" Thats just silly.

This is just my opinion, playing prime all these years.

 

[Bastrii]

Sorry, Ill have to disagree with you, Before the patch on live with new skills/gems, I was a 6.5k Prime. I had everything you said if not more and still had issues doing dps on classes same GS as me. To say that Archer isnt meant to kill a class is just silly.

Every class should be balanced to kill one another. I've played prime since alpha, and they are always under-balanced. I can agree to say if, if you have 30k hp you shouldnt be doing DR DPS. That being said, Prime does not offer HP,nor does it offer "good" dps or defense, nor does it offer stuns. It does need a buff, even if its slight, the archer class base needs a rework. You shouldn't need to be legendary (TOP TIER) gear to be "Viable" Thats just silly.

This is just my opinion, playing prime all these years.

Agreed. The core problem with Archery is that the majority of its damage scales from gear. The main problem would be Endless Arrows, which does 57% of your base ranged damage. The majority of other base attacks, like firebolt, may also share this, but they hit in 3 parts; each part also functions as a combo and has variable damage. Endless Arrows does not, but is the MAIN source of damage, and only scales off of gear. This means that at level 55 with no gear, Endless Arrows is weaker than other "base line" abilities that can be continuously used; because it has no combo bonuses that allow stuns nor does it proc any debuffs. On top of this, it scales very low with your Ranged Attack Bonus, meaning powerful gear is 100% required to even penetrate armor.

Since Archery relies entirely on Endless Arrows to be effective, and has very few other options for DPS, its current implementation is very poorly done.

The tradeoff we're supposed to have is high mobility. This is slightly effective against magic users, but pointless against melee characters as they, too, have very high mobility (sometimes more than Primes.) Partly because they take a required Archery tree (shadowplay) for its mobility and damage, and also because other base movesets give really good mobility, too.

I would just advocate for a damage bonus, but I think the skill can just flat out be reworked instead into a new ability, Bodkin Arrows.

Bodkin Arrows:
Fires powerful, unending arrows at the target in a steady rate, dealing 100 +57% Ranged Attack. This skill ignores 20% Armor on bleeding targets, with an additional 5% per rank of bleeding (rank 1 = 20%, rank 2 = 25%, rank 3 = 30%). This skill deals 33% more damage on poisoned targets, and 17% more damage on slowed targets.

Reasoning: Armor is primarily the reason why this is so trash, but also because of its super high gear requirements to even do anything. It has no "base" damage that makes fast attacks worth while, so it's either increase the scaling (which you don't want to do, because high GS damage would make it stupid powerful), or give it some base damage (much better idea). If you have 1000 Ranged Attack, 57% = 570, +100 baseline, so 670 each arrow, with 0 armor. But for lower GS players, they have access to higher damage faster because of the base damage buff. 300 Ranged attack/57% = 171, +100 = 271 per arrow. It's a massive increase in DPS against armor, because of the added armor penetration, while also normalizing the damage a bit more to fit lower gear players without super buffing high gear players. This penetration barely affects clothies, who already have low physical defense, but it tears up plate quite a bit. The base damage can scale off of level, giving Endless Arrows 3 ranks; lvl 4 for 20 bonus damage, lvl 25 for 60, lvl 50 for 100. Like it matters, since leveling is so fast.

Throwing Knife needs to scale with Ranged Damage instead of Melee, as it really only helps Archery. It's also a thrown weapon, which requires accuracy and skill; and could definitely constitute as a Ranged ability.

Double Recurve should be a short term buff that increases Crit Rate by 20%, and lasts for 12 seconds.

Float is pointless. Replacing it with something else would be nice. Its only real benefit is that you get off the ground for a moment. I think it would benefit a more restrained, in place moveset like Sorcery, and make more sense. Give us another CC breaker, that would be better. Maybe a knockback arrow of sorts, that pushes them 15 yards away and deals bonus damage

Make Intensity break fear if you're already feared. Battlerage has moves that drop all CC and grant immunity to it. We should get at least one or two of our own.

The normal attacks, like Piercing Arrow, Charged Bolt, etc need no changes in damage besides maybe a small increase to its base damage.

Bone yard should stun for 0.8 seconds before the bones summon, so it actually traps people and encages them for a moment. Reason: It can MISS ENTIRELY.

Transfer the 15% bonus damage from Double Recurve to add as a passive to Archery Expertise, giving it more use besides just a 1 second cooldown reduction. Maybe people will actually take it now.

Just some recommendations to improve Archery.

 

[enigmaseven]

Base damage could be buffed but perhaps for a tradeoff like increased cast time or reduced mobility during endless arrows. Doesn't have to be like this, but they can play with many variables to balance Archery properly.

Nobody likes playing a class where it's only really viable in a late-game scenario, it needs an update.

 

[Bastrii]

Base damage could be buffed but perhaps for a tradeoff like increased cast time or reduced mobility during endless arrows. Doesn't have to be like this, but they can play with many variables to balance Archery properly.

Nobody likes playing a class where it's only really viable in a late-game scenario, it needs an update.

It does NOT need a trade off or nerf, it only needs buffs. It's relatively balanced if it had similar damage to every other class, but it does not.

Battlerage needs a flat nerf with no trade offs. Archery has very few skills that grant mobility - Float, Deadeye, Concussive Arrow, Missile Rain, and Snipe all have cast times or prevent movement to use, and are simply rarely viable. That means only Charged Bolt, Puncture Arrow, Marked Shot, and Poison Arrow are the only good attacks an Archer can use.

Float makes your defense drop to zero, and prevents all moves with cast times. The only buff is that it gives you Feral Mark, which isn't very useful.

Concussive Arrow deals okay damage, and inflicts shackle, but offers no combos and works mostly as a very, very weak "nuke".

Deadeye only gives a buff if you're standing still. Which will kill you.

Missile Rain isn't viable until 3.5, only targets a very small area, does poor/spread out damage, has a cast time, and has no use in PvP.

Snipe will trip... if a target is snared. Which can only combo with ranged snares that last 3 seconds longer than the cast time of Snipe. But it does no extra damage and is very weak until VERY late game, as it scales WAY too much off of Ranged Attack with no base damage.

Archery has the fewest self combos in the game. Archery has similar range to magic attacks, with the only benefit of being able to move during some of your attacks. Archery has no CC clearing abilities, unlike battlerage, who gets Behind Enemy Lines.

Battlerage has a ton of heavy hitting, high damage attack on short cooldowns, gap closers, stuns galore, and stun clearing moves. With shadowplay, they get more stuns, speed buffs, attack speed buffs, and stealth. Auramancy is taken by 14 out of the 16 top classes of the game. All of these put together give you Dark Runner.

Archery has one stun. If a target is snared.

Fuck off giving it a trade off. Replace the shitty cast time moves with a few stuns, high damage, push effects, and one Get Out of Jail Free Card, and you'll have Dark Runner with a bow. All I'm asking for is an increase in damage and maybe 1 CC clearing option in the tree.

 

[kit]

It does NOT need a trade off or nerf, it only needs buffs. It's relatively balanced if it had similar damage to every other class, but it does not.

Battlerage needs a flat nerf with no trade offs. Archery has very few skills that grant mobility - Float, Deadeye, Concussive Arrow, Missile Rain, and Snipe all have cast times or prevent movement to use, and are simply rarely viable. That means only Charged Bolt, Puncture Arrow, Marked Shot, and Poison Arrow are the only good attacks an Archer can use.

Float makes your defense drop to zero, and prevents all moves with cast times. The only buff is that it gives you Feral Mark, which isn't very useful.

Concussive Arrow deals okay damage, and inflicts shackle, but offers no combos and works mostly as a very, very weak "nuke".

Deadeye only gives a buff if you're standing still. Which will kill you.

Missile Rain isn't viable until 3.5, only targets a very small area, does poor/spread out damage, has a cast time, and has no use in PvP.

Snipe will trip... if a target is snared. Which can only combo with ranged snares that last 3 seconds longer than the cast time of Snipe. But it does no extra damage and is very weak until VERY late game, as it scales WAY too much off of Ranged Attack with no base damage.

Archery has the fewest self combos in the game. Archery has similar range to magic attacks, with the only benefit of being able to move during some of your attacks. Archery has no CC clearing abilities, unlike battlerage, who gets Behind Enemy Lines.

Battlerage has a ton of heavy hitting, high damage attack on short cooldowns, gap closers, stuns galore, and stun clearing moves. With shadowplay, they get more stuns, speed buffs, attack speed buffs, and stealth. Auramancy is taken by 14 out of the 16 top classes of the game. All of these put together give you Dark Runner.

Archery has one stun. If a target is snared.

Fuck off giving it a trade off. Replace the shitty cast time moves with a few stuns, high damage, push effects, and one Get Out of Jail Free Card, and you'll have Dark Runner with a bow. All I'm asking for is an increase in damage and maybe 1 CC clearing option in the tree.

Exactly. Once again people feel that archery needs a movement nerf for damage increase. Which is false. Movement is all we have, compared to other classes with their high damage and gap closers along with traps or stuns. I don't see how people think archers are fine where they are. Probably because they havent had their teeth kicked in since the beginning of the game constantly.

 

[Bardregan]

I think a lot of you guys are missing the point that @Sjinderson is trying to make. Archer classes are not thought of as dueling classes- ESPECIALLY against people in plate armor. Your argument is like saying that Enigmatist doesn't do enough damage to a healer. I've played archer (Primeval to be exact) ever since I began playing Archeage on the live servers and I don't think they need a buff in the current game version we are on.

Let me give you a simple "rock paper scissors" breakdown if that helps.... GENERALLY SPEAKING:

Plate beats Leather (simply because of a war of attrition)
Leather beats cloth (strength and/or agility stats provide plenty of DPS against someone with low physical defense)
Cloth beats Plate (Plate armor is skewed towards physical defense and unless you've invested in magic defense gems then you'll most likely get shredded by a few gods whip attacks)

If you, for example, did convince the admins of our private server to buff archery all you would do is upset the balance by making something that archers are good at even easier. Then mages would wish for a buff to take less physical damage simply because the archery buffs are causing them to die too quickly. The cycle goes on.

Just some food for thought.

 

[Bardregan]

Sorry, Ill have to disagree with you, Before the patch on live with new skills/gems, I was a 6.5k Prime. I had everything you said if not more and still had issues doing dps on classes same GS as me. To say that Archer isnt meant to kill a class is just silly.

Every class should be balanced to kill one another. I've played prime since alpha, and they are always under-balanced. I can agree to say if, if you have 30k hp you shouldnt be doing DR DPS. That being said, Prime does not offer HP,nor does it offer "good" dps or defense, nor does it offer stuns. It does need a buff, even if its slight, the archer class base needs a rework. You shouldn't need to be legendary (TOP TIER) gear to be "Viable" Thats just silly.

This is just my opinion, playing prime all these years.

Archers are given so much mobility (in skill and stat), evasion, and we're also given a lot of the same gap closers other classes have. If you compare a primeval to a dark runner we both share the auramancy tree and the shadowplay tree. We also have access to (as a primeval with my current build) numerous slows, stuns, shackles, a snare, a literal cage, a knockdown, and a sleep. Saying we don't have Stuns (or any form of CC for that matter) is simply not true.

 

[Bardregan]

It does NOT need a trade off or nerf, it only needs buffs. It's relatively balanced if it had similar damage to every other class, but it does not.

Battlerage needs a flat nerf with no trade offs. Archery has very few skills that grant mobility - Float, Deadeye, Concussive Arrow, Missile Rain, and Snipe all have cast times or prevent movement to use, and are simply rarely viable. That means only Charged Bolt, Puncture Arrow, Marked Shot, and Poison Arrow are the only good attacks an Archer can use.

Float makes your defense drop to zero, and prevents all moves with cast times. The only buff is that it gives you Feral Mark, which isn't very useful.

Concussive Arrow deals okay damage, and inflicts shackle, but offers no combos and works mostly as a very, very weak "nuke".

Deadeye only gives a buff if you're standing still. Which will kill you.

Missile Rain isn't viable until 3.5, only targets a very small area, does poor/spread out damage, has a cast time, and has no use in PvP.

Snipe will trip... if a target is snared. Which can only combo with ranged snares that last 3 seconds longer than the cast time of Snipe. But it does no extra damage and is very weak until VERY late game, as it scales WAY too much off of Ranged Attack with no base damage.

Archery has the fewest self combos in the game. Archery has similar range to magic attacks, with the only benefit of being able to move during some of your attacks. Archery has no CC clearing abilities, unlike battlerage, who gets Behind Enemy Lines.

Battlerage has a ton of heavy hitting, high damage attack on short cooldowns, gap closers, stuns galore, and stun clearing moves. With shadowplay, they get more stuns, speed buffs, attack speed buffs, and stealth. Auramancy is taken by 14 out of the 16 top classes of the game. All of these put together give you Dark Runner.

Archery has one stun. If a target is snared.

Fuck off giving it a trade off. Replace the shitty cast time moves with a few stuns, high damage, push effects, and one Get Out of Jail Free Card, and you'll have Dark Runner with a bow. All I'm asking for is an increase in damage and maybe 1 CC clearing option in the tree.

Float also increases the range of your skills by 7 meters (on top of your already 28 meters!!), and buffs your skill damage by +30%. You can also break it whenever you please (unlike serpent's sight).

Concussive Arrow does 40% more defense penetration if your target is bleeding (thus doing more damage).

Deadeye is gimmicky but some archers can actually benefit from taking it. For instance: An ebonsong can zeal proc snipe you with deadeye going and you can kiss your health bar goodbye. It's not viable in all cases, but it's certainly not a dead skill.

Missile rain is the only skill I'll find common ground on as it has no combo effects and doesn't really do much in a Player vs Player setting.

Snipe is a fantastic skill as it finishes it's travel distance regardless of terrain. It can also find it's target even if they've gone into stealth during your cast time, and also happens to have the highest unbuffed skill range IN THE GAME. In my opinion, the trip is just an added bonus but snipe as a skill is never something I rely on in order to trip somebody.

My endless arrows can hit someone for over 1000 per shot and I'm shooting multiple arrows a second- If you think that the sustain dps from archery (crits aside) isn't doing enough damage then you're not looking at archery the right way. Any melee class has a big problem that archers don't- They MUST get into melee range before they can even hit you. And if you ask me, having a 27 meter advantage on an opponent is pretty significant.

Also, Charged bolt can be cast (if you gear for it) within the same duration as it's slow in order to stun your opponent off of the combo effect. Archery as a skillset does not need more CC as the Archer classes receive CC off of their supporting skillsets.

Those darkrunners aren't 2shotting you with GHA weapons by the way.

 

[Bardregan]

Agreed. The core problem with Archery is that the majority of its damage scales from gear. The main problem would be Endless Arrows, which does 57% of your base ranged damage. The majority of other base attacks, like firebolt, may also share this, but they hit in 3 parts; each part also functions as a combo and has variable damage. Endless Arrows does not, but is the MAIN source of damage, and only scales off of gear. This means that at level 55 with no gear, Endless Arrows is weaker than other "base line" abilities that can be continuously used; because it has no combo bonuses that allow stuns nor does it proc any debuffs. On top of this, it scales very low with your Ranged Attack Bonus, meaning powerful gear is 100% required to even penetrate armor.

Since Archery relies entirely on Endless Arrows to be effective, and has very few other options for DPS, its current implementation is very poorly done.

The tradeoff we're supposed to have is high mobility. This is slightly effective against magic users, but pointless against melee characters as they, too, have very high mobility (sometimes more than Primes.) Partly because they take a required Archery tree (shadowplay) for its mobility and damage, and also because other base movesets give really good mobility, too.

I would just advocate for a damage bonus, but I think the skill can just flat out be reworked instead into a new ability, Bodkin Arrows.

Bodkin Arrows:
Fires powerful, unending arrows at the target in a steady rate, dealing 100 +57% Ranged Attack. This skill ignores 20% Armor on bleeding targets, with an additional 5% per rank of bleeding (rank 1 = 20%, rank 2 = 25%, rank 3 = 30%). This skill deals 33% more damage on poisoned targets, and 17% more damage on slowed targets.

Reasoning: Armor is primarily the reason why this is so trash, but also because of its super high gear requirements to even do anything. It has no "base" damage that makes fast attacks worth while, so it's either increase the scaling (which you don't want to do, because high GS damage would make it stupid powerful), or give it some base damage (much better idea). If you have 1000 Ranged Attack, 57% = 570, +100 baseline, so 670 each arrow, with 0 armor. But for lower GS players, they have access to higher damage faster because of the base damage buff. 300 Ranged attack/57% = 171, +100 = 271 per arrow. It's a massive increase in DPS against armor, because of the added armor penetration, while also normalizing the damage a bit more to fit lower gear players without super buffing high gear players. This penetration barely affects clothies, who already have low physical defense, but it tears up plate quite a bit. The base damage can scale off of level, giving Endless Arrows 3 ranks; lvl 4 for 20 bonus damage, lvl 25 for 60, lvl 50 for 100. Like it matters, since leveling is so fast.

Throwing Knife needs to scale with Ranged Damage instead of Melee, as it really only helps Archery. It's also a thrown weapon, which requires accuracy and skill; and could definitely constitute as a Ranged ability.

Double Recurve should be a short term buff that increases Crit Rate by 20%, and lasts for 12 seconds.

Float is pointless. Replacing it with something else would be nice. Its only real benefit is that you get off the ground for a moment. I think it would benefit a more restrained, in place moveset like Sorcery, and make more sense. Give us another CC breaker, that would be better. Maybe a knockback arrow of sorts, that pushes them 15 yards away and deals bonus damage

Make Intensity break fear if you're already feared. Battlerage has moves that drop all CC and grant immunity to it. We should get at least one or two of our own.

The normal attacks, like Piercing Arrow, Charged Bolt, etc need no changes in damage besides maybe a small increase to its base damage.

Bone yard should stun for 0.8 seconds before the bones summon, so it actually traps people and encages them for a moment. Reason: It can MISS ENTIRELY.

Transfer the 15% bonus damage from Double Recurve to add as a passive to Archery Expertise, giving it more use besides just a 1 second cooldown reduction. Maybe people will actually take it now.

Just some recommendations to improve Archery.

Just so you know, Endless arrows does combo off of slowed AND bleeding targets (both status effects that archers have access to) for an additional 57% more damage total.

Endless arrows aren't meant to be chunking peoples health bars. Although I appreciate an original idea when I see one.

Dagger Throw's melee attack gets scaled from an archers melee weapons (e.g. 2 Daggers or A dagger and a Shortspear). I don't even utilize it as a damage skill as much as I would suggest using it for CC.

Double Recurve is an amazing buff that grants the user 17% more damage (something we apparently don't have enough of), and your idea already exists under the name of a skill known as "intensity" which gradually increases your crit rate for the duration.

Float is not pointless and you can use it for more than it's "intended" purpose (e.g. an escape)

Intensity makes you IMMUNE to fears, something you as an archer shouldn't even really be susceptible to if you're positioned correctly.

I've shot charged bolts upwards of 12,000 damage on someone- if you think that needs a damage increase then you must be crazy.

Boneyard is fine, you need to break out of the walls via a hotkey or in otherwords inconvenience your opponent enough to get yourself proper spacing again.

Also, if you want more ranged damage then consider taking the Archery "10" passive "Feral Claws" for an additional 15% skill damage increase on your (instant casting) abilities.

 

[Bastrii]

Just so you know, Endless arrows does combo off of slowed AND bleeding targets (both status effects that archers have access to) for an additional 57% more damage total.

Endless arrows aren't meant to be chunking peoples health bars. Although I appreciate an original idea when I see one.

Dagger Throw's melee attack gets scaled from an archers melee weapons (e.g. 2 Daggers or A dagger and a Shortspear). I don't even utilize it as a damage skill as much as I would suggest using it for CC.

Double Recurve is an amazing buff that grants the user 17% more damage (something we apparently don't have enough of), and your idea already exists under the name of a skill known as "intensity" which gradually increases your crit rate for the duration.

Float is not pointless and you can use it for more than it's "intended" purpose (e.g. an escape)

Intensity makes you IMMUNE to fears, something you as an archer shouldn't even really be susceptible to if you're positioned correctly.

I've shot charged bolts upwards of 12,000 damage on someone- if you think that needs a damage increase then you must be crazy.

Boneyard is fine, you need to break out of the walls via a hotkey or in otherwords inconvenience your opponent enough to get yourself proper spacing again.

Also, if you want more ranged damage then consider taking the Archery "10" passive "Feral Claws" for an additional 15% skill damage increase on your (instant casting) abilities.

Wrong and wrong.

And as stated in previous points, it seems you already skimmed over it.

I stated that Intensity gives you immunity to fear. It does not clear it. Battlerage has bondbreaker and behind enemy lines, that clears nearly every single CC in the game.

The problem we're having with Darkrunners is that the moment they touch you, it's game over.

Boneyard can't be shot through, except with snipe or with a great enough height advantage with float (and pressed right against it.) Darkrunners can escape this one Behind Enemy Lines.

They can escape all snares and inflict snare themselves with one skill. Our snare >mostly< works at close range, within five meters. Unless if you float to use it.

We have 1 slow combo that lasts four seconds. Dark Runners have Charge, which Snares, and their next attack trips. Charge has a 12 Second Cooldown baseline, and Triple Slash trips, which has infinite use.

Throw Dagger shouldn't scale off of melee damage to begin with.

Our "endless" CC can both miss, fail, and be shrugged off. It goes: Stealth* > Shadowstep* > Leech* > Snare > Snipe > ~Overwhelm* > ~Shadowsmite* > Drop Back* > ~Throw Dagger* > Charged Bolt. The abilities marked with * are pretty much "base line" for Dark Runners. The abilities with ~ can miss. If they miss, the combo fails, and you're dead. Dark runners nearly never miss, and have enough gems to penetrate your evasion.

I already know we do more damage on poisoned and slowed targets. You must think I'm braindead, but that would be an assumption, something I'm trying not to make too many of here.

Double Recurve is a good buff. Yes. What I'm saying is, we could just have the 17% increased damage baked into the skill tree to begin with, and make Double Recurve into a new ability. It's not that I forgot intensity, more so that I'm trying to make it a more powerful temporary buff. If anything, it could just be made into a Push Ability, which would have waaaay more utility. I could understand raid wide buffs, like health lift, boon, and hummingbird deity - they apply buffs to everyone. But this is a required skill that only gives you more damage for 30 minutes.

I already have Feral Claws. You're implying, again, that I do NOT understand the class. I do understand the class. And in comparison to other classes, it's garbage... UNLESS if you have Godly gear. But at that point, you're playing a different game - your normal attacks already do stupid damage. Since you're saying you hit 12k with Charged Bolt, you made this obvious. You've distanced yourself from the majority of players, new and old, who have lower gear score, haven't min-maxed to the point that killing others is laughably easy.

And finally, I don't think Endless Arrows should chunk health bars. I think it should be able to damage players who have average gear. A lot of required Archery equipment gives Armor Penetration, which you mostly get after a long ass time in ArcheAge. On top of having a lot of focus, a player at end-game would have no problems against most players, because their stats simply cut through damage absorption that mid-level players can't penetrate. My point was to make Puncturing Arrow also puncture armor, making it easy to damage targets (as Endless Arrows is a rapid fire, low damage attack. Which even leather armor destroys.)

Now I'll round back out to the problems with Dark Runner, which you don't have issues with because you can kill them before they catch you once. Most players have issues fighting them because Dark Runners have more gap closers than you have gap wideners. From our perspective, it's entirely tipped in their favor - and it really is.

We have these abilities, mind you, DRs share all of them (if they choose):
Drop Back
Teleport
Mirror Teleport
Comet's Boon
Freerunner

DRs also have, on top of these:
Charge
Tiger Strike
Behind Enemy Lines
Lasso

Now with your claim that we have a lot of CC options, let's look at Bondbreaker, Behind Enemy Lines, Deflect and Retaliate, Dual Wield Proficiency, and Reckless Charge.

Taken from the Wiki:

Bondbreaker: Removes Snare, Slowed, Launched, Lassitude, Telekinesis effects from you and gain immunity to them for several seconds.

Behind Enemy Lines: Triggers a high leap that lands at a designated site and deals (576 +400% Melee Attack) Physical Damage and Snares enemies for 3.5sec. Can cancel the Shackled debuff. Snare duration reduced -50% in PvP.

On top of that, they have:

Deflect and Retaliate: Permanently increases Parry rate +2%; each successful parry resets the cooldown of all Battlerage skills. Can't be triggered more than once every 3 seconds. (That's right. 3 Seconds.)

Dual Wield Proficiency: When dual-wielding, Parry deflects Ranged Attacks as well. Increases Melee Crit Rate +8%.

Reckless Charge: Decreases the duration of Shackle, Move Speed Reduction, Snare, and Impared -15% and increases your move speed +40% for 3 seconds after using Physical Charge, Tiger Strike, and Behind Enemy Lines.

Are you starting to see a problem here? Baked into their skill line, they pretty much have immunity to most CC and resistance to a lot more of them.

We have a +10% to our evasion. Which can be pushed through with Focus. Easily. If focus didn't affect Evasion, it might be useful. But it does. A lot.

They also have Puncture, which reduces armor by 2,000 on any melee critical hit. And Battle Focus, which essentially gives them infinite amounts of Parry.

If you took every Battlerage ability and passive, and NOTHING else, you would be able to overwhelm MOST players of equal Gear Score, if you could catch them once. They also have Frenzy to reduce incoming Magic Damage by 21%, too, so they're viable against mages as well.

On top of that, Sunder Earth gives up to three stacks of Inspired. They don't even have to >take< Auramancy to benefit from it.

Either nerf Dark Runners to fall in line, or improve Archery to be somewhat viable against being totally overwhelmed. It's a serious issue. Even in Arenas, where advantages are supposed to be neutralized somewhat, DRs run train on everyone except for maybe a few mages and a lucky Primeval.

Also, on a stun for stun basis, Battlerage has several in its tree alone. And resistance to stun. It's stupidly broken. Shadowplay and Auramancy aren't broken - they're tuned well. It's the battlerage tree that's OP. Archery just needs a few buffs to be more viable against them.

 

[Bardregan]

Wrong and wrong.

And as stated in previous points, it seems you already skimmed over it.

I stated that Intensity gives you immunity to fear. It does not clear it. Battlerage has bondbreaker and behind enemy lines, that clears nearly every single CC in the game.

The problem we're having with Darkrunners is that the moment they touch you, it's game over.

Boneyard can't be shot through, except with snipe or with a great enough height advantage with float (and pressed right against it.) Darkrunners can escape this one Behind Enemy Lines.

They can escape all snares and inflict snare themselves with one skill. Our snare >mostly< works at close range, within five meters. Unless if you float to use it.

We have 1 slow combo that lasts four seconds. Dark Runners have Charge, which Snares, and their next attack trips. Charge has a 12 Second Cooldown baseline, and Triple Slash trips, which has infinite use.

Throw Dagger shouldn't scale off of melee damage to begin with.

Our "endless" CC can both miss, fail, and be shrugged off. It goes: Stealth* > Shadowstep* > Leech* > Snare > Snipe > ~Overwhelm* > ~Shadowsmite* > Drop Back* > ~Throw Dagger* > Charged Bolt. The abilities marked with * are pretty much "base line" for Dark Runners. The abilities with ~ can miss. If they miss, the combo fails, and you're dead. Dark runners nearly never miss, and have enough gems to penetrate your evasion.

I already know we do more damage on poisoned and slowed targets. You must think I'm braindead, but that would be an assumption, something I'm trying not to make too many of here.

Double Recurve is a good buff. Yes. What I'm saying is, we could just have the 17% increased damage baked into the skill tree to begin with, and make Double Recurve into a new ability. It's not that I forgot intensity, more so that I'm trying to make it a more powerful temporary buff. If anything, it could just be made into a Push Ability, which would have waaaay more utility. I could understand raid wide buffs, like health lift, boon, and hummingbird deity - they apply buffs to everyone. But this is a required skill that only gives you more damage for 30 minutes.

I already have Feral Claws. You're implying, again, that I do NOT understand the class. I do understand the class. And in comparison to other classes, it's garbage... UNLESS if you have Godly gear. But at that point, you're playing a different game - your normal attacks already do stupid damage. Since you're saying you hit 12k with Charged Bolt, you made this obvious. You've distanced yourself from the majority of players, new and old, who have lower gear score, haven't min-maxed to the point that killing others is laughably easy.

And finally, I don't think Endless Arrows should chunk health bars. I think it should be able to damage players who have average gear. A lot of required Archery equipment gives Armor Penetration, which you mostly get after a long ass time in ArcheAge. On top of having a lot of focus, a player at end-game would have no problems against most players, because their stats simply cut through damage absorption that mid-level players can't penetrate. My point was to make Puncturing Arrow also puncture armor, making it easy to damage targets (as Endless Arrows is a rapid fire, low damage attack. Which even leather armor destroys.)

Now I'll round back out to the problems with Dark Runner, which you don't have issues with because you can kill them before they catch you once. Most players have issues fighting them because Dark Runners have more gap closers than you have gap wideners. From our perspective, it's entirely tipped in their favor - and it really is.

We have these abilities, mind you, DRs share all of them (if they choose):
Drop Back
Teleport
Mirror Teleport
Comet's Boon
Freerunner

DRs also have, on top of these:
Charge
Tiger Strike
Behind Enemy Lines
Lasso

Now with your claim that we have a lot of CC options, let's look at Bondbreaker, Behind Enemy Lines, Deflect and Retaliate, Dual Wield Proficiency, and Reckless Charge.

Taken from the Wiki:

Bondbreaker: Removes Snare, Slowed, Launched, Lassitude, Telekinesis effects from you and gain immunity to them for several seconds.

Behind Enemy Lines: Triggers a high leap that lands at a designated site and deals (576 +400% Melee Attack) Physical Damage and Snares enemies for 3.5sec. Can cancel the Shackled debuff. Snare duration reduced -50% in PvP.

On top of that, they have:

Deflect and Retaliate: Permanently increases Parry rate +2%; each successful parry resets the cooldown of all Battlerage skills. Can't be triggered more than once every 3 seconds. (That's right. 3 Seconds.)

Dual Wield Proficiency: When dual-wielding, Parry deflects Ranged Attacks as well. Increases Melee Crit Rate +8%.

Reckless Charge: Decreases the duration of Shackle, Move Speed Reduction, Snare, and Impared -15% and increases your move speed +40% for 3 seconds after using Physical Charge, Tiger Strike, and Behind Enemy Lines.

Are you starting to see a problem here? Baked into their skill line, they pretty much have immunity to most CC and resistance to a lot more of them.

We have a +10% to our evasion. Which can be pushed through with Focus. Easily. If focus didn't affect Evasion, it might be useful. But it does. A lot.

They also have Puncture, which reduces armor by 2,000 on any melee critical hit. And Battle Focus, which essentially gives them infinite amounts of Parry.

If you took every Battlerage ability and passive, and NOTHING else, you would be able to overwhelm MOST players of equal Gear Score, if you could catch them once. They also have Frenzy to reduce incoming Magic Damage by 21%, too, so they're viable against mages as well.

On top of that, Sunder Earth gives up to three stacks of Inspired. They don't even have to >take< Auramancy to benefit from it.

Either nerf Dark Runners to fall in line, or improve Archery to be somewhat viable against being totally overwhelmed. It's a serious issue. Even in Arenas, where advantages are supposed to be neutralized somewhat, DRs run train on everyone except for maybe a few mages and a lucky Primeval.

Also, on a stun for stun basis, Battlerage has several in its tree alone. And resistance to stun. It's stupidly broken. Shadowplay and Auramancy aren't broken - they're tuned well. It's the battlerage tree that's OP. Archery just needs a few buffs to be more viable against them.

I will concede that Battlerage is a very strong tree on its own, but that doesn't mean Archery isn't. We have our own advantages, the biggest one being 27 meters more range than melee classes.

 

[Bastrii]

I will concede that Battlerage is a very strong tree on its own, but that doesn't mean Archery isn't. We have our own advantages, the biggest one being 27 meters more range than melee classes.

Yes, but Battlerage only needs to get within 20 meters of us to use Shadowstep. Or Lasso. Or Tiger Strike. Or Behind Enemy lines. They have more gap closers than us. They have more speed boosts than us. They have more CC immunity than us. We only have a 7 meter deadzone to use.

Mages, who also have decent range, have more CCs and CC immunities than us. They also have some of the more powerful combos in the game, that would "tear up" someone using plate armor, except...

DRs don't use plate armor. DRs use leather. Which gives a mix of good resistance to both. But since they have stupidly high parry rates, and can block ranged attacks, you can see why it's a problem. A DR with weak armor can destroy the average player with good, high quality armor. If they have just a little bit of skill.

Charge has a cooldown of 12 seconds. It inflicts snare. It also has the shortest range, being 12 yards.
Lasso has a 24 second cooldown, and a 20 yard range.
Tiger strike's cooldown is 18 seconds, and has a 20 yard range.
Behind Enemy Lines, which stuns, has a range of 20 yards and a 21 second cooldown.

The thing is, this is 4 more gap closers than we have gap wideners. And they have all of our gap wideners, usually, too. And most people don't recommend taking Comet's Boon or Liberation so you can have Hearten and Inspiration; a gap widener and a shackle immunity skill, gone.

Fighting a DR is literally a game of cat and mouse for Archers; you're the mouse and they're a lion. It's to the point that their advantage is simply unfair, as ALL of their moves, baseline, combo into each other.

Mage's usually have a 20 meter range they work around. We have 7 meters on them, but they often take Auramancy too. That gives them good gap closers. They have better stuns and snares than us. They also have insulating lens, which grants increased stealth detection and armor, with damage absorption.

If, baseline, we had a 30 meter range on our attacks, that would give us a slight upper hand. We could teleport earlier. We could stealth earlier. We could reposition faster. We would have a bigger dead zone to work off of.

The thing is, a lot of people think we also move at the same speed when firing endless arrows. Nope, not true - if we're kiting you with Endless arrows, we're moving at an angle to maintain a higher movement speed than walking backwards. You will close the distance on us faster, unless if we have 35% higher base movement speed and you use no gap closers - and that point, you will never catch us. With amazing gear and the correct gems, you'll probably hit that number no problem. Windsong cloak, Archery move speed perk, an Assassin's Lunafrost, will all put you at 23% at the beginning of the game. With a upgraded cloak, this number increases slightly to around 25%. I don't believe it's in 3.0, but there's movement speed gems that grant 2% increased movement speed, when socketted into your boots. Five of them will net you 35%. With free runner on top, you're almost hitting mount speed - which is really, really hard to catch on foot.

But we don't have this ability again, until very, very late game. If we can even get it in 3.0.

Why do you think we out range melee classes? We have four, instant cast abilities to strike up to 27 meters. Endless Arrows, Puncturing Arrow, Poison Arrow, and Charged Bolt. They have four extra gap closers, and immunity to our CC WITH immunity to poison thrown on top when they're using free runner. And they have personal speed buffs on top of that, thanks to Reckless Charge. And they can initiate up to 40 yards away, while we're stuck at 27 meters maximum. That's right, when they cast Behind Enemy Lines, they close >20< meters in one move, allowing them to use Lasso or Tiger Strike for free. Or if they're closer, they can use Charge. But since it has NO minimum range, it's used after Tiger Strike usually.

It's like you don't even play the same game as us. Do... do you NOT understand how DRs work? They have several stuns that prevent all forms of CC break, deal massive damage, then they can disengage at any time until they're off cooldown and repeat as much as they like.

 

[Lusk]

tl;dr: DR with celestial gear can kill everyone.
Archery with celestial can take 20% of someksome hp.

You need at least mythic bow, dagger/shortspear to be equivalent as divine Dr.