I've read this thread back when i changed my mind about playing Spellsinger, sold my gear and re-rolled Primeval. I didn't pay too much attention to the statements / suggestions in this thread, but now that I am at 6.5K gearscore with 930 ranged attack & 1.1K agility without buffs, i can very much agree/disagree with much that is written here.
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
While I do agree that there are indeed a lot of mechanics that need proper usage from a player to be an effective archer, I disagree with you saying that the class is not weak. You say that you need a much higher stage of gear to be effective, and while I do agree that it indeed slowly starts to shine once you have proper gear, it is far from being on par with how mages for example scale at the very end. A mage of the same gearscore as me, can easily take away at least 15K of my HP with a single Arc Lightning after he applied shock with God's Whip. The skills damage is actually so insane, nothing of Archery comes even remotely close to it. I've heard guild-members getting shut down by Chumps Arc Lightning for 80k crit. Yes Archery get's stronger, but other Trees just have their damage blow through the roof end-game.
Another point that you say is, that Archery is a raid class. I do agree, it's playstyle synergizes with it but really, you don't do any damage to anyone. In Mistmerrow, I cannot take down anyone above 6K that isn't Leather or basically spec'd entirely for DPS. Tanky plate classes have way too much defense, and cloth classes are stacked up with damage reduction, shields & Defense skill-trees and full of heals and buffs thanks to using Defense, Vitalism & a Songcraft player in their raid.
The only people I seem to be doing reasonable damage to are classes such as DR that focus someone else, or Mages that don't use Defense.
The fact that a shield can be used by any class and Archery being so weak, makes it nearly impossible to kill even the which-are-supposed-to-be-squishy classes.
An archer isn't meant to kill abolishers of other tank classes. Archers shine against cloth usesers.
There are 4 core items to be an effective archer
Strong bow, divine obs or vengeful wings is good enough.
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
I agree that you aren't supposed to be killing classes that stack physical defense. But saying that Archers shine against cloth users, when like 50% of them use the Defense Tree & shields, then you won't be dealing damage either way.
You claim that a "Divine Obsidian Bow or Mistsong Weapon
is enough" - I'm sorry but how can you say that ? I'm running an Epic Ayanad Tidal Bow with 592dps & additional 4x6.0 ranged attack gems, 4piece divine delphinad gale to reach 1.1K agility, I have an epic delphinad lightning necklace, a divine & epic delphinad gale ring all with 3.0 ranged attack, and my damage against any class is making them laugh behind their screen. I've hit a 6.8K DR whose only defense buff was a Kingdom's Shadow potion, with a berserk nodachi-deadeye buffed snipe for 3.8K. 5 minutes later he ambushed me in stealth with a shadowsmite that hit me for 15K crit...
I'm at 6.5K now and still waiting to "notice how effective i can be".
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)
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.
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.
Honestly, this guy knows what's up. I don't agree with all of it, for example, he claims that Primevals have 0 Stun Immunities (shrug it off has it) but mostly the things he mentioned warm my heart, knowing that i share my frustration and thoughts with someone else.
One thing he mentioned was that a lot of vital abilities are locked into Shadowplay. Freerunner which is a must to any Archer, and the Poisoned Arrow is mandatory for Archers aswell.
Also he shows, that many of the top-tier classes use Defense, which sucks to play against as an Archer as I've mentioned myself already.
Melee Players get damage reduction as they WILL be on target most of the fight and therefore take 20% less damage as many of Archery's skills do decreased damage at this distance. Any Melee/Battlerage class, no matter what the other 2 Trees are already superior to Primevals for example. This one tree alone offers:
CCs: Snare (BEL, Charge), Trip (BEL & Charge then Triple Slash), Lasso, Terrifying Roar (increases duration of Sun, Trip, Fear, Shackle, Petrify, Sleep, Impale & Bubble Trap by 25%)
CC-Breaks: Bondbreaker (Snared, Slowed, Lassitude), Terrifying Roar(reduces the duration of Stun, Trip, Fear, Shackle, Petrify, Sleep, Impale & Bubble Trap by 25%), Reckless Charge (decreases duration of Shackle, Slow, Snare & Impale of 35% for 4 seconds), BEL (Bubble-Trap, Petrify, Telekinesis)
Gap-Closers: (BEL, Charge, Tigerstrike)
Utilities: Tons of melee(crit)damage passives, Skill-Tree resets, parrying arrows, Reckless Charge decreasing Physical Damage by 15%, Puncture ignoring 2K pdef and many more.
I didn't even go over the whole Tree.
Why is such a strong CC as Snare only removable by Battlerage ? It is the Tree that applies it the most, yet the only way to get rid of it is to be using the Tree yourself. And as if Snare isn't already strong as it is, it also ends up in a guaranteed Trip that NO CLASS in the game that doesn't use Battlerage can avoid.
Any Melee Class (Battlerage) is far superior to Archery with 1 Tree alone already.
Mages share the ranged advantage with Archers and their skills scale in such a stupidly broken way that a single Arc Lightning can kill almost anybody if the target is under shock effect.
Ping also eliminates the ranged advantage for anybody that doesn't live in NA. Ping above 100 can already lead to get mana-star spammed by occultism users while all of your skills are still greyed out as on your screen, he is still 28m+ away.
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.
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.
This boneyard suggestion is a VERY good one that really is needed. Having a skill that based on someone's ping can be entirely useless is just stupid. Applying a stun before the cage appears seems to be a very good idea to fix this issue and I am sure the devs can work on this if they really wanted to.
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.
"numerous" slows ? the only slows that I am aware of are Charged Bolt (which is guaranteed, yet not slowing down very much), Piercing Shot (increasing the slow effect) & Throw Dagger. for Throw Dagger you either need to be close to your target, which will kill you, or you need to waste a precious gap-creating skill called Backdrop. Most of the time, the last 2 Skills get parried/evaded/shield-blocked anyways.
"numerous" stuns ? where ? the only stuns we have are Throw Dagger - Charged Bolt (but since Throw Dagger gets dodged all the time, this stun renders useless and not a reliable way to stun someone), and Overwhelm which I honestly dropped long time ago because it get's parried or evaded all the time. There go your "numerous" stuns..
Shackle is a nice debuff to apply, but having cast time renders it very very situational. A change I've seen on future patches where Backdrop eliminates it's cast time is someting I'd love to test out. Shadowsmite also requires you to be on target and also missed half the time making you stupid vulnerable to your enemy as you're in melee/most CC range & need to waste a gap-creator to get away.
Using Snare to snare an enemy (healers are an exception) is a dumb idea. Melee Classes will Bondbreak out of it and almost any other class can still hit you with ranged attacks. By using Snare prematurely you're also removing your ability to remove shackle, unless you waste another skill-point into Liberation that you have to pre-cast.
The problem with the Stuns Archers have is that they can all be evaded/parried/shield-blocked. Overwhelm block > no stun neither a trip with Shadowsmite. Throw Dagger block > no stun with Charged Bolt. Snare & blocked Snipe > no trip. Melee classes get almost guaranteed Trips as their snare is only removable by Battlerage itself.
Sleep is useless in Raid vs Raid (which Archery is supposed to be played in) as your target will just take damage from another player and wake up.
Just read what I wrote about the Battlerage Skill-Tree and now compare it with Archery. Yes we share Shadowplay & Auramancy but BR is simply sky-high superior to Archery in every way.
Double Recurve is an amazing buff that grants the user 17% more damage
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.
0*17% is still 0%.
How can you call Double Recurve "an amazing buff" ? WTF. The simple fact that archery is the only skill-tree with such a high damage increasement-skill, yet still being super weak. It shows how stupid weak the Tree is. The 17% should be applied in general and be replaced with a more useful skill.
Saying Boneyard is fine also just demonstrates that you've never regularly used it. You're forced to somehow render a target immobile to apply it, otherwise they'll just run straight out of it. Only having to smack 2 bones to get out in case you did get someone doesn't help much either.
I can't be arsed to write more. Any Advantage that Archery has over other Trees is nullified by their 2nd/3rd Trees. Archery's damage output is weak and most skills require you to be immobilized by standing still, to either cast it or have the effect applied in the first place, something a "mobile" class should not be relying on.
my suggestions:
- remove useless/weak passives such as Eagle Eyes/Archery's Expertise and replace them with proper buffs. (shield defense penetration + rate). Everybody that plays a squishy class can tank Archery simply by equipping a shield and it makes a ton of difference, not only in damage reduction but also in blocking almost every skill.
- remove the ability to evade/shield-block/parry snipe. A skill with cast-time that does no damage when it has been used within the last 6 seconds should not be able to get dodged.
- grant other skill-trees the ability to remove snare. (its BS that only battlerage has it. a tree that inflicts it the most shouldn't be the only tree to remove it).
- increase the duration of the slow debuff from charged bolt from 2.5 to 3 or 3.5 seconds (the slow effect is too short to get any usage out of piercing shots combo effect (increasing the severity of slow effect). besides, piercing shot is not guaranteed to hit.
- make boneyard stun the target for half a second before applying the prison
- increase snares effective radius. ping renders it useless most of the time. i've seen myself hundreds of times shadowstepping a healer trying to snare him but nothing happens as my screen is showing character locations from the past..
just a few ideas.