Recent Ammunition Nerf

[Gwenneth_Corvain]

I am not affected by this change. I will admit that some arrows can be pretty strong if the creator goes through the effort.

So.. just to sumarize - and please correct me if i am missing something:

The major concern is a glitch / exploit that requires HIPS, high AB and called shot to pull off properly - and the solution is not targeted at either of these things but rather a blanket sweep at the ammunition-creation process which does not at all prevent the glitch but hurts everyone else.

Would it not make more sense to do one of the following:
- make called shot have a cooldown
- make called shot require a round of standing still
- apply a round of slow after called shot

[garrbear758]

I am not affected by this change. I will admit that some arrows can be pretty strong if the creator goes through the effort.

So.. just to sumarize - and please correct me if i am missing something:

The major concern is a glitch / exploit that requires HIPS, high AB and called shot to pull off properly - and the solution is not targeted at either of these things but rather a blanket sweep at the ammunition-creation process which does not at all prevent the glitch but hurts everyone else.

Would it not make more sense to do one of the following:
- make called shot have a cooldown
- make called shot require a round of standing still
- apply a round of slow after called shot

It does not require HiPS, high ab, or called shot. It requires a ranged weapon and using keyboard for movement.

None of those changes for called shot are going to happen, because melee builds use it as well and that would hurt them more than archers.

[Xerah]

The concern is that, by and large, the damage was too high.

A unique thing was added to Arelith to allow for this archetype and shortly after, the developer left. There was a limited time for playtesting before that happened and no changes (other than complex removal) happened in the meantime. This sort of sat as an issue we talked about for a year+. A lot of developers aren't quick to take up another developer's work (since you work on what you are passionate about) and finally we had a combo of an active effort of wanting to dial this back and someone who wanted to work on archery stuff.

[Gwenneth_Corvain]

Sorry i was going by Drowboys sequence.

So - you can just run away from a target while also shooting it? That would be bad.
I can see how this would need to be addressed.

The concern is that, by and large, the damage was too high.

Fair enough - then the fix accomplishes what it was ment to accomplish.

[Aren]

Sorry for anyone upset by this but here are the facts:

1. Tournaments with made up rules that generally skew towards shotgun builds are not a good metric for balance.

2. Just because you aren't personally playing an archer well or have a good build doesn't mean they aren't overpowered. We cant balance around nonoptimal builds although that is what the majority of us (myself included) usually end up playing.

3. This nerf was smaller than what I wanted.

4. Archers who know what they're doing shouldn't ever lose in real (non tournament) pvp due to nwn engine mechanics, and while that is likely still the case, this forces them to take longer kiting, which leaves room for them to make more mistakes.

I am in hard agreement with Garrbear here.

[Naghast]

hello, i was asked to post a reply here regarding options, so i'm posting it here, with a small addition:
i believe that slow from calledshot can be negated with freedom of movement, and potions of FoM can be crafted using herbalism. furthermore, stat drain from called shot: leg can be negated using negative energy protection, a potion of which is a commonly accessible consumable. albeit both of these wards are breachable. still, breaching the wards occupies ranged's action economy - if they're using a wand to breach your wards, they're not busy shooting you.
when it comes to kiting, a potion of balagarn's iron horn can be used. it's a fairly strong tool against dex-builds in general, and it's AoE is actually bigger than one may think (i believe it's bigger than the VFX). furthermore, sneaking rangeds need to gear for:
dexterity, constitution, unisaves, discipline, hide, move silently
which makes adding strength there already difficult. which means, a potion of iron horn is likely to land - assuming they have no spell resistance
there's another tool for crowd-controlling people, and that is: scintillating pattern. if you, for any reason, reach 65 lore, then you can use them. and even if someone rocks a 26 SR helmet, you can throw a mords gem to reduce that SR to 16 (yes, i tested it, the SR gets reduced) so a CL 15 scroll will land 100% of the time, since you only need to roll... 1 to punch through.
when it comes to hips, it's usually used by rangeds when they're in a tough spot and needs to reposition. so when they use it, you can attempt to knock them down using a potion of iron horn - and immediately afterwards you can start reading a scroll of true seeing (i tested it, there's no real delay between chugging a pot and reading a scroll). which means - the moment they get up is the moment you see them. while they're still in the tough spot. and from that point you can follow up with a scroll of scintillating pattern.
for those who don't know - scintillating pattern is a saveless confusion for 1d4 rounds (the description mentions it operating on health die. that's half true. it will confuse at least one target, always, regardless of health die, as long as they don't resist it using mind immunity, spell mantle, or spell resistance). so, a fairly strong option for crowd-controlling, if your victim isn't mind immune (and yes, i know. potions of clarity. lesser mind blank being really low on breaching list. assuming your target knows what you're using, they may have these things prepared. but if they, for any reason, don't know this, then it's likely they don't have it. because why would they have it in a fight against a melee? not like they're gonna expect being struck with too many mind-affecting spells.)

(a bonus- a cavalier can, most of the time, keep up with an archer, and they can boop someone for 300+ damage, which now i believe can ignore DR wards with the new +5 lance)
(another bonus i forgot to mention: STR hips-ers. such builds usually have, like, 70 or so in hide + ms
assuming 33 skills, +2 from dex = 35, +28 or so from gear = 63, ESkF hide = 73
a half-decent listener can hit...
33 from skill, -1 from wisdom = 32, +16 from gear (assuming +2 spot on 8 gear pieces, so everything except for weapon + offhand + one more other gear piece) = 48, +20 from amplify (it lasts turns/level) = 68.
a dedicated spotter + listener can hit much, much higher numbers.)

[The Hazards of Love]

Frankly, this still doesn't address the real reason archers are so good: range, and mobility.

With proper timing, a canny archer can shoot and run at the same time at their highest AB, without much more than a stutter. This allows them to consistently outpace their foes, staying out of engagement range while their damage output continues unabated.

Making them deal scimitar weaponmaster damage instead of falchion weaponmaster damage is a piddly little band-aid on a wound that requires stitching. What archer needs to be 'fair' is a short slow or root after making an attack. This is both more realistic and more competitive, representing both the good posture and grounding needed to effectively use archery (You will never see an expert bowman doing Hawkeye/Legolas-esque trick shooting with any seriousness) and forcing an archer to choose their engagement distance more carefully.

I thought that templates were in a reasonably good place before this change, but I think archers are still firmly top tier just because the above has not been addressed. I don't really like the change to a lot of the effects, it will just force people to go into the underdark for d8 essences if there are no comparable strong options on the surface.

[Ork]

Agreed Hazards, I hope we do solve the obnoxious & glitchy run-attack archers can do.

[ReverentBlade]

I feel like any sense of incrementalism has been lost. D10s become D6s instead of maybe seeing if D8 is fine after giving it a hot minute. The staff seems to have collectively decided "eff dexterity" for...reasons?

Ammo nerf. Gear nerf. Blinding Speed pseudo-haste weirdness. Timestop revert. Powercreeped plate after we just de-powercreeped cloth.

Its going to lead to swingy, pendulum-like balance because you're all balancing around PGCC theorycrafted characters with perfect gear and runes instead of the live server reality where characters are often off meta or "were meta" and have to grind for those items. Balance changes are so frequent that your character can become bad before you've even finished leveling it. Its extremely disheartening for still-mechanically-savvy RPers that don't roll their characters every other week.

My archer buddy is strong af, no lie, but bruisers and their triple-digit whirlwinds certainly do not seem to be suffering in any way. Maybe dial it back -a little- and chill with it for a minute.

[Xerah]

We have been being very slow and calculated for pushing out these changes. You are talking about changes that happened over 6-12 months. It's pretty obnoxious to read statements like "The staff seems to have collectively decided "eff dexterity" for...reasons?" because you're telling us that we're doing this on a whim and without any thought at all.

Everyone knows that DEX based builds are well overtuned on Arelith right now. They're slowly getting to a better place.

These are not "swingy, pendulum-like balance" changes; that is an extremely narrow way to describe them. The point isn't to overwhelm with massive changes that need to be re-looked at, but slow minor changes that shift things slightly and then let us observe. That's the balancing method we've taken to address some of these long standing issues.

[Gouge Away]

I’m not agreeing with the pendulum thing but I do kind of understand it as for most players it takes many months or even a year to get to 30. If we based the build on the best possible info we had when we started and the character’s nowhere near what we thought at the end-game because it got hit by a series of nerfs along the way well, it can be a big letdown. Probably one reason why you should be wary of starting whatever is the the flavor of the month as that’s most likely to get the nerfs...

Again, not saying anything about the changes themselves, but 6 to 12 months isn’t that long a time really, probably the lifespan of a typical “main.”

[Diegovog]

Archers are absolute beasts in large scale fights. It's awkward to balance them on tournament 1v1 but even if you consider solo work they can do outstanding work. I have an archer, so even though I'm not 100% happy, it's probably more balanced now.

[Dreams]

Nerfing damage hurts the builds that aren’t part of the problem. I agree that ranged damage could get huge sometimes. The issue is more that they get this damage at range with near perfect mobility if they’re playing well/experienced.

A better solution would be to look at giving any ranged weapon users various forms of slow. A one round 50% slow on flurry would basically solve this problem.

Ranged characters then become walking turrets, who can choose between moving and firing, rather than glitching the two together. It’s this behaviour in combat that was the problem, not just the damage.

[ReverentBlade]

Slows would make PvE super obnoxious.

[AstralUniverse]

Slows would make PvE super obnoxious.

If it's a 1 second slow you're not going to even feel it unless you hold your w while attacking mobs.

[ReverentBlade]

That is not remotely true. PvE mobs do not have an aggro table. They attack the last source of damage. A (good) archer is constantly repositioning around his or her tank in PvE to stay safe and help provoke AoO. Any snares on firing would be the clunkiest thing you could possibly do to the playstyle.

[mjones3]

That is not remotely true. PvE mobs do not have an aggro table. They attack the last source of damage. A (good) archer is constantly repositioning around his or her tank in PvE to stay safe and help provoke AoO. Any snares on firing would be the clunkiest thing you could possibly do to the playstyle.

It takes a round for the AI to change targets, just only attack the same thing someone else is and nothing will target you usually. That's how rogues used their sneak attacks before -guard. Hell a good tank can just change their target before the rounds over but before the start of the next and take aggro right back so you don't even need to do that.

On another note damage went from max 3d10 or 2d10 + 2d6 to 3d8, maybe 3d10 still even. You lose 16-24 at most on a crit, and 4 or so normally. All this change does is make it so spell casting isn't vastly more powerful than essences for templates.

[Aren]

Even after these nerfs, archers are still in a good spot.

[Baron Saturday]

I wonder, would it be possible to code a 2 second (1 flurry) AB penalty that applies every time someone with a ranged weapon equipped moves? This seems like it would be a more targeted nerf that would specifically impact an exploitative play style, similar to how there's an AB penalty on weapon switching that was added to combat a melee exploit.

[AstralUniverse]

1 second slow would accomplish the same thing and be easier to code than a script that checks if you're moving every time you attack, I'm pretty sure (could still be wrong, I'm not a programmer). It does not bother anyone unless they are exploiting a bug

[malcolm_mountainslayer]

With nerfs being made with the expectation a player will abuse the engine, should we provide a guide in the wiki? I found my archer very hard to play solo (shelved ecl - 2 archer on skal like from over year ago) becuase i wasn't aware of "how to kite properly".

[Curve]

I think this is not enough of a damage nerf. Having that much ab/ac/damage with the potential to pick and choose between so many goodies from ED to HiPS to super saves is too much.

I think it would also be useful to have someone of authority chime in on run n’ gun archery and if it is an exploit or not. I’m going on the assumption that it is not considered an exploit because ever archer I’ve seen on arelith in a decade has used that tactic.

[malcolm_mountainslayer]

That is not remotely true. PvE mobs do not have an aggro table. They attack the last source of damage. A (good) archer is constantly repositioning around his or her tank in PvE to stay safe and help provoke AoO. Any snares on firing would be the clunkiest thing you could possibly do to the playstyle.

A good archer has can't even be a good archer apparently until reading this forum on how to do the W trick is the frustrating part for me. Ofbwe want to balance around amazing mobility while firing, we should have a guide on the wiki has mass majority of players, in my subjective opinion, trying to be be archers have been doing it wrong for years. I have not once even witnessed the Hold W and click trick in my off and on years of nwn. Not that I play much in those years, but I think those who know the mechanic exploit are in the minority by a massive margin.

[Kenji]

People need to recognize that regardless of the moving when firing mechanics, ranged was just doing too much damage in general. Hence the nerf.

However, that is not to say that the kiting mechanic itself is not a problem. There are many valid and adequate suggestions as to how to approach toning down the said kiting mechanic. It will certainly take some time to first discuss internally within the dev team, then to test and to get feedback with various methods.

As for assembly template and bundle crafting, it is definitely on my radar to streamline the process.

Only then can we look at ranged again and, hopefully, fine-tune each individual class and adjust them from there.

All I can say is these are not going to happen in short term. But I can offer a light-hearted estimate of Soon™.

[TimeAdept]

Arelith remains the only server I have ever seen that hasn't declared runshooting an exploit. Every PvP server and ever other RP server I have ever played on classifies it as one.

As long as this exists there is no ground to stand on for ranged complaints, in my completely honest opinion.