FYI: archery changes

I give up. Trying to explain why I feel that it's garbage to adjust nerf skills in order to make up for power-creep from other sources is like beating my head against the wall.

 

I think the take away from this discussion is that Chris put in some nerfs to deal with how out of balance ranged damage has become. His changes disproportionally hit less skilled players, because players with higher skill know how to work around them. However, it's the higher skilled players which are pushing the dps of archery. Thus, these changes are unlikely to have the desired effect, but you will end up with a lot of static deck users out of focus faster.

 

Whether he's handicapping himself or not, he's doing less damage after the next release than he was before. His argument is not "I'm not soloing T15 mobs when I could be." The argument is, "yesterday, I was killing t12 mobs. Today, I can barely kill t10 mobs, apparently because other people are too easily killing t15 mobs."

 

Which he himself is responsible for creating the problem in the first place.

And representative of almost every other 'balance' pass he has made. He has no clue what he is doing because he doesn't play the game.

Why is the answer always to tear down instead of building up? We beg, plead, and threaten for more powerful (= fun to play) characters, better loot, finished scenes, and this is what we always get. A nerf that hurts the average guy (which we so desperately need more of ) and barely affects the supposed real problem.

That's the development strategy in a nutshell, which again, explains why no one plays this game. So stupid and repeated over and over and over. Some people just can't learn.

 

I disagree.

Whether or not a player imposes limits on himself is irrelevant to the issue. His skills are going to decrease either way. If he changes his build and adds the things you suggest, then instead of dropping from t14 to t13, he's going from t13 to t12. Or t11. Or whatever those numbers may actually be. And the top players are strong enough they won't notice. Sure, if he keeps playing, at some point he'll be so strong nerfs won't matter. But that's like saying it's super fun to run a race where every time you run fifty yards, you blink and find yourself back at the starting line. Until suddenly one of those blinks puts you at the finish. How many blinks until you just stop running instead of hoping the next one is the one that gets you over the line?

 

These changes might encourage more players to try dynamic glyph stacking.
The combat seems designed so people can play it like an MMO made in 1999, but there's also a system for superior results that requires human skill/practice to master.

While charging a single glyph, you can only auto-attack.
When you stack dynamically you can simultaneously execute a glyph attack and stack other glyphs while your attack is executing. Also, you can hold multiple dynamically stacked glyphs, so you can fire a 6 stacked Aimed Shot immediately followed by a 6 stacked Rapid Fire.

Did you know sheathing and drawing your weapons resets the cooldowns on your dynamic glyphs?
Did you also know you can switch to a deck without rapid fire (dynamic) then back to your deck with rapid fire (dynamic) to also reset your cooldowns without having to sheath your weapons?

Switching decks takes time, but is faster than charging a slow, static glyph like Rapid Fire with heat - heat worsens your global cooldown in addition to the focus cost penalty.

I believe in you Nerfies - we've all been there

 

Good news if you're a pole arms player, though.

 

How will archers out DPS everyone while never missing at 40m?

 

My main gripe with this nerf is really the focus cost. Getting out of focus is probably the lamest part of any fight. It's just boring to use one focus potion after another. And obviously, Chaotic Feedback is no longer usable as DPS boost, and Torpid will just kill any archer in PVP fast enough.
Meanwhile the minmaxers will still hit above 1k with regular attack.

So this way you hurt average joe (me for example) while not addressing high end and PVP balance (piercing shot and regular attack).

This will make the game way too boring for me to play.

 

I totally understand you Barugon I barely do 700 critical and rarely
again I see my skill changed because of new elements in the game
please stop adding without calculating all the problems that will result
or even better change what has been added


i am not a high player sorry but i dont understand why i would need this change

sorry for my english

 

Well, I was planning on trying some things out later but you deleted all your posts.

Anyway, my complaints weren't about overcoming a change. I can always change the way I play (which is never fun). It was more about diminishing the work that people put into their character's skills. I don't always communicate very clearly.

 

If you want these tips, hit me up in private, I can answer your questions and give suggestions on things you could try to tweak on your build.

 

And the worst part of it is, diminishing their work to fix something that was dev inflicted through other items/changes/gear added.

Step 1: Create imbalance by 'balancing combat' because you don't play to a depth to understand the game (don't say it was for pvp either, there is no pvp to mention in this game)
Step 2: Let it persist for at least 6 months to a year and so everyone builds around the new changes to 'overcome' the new balance
Step 3: Change something totally unrelated to what caused the imbalance, which discourages a build to even use their main skills and primarily hurts the new to middle player
Step 4: Ignore all information from the experienced players in the game who really know how the combat system works and where the imbalances really are
Step 5: Rinse and repeat

This cycle has been repeated over and over for four plus years now. Chris doesn't get it, he has never gotten it, and he's never going to get it, and isn't willing to ask and listen to the experts. So many other more important things need attention, yet the population continues to spiral. Unbelievable.

Just like the loot situation and the reward vs effort/costs arguments. He has never understood it and shows no signs that he ever will, at least not to a point to actually do something about it. Meanwhile the population continues to spiral.

 

Unfortunately and sadly, I agree.........

 

Aftermath: Rapid Fire is likely to be dropped from all my decks... it's pretty much unusable for my build now. I'm even considering unlearn it to 100 again to put the XP in other skill.... fire magic maybe?

 

An additional frustration is that ep2 content has so far been pretty high level. Every nerf a player gets (archery or otherwise) makes it that much harder to get to content most of us have already paid for access to. Granted, it's not like it was a gigantic amount of cash, but the point remains valid.

 

This archery "nerf" is a complete joke for me and any archer who knows what they're doing. It's the same as the fire "nerf" with increased focus cost.

@Chris Please, an actual damage nerf is needed.

No berserk stance with savage stacking
bards can only have and instrument and no shield
no air shield with berserker stance stacking
reduce air shield to .4 transfer at level 200 with 500 dex
reduce tactics spec effectiveness on berserk stance 10-20%

Really all of these are needed. And while you're at it - limit the amount of targets damaged by fire and meteor aoe like you said you'd do 2 years ago. Thx.

 

Yep, lets just make archers completely useless. Hell, let's cap their crit damage at 100 while we are at it. I don't think we have gotten rid of enough players yet. If we keep dumbing down the builds instead of building them up, i think we can get to under 100 daily logins. Let's all jump on the nerf train. Woooo Woooooooooo!

 

Just a little info I noticed while Streaming today and analyzing the Ranged tree in detail, Ranged Specialization adds some nice bonuses (such as reduced focus cost on Aimed Shot) Could be worth looking into Ranged Spec once more!

 

Probably not. Which are you going to give up for that small focus reduction? The 20% crit chance increase from air spec or the 100% crit damage increase from beserker's stance?
I don't see the tradeoff being worth it personally. Now, if we could spec in 3 schools. . . . . then it would allow for some interesting depth of builds. But, that might lead to fun, no fun allowed here without penalty.