Update 66 Preview 2: AOE Ranged Attacks

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SpardaX

Well-known member
All AOE Ranged Attacks currently have a size of 2.5 (how far out from the center the detect goes), that may change between abilities in the future.

So I just have 1 question. Since we cant see behind the curtain can you give this some context? Like, is this the size of a fireball's AoE from explosion point? A burning hands distance? The touch range distance of a spell with range touch?
 

FixBows

Well-known member
I would say this... think about how you think it should work, then divide that by 2 and shrink it a little. The space between the red named training dummies is bigger than the hit box for ranged AOE.
 

Dunspartacus

Well-known member
This seems good, looking forward to seeing if this makes ranged feel more bearable to level. Any thoughts about brining some AoE to things like heroic thrower trees like alch or monk, or other xbow users like inquisitive/mechanic (does mechanics time bomb work yet?)? Regardless, looks like cool stuff, excited to try it when lam2 drops.
 

SteelStar

Senior Systems Designer
So I just have 1 question. Since we cant see behind the curtain can you give this some context? Like, is this the size of a fireball's AoE from explosion point? A burning hands distance? The touch range distance of a spell with range touch?
In terms of horizontal area of the detect, about 40% bigger than Cleave, about half the size of Fireball.
 

FixBows

Well-known member
Thinking now, where do bows fit in? We were told recently that bows should be single target dps. Now, we are saying AOE. The issue you (SSG) nerfed the single target dps and gave us a very weak and small AOE attack as a revamp with only a couple of useless or long cooldown attacks that can utilize the tiny hit box of AOE you implemented. It is a nerf no matter how you look at it. Much less dps, narrow scope of attacks that utilize a tiny hit box for AOE. This is not good any way you look at it. I just don't understand why bows are ALWAYS the target for nerfs. Just remove them from the game already and be done with it.
 

rabidfox

The People's Champion
Tried AoE stuff on my repeater. Using shattered defenses and thundershock has issues. It's fires a single shot and it breaks the animation sequence like it's firing my other 3 bolts before attacks resume. There's about a 2 to 3 second pause where I can't attack after using one of the AoE attacks before I can resume firing.
 

SteelStar

Senior Systems Designer
Tried AoE stuff on my repeater. Using shattered defenses and thundershock has issues. It's fires a single shot and it breaks the animation sequence like it's firing my other 3 bolts before attacks resume. There's about a 2 to 3 second pause where I can't attack after using one of the AoE attacks before I can resume firing.
Apologies, I thought there was a Known Issue being listed with this elsewhere.

We've gotten most styles firing smoothly with the AOE Ranged Attacks, but some crossbows still aren't there yet in this build. It will be fixed.
 

rabidfox

The People's Champion
A big advantage of IPS vs PS is one can toggle between AoE or single target based off the situation. Let's take shattered defenses in articer for example. It applies a sunder effect to a mob. It's something one wants to keep up on raid bosses all the time. With it being AoE, it'll be great for trash in quests; but when you only want to attack a specific mob and not agro mobs around it, then the new version will not be as good.

Admittedly the AoE of these ranged attacks aren't huge so maybe with real world usage it might not actually matter, but it's taking away choice and control in fights in exchange for convenience of AoE. In a dream world, all these attacks would have 2 versions that could be hot barred, one with the AoE and one without for situational control.
 

Melkizadek

Active member
The hunts end change basically had to be made because autocritting on multiple mobs every aoe shot you do every 9 seconds isn't healthy.
Adrenaline doesn't get to do that and will only apply the autocrit and damage modifier to the first target struck, but because your shots are processed seperately from your stats once fired and won't be updated it meant that hunts end would just autocrit and 250% damage mod your aoe shot on every target.
Yeah, I want HE back and scrap this Tears of the Kingdom Bomb arrow idea
 

Melkizadek

Active member
This seems good, looking forward to seeing if this makes ranged feel more bearable to level. Any thoughts about brining some AoE to things like heroic thrower trees like alch or monk, or other xbow users like inquisitive/mechanic (does mechanics time bomb work yet?)? Regardless, looks like cool stuff, excited to try it when lam2 drops.
Yes, leveling might be better but raid/endgame dps is taking a HUGE hit
 

Coffey

Well-known member
A big advantage of IPS vs PS is one can toggle between AoE or single target based off the situation. Let's take shattered defenses in articer for example. It applies a sunder effect to a mob. It's something one wants to keep up on raid bosses all the time. With it being AoE, it'll be great for trash in quests; but when you only want to attack a specific mob and not agro mobs around it, then the new version will not be as good.

Admittedly the AoE of these ranged attacks aren't huge so maybe with real world usage it might not actually matter, but it's taking away choice and control in fights in exchange for convenience of AoE. In a dream world, all these attacks would have 2 versions that could be hot barred, one with the AoE and one without for situational control.
Hunts End could have a choice as well then everyone can be happy with the changes. Allow the original non AOE attacks to still work with original HE.
 

Oliphant

Well-known member
Ideally they could implement these new mechanics as optional. Like a multi-selector version of Hunts End where either you get the new direct attack idea or classic Hunts End. For people that select the new version, they get two different attacks in one loop and classic folks get to do what they were doing before. Adding new options rather than destroying some of our best mechanics seems like easy math to compare.

More generally, consider we want a fast paced experience to attract new players and certainly for vets that get new experiences by having the game accelerate. Accelerating the pace of run throughs is natural, fits perfectly with your growing suite of past life options and encourages Alts.

Lastly, deleting mobs, if anything, helps with lag.
 

mikarddo

Well-known member
I don't think people are fully grasping what a huge nerf to ranged DPS this is going to be. These +10% damage AOE abilities in a tiny burst template are trivial compared to the loss of Hunt's End at end game. I'm shell-shocked, frankly.
Could you explain in detail? I dont play ranged atm but I do see some negative effects:

a) Wont get +2 crit mult (sniper shot) or +250 damage (slayer arrow) together with Hunts End (but will get both a Hunts End and a Sniper Shot / Slayer Arrow attack instead). Definitely a big nerf.


b) Hunts End will result in misses/deflects where today it simply carries over to the next attack. Another pretty big nerf in particular when deflecting mobs are around.

Am I overlooking anything else?

My suggestion would be to lower the cool down to 6 seconds on Hunts End to compensate.
 

Oliphant

Well-known member
Reducing cooldown to 6 seconds with this new generic HE might result in a more democratic bow that is actually not nerfed to obsolescence but DDO devs hate dps when its democratic and they will just nerf it later when they see all the joyous posts of new bow people enjoying bow for the first time.
 

plantpower

Member
I really like playing my arcane archer. Currently, I have no real issues with packs of trash mobs because my build has good paralyzing and that makes it easy to use IPS effectively, so I don't have a strong need for any AoE attacks. Meanwhile, the ability to combo hunt's end into slayer arrow is the only thing keeping my damage comparable to other ranged builds, because everything else in arcane archer is very unremarkable dps-wise.

To put it plainly, I'd dumpster everything in this thread along with any other shiradi buffs to keep my current hunt's end. Obviously once a feature has this amount of work put into it, none of us are going to stop it from going through in some form. Is there not some sort of compromise, like having the current hunt's end disable the AoE feature of any shots it applies to? It's not like new hunt's end can be combined with an AoE attack either, and perhaps the clickable attack can be kept as a multiselector for people who don't like the playstyle of chaining into a separate attack.

Otherwise, at least make things like slayer arrow and sniper shot significantly better standalone attacks. If the hunt's end change goes through, arcane archer effectively loses its best top row enhancement, slayer arrow won't be worth its 2 action points if I go to the top row/capstone anyway, and I don't think I'd even give it a hotbar spot if I got it for free.
 
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