Archer changes general

All you knight-fanboys looks the same to me.

#noracism

 

If you guys want to talk about the archer class then please do so in the archer gen thread pls k thx.

 

I'm confused. All discussion was on knights, you just have to refer to archers in order to have anything to do with knights.

Whatever, though, nothing's getting changed it seems.

 

The answer has always been to give the Archer some sort of way of getting through Shield at range with basic kit, just a little bit, so skilled players can actually deal some miniscule damage at range rather than having to rely on close up legolas stun. It only needs to be a little bit, and then the Archer can do things on their own AT RANGE.
And make archer faster swimming in water, because Knight is still like a fish compared to the other classes and everyone is conveniently ignoring this.

 

I THINK BUILDERS SHOULD HAVE AN ITEM THAT DEALS MORE THEN ONE HEART. YA? (but srsly I think this is a good idea maybe call it the Poison Arrow or something. Or an arrow with a knife attached to it not a rock)

 

those are insta!

 

Just make it so knights can't shield in water (unless they stop moving) and the archers can deal with them if they decide to swim to them.

 

There isn't heaps of incentive to use boats considering the effort it takes currently to make them. If boats were tougher against arrows, and archers could damage swimming knights, would that be balanced then?

--- Double Post Merged, Jun 24, 2014, Original Post Date: Jun 24, 2014 ---

A Knight has 4 Hearts of health. Even a very unobservant Knight is going to pop his Shield after the first arrow hits him, and then you're not going to be able to hurt him at all.
Shields need counterplay, water arrows do not count because they're not part of your basic kit, you gotta pay up if you want them. Sure, not many people have shields up 100% of the time, but only because Archers are rarely around 100% of the time. If you see an Archer around, it's Shield up, because you have a perfect counter with almost no downsides and you're going to use it. It's literally "press RMB to negate an Archer far away from you".

 

But then again @bobotype how do the archers counter the knight's basic kit range attacks? They don't need to, because knights don't have any. With basic kit as you say, archers can do a heart or two ranged damage then they can use legolas in CQC. dontbringupbombstheyarenotbasickittheydontcount

"no downsides" Like slow movement, no jumping and vulnerability to melee attacks? And before you go on about that just being support, please realise that knights cannot do ranged support whereas archers can do both that and CQC. A weaker CQC to be sure, but ranged support is a worthy trade-off.

In KAG, basically all ranged attacks are either demolition or support. A regular, unblockable ranged attack is god-like in a game of this design.

 

They don't need to use there swords if there are no knights around. I'll remind you that we're talking about in the water that knights can't have shields up while swimming. If you're going to be battling a knight anyway, there is no need to have shields up. The only time you could be correct is if an archers come along and Legolas-breaks down your shield. But a good knight would probably find it easy to dodge at least some of the shots given that you can now move up and down, and archers having both limited movement and limited shots (until they reload, by which point, in stunning distance, would be dead).

 

Yes, the Knight has no ranged attack. But since he negates the Archer's ranged attack, and counters the Archer in CQC, the Archer comes out at a loss at both range and melee, even though the Knight possesses no basic kit ranged attack.

The Legolas Shot takes over three seconds to charge up per use, and at most can ensure, what is it? A heart and a half? Of penetrating damage, and roughly-a-second of stun to the Knight. The Knight can if he wishes tank the damage, then mess up the Archer. It also only has 11 tiles of range, while the Knight's slash takes up about a third of that and lets him dash to the Archer, and will slash will kill in one hit should it connect.

And a ranged attack which can be blocked infinitely at will, takes time to charge, takes ammo, and does ordinary damage [in contrast to a 1 hit kill] is near useless in a game of this design unless you have someone to help you. On top of that, the Archer's Arrows have suffered multiple nerfs since Classic: much less range, a more arcing than straight pattern, and even forced flight deviation when you Legolas.

But they can keep it up while doing lots of other things, a key one being planting/throwing bombs, a Knight's personal way of eroding enemy defences. You can counter this with Water Arrows, but they need Gold, and while the Knight's time is devoted to getting Kills and thus Gold to buy Bombs [and he can pick them up off the battlefield], not being strong at killing makes the Archer not have a consistent Gold supply, and picking up a Water Arrow is something that happens once in a blue moon. And there's no delay to up your Shield, so you can also jab and Shield intermittently and block a lot of hits.

And this is why Archer could benefit with some form of shield penetration. Even 1/4th of a Heart per hit, through Shields at full range, would be amazing for Archers for chasing down escaping Knights and at least whittling down Knights who are simply tanking everything you throw at them. You could balance this with nerfs to the amount of ammunition an Archer carries to prevent spam.

Archer can be useful, and is a lot more useful with some recent changes, like forcing keg drop. But while Knights are indispensable, and Builders are indispensable, Archers aren't.
The Archer, as a whole class, needs a looking at. It shouldn't be relegated to some backseat role where it has to have Knights or grapplestomping to let it get kills, it should be able to get kills on its own, by outplaying enemies, not just relying on them being distracted or stupid like currently. Nobody try and argue with me on that one; if a Knight isn't distracted or stupid, and you don't have Water Arrows, you will never kill him at range. Archer, the ranged class.

 

@bobotype but if you could kill knights easily at range it would be a piece of cake to kill anyone.

It is not impossible to kill a knight at range. I will argue with you on that and the majority will back me up. If a knight is sitting there with his shield up, you can't kill him but he also isn't doing anything. If knights do anything they risk getting hit. Also stunning range is still longer than a knights slash range.

 

Not doing anything like what he just said, lighting and tossing bombs. He could also be sitting in front of his builders and archers creating a human wall. He also could be running around below with shield faced up so you can't hit him. And even when they are doing things, they can easily tell when and where you're going to shoot your arrows in order to simply shield up at the correct time, and if he failed then its 1/4 of the hits he can take. As soon as he gets down to 1, he can retreat.

I hate sexism, so I'm just gonna say I cba to put he/she/it/they so there, good enough.

 

I think the knight's shield should be more susceptible to arrows. Without nerfing its coverage to jabs or slashes, you could add areas where a shield position does not protect (that is not their back) when shot at with arrows.

For example if my shield was to the right, an archer could shoot my head, or if I had my shield to the top right, he could shoot my feet. This means that a single archer could aim for a weak spot, or multiple archers could work together to fire at multiple weak spots to ensure a hit from range, no matter the shield position.

 

Hey buddy. Hey. Don't change what I said.

That is what I said, and I will stand by it.
You are also incorrect when saying "if Knights do anything they risk getting hit". The Knight can continue to Shield while doing many things, such as priming a bomb, and I'm fairly sure he can even stay Shielded while holding a Boulder. Both of these capabilities are invaluable; you can continue to mess up defences with explosives even with your Shield protecting you from the Archer who should be protecting said defences, then get to that Archer. The way it's implemented is pretty arbitrary too, because you can't Shield while carrying a Mine, but you can Shield while eating a burger to gain health.

That's a good idea, it's been brought up before, and then they dismissed it because apparently latency issues would mean lagging players wouldn't be able to aim for it correctly. That's silly, if your lag is so awful that you can't react quickly enough to match a shield direction to a relatively predictable arrow direction then you shouldn't be playing a twitch-reflex class like Knight anyway.
It should be implemented, even if we have to trade off Legolas shot 11-tile penetration for it. It would encourage more intelligent use and aiming of the Shield, and thus give the Archer counterplay to the Knight's Arrow counter.