Update 66 Preview 1: AOE Ranged Attacks

[FaceDancer]

I like to pull critters in with a flame turret and blade barriers running, but you do have to stand and deliver at that point (defeats the purpose otherwise). Kiting does have it points.

 

[The Narc]

Circle kiting is a must learn skill in this game, if you do not know how to do this you are immediately recognized by skilled players as a player that has much to learn.

Circle kiting is a foundation type of skill that both ranged and casters and to a limited amount melees should understand and be able to do.

Problem with the game now is some skills like this are not required because most builds can just stand there and not be hurt by anything, which has lead towards the interactive beauty of this live action game slowly degrading into nothingness. It will lead us into the future of we are exactly like the button taping knobheads that play everquest!

 

[canicus]

How about instead of introducing a new system, you undo nerfing improved precise shot from years back then try re-inventing the wheel.

Hard disagree. I don't mind if they do something to improve IPS, but the new scattershot and pin are too much fun to go back from. Please keep these changes and find more ways to include in more trees (within reason). I would much rather be able to hit groups of mobs as opposed to a line. But if the devs can improve both, that's great

 

[The Narc]

Hard disagree. I don't mind if they do something to improve IPS, but the new scattershot and pin are too much fun to go back from. Please keep these changes and find more ways to include in more trees (within reason). I would much rather be able to hit groups of mobs as opposed to a line. But if the devs can improve both, that's great

Agree, it is time to undo the original nerf to IPS, not sure if I would ever use it again, but it was a pointless nerf.

 

[FixBows]

We know it going to massively OP. At a minimum it needs to share cool down with hunts end. It will be so broken if you can one shot a pack if mobs every 9 sec.

You mean like a caster... only slower?

 

[Scrag]

Arrows from a bow should be launched roughly twice as fast as they are. animation at least.

Sloooooow play in heroics is like, why bother? Caster play isnt slow in heroics. 'peeter play isnt slow. Inquiz is fairly not slow.

Why bows get the badness?!

 

[Scrag]

You mean like a caster... only slower?

We know it going to massively OP. At a minimum it needs to share cool down with hunts end. It will be so broken if you can one shot a pack if mobs every 9 sec.

I KNOW I have seen melee destroy packs of trash in well under 9 seconds. And they don't have cooldowns. And they don't have spellpoints. Are they ranged? No... but spring attack, wings, etc get them into combat pretty damn fast.

So... You have a complaint that a horribly unplayable combat style in most of heorics and a significant chunk of epics would get an ability to waste a group of trash at a rate _still slower than other playstyles_?

Have you played a bow life, and if so, at anything other than cap? Inquiz and 'peeters are pretty good at click-to-delete, but that sure isn't wasting a group of mobs in faster than 9 seconds.

Para arrow builds and other interesting playstyles suffer from the fact that they require rather large investment in things like enchantment focus at the cost of... doing damage and/or survivability. We aren't talking about slapping one or two enchantment focus items into an archery build. Moreover, those nifty para arrow builds? Casters lock things down MUCH faster, in a bigger aoe, AND get way more use out of spending gear/enhs/feats to do it than one trick pony archers.

In before what about horizon walker! Well, that is GREAT fun, at a slooooooow, one at a time kill (if you are lucky) in heroics and a chunk of epics. Does HW rock monkey socks at cap? It does indeed do gobs of damage.

The game is not all about just cap.

A 9 second nuke is a start, not a finish, of improvement to archers.

 

[FixBows]

Para arrow builds and other interesting playstyles suffer from the fact that they require rather large investment in things like enchantment focus at the cost of... doing damage and/or survivability. We aren't talking about slapping one or two enchantment focus items into an archery build. Moreover, those nifty para arrow builds? Casters lock things down MUCH faster, in a bigger aoe, AND get way more use out of spending gear/enhs/feats to do it than one trick pony archers.

I have to disagree with some of this. Yes, casters do it better, but they pretty much do everything better. For whatever reason, never nerfed like bows are nerfed. Yes, there certainly is a high investment, but what build that is expected to function in high tier reapers doesn't?
I do disagree with the negativity on paralyze builds. If done correctly, still do a lot of damage and can lock down mobs in r10. Falconry allows your investment into wisdom count for damage. Also, survivability is actually much better that you are giving credit. With the high wisdom you have very nice self-healing options.

And I think maybe you are missing my point... I mean, look at my forum name. I want nothing more than bows to get love. But, after 17+ years of devs doing everything to make bows crappy, I am a bit skeptical of the true intention of SSG here. My gut is telling me it is aimed at their nemesis of IPS since time and time again they want to target that. I am just waiting for the veil to drop, so to speak, so we can more clearly see their intentions.

 

[Elminster]

Yes, casters do it better, but they pretty much do everything better. For whatever reason, never nerfed like bows are nerfed.

No worries, ranged bro. If ....

SSG is doing the new Myth Drannor expansion true-to-the-lore. Then casters are in for one of heckuva ride with those level 34 quests.

 

[hit_fido]

• Improved Precise Shot applies AOE to every attack, activated or otherwise, and represents 100% of your total attacks over time when turned on.

Yeah I dunno man... IPS offers every attack the potential for an 'AOE' limited to a straight line. This potential for AOE is greatly affected by player skill re: positioning and timing which is fair, good even. But it's disproportionately more skill based than other kind of true two-dimensional AOE effects that hit everything in the area regardless of player positioning relative to the target. It also de-synergizes with Archer's Focus so you lose that and then your potential for bonus AOE comes with a corresponding (20%) penalty, and that penalty actually does affect every attack, even when you're only attacking one enemy!

 

[CBDunk]

Yeah I dunno man... IPS offers every attack the potential for an 'AOE' limited to a straight line. This potential for AOE is greatly affected by player skill re: positioning and timing which is fair, good even.

IPS is also highly dependent on quest design and group dynamics.

Long narrow hallways with a single tank that pulls all enemies straight to them... GREAT for IPS
Vast open spaces with people pulling enemy groups apart in multiple directions... TERRIBLE for IPS

 

[Tilomere]

Ehehe, melee can pre-prep Hunt's End while finishing a pack off in melee, swap to bow on new pack to Pin with prepped hunt's end, then hunt's end + scattershot the pinned mobs, then go back to melee. to clean up again.

In a way, adrenaline just became AoE, overpowered, and obsolete all at the same time.

 

[Mickeymouse]

Ehehe, melee can pre-prep Hunt's End while finishing a pack off in melee, swap to bow on new pack to Pin with prepped hunt's end, then hunt's end + scattershot the pinned mobs, then go back to melee. to clean up again.

In a way, adrenaline just became AoE, overpowered, and obsolete all at the same time.

on epic hard maybe?

 

[Tilomere]

Please allow the activation of Hunt's End/Dance of Death/and Adrenaline with any weapon type, to allow for more nuanced gameplay.

 

[Hawk]

It's why ya max Intim on every melee IMO. If you want you can grab those mobs, and if you don't want you can just keep going while the kiter does their thing.

This ^

Any melee who doesn't max intim (and extra threat), is doing it wrong, and being lazy. If you're chasing mobs all the time, it's your own fault. My favorite players in DDO are real spec'd tanks in R10 who know what they're doing. Unfortunately, that's like 0.001% of DDO's population. So that means, every melee needs to learn how to take a few hits and taunt.

 

[Hawk]

If that were true. But is not. IPS is difficult to use. It's not as easy to line up the mobs in a straight line, and the shots tend to go over the heads of the mobs.

IPS gives you a chance for all of your attacks to hit multiple enemies, but that chance is far from 100%.

This ^

IPS was nerfed because there's a few quests in R10 that were easy to pierce packs or kite packs. But 98% of the quests aren't like that. You're lucky if you can even get 2 mobs to line up most of the time, and that usually requires standing behind a ranged/caster mob (or vice versa), and trying to pierce some other guy at the same time. Which makes it impossible to balance DPS properly, unlike caster AOE.

I might be fine if IPS was converted the same way that Manyshot was. But only if it felt really powerful.

Improved Precise Shot:
- Perform a powerful ranged attack that pierces all mobs to the target
- Adds +200% extra damage (doesn't stack with Hunt's end)
- 3 charges - each charge regenerates every 12 seconds

On a side note, I also hate the way Hunt's End/Fury has always worked. Especially in this laggy DDO engine. I should just be able to hit Hunt's End, and it should fire a +400% attack immediately. Instead of pre-buffing a Sniper Shot with +225% while the server delay screws up your timing (or doesn't display the cooldown properly, so you get confused.) This would give more options, and better game balance.

If you did both things above, you could balance ranged damage much easier... and even buff many of the other shots (finally.. because most of them are complete and total garbage.)

You're allowing yourself to be chained to restrictions because of these stacking AOE auras and pre-shot buffs. Remove the buffs, and just make every special range attack it's own shot, but make them much stronger. This would allow you to actually balance ranged damage similar to caster AOE.

 

[Mickeymouse]

No thanks. IPS is the only stance worth using while questing due to how targeting works in DDO. If you have archer focus running, and your selected mob goes behind a pillar, moves in certain patterns etc etc. you will hit nothing. IPS makes u always hit something as long as you try to aim at enemies.

 

[Hawk]

No thanks. IPS is the only stance worth using while questing due to how targeting works in DDO. If you have archer focus running, and your selected mob goes behind a pillar, moves in certain patterns etc etc. you will hit nothing. IPS makes u always hit something as long as you try to aim at enemies.

The problem you're referring to is because of "Precise Shot." And I agree with you. It sucks when precise shot tries to hit some targetted guy in the back, but he's out of LOS, so the guy in front of you doesn't get hit.

However, mechanics problems with the engine from a technical perspective, should be ADDRESSED separately. We can't cling to band-aid solutions for something that should be fixed regardless. It would be nice if Precise Shot was "smart", and if it can't hit the targeted mob, it at least hits SOMETHING on the way. That would fix that problem. Otherwise, maybe just add a toggle to toggle OFF precise shot separately.

This doesn't mean we should keep IPS in the caveman era, just because Precise Shot's code needs to be better.

 

[hit_fido]

I might be fine if IPS was converted the same way that Manyshot was. But only if it felt really powerful.

What bugged me the most about the IPS change is that it turned a high investment feat from providing a consistent benefit to a situation dependent good/bad effect. Most (all?) feats in DDO with a prerequisite feat chain operate on the principle that each feat in the chain provides an incremental boost and the IPS chain (Point Blank, Precise, Improved Precise) used to be like that. Now, you accrue a 20% penalty even when you only attack one enemy - and as far as I could ever see, the majority of ranged attacks over a large set of varied quests end up being against one enemy. I acknowledge it could be a player skill issue but I cant see myelf constantly toggling IPS on and off throughout a quest to try and account for the likelyhood of single targets versus straight line ups. At the end boss, sure, I could usually remember to toggle it then but of course not all end bosses come without henchmen or streams of adds anyway.

I'm sure there are code implications but I would have felt less bitter about it if IPS did 100% to the first target and then diminished for every successive target hit; 80%, then 70%, etc. That way IPS would be at worst, neutral, and best, you're doing that extra damage to the other lined targets.

 

[Ahpuch]

I'm sure there are code implications but I would have felt less bitter about it if IPS did 100% to the first target and then diminished for every successive target hit; 80%, then 70%, etc. That way IPS would be at worst, neutral, and best, you're doing that extra damage to the other lined targets.

I was typing a similar sentiment but saw your post before I could post. This is a model that SSG should figure out as it could work in other scenarios where AOE is over tuned rather than neutering the ability on the assumption that there multiple targets and thus making it useless.

With the 20% penalty in play they should at least make the change in stance instantaneous with no cooldown. Alternatively IPS be its own attack key that you could use instead of the regular attack. Use one key and you get a single target attack or use the IPS key to get an IPS attack that gets no benefit from Archers Focus. The cooldown on stance change is just a double penalty.