History repeats itself: Time for the Great Archer Nerf of 2011

[Peregrine]

Im fine with archers having more damage and range honestly, the best and most entertaining solutions lie with the monsters, have mobs that excel at fighting ranged characters mixed with those that do not. Have monsters grouped in parties more often. They should have mobs that can attack from range WITH THIER WS and powerful attacks. More group combat allows different jobs abilities to shine, Throw good NMs in dungeons, or areas where you actually have to fight things to get to it, and it wont be just about who can attack one guy for the most damage.

Also id say archer is one of the more unique classes, They should add more to other classes like this, so even if they have similar damage, the over all playstyle and feel of the class is different. And i really dont mean just more damage, make a mechanic that a class takes advantage of to get damage, if thats what the class is about.

So at face value this can't work, unfortunately. A mage and a ranger can fight just as well up in the mob's face as they can at range. A meleer cannot. Therefore, you can't really design a NM that excels at fighting ranged people, because they can always move closer.

[Xzen]

This is the sticky situation MMORPG makers face. There is a horde of players who know that MMORPGs tend to favor ranged classes and overpower them, and constantly let them run the endgame show. Any MMORPG who takes a stand against them, they ragequit and threaten to stop playing.

They're like senior citizens and self-entitled baby boomers. They block every change that needs to change by threatening to vote whoever does it out of office.

They threaten and threaten, and no one calls them on it until the status gets so bad that action HAS to be taken. So many rangers quit final fantasy XI after the nerf. Sad part is those players caused the quitting of three times as many players, so square enix lost on all fronts.

That's why it's important to nerf archers now. Not later. Nerfing them later does two things. A. It drives other players to quit before archer is balanced. And it causes archers to ragequit when archer is balanced.

Do it now. Do it soon.

So remove all ranged DD and support and spread those abilities between the remaining melee. Get rid of ARC, THM, CON, all together or make them all have the same value to a party as ranged classes. At the moment conjurer is the least useful of the three and needs to be buffed.

[Joe_Cool]

Peregrine, maybe you will be happy if they got rid of ALL DD's except for 1 and all mages except for 1. There you go, balance! Everything is equal

[AlexiaKidd]

Peregrine, maybe you will be happy if they got rid of ALL DD's except for 1 and all mages except for 1. There you go, balance! Everything is equal

Or just remove all skills and abilities and just have Parley maybe???

[Xzen]

Maybe Peregrine will be happy if they got rid of ALL DD's except for 1 and all mages except for 1. There you go, balance! Everything is equal

But where did the Trinity go? Tank, DD, Healer? Anyways the way I see it all the classes kinda have a scale to them with tank on the far left and casters on the far right. with DD and support kind of mixed in the middle. and the classes with the most cross over are the Thm and Con. Your GLD is the pure tank. MRD and PUG are tank/off-tank/DD. LNC is all support/DD. ARC is just DD. THM and CON are DD/Support/Healers.

Gld, Mrd, Pug, Lnc, Arc, Thm, Con

[Physic]

So basically what you guys are saying, is that if archer cant outdamage everyone else, they should cease to exist? That playstyle is irrelevant? The point of archer is to do the most dmg with the least risk, and no other role would be worthy of them?
Lets put it like this, since it really is all about battle afjustments, class uniqueness and the like, for your vision how should these classes work, what should thier role be, and are they achieving that now? also ask yourself if that role is a viable role, and useful in the combat situations that will present themselves in game

I see it this way
Glad, best one on one tank, best for high dmg monsters
IN DD setup, above average one on one potential
Pug most adaptive in defense and offense, close range. excels at single monster combat and mid damage/low accuracy monster tanking.
lnc, best in mid range combat, team buffs and tp management,
marauder, high spikes, excels in close range multi target combat and multi target tanking mid damage monsters.
Archer long range combat specialist, with burst potential and many utility skills.

I dont think any DD should have inately the best Damage, unless they are giving some great utility.

one big key is you have to create situations where one advantage doesnt outweigh all others, thats up to the design of the mobs and the best ways to fight them.

[Xzen]

So basically what you guys are saying, is that if archer cant outdamage everyone else, they should cease to exist? That playstyle is irrelevant? The point of archer is to do the most dmg with the least risk, and no other role would be worthy of them?
Lets put it like this, since it really is all about battle afjustments, class uniqueness and the like, for your vision how should these classes work, what should thier role be, and are they achieving that now? also ask yourself if that role is a viable role, and useful in the combat situations that will present themselves in game

I see it this way
Glad, best one on one tank, best for high dmg monsters
IN DD setup, above average one on one potential
Pug most adaptive in defense and offense, close range. excels at single monster combat and mid damage/low accuracy monster tanking.
lnc, best in mid range combat, team buffs and tp management,
marauder, high spikes, excels in close range multi target combat and multi target tanking mid damage monsters.
Archer long range combat specialist, with burst potential and many utility skills.

I dont think any DD should have inately the best Damage, unless they are giving some great utility.

one big key is you have to create situations where one advantage doesnt outweigh all others, thats up to the design of the mobs and the best ways to fight them.

Ok I can agree with that pretty much. If you take the only thing they are good for away you replace it with some major support type abilities. Now that is fair and makes sense.

[Physic]

Ok I can agree with that pretty much. If you take the only thing they are good for away you replace it with some major support type abilities. Now that is fair and makes sense.

yeah, im just influenced by some of things they claimed they would have. Mostly the various arrows for different situations, like i said, even if they just keep them straight DD, thats fine as long as the fact that they have less defense matters in real game situations. Right now, this may not be the case.

I honestly think all classes should be interesting and varied, but non should be the ultimate answer to most situations.

[Augury]

The problem with the nerf hammer is that it DOESN'T work. In order to achieve balance, there must be some sort of exchange. This problem existed in RO too with the Hunter job for a while (imagine that), but ironed itself out as the game progressed (now it's kind of on the other spectrum of the new Archer job not being so hot). Instead of being near-sighted with the "answer", there is a need to be more constructive. For example, slow down the skill progression at higher ranks while the closer range jobs experience normal skill growth to grind down the modifiers comparatively into a comfortable level. There is no reason to punish Archer players to create "balance", by making them weaker than close-range jobs.

[Joe_Cool]

yeah, im just influenced by some of things they claimed they would have. Mostly the various arrows for different situations, like i said, even if they just keep them straight DD, thats fine as long as the fact that they have less defense matters in real game situations. Right now, this may not be the case.

I honestly think all classes should be interesting and varied, but non should be the ultimate answer to most situations.

I've said it earlier in this thread and I'll say it again. ARC has to buy arrows and that HAS to count for something, rather certain people want to admit it or not. Unless you've spent millions of gil on arrows like I have, YOU JUST DON'T KNOW. Sure, I can buy the 2 gil each warped arrows and then my DPS would drop closer to the other DD's (Arrows also affect acc and crit. hit rate). But I don't. I use the arrows that are optimal for my rank when there is a party or NM hunt run going on so that I can further help that party/linkshell/etc.

And to those that want to say "But ARC can attack from a far, safe distance", they are also the weakest to attacks out of all of the other DD's and with that you also have to consider the very high Enmity that an ARC's abilties/attacks create.