Thread: Retuning the Archer DPS

Right now the Archer is a complete joke. Some may say that it's worthy of being axed - instead, the DPS should be adjusted to make it an interesting choice.

Ideally, a fully traited archer + LtC Captain should have a slight edge in DPS over a war banner - you are sacrificing a significant amount of personal DPS and survivability for overall DPS. The Archer's total DPS should look like:

(current max DPS - Max DPS with armament) * 1.1

Since we know the current max DPS is around 1.1k, what is yet to be determined is how much of a DPS hit we take when we swap out the banner for the armaments - and I was wondering if someone could parse that.

My opinion is that the archer is a nice idea but I i have no time in to care for a pet, for me it woud be ok if the archer woud be buffed
that he's good for solo playing but not for raiding

Increase its base and skill damages by 50% and change the slow to -40% from the skill as almost every creep in the ettens slows that much. This would make it usable in PvMP and so giving it a purpose, especially when you're alone. Right now captains can't catch anything and I mean they catch nothing! The slow would be a deserved help there!

Originally Posted by Thaodan

My opinion is that the archer is a nice idea but I i have no time in to care for a pet, for me it woud be ok if the archer woud be buffed
that he's good for solo playing but not for raiding

It's not that hard to care for a summon if you've got critted T7 armaments, Loyalty, and Master of War slotted.

While the archer might need a morale bump, but otherwise, they're more durable than you think they are, especially the heralds.

Not really interested in upgrading pets as it costs valuable dev time. Archer will be still unusable in group situations so this will be solo curiosity and since cappy solo is good enough, I wouldn't even bother to lose money/time for retraiting. Unless devs allow us to have pets and banners at same time so pet isn't penalty to captain. This is main and biggest difference between us and LMs.

I mean back in early days cappies got banners to get something extra if You didn't want a pet(for example we could get biggest morale pools out of all classes). Today it's not something extra. It's a must have. I can't really imagine running raid content with 1.5k morale and 3k offence less, just for moving banner pet which dies if mobs sneezes or archer that does how much dps? So either make pets something good and usable in all content(doubt that gonna ever happen) or just leave them be.

Originally Posted by Fuin

...moving banner pet which dies if mobs sneezes ...

I don't really understand this. How do people have so many problems keeping their herald/archer alive? The only time mine ever dies is when I'm soloing the limlight hurons and I forget to position myself properly. They really aren't that squishy.

It's called AoE. Unlike LM pets their not immune to it, or to eyes and such.

IMHO a few basic changes are needed to make our heralds worth using.

1. Change them to the light damage type by defualt. It's good vs most things and fits with several other cappy skills.

2. Take all our herald traits, (include LTC capstone compnents), and incorporate them into the basic heralds, and then flush the traits down the toliet. Our heralds bassiclly need a whole bunch of traits to be even vaguely useful, our banners are useful straight away, we also have 4 of those traits be mutually exclusive, 3 of them are of no use to the other 3 heralds

3. Add on the LM pet eye and AoE immunity.

4. Limit banners to moors, so long as they're avlibile the simple assurranc of a buff that cannot die will keep people using them.

5. Make the heralds weapon damage be a base % of the Captains.

6. Look at overhauling the skills, i'd much rather the heals where weaker but had a shorter CD and no morale cost for example, or that coordinated strike did a bleed. e.t.c.

I haven't thought too deeply about this yet, but on the face of it I would love it if they jacked up the archer's dps. Like, give the archer 500dps. I think it would be a great way to increase the captain's total dps, especially since: 1) it wouldn't require massive adjustments to trait sets or the nitty-gritty of the captain's skills, 2) the archer disallows the standard, so groups would have to decide whether they want more dps or the banner buff, 3) soloing would be a little more fun since captains can worry about archer aggro while killing mobs much faster.

On the other hand, maybe relying on the pet would be pretty annoying. Still pondering.

Originally Posted by Darth_Carl

It's called AoE. Unlike LM pets their not immune to it, or to eyes and such.

IMHO a few basic changes are needed to make our heralds worth using.

1. Change them to the light damage type by defualt. It's good vs most things and fits with several other cappy skills.

2. Take all our herald traits, (include LTC capstone compnents), and incorporate them into the basic heralds, and then flush the traits down the toliet. Our heralds bassiclly need a whole bunch of traits to be even vaguely useful, our banners are useful straight away, we also have 4 of those traits be mutually exclusive, 3 of them are of no use to the other 3 heralds

3. Add on the LM pet eye and AoE immunity.

4. Limit banners to moors, so long as they're avlibile the simple assurranc of a buff that cannot die will keep people using them.

5. Make the heralds weapon damage be a base % of the Captains.

6. Look at overhauling the skills, i'd much rather the heals where weaker but had a shorter CD and no morale cost for example, or that coordinated strike did a bleed. e.t.c.

I like most of these suggestions, especially 1 and 2. I don't like 4, since I like the banner option in groups. Managing a pet is fine while solo, but in group instances there is already enough to worry about.

Edit: We had another discussion about heralds and pets recently here. We came up with some wild ideas, and I was especially interested in this set (minus any of the back & forth arguments).

The whole point of 4 was so that you have to use them in group stuff though. Right now for solo play they're mostly fine, the only reason to even touch them is to get people using them in group content.

At the end of the day they are a very intregral part of our class, providing very vital buffs and good support abilities. The problem is changes in content have left them behind so that they're no longer relevant in group, but that dosen't change how much emphesis is put on them, (just look at the list of traits affecting them or consider how vital they are through the leveling process). Lm's don't get a means to get their pet benefits without the added complication of dealing with them, so i see no reason we shouldn't. The only reason i'm not suggesting scrapping banners outright is because i don't see how we can make heralds durable enough to stand upto focus fire from creep and still be balanced outside PvP. LM's a least don't have pets that give the whole group a huge buff, so they don't invite that much focus for the most part.

Right now our only justification for having viable group content banners whlst LM's don't have anything similar is the fact that our pets don't have the same kind of base stats or the same kind of immunities, (which render LM pets immune to 99 of the things that can kill them that don't involve pulling aggro on somthing).

Maybe what the archer needs isn't more DPS, but a specific aura (say, +crit magnitude and -attack speed), and a bump to survivability.

I hate heralds. I lose way too much autonomy for little to no gain. Perhaps I hate them because they have made me hate them since the beginning. Until the OB herald they looked like tools. Now they are tools that look cool. Rather than having 3 different heralds they took the lazy route and copy/pasted them and changed 1 little thing much later in the game to make you think they are different.

This is what it would take to get me to use a herald in a group.

War herald = Flat offense and crit buffs, but now does significant aoe damage, and adds attack speed to group and minor power hot on rotation.

Hope = same buffs but add's +5% incoming healing to the group instead of 1 hope. Has a group aoe heal on rotation and a minor aoe bubble on rotation that stacks to X number of times.

Victory = Same buffs only it now has an aoe heal (smaller than hope) and significant power hot on rotation.

Archer = Significant damage, now provides 4-5% inc dmg buff on hit and lowers targets crit defense by 2% on rotation. Some where near half the time up.

Even with every pet trait slotted - which is a HUGE chunk of our endgame self-identity - my OB archer does the same amount of damage as I lose swapping out the banner to use him. So for 3 traits and a capstone, I get the same DPS, less survivability, and extra pet management and AI to worry about.

I really like the idea of being able to use my pet. And I should get something for those traits. Else, like stated, flush the traits and add them to the pet "as is" - that makes sense for getting nothing relative to going petless.

We have terrible solo DPS as it is - what harm would it cause to give us some decent archer DPS? It would solve a lot of problems very easily. Double or triple archer dps... done.

Originally Posted by Almagnus1

The Archer's total DPS should look like:

(Max DPS with armament - Max DPS without armament) * 1.1

You had them switched

Originally Posted by Xodarap777

You had them switched

That would be negative since current max DPS w/ Banner > current max DPS w/ armament

Seeing as the archer falls under our damage category, why not improve its damage? The LM pets slaughter ours too easy -.- Pet's everywhere are in protest! lol But seriously it would be nice if it had better damage output.

Though I do agree with some points that the archer should have some wicked DPS for the buffs we loose. I don't really think Cappy pets and LM pets should be compared. A captain without a herald still has banners and can still function. A LM without a pet is virtually nothing but a induction laden fireball throwing squishy thing and basically looses the entire LM strategy. There is no 'banner' for a LM there stuck.

If the archer doesn't provide us with a solid DPS boost, then what's the point of the archer?

Originally Posted by Almagnus1

That would be negative since current max DPS w/ Banner > current max DPS w/ armament

I wonder if there are good parses backing that up? I've not seen one.

In particular, I wonder if using Archer + Blade Brother, with 100% reflection due to MOW capstone of the to arms/SOW benefits, is really so bad? And whether the power win from Inspire/BB gives you some advantage in the power intensive rotation that MOW uses, particularly with armors that let you hit SL/DB/BOE rather more often...

I sometimes solo harder stuff with my Archer. It gives me the inspires self heal as well as the BB offensive benefits, and also gives me some DPS when I'm stunned, which is all too often.

Not arguing against jazzing up Archer, mind you. I think our heralds could use some love.

Flavor-wise I enjoy having my OBarcher along. I retraited for WarBanner this morning and whilst it did 'feel' as though mobs went down faster, the lack of brothering interactions meant that the playstyle felt more linear/less interesting.

I'd definitely applaud a dps increase for the OB/archer to balance the lack of auras and provide better dps for more effective soloing.

The skirmish soldier archer can out dps the captain's archer pet -.-