Does the archery code need tweaked?

[Malken]

Oh, the things that Iyola and I have done to master archery *shudders* Sometime I wonder how I ever got enough free time in the past to get anywhere on Arm!

[Harmless]

Just gonna leave this here as your sling demonstration:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RzDMCVdPwnE&list=PLGnWLXjIDnpBR4xqf3FO-xFFwE-ucq4Fj&index=12

He also makes a bow and shoots it in another video. They look like very different skills.

[The Warshaper]

Just gonna leave this here as your sling demonstration:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RzDMCVdPwnE&list=PLGnWLXjIDnpBR4xqf3FO-xFFwE-ucq4Fj&index=12

He also makes a bow and shoots it in another video. They look like very different skills.

What a TWINK. 😜  Very good video of all things sling.

[Dunetrade55]

I dig that video, it makes David and Goliath look all that much more believable. POW, you'd be lucky not to have rock shards in your skull.

[Miradus]

Yeah, but Armageddon slings ...

[lostinspace]

Archery is fine if you're not the one getting shot.  I'd say it favors the ambusher far more than the other ambush skills do.

But I'd be happy if Backstab, Sap or Throw were given comparable boosts in lethality.

I'd be happy with a flat percentage to block arrows just from holding a shield.

I'd be happy if there was some sort of delay/precision trade off available to archery. Crossbows vs Bows anyone?

Agree completely, throw is thematically one of my favorite things, but codedly it's pretty much just shitty archery with the advantage of having a weapon in your hands if you're jumped. Also shields should block throw and archery very often at master, should block baskstab when worn on the back, and shouldn't have any bearing on sap (but helmet armor should).

As for making archery harder to level, I am alright with this if we also don't change shields to be more effective against them, no reason to add a counter and nerf a skill into the ground at the same time.

[Feco]

I don't think shields should block backstab on the back.  I think it's been long established that backstab is a "criticial strike," and not a literal stab to the back.

I guess it could block it sometimes, but I dunno.  The massive lag from backstab already makes it a pretty risky move.

[Harmless]

Yeah, but Armageddon slings...

If you were to LOOK at a 'slingshot' in armageddon, you will see it described as the type of weapon in the above video. I am unsure why the game went with the word 'slingshot' to create the confusion.

[Fathi]

Split out slings from archery and make shields more effective, and add a guard check.

That stuff I agree with. But watering down archery when it's only ever "two head shots and done" in rare scenarios when the RNG favors you with its blessings, is silly at best.

This bolded bit seems accurate in my experience.

I have a cumulative total of almost 300 days played on a few badass long-lived rangers. Maybe I just wasn't using the right equipment or my PCs' stats all sucked, but in over a decade playing this game I can only remember two times when my ranger's max archery fucked someone up that badly.

I had a ranger with great stats, great equipment, and archery skill that had to be maxed given her playtime and longevity, although I can't verify this because it was before skill levels displayed. She still regularly had to shoot gith 4-5 times to kill them, and she never managed to one-shot or two-shot  or three-shot kill a PC despite having a few opportunities over the years when she tried. I spent a long time on that PC thinking archery was underpowered because she never seemed capable of the great feats of fuck-upping that PCs around her talked about achieving. Any time I needed to kill a thing quickly I opted for melee combat because archery seemed comparatively less useful.

I really do think the randomness of archery makes it okay as-is.

Obviously in a statistical sense my anecdotes are just as meaningless as anyone else's, but I really think that if archery were that powerful I would have experienced more of that over the years. My rangers don't tend to be tavern-sitters and they had ample opportunity to mess people and animals up with archery, the skill just never seemed that consistently powerful to me.

Based on my own personal experiences I would never ever ever in a thousand years say archery was more powerful than backstab and the amount of people who seem to think it is makes me wonder if I've been playing rangers wrong this whole time. 

[Jingo]

Three arrow kills seems to be the norm from what I've witnessed. And as quickly as it takes to finish my emote.

Actually, I've played a lot of assassins. And I keep running into people who tell me back stab is mega powerful. I'm not sure if I'm right but it's got significant post-action delay issues that make it extremely dangerous to use or practice on anything but snakes and rats. And the final damage rating seems to correlate far too much with strength.

[Dunetrade55]

When I first started playing, some super-ranger geared to the teeth joined the Byn. He assured me he was going to train me, I liked the guy. Byn goes on trip to Allanak. Single arrow hits this guy square in the face and p much dead... to be fair it was a staff animated gith who shot it, so some things were probably tweaked as this gith rained death upon us as we tried to explain mount code to someone more newbish than I.

I don't think the real power in ranged combat is the insta-gank, more the versatility and applicability of poisons, some of which are just like, ok, so you're helpless in hostile territory. I don't think this should be removed but considering a shield could realisticly, and has historically, been used as a defense against archers, that it could, perhaps, stand to have its current applicability as a tactic reviewed and possibly tweaked in favor of shield use vs. ranged weaponry, although others with more anecdotal evidence than I say it's working fine, which it may very well be.