Archer Athletics

Hello there, intrepid viewer of these fine forums. You are most likely thinking to yourself already, "Man, another archer thread? When will the madness end?" Unfortunately, I have no answer to that. Hopefully, though, you won't take this as just another archer thread, but something quite neat and innovative. I suggest that, to fill the long empty keybinding of spacebar for archer, we give them a new move. Nothing quite crazy enough to break the game, but something useful enough to give new archers the edge they need in combat.

I call it Archer Athletics! What I'm thinking is that, if an archer hits spacebar, they should roll. "Well, that was very bland." You may be thinking. Yet, it's not bland at all! It is, in fact, the peak of useful! What I imagine for this fine move is this:

Picture yourself as an archer, and a knight has almost caught up to you. In most cases, this either ends with a VERY close grapple escape, or death. With this new move, no more of the adrenaline pumping escapes of days past. I propose that the dodge roll makes you invincible for at least .2 seconds, and quickly rolls you forwards. This is just what you needed to escape from that death sentence.

Oh noes, but there's a wall in the way! Well, I also propose that if you run into a wall, you gain a slightly longer invincibility, and roll for a farther distance the opposite way by kicking yourself off the wall! Who knows? Maybe this could even include a bit of an attack!

"But now I'm stuck in water, and a knight is catching up to me!" For this situation, I propose that, only in water, you can instigate athletics and quickly swim away in water, working the same way as on land, but without a roll!

"What if you're grappling and you hit spacebar?" Well, I've thought about this for awhile, and I've decided that it should contract your grappling hook quickly and keep you reeled in for as long as you hold it, so that you can either reach somewhere faster, or dodge an arrow flying at you. It would be like the roll, where you have to wait for the action to complete it's whole course before you can do it again. This means that once you start reeling in, you can't use it again until you're reeled out again.

"This sounds horrible. Archers are never gonna be in close combat, and this will be useless" This is where you are wrong. You can NEVER say ANY class will avoid close combat and be correct. Even the most scared of all archers never camp forever, they all move forwards to where the action is eventually.

"Well, this is OP, because archers will just roll around and taunt knights." Notice how I said .2 seconds on the length of invincibility. Not only can this expand or contract as necessary, but it means that once you instigate the roll, you must go through with the whole thing before you can begin another one. This means a surefire escape method for archers caught off-guard, but not an overpowered mechanic that would destroy the gameplay.

Thank you for either reading through all that or skipping to the end!
I apologize for any spelling or grammer mistakes. Please don't point them out unless they're critical to understanding this.
I hope to see lots of positive feedback!

 

I did read your suggestion carefully and that is my answer. Not to be an ass but I feel like the classes in game are fine right now. But that is just my opinion.

 

This is just saying that an archer should be able to dodge a knights slash no matter what and only a well timed bomb could kill the archer, Archers are already able to get away quick enough with grappling. Why should they even be more acrobatic when they are the most agile class in the game? (except in water).

 

This is not just saying that archers need to be able to escape knights whenever! This is saying that they need to have some chance at escaping from all of the thousands of situations (many of which I have been a part of) where a knight is chasing an archer on any terrain, and 90% of the time, the archer doesn't live! This change would allow that number to go down drastically! Furthermore, it fits the archer's style perfectly! They only have 2 hearts because they are nimble and agile! This is a demonstration of that agility.

If you want to know, I got this idea from playing Monster Hunter. I won't go into too much detail, but the dodge mechanic in those games prevents a lot of repetitive deaths for the classes not as well armored! Archer has 2 hearts, and if you want to be efficient, you MUST get close to the enemy's base! Not only is this one of the hardest things in the world, archers' lifespans are quite short unless they know every map by heart and are extremely good at the game.

This suggestion would allow lenience for archers! A way for the new people to escape from the constant danger, and a way for the veterans to preform new tricks! I don't see why this community seems against change to the classes so much, since it's been long needed.

 

Then, It would be nice to see the distance of the archer roll specified and perhaps even a charge time.

Woah, hold it right there! An archer can grapple away with ease, legolas him, even full charged shot can stun the knight long enough for the archer to bolt. If the archer chooses to stay there and continue to show aggresion towards the knight and in the process gets himself killed, That would be the recklessness of the archer. 90% of the archers are being reckless. The other 10% are the ones have mastered the class the archer class and know what they are doing (or just not being reckless). This has been said a countless times, The archer is a ranged class, Not a meele.

Grappling can definitely avoid knights slashes and catapult him quite a distance away from the knight. I just see this has a minute version of grappling

Grappling would be a long distance move, Rolling would be a short distance. Why would you want to roll away than grapple for a longer distance?

 

Malitha, I don't think you quite understand what I'm trying to get at with this suggestion. A lot of times, when you attempt to shoot a knight in the face to prevent him from hitting you, he takes the hit, then pulls some tricks off and slaughters you. See this at 12:30 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8o0TDW3oth0 Not the best example, but the best I could find on quick notice. In this, you see the archer has a choice to either stand his ground and triple shot the knight (which he does) or run for his life. He Legolas shots the knight in the face and pays for it with his life. If he had grappled away within the last 2 seconds of the knight approaching him, he would've been killed by the knight as well. This suggestion is a way for an archer to, last second, get away from a knight. This is a "Oh crap, I waited too long to make a decision about whether I should shoot him or run, now I'm just dead." This is a fast paced game. I'm not denying that. What I'm denying is how you keep talking about grappling like it solves every single problem when it clearly doesn't. It takes instant reflexes to find a spot in range to grapple to, and even then it takes a little bit to reel in. If you don't make a decision within an EXTREMELY short amount of time sometimes, you die. I'm not saying archer should be invulnerable, either. This would also make archer battles a little more interesting, and I took this into consideration while thinking about these changes. If you're rolling, you probably shouldn't be able to shoot, either. Also, if you're in water you're just plain screwed unless you're close to land. If you are shooting a knight while he's chasing you, and you try to grapple away, chances are he'll get to you before you can get away and slash you. The big thing here is that knights have a low skill curve whereas archers have a large one. Anybody can pick up a knight and within a week be kicking butt. Anybody who becomes dedicated to archer has a very bumpy ride ahead of themselves. Being able to roll out of danger, again, reflects their class type (light) and would be a suitable escape option. The distance rolled would be reasonable, I think, mostly because the invincibility wouldn't last long.

 

So this is clearly saying that the archer can ninja away from the knight at the last second, meaning that the only way a knight can kill this archer is by bombing him. All the archer needs to do is time his button press and knights can never hit him. I can see being heavily abused, roll away then quick grapple to safety, Repeat for never getting slashed from a knight.

He clearly didnt have his legolas charged at the time the knight was coming at him and you say that he does....
He didn't even fire an arrow when the knight was on top of him.
And then again, The way the knight got to the archer was by pure chance and not by skill.

You completely disregard my thoughts on this matter, and you are repeating the same thing you said in your previous post.

Not necessarily does it take instant reflexes for an archer to find a spot to grapple to, I've seen many archers who are agile enough to quickly run away from knight slashes squeeze in a half shot and avoid their bombs. I never said that grappling solves EVERY single problem archers have but just making an archer a complete ninja with the ability to block off knight slashes using his immunity rolling which you talked about is just too much..

Quoting this from your first post :

So now they can wall-roll parkour ninja can they? And even attack knights back while doing this and this also increases their invincibility. I'm assuming that this attack would be some sort of a stomp, And in any case all classes have the ability to stomp, why should they archer be this heavily overpowered?

 

Ok Malitha, tell you what. I'm going to a computer camp next week. If I learn to mod, I will mod this onto a server and see how it does. After that, we can conclude if it is overpowered, as you suggest, or perfect fine, as I suggest. If anyone else has any thoughtful comments to add to this post, be my guest.

 

Classes are in perfect balance right now, after knight's shield has been nerfed.

 

Does anybody in these forums put ANY thought into what they write before they post it? It's absolutely absurd that so many people disregard suggested changes just because the suggested changes don't immediately give them yet another edge in combat. Everything is NOT perfectly balanced right now. Archers are still killed like pigs because they don't see a knight coming close, or because they don't notice a bomb being lit. "Oh, well if you're just ultra-observative and grapple precisely in the 2 seconds a knight has to take to charge up a slash, you're the best class in the world!" No! Just stop with the "Archer's fine the way it is" statement. No archer can ever 1) Find a perfect spot on the front lines that is far enough from the battle that you're safe, but close enough to the battle that you can shoot down the enemies 2) Focus on the archer duel you're having AND the huge knight battle going on AND the offensive builder coming your way 3) Grapple away at the last second from a charging knight. Guess what? They're better than you in every way if they get within 7 blocks without you knowing, which is EXTREMELY easy. Even if you do notice them, there's a good chance you'll still die! They can shield slide much faster than you can grapple, and do you know why? Because if you try to grapple to get away, you grapple to every tree in your path, which the knight conveniently slides past until he bumps you, stuns you, and stabs you twice. And even if things go a little good, and you notice him before he starts charging up the instant killing move that all archer's despise, the slash, that also barely slows him down, you're stuck desperately charging your arrow which takes longer to charge and slows you down a ton. He just races forward a little and you're dead. Even if my suggestion isn't the right one, you cannot correctly deny that archers need some form of melee capability. They are literally the weakest class in the game! They have two hearts, and are the easiest thing to just swat out of your way unless they've spent almost all of their free time training to be the best archer they can be! Please consider using the big globs inside of your heads called brains to think through your posts before posting them. Again, I will hopefully be able to make a mod of this suggestion and prove that it works fine.

EDIT: Also, I read this over 6 times before I finally posted it.

 

1) You have a point. We can just make arrows don't break mid-air or improve their range.

 

Ugh, are you still onto this?

It seems that you take 0% of your time to read my posts because you just keep on ranting on the same thing over and over again.
Statement(3) : (What you said),

And about an archer grappling onto every tree into his path; Grappling onto a tree properly will actually give you a boost and save you from the knight.
You say that a knight can shield slide onto an archer when grappling is faster than a shield slide by far.

How can you say that 0% of archers can never find a good spot? I've seen archers camping atop high towers and shoot down knights with half shots. Well, you also talk about the correct distance an archer has to be in order to shoot down knights;
Statement(1) : You should know that an archer is meant to stick behind enemies and not supposed to be in the heat of the battle
Statement(2) : If there is no cover for an archer he should run back to base and wait for knight backup instead of soloing (which would get him killed). An archer should also learn to stick behind cover (in order to avoid being slashed by knights,being bombed,etc.) By cover I'm referring to both structural cover and the cover knights provide in order to deal with the archer lingering at the back.
Statement(3) broken down above^.

How can you say in it is the weakest class in the game when it possess the ability to fire arrows at the enemy? Builders only do half a heart of damage up close with their measly pick-axes. The archer has the lowest amount of health because it is the most agile class in-game able to weave in and out of battle quickly. Well, If a knight does slash an archer its quick death for him but archers do have the granted opportunity to get away (I've mentioned above).

 

sooo, archers already have:
-dumb hitboxes that often guarantee escape even though they should get hit
-grapple
and you want to give them a shield that lasts 1/5 of a second in an online multiplayer game which is known for being affected by lag greatly?

what could possibly go wrong, OP!

I also think that if you can't play archer because the skill entrance level is too high for you, you should consider switching your class or not trying to rambo