Archers are very powerful

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Imperatrix
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Archers are very powerful

Post by Imperatrix » Mon Apr 06, 2020 2:38 pm

Archers of most varieties are inarguably one of the top dogs in the current meta with divine archers in particular being incredibly powerful. Furthermore archer rangers receive a lot of free stuff.
Level 1: Rapid Reload
Level 1: Rapid Shot
Level 1: Point Blank Shot
Level 9: Called Shot
Craft Ammunition ability: Once per day, a ranger may create a bundle of projectiles for the weapon they have specialized in (bow, crossbow, sling, thrown weapons). The quality of the projectiles escalates with the ranger's level.
Level 1: Iron
Level 5: Steel
Level 10: Damask
Bonus Ranger damage: +2 at class level 4 and an additional +2 after every 8 class levels. (+ 2/4/6/8 at ranger levels 4/12/20/28).
With all those free feats archer rangers have a lot of flexibility in how they build, but I feel the bigger issue is all the free damage they get which I think is a holdover from before ammunition was reworked. Archers now have an incredible amount of damage potential and can pretty much walk over most other builds in PvP, especially with all the goodies rangers already get since they were reworked (stealth, HiPS, ranger specific items, etc.)

With assembly templates archers can stack vast amounts of damage on their ammunition and they are no longer in need of all that free damage. I think it should be removed entirely or halved to something like +2 at 21 and +4 at 26, with the full +8 bonus remaining for pure rangers at 28.

I also feel rapid shot and rapid reload should be moved to level 4 or level 6 because it's very potent as a "dip" on ranged builds at the moment.

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Re: Archers are very powerful

Post by CookieMonster » Mon Apr 06, 2020 2:52 pm

You can't dip 'Archer Path' because the Path is only available at Creation.
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Imperatrix
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Re: Archers are very powerful

Post by Imperatrix » Mon Apr 06, 2020 2:53 pm

Yes you can. You can type -path and take it when you take your first ranger level. It's a fairly recent feature.

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Re: Archers are very powerful

Post by CookieMonster » Mon Apr 06, 2020 2:58 pm

Imperatrix wrote:
Mon Apr 06, 2020 2:53 pm
Yes you can. You can type -path and take it when you take your first ranger level. It's a fairly recent feature.
I withdraw then. Didn't know this was a thing
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Re: Archers are very powerful

Post by AstralUniverse » Mon Apr 06, 2020 9:31 pm

Ranged builds in general arent that good. There's nothing wrong with dipping 3 archer and doing a unique build from there. The feats you listed arent free because you lose dual-wield for them.
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Re: Archers are very powerful

Post by Tarkus the dog » Mon Apr 06, 2020 9:42 pm

I think that doing something about true strike potions being used by archers is something the devs should look at.

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Re: Archers are very powerful

Post by Aelryn Bloodmoon » Mon Apr 06, 2020 9:48 pm

AstralUniverse wrote:
Mon Apr 06, 2020 9:31 pm
Ranged builds in general arent that good. There's nothing wrong with dipping 3 archer and doing a unique build from there. The feats you listed arent free because you lose dual-wield for them.
And improved TWF.

The archer path is comparable to the melee path, and functions like pnp, where you choose one at level 1. The free feats from both versions amount to the same things: ambidexterity and twf (dual-wield) to reduce melee penalties, and an extra apr (ITWF), vs point blank shot/called shot (penalty reduction plus a penalty to the other side on hit), and an extra attack (RS/RR).

Ranger changes are probably my favorite Arelith change mechanically, because I can see exactly how it was balanced and how it's designed to reflect the 3.5 RAW.

Edit: At most, I would say make the ranger's archer feats only work in light armor or less. I can see a few outlying builds that might exploit that part with zen archery.
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Re: Archers are very powerful

Post by Dracorid3r » Mon Apr 06, 2020 9:57 pm

Speaking from someone who is playing a drow ranger 27/3 archer.

Archers are really powerful, yes... the damage is quite insane, There are some drawbacks though.
PVE wise, they are great, fantastic even... when you're in a group. You drag so much aggro, to the point that if you don't have someone there to guard you, you're screwed. One bolt/arrow and it doesn't matter what's going on, the mob is coming for you. And AC is really not there, but as an archer you take those risks. You're only hope is to kill them before they get to you, or darkness... lots and lots of darkness.
PVP, Yeah, you'll wreck someone, 1v1, but most pvp isn't 1v1 at least in Arelith that I've found. Once that one melee WM gets ontop of you, you're done. Really, if its a prepared pvp, archer isn't in the hottest spot.

The damage is awesome, but grinding is hell without a group. Even summons aren't great, because of the sheer aggro you pull. Please don't nerf the ammo, it is the one thing that makes life tolerable.

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Re: Archers are very powerful

Post by Aelryn Bloodmoon » Mon Apr 06, 2020 10:02 pm

Tarkus the dog wrote:
Mon Apr 06, 2020 9:42 pm
I think that doing something about true strike potions being used by archers is something the devs should look at.
I think an archer wasting 4 extra attacks to drink a true strike potion is probably doing so because someone optimized an ac build to the point it's required- I'll take the extra 4 attacks under my normal ab under EVERY other circumstance.

It's an archer. They don't need true strike to hit you, and if they do the correct response isn't to nerf true strike, it's probably to nerf the ac potential of the build they need the potion for, since a good archer build does exactly one thing, and that's hit things more reliably than everyone else.
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Re: Archers are very powerful

Post by Aeralad » Mon Apr 06, 2020 10:10 pm

Dracorid3r wrote:
Mon Apr 06, 2020 9:57 pm
Speaking from someone who is playing a drow ranger 27/3 archer.

Archers are really powerful, yes... the damage is quite insane, There are some drawbacks though.
PVE wise, they are great, fantastic even... when you're in a group. You drag so much aggro, to the point that if you don't have someone there to guard you, you're screwed. One bolt/arrow and it doesn't matter what's going on, the mob is coming for you. And AC is really not there, but as an archer you take those risks. You're only hope is to kill them before they get to you, or darkness... lots and lots of darkness. ...
This argument only shows how melee builds are suffering to ranged builds. How? "The ac isn't there"
Well if the ac is never there then melee just constantly get whooped? Seems to favor range to me.
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Re: Archers are very powerful

Post by Aelryn Bloodmoon » Mon Apr 06, 2020 10:19 pm

Aeralad wrote:
Mon Apr 06, 2020 10:10 pm
Dracorid3r wrote:
Mon Apr 06, 2020 9:57 pm
Speaking from someone who is playing a drow ranger 27/3 archer.

Archers are really powerful, yes... the damage is quite insane, There are some drawbacks though.
PVE wise, they are great, fantastic even... when you're in a group. You drag so much aggro, to the point that if you don't have someone there to guard you, you're screwed. One bolt/arrow and it doesn't matter what's going on, the mob is coming for you. And AC is really not there, but as an archer you take those risks. You're only hope is to kill them before they get to you, or darkness... lots and lots of darkness. ...
This argument only shows how melee builds are suffering to ranged builds. How? "The ac isn't there"
Well if the ac is never there then melee just constantly get whooped? Seems to favor range to me.
You're overlooking the obvious, here. The archer hits everything, not just melee. That's what it does.

But it also gets hit by melees. Once a melee closes, it gets hit with an extra AoO up to 5 times per round, and that's only while it's not on its back (good luck, you're a dex or wisdom build. )

"But it's an archer, how do they get in range?" That's their problem, it's an archer and that's literally the point, but I'd suggest hugging a terrain corner to break LoS to force them to come to you if they want to fight.
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Re: Archers are very powerful

Post by Aeralad » Mon Apr 06, 2020 10:27 pm

Where is it written a dex build can't melee?

But the other persons point was Ac is meaningless, and I simply pointed out if that is true, then melees are worse off and not range.
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Re: Archers are very powerful

Post by Dracorid3r » Mon Apr 06, 2020 10:47 pm

If a dex build archer goes melee, Then most of the things (feats etc) that we put into our bow, to make us great/fantastic at killing things, goes out the window. We become just a decent fighter. We'll still get murdered compared to any Melee focused builds.
If its a Wisdom focused (Arcane Archer), then they are just terrible melee period.

Yes, Melee is going to be worst off Archer vs Melee, /at range/. There is no getting around that, Mages are going to be worst off either way, if the archers gets the drop on them,

Either way, There are upsides and downsides to all classes/builds. Not everything is going to be completely balanced. Archers are amazing damage dealers and can hit just about everything, until they get CC'd or Knocked down in melee, or even just 5 rounded by A melee'r not taking into account of the AoO from every round they shoot in close range.

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Re: Archers are very powerful

Post by three wolf moon » Mon Apr 06, 2020 10:48 pm

Aelryn Bloodmoon wrote:
Mon Apr 06, 2020 10:19 pm


You're overlooking the obvious, here. The archer hits everything, not just melee. That's what it does.

But it also gets hit by melees. Once a melee closes, it gets hit with an extra AoO up to 5 times per round, and that's only while it's not on its back (good luck, you're a dex or wisdom build. )
you're living in the past. This is the Lore Meta present, where the rogue/bard dip for UMD can safely (and very profitably) be replaced by any class that gets divine might/shield which for a character who has dex and/or wisdom (for the also powerful monk dip) can boost your AC up to the mid-to-high 60s range. I have on my character stood in front of a kensai barb and shot them in the face while they tried to hit and land knockdowns on me. I don't think I was hit even one time.

This is even very safe to build because of how ridiculous the monk items are (they are multi-stat, disc, and all runable).

I think Archers are kind of in a "holy sword" zone, where they are very good and a nerf is probably necessary/deserved, but at the same time too much of a nerf or the wrong kind of nerf could put them back to being useless again. I don't really know what the solution is, given that the lore change is here to stay and will continue to enable the dipping of powerful classes of monk and div classes.

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Re: Archers are very powerful

Post by Hazard » Tue Apr 07, 2020 5:07 am

OP is correct.

There's a reason there's so many smug, cocky archers strutting about, just like there was monks.

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Re: Archers are very powerful

Post by Babylon System is the Vampire » Tue Apr 07, 2020 6:33 am

If archers are too good maybe improving entropic shield could help some. Perhaps giving it 50% instead of 20% chance of arrows missing.

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Re: Archers are very powerful

Post by vaclavc » Tue Apr 07, 2020 7:21 am

Big problem for archers is improved expertise. It allows to increase melee character‘s AC by 10 points even when running at no cost at all, allowing to close the distance to the archer in relative safety and then turning it off immediately, gaining +10 AB. It is great QoL improvement, but it is also a huge unbalancing factor when considering ranged vs melee characters.
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Re: Archers are very powerful

Post by Jagel » Tue Apr 07, 2020 7:52 am

Never thought I’d see the day when archers were considered op o.O

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Re: Archers are very powerful

Post by the grim yeeter » Tue Apr 07, 2020 8:10 am

The people saying archers "aren't that powerful" vastly, vastly underestimate the enormous advantage ranged characters have over melee characters, owing not only to the free damage gained over whatever distance the melee needs to cover to reach the archer, but also to the way kiting can be done in NWN. It is the kiting in particular that allows for basically an unlimited amount of shots at a negligible cost, especially if you manage to get a successful CS: leg attempt in. With a properly built archer's AB and the amount of shots an archer gets to take before being in danger, you're bound to land at least one successful CS: leg attempt (assuming this archer is played by someone who knows what they are doing and is keeping distance at all times). With the way Called Shot works, it is very hard for a melee character to recover from one successful CS: leg hit.

That, together with all the free feats, damage and abilities that the -archer path (or ranger in general) has cumulatively gained over the past years on Arelith, and with how easy it is for them to take a divine dip nowadays, actually does make archers immensely strong on this server.
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Re: Archers are very powerful

Post by Sockss » Tue Apr 07, 2020 8:50 am

Archers have always been good, they are however shining in this meta.

Builds aren't able to gain access to reliable finishing tools thanks to two very poorly thought out changes. Namely the KD nerf and the lore change, both of which have sillier consequences than this but I won't go into that.

People are therefore extremely reliant on outputting a lot of damage very quickly (shotgun builds), because no one has much ability to keep someone around long enough to finish them, unless of course they are ranged.

As UMD is useless and common scroll tools are nerfed (here's looking at you WoF), taking a dip in classes that offer UMD is not beneficial, so archers (and other builds) are able to divine dip with no downsides (No umd previously was a big trade, now it's completely irrelevant).

Further to this problem is maxing 3-4 stats is no longer difficult and as a result, divine dips, both paragon and pal/bg are extremely beneficial for little commitment.

As it's doubtful we will ever be able to revert the lore change (or WoF nerf), or the KD change, with any reasonable arguments, since they don't have any logical basis for existing; we are stuck with requiring rare loot to bridge some of the gap (Yay timestop clocks / hellball rods) so I guess get farming?

It's worth noting that these problems aren't just making archers disproportionately powerful. Divine dipping, being ranged (casters included), or being a shotgun build is pretty much required to do any sort of mid-high level PvP.

It's not all upsides, usually, for archers - they're extremely terrain reliant and, in many cases they will struggle to kill anyone if they are using line of sight correctly. The problem lies in that an archer doesn't currently need to fight at range, they have the AC and survivability (thanks to the combination of things above) to get in melee range and still put out damage if/when their opponent retreats (something a melee struggles to do). When they were at risk of chain KD's, didn't have huge AC without sacrifices and were at the threat of WoF / Timestop - their survivability in melee wasn't high.

An immediate change I'd make would be to remove HIPS from the ranger archer path. It's problematic (and broken, it shouldn't tick the cooldown while you're in stealth sheesh), especially on a ranged character (here's to you SM's). The consequences of the umberhulk nerf, the lore change (unreliable TS scroll use) are very apparent here. It also gives them a 'get out of jail free' card if they're threatened, which frankly they don't need.

However, that's not going to fix them. Things need to change on a much wider scale to increase the viability of more than a handful of builds.
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Re: Archers are very powerful

Post by Imperatrix » Tue Apr 07, 2020 9:26 am

Sockss wrote:
Tue Apr 07, 2020 8:50 am
Archers have always been good, they are however shining in this meta.

Builds aren't able to gain access to reliable finishing tools thanks to two very poorly thought out changes. Namely the KD nerf and the lore change, both of which have sillier consequences than this but I won't go into that.

People are therefore extremely reliant on outputting a lot of damage very quickly (shotgun builds), because no one has much ability to keep someone around long enough to finish them, unless of course they are ranged.

As UMD is useless and common scroll tools are nerfed (here's looking at you WoF), taking a dip in classes that offer UMD is not beneficial, so archers (and other builds) are able to divine dip with no downsides (No umd previously was a big trade, now it's completely irrelevant).

Further to this problem is maxing 3-4 stats is no longer difficult and as a result, divine dips, both paragon and pal/bg are extremely beneficial for little commitment.

As it's doubtful we will ever be able to revert the lore change (or WoF nerf), or the KD change, with any reasonable arguments, since they don't have any logical basis for existing; we are stuck with requiring rare loot to bridge some of the gap (Yay timestop clocks / hellball rods) so I guess get farming?

It's worth noting that these problems aren't just making archers disproportionately powerful. Divine dipping, being ranged (casters included), or being a shotgun build is pretty much required to do any sort of mid-high level PvP.

It's not all upsides, usually, for archers - they're extremely terrain reliant and, in many cases they will struggle to kill anyone if they are using line of sight correctly. The problem lies in that an archer doesn't currently need to fight at range, they have the AC and survivability (thanks to the combination of things above) to get in melee range and still put out damage if/when their opponent retreats (something a melee struggles to do). When they were at risk of chain KD's, didn't have huge AC without sacrifices and were at the threat of WoF / Timestop - their survivability in melee wasn't high.

An immediate change I'd make would be to remove HIPS from the ranger archer path. It's problematic (and broken, it shouldn't tick the cooldown while you're in stealth sheesh), especially on a ranged character (here's to you SM's). The consequences of the umberhulk nerf, the lore change (unreliable TS scroll use) are very apparent here. It also gives them a 'get out of jail free' card if they're threatened, which frankly they don't need.

However, that's not going to fix them. Things need to change on a much wider scale to increase the viability of more than a handful of builds.
Agree with most of your points. I'd also like to see archer rangers lose HiPS as it is a massive advantage to an already strong build, though HiPS in general needs to be rebalanced (but we've already had that thread.)

But as you said the bigger issue in the current meta is how easy it is to div dip with little consequence and how powerful div builds are in general. I wanted to make a separate post about that but I honestly don't know where to start fixing that problem. In any case one of the reasons I wanted archer damage nerfed is that most of it is given at 20, allowing to dip into 2 classes (fighter and div) without any significant sacrifice. It should be removed or given later.

Div dip aside, non-div archers are still incredibly powerful. A decent archer cannot be engaged in melee in most circumstances. They don't even need to stop in order to fire off their initial volley and keep moving.
Last edited by Imperatrix on Tue Apr 07, 2020 9:37 am, edited 2 times in total.

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Re: Archers are very powerful

Post by -XXX- » Tue Apr 07, 2020 9:33 am

Ranged game in NWN has always been the pinnacle of PvP cancer - mostly because of runshooting and HIPS
(one of these issues has been once addressed then "unaddressed" - much to my dismay TBH)

Fortunately they aren't a very common sight despite their "intensly-one-sided-not-even-funny-uberstomping" PvP potential, as archers are tremendously boring to lvl up and the Arelith PvE content makes it a tedious pain
The constant nagging ammo management requirements to play the class are also... making you want to euthanize the character on a cheery day and yourself on a dour one.

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Re: Archers are very powerful

Post by Hazard » Tue Apr 07, 2020 9:37 am

Someone send me the most broken archer PvP build. The most sure-fire way to get something nerfed is if I spend time trying to level it :P

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Re: Archers are very powerful

Post by Sockss » Tue Apr 07, 2020 10:28 am

Well the easiest path that is open would be to:

Revert Lore/UMD, KD, WoF, UH.

If that won't happen, then we're looking at the inevitable stubborn container-style band-aid patches which could include (But isn't limited to):

Caps on divine might/shield/grace/blessing to encourage larger class investment.
Divine Grace / Dark Blessing not giving 'hard' saves.
KD causing 2 rounds of movement speed reduction and -ac.
Longer HIPS cooldowns.
Introduction of anti HIPS mechanics (light-style AOE's).
Blinding speed not being a free action.
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Re: Archers are very powerful

Post by Archnon » Tue Apr 07, 2020 2:35 pm

Giving every class arrows would not change the reliance on divine dips for archers, it would only increase it. Instead players would go full divine and dip fighter or cot. Both open up stronger feat progressions than the ranger and cot stacks with the divine classes.

If you want to fix divine dips, then fix that. Don't treat a symptom and ignore the problem.

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