Archer Balance [371]

@Dawn,

I don't think archers need a melee weapon, if they are close enough to use it they're dead anyway. Because think about it, would this knife really help them from a knight on their butt? If you're that close you are better off firing arrows into his head anyway.

 

I'll change the wording of my post a little bit, I don't think my message was conveyed correctly Blueluigi. What I meant was skilled knights in ideal combat shouldn't have a hard time shielding and being close to archers, so the way archers are now is not OP if you take away all of the de-syncs and weird things that happen.

 

All this rambling about archers. In my opinion, it is not OP, one shield and you're safe. If you are a builder, you dont have to be on the front lines, if you are, you will die a lot anyway unless you dig yourself in. As another archer, you are even.

There is absulutely no problem with archers. They are ranged, what do you expect them to do? Hand-to-hand combat? It's not like they did that in the real medieval wars...

 

So, you are saying that close range arrows such has 'grey arrows' damage being increased? Or do you mean that with a fully charged shot that being closer will do more damage?

if you do mean the grey arrow option, then i completely disagree with you. if grey arrows did one heart dam, and you could spam them as fast as a builder can attack, then knights would be useless against them, if the knight had no bomb.

Knights have a hard time shielding archers because of the new shield delay glitch/bug. So it is hard to get near them without taking a lot of damage.

 

I think he means more that the closer the range hte more damage in general, and further away vice-versa, so a high power shot might do 2 hearts at very closest range and only 1 maybe even .5 at furthest, not that those are the values he's suggesting obviously, and the same would apply to medium power, obviously low power will only do .5 damage or more if it falls enough to build up the pace.

This is the exact problem though, if builders aren't supposed to go on the front line, and archers are supposed to stay at long range, how on earth would you ever siege a tower? If you stuck to those roles then the game would either be a stalemate cos no-one would attack, or whoever decided to attack loses. In medievel times I'm pretty sure 99.999% of archers never climbed a tree to fire, and certainly didn't hop between them, or off a castle on to them either.

 

I'm going to agree with Kouji but I do think some of the tweaks are just a bit too much, therefore I put my own list here with some of Kouji's idea's in it.

-Archers should be able to outrun builders and knights, this way they don't have to fight in close-range to survive.
-Wanting to shoot decreases mobility a lot ( like it is now ) and those tree jumps will be heavily tweaked too in that state, to make sure there is no way for an archer to be fast while wanting to shoot.
-Make shooting an arrow take 0.2 seconds longer instead.
-Make arrow damage a bit more dynamic:
Releasing an arrow right away will do 0.25 damage.
Releasing an arrow a bit later will do 0.5 damage.
Releasing an arrow half charged will do 0.75 damage
Releasing an arrow almost charged 1 damage
Charged arrow will do 1.5 damage.

Of course it's the speed that will be the most important factor at determining the damage. (Charging = equal to the speed of the arrow anyway.)


I think these tweaks, will not make an archer that weaker at all in mid and long range but they will be far less strong in close range if they are being chased.

Because they can outrun builders and knights, archers won't die as much and have as much reason to spam arrows to make sure they survive.

 

I can't agree. In my opinion and game experience, archers dont have to be OP at all and an arrow might for through a shield once every 5 matches due to lag, no problem. And ofcourse it doesn't shield all around you, thats the point of having a direction driven shield, and even then, they block way more already than they really should.

And most importantly, archers are and will be archers! This is how bow&arrow works and has always worked.

 

Archers aren't OP at all.

If you can't block them, sucks for you. I don't see how it makes them OP.

What needs to be fixed is the shield bugs.

Also, if you guys are all going to whine about them being op, take away some of the damage their arrows do and make him more mobile. It'll make the class funner.

Although, there really is no need for change. The archer is great in balance already.

 

So 5 archers + a tower = win is a good mechanic for the game?
Noone is saying archers are overpowered in general, just in defensive mobs, currently there is no way of attacking unless the team and or the tower your attacking are/is completely retarded.

 

I don't think you guys read my comment, Since the new update you can not just shield before a arrow hits you, there is a delay before the shield works, so half the time the arrow goes through the shield.

@ BoiiW Yes archers are archers, If you have ever used a bow you would know that you can't fire it like a machine gun.

 

I play archer just as much as the other two classes >.>

 

I think that part of the reason there is a balance issue here is just how the units are played. They seemed to be balanced more for a 1v1 type of situation. That's not what happens though. Builders are usually scattered on the map getting resources, building up defenses, and helping out knights on the front line. Knights are located mostly at the front, but in most pub games you don't see a concentrated effort on the part of knights to push in waves, so they constantly filter in and die. Archers though, accumulate around defensible positions within arrow shot of the front line. Unlike the other two groups, archers are very likely to aggregate together, and just making it flat-out annoying to play against. Their job specifically is to not die while harassing/killing as many of the enemy as possible.

There are a few ways around this.
-nerf archers' raw ability through attack speed, attack power, etc.
-nerf archers' arrow capacity by capping the number of carriable arrows (or way less to make it noticeable, if it already is capped), making arrows cost more at shops/giving less gold from hitting people, and making arrows take longer to harvest
-make defensible positions easier to assault with more/better siege weapons like stronger catapults, ballistae, and siege towers (upgraded siege workshop anyone?)

The first option just works around the problem that archers have of bunching up and camping by making them not matter as much anymore. The second one forces them to scatter across the map a little, making it hard for all of the archers to be at the front at any one time (barring organized games). The third provides a legitimate counter to it.

 

I think the players playing archer's are doing good, and that's why people think they're OP.

Let me put it this way: Knights fight in groups, and charge as a group and fight. Archers hold back in good defensible positions and fire at the enemy.

Knights never do that. They charge one by one to their deaths.

Archers DO do that, and they get called OP for it.

That's just my opinion.

 

It's not that archers are good, though, that makes them do that. It's just the mechanics of the class they are using. If you are using a knight, who's primary weapon is melee, the natural inclination is to go up to an enemy's face and slash at them. You don't get the luxury of camping in a good defensible position if you are a knight, in a way that feels rewarding to the player. Sure, you can defend your archers against other archers. But you receive no gold for it, no kills, no assists, you can still take damage from multiple archers firing together and bombs, and you aren't helping to take ground. Knights are supposed to be offensive, archers defensive, and the individual's incentive/reward comes from following that objective.

For archers, the primary inclination is to use the range of your weapon to your advantage. The best way for you to accomplish that objective right now is to stock up on arrows, find a good spot where you can camp and won't take much damage, and fire away. It's not that there is skill involved, it's just what the mechanics convince the players to try and do.

Even then, that's not the OP part. What people are complaining about are bugs like being able to hit multiple enemies standing together with one arrow and mechanics like spamming low strength shots, which, combined together with the tendency of archers to cluster together, make it ultimately very difficult to take a position without sending builders to dig underneath the structure. The problem is, that process is very slow, very easily countered by enemy builders reinforcing the structure, and the rest of your team will often keep assaulting the position and losing more lives in the process so that they won't lose what ground they have in case the attempt at destroying the wall fails.

 

Well you can still have a bit of tactical thought involved in your positioning and movement about the place your defending, but your point is pretty much spot on. The overpowering thing is that in a group mediocre archers can have a big effect against very good knights and builders just by the virtue of sheer numbers. At a 1:1 ratio the balance goes more and more in favour of archers as the number goes up against a defensive position, even in open combat really, if you had 20 archers on a tower how can you realisitcally get anywhere near it, if they aren't complete morons they'll take out any catas and the only other alternative is tunneling. Simple truth is full powered arrows break shields, and after that a knight is fucked, if there's another 4 archers shooting vaguely in your direction your gonna take damage, it doesn't take skill to shoot in the direction of a mob of knights and builders.

Archers can be very skilled, and a skilled archer camping in a tower will be more effective then one that isn't, but the whole principle of having a ranged weapon and sitting in a tower and shooting a groups of people neither takes a great deal of experience or tutoring to work, out or a great deal of skill to do.

The ideal would be to have more siege weapons, if we had that weird arrow umbrella thing and the ballista (which I'm hoping is gonna do damage to walls and stuff) so you could have something that can accurately target certain parts of a castle and damage archer cover. But that just isn't gonna happen soon or in the free version.

 

I know archers aren't good and that's why they do it, yes it's because it's their mechanics.

That's why being a Knight can be harder. And that takes skill. This is a game, if you don't have enough skill you will lose.

The best way to fix this would definitely be a kind of catapult that is armored and can't take damage from archers.

 

I don't think archers are the problem in these last few builds (except the speed and damage rate of a low power arrow)
I say that the nerfs and the new mechanics that were introduced a few builds back really stuffed up balance between classes.
I have a few problems with archers, arrows can stop melee attacks even with low power arrows, meaning that a archer that has good timing can stop a knight from attacking him even when he is 1 block away.
Over powered volleys can destroy any living thing that happens to get in the way.
Low power arrows has a massive dps rate.
I rather have the other classes buffed then archers being nerfed.
sorry if this makes no sense I'm a bit sick.