Archery - standing still versus moving - Hit chance

Technically my build is bows/earth (was bludge/earth). Its the best I can do as a casual, I may switch magic later but it can take me months to GM stuff.

Thats why you want to supplement bows (or anything) with magic. I was actually still using my body slam to stun the mob and have been using my earth fist (and maybe later earthquake) to hit multiples, especially if they are melee mobs. So I still have most of my multi-mob power that I had before and now an insane amount of single fire power too. In fact, I find it powerful to have an archer targeted and twang at it with bow skills and pound the melees on me at the same time with stone fist and body slam at the same time.

Auto attack on my bow is *FAR* more powerful then the autoattack with my blunt wep and far faster and they are significantly lower lvl still as bows (60 bows vs 100 bludge).

I also agree with people on blades. I have been running dual wield daggers on my lvl 55 alt with poison for some time and he can solo a 5 skull like seq collosus like my main (and he only has 400 hp).

lvl 55 with dual wield daggers:

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/149217986

 

Even when at a stand still on one's feet, even Olympic archers given an extreme amount of time have trouble hitting the target center from 30-90m with modern extremely powerful bows. Most bow hunters consider 30 m to be one hell of a shot if it hits the animal targeted. Far from seriously being close to real into the magical, then yes... but in reality on horseback, no. Not if you want to hit anything.

But when in our game, most places are all around 30 meter openings unless in the deserts. But being how this is "game distance estimations", then we can only suggest by percentage of increase or short fall from what the current normal is. The only way we can judge distance right now is by video screen distance as a starting point.


So we have to think in the very magical ~TL~

 

Did the chance to hit mobs get fixed with Blades? I got tired of missing green kobalds and switched to ranged.

 

You can control with bows. Someone said you really can't, and that's ridic. Slow target, and yes, with the new mechanics, you have multiple chances to slow the target. It's basically unlimited chances to slow your target, until it's applied. I find the mana usage is very low using archery, mostly because I'm not using multishot etc. And why should I when I can simply slow my target while kiting and never needing to heal myself? Not to mention that you can also increase your hit chance in the Archery skill tree..

Yeah, archery is OP. The best way to balance it right now would be to increase/decrease hit chance by at least 35% for movement penalty. I went light with the 10% and wasn't surprised to see resistance.

 

Sorry, going to have to disagree. Archery is not OP, if you want to do it well. Archery is a single-target combat style (aside from Multi Shot), and to truly be effective means a high DEX and good damage avoidance, which means Light Armor and kiting. Kiting is only good against mobs that are melee; ranged enemies are supremely dangerous for archer types, especially with the lighter armor... so your comment about "Never having to heal" is invalid. In a room with multiple targets, an archer has to pull targets one at a time, and hope we don't get too many adds. If we do, then hit the melee enemy with Disabling Shot, (so he takes longer to get to you), and take out the ranged attacker(s). Keep doing that, and hope the enemies don't respawn while you're clearing the room. The amount of damage we do with the bow is balanced by how much damage we take, as well as the fact that we can only fight one target at a time. No true archer is going to stand in one spot and fire arrows point-blank while an enemy pounds them in the face with a club or sword. That's just dumb. So we often hop around to keep from being hit by melee attacks.

Agreed, having Magic as a backup/support is crucial for an archer. Granted, it can suck you dry on Focus if it's used too often, but a good balance between Archery and Magery is very useful... especially the heals.

 

I dont recall saying "never having to heal".

But I completely disagree. Again, I was taking on 3 yellow cons at one time with my bow and lvl 96 with bow skills at 60. That is insanely powerful. Now, I am in full chain armor with GM buffs and avoidance above 70 usually so they actually barely damage me and I easily survive with my normal life heal over time. I can stand there with a bow as if I were melee with no problem what-so-ever. I think your issue is that you are not wearing good armor and not using buffs right, you probably went light and you clearly dont need to in this game unless you are running the hard core magic trees like air.

Even funner is that my gear and spec is completely str based (I have 90 in the dex skill) so I have maybe 150 str and 90 dex.

I stand toe to toe with the melee (they have around 1K hp) with no problem just twanging away with my bow. Look like I need to stream it tonight and show you the videos of how to "get-r-done". You may be hung up (on normal mobs at least, not boss mobs) thinking you need to dance around to kill stuff in this game.

Watch this video of Krull. I am doing the same thing now, no different except I have a bow equipped so I am using bow skills instead of bludge skills. But note, especially on the 3K hp ore con mobs how they barely hit me (and I have a wand in one hand to boot):


https://www.twitch.tv/videos/149494482

 

If we're talking about long bows, 30m is nothing.

This was practice distance, not maximum distance.

 

Olympic Bow Competitors...
30m with super bow without stabilizers while standing still;

70m with complete super bow while standing still;

 

Yea i feel bows are about right.

Ahh. I was under impression blades was the.. most finished tree.. so i use it as baseline.. and i ment ranged feels right compared to that dps wise.

Your auto attack on bow, hows it compare to a blades thoigh? I know duel wield dagger out dps s me prettttty hard just auto attacks and rapid is my only saving grace lol

 

Someone posted this video a while ago, and it is amazing. I just thought I would share this as well, not trying to make a point.

 

With my bludgeon tree gmed, compared to my bow skills with some gmed and a couple skills at 120, I was still able to clear out the lich room in chillbanes about 25% faster with my bludgeon, and it was safer with my bludgeon as I was stunning and knocking them down.

 

I demand sota revisits archery to match this drawing technique.

 

Here you go, I did one real fast run:

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/158694851

 

I feel that bows are strong in burst single target and kiting. I can kite two Cabalist (melee ones) with no problem and burst mages in The Rise for 500+ (300 ish charged attack and another 200 from Aim Shot or Rapid Fire). I feel that blades can out sustain DPS bow builds while other melee and magic builds have more versatility and AOE. I have friends that can AOE clear full packs of Obsidian bears/wolves or the fighter room in The Rise without issue while I have to do it one by one. To me it is all about the right tool for the job. I am happy running around with Sprint and Fleet Flute landing heavy critical strikes on mobs. Others like to do massive AOE clears and tank everything.

 

Lol, my wife picks up a bow during one of our excursions... gains 1-40 ranged combat and winds up doing more damage than me and pulling aggro This was in my blade spec gm'd 3/mastered the rest and it's not even close to being on par with archery. Im not wanting the exact same dps, but a little less of a gap between the damage output of archery vs melee builds would be great.

 

heres a good one:

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/158742686

 

I have no idea why you didn't use Stone Arrow, instead of your bow? considering you have 1000 points invested in the earth tree - I've seen players hit with it for over 300 damage and consistently.
Regarding being able to solo a dragon, it takes a lot of skill and skills - I have solo'd it once. I used a full set of enchanted bone armour, evasion/fortify defences/dodge/blind/shield of ice/douse and two heal over times which all are cast on a rotation/dragon stew/ 2 devotional buffs that give focus/health regen, I have a lot of other skills that back up my fortitude and would probably insist that I have invested as much xp into my character as some small groups would have of collectively. Should I miss one of my rotational buffs - I'm dead.

I would suggest that a player who can cast spells doing 300 damage should NOT be wearing plate armour.

 

The devil is in the details. It's epic if you have defenses really high circa 70% avoidance aka have several skills gmed in defenses. I am certain if I pick up a bow at adventure level 110 I would be epic at bows too since I already have massive amounts of skills to ignore damage from mobs. He's adventure level 96 so of course his use of skills even at lower levels are going to seem more epic since he has the str/dex/int of a much higher player. I don't think archers need any negative changes to their hits on movement. It doesn't make sense when it is expected that an archer should be moving.

 

Why? The earth tree is plate friendly. Magic schools on the right side of the wheel (life, earth, water) are far more friendly to plate users than (fire, death, air). Moon and Sun are ok as well. Even better if you get a full set of Obsidian... there is no reason not to wear plate if you're an Earth Mage unless you just don't want to.