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

[Peregrine]

Heh.

Alright, how about a simple solution for "tank and spank" mechanics then. Every class except archer gets a party buff which is unique to their own class. That way, almost every class gets brought to parties, and only the most competitive members of each class are brought. Boring, but simple.

We've already tried this. Feint-era. Failed. The classes are inherently so unequal the the provided buffs would have to be completely ridiculous. Double the crit rate of the team with marauder. 1.5x TP gain with a lancer. Stupid, broken buffs.

But you know what the players would end up doing with it? They'd pick the best one and invite one of them. So in effect, the party goes from:

Gladiator
Archer
Archer
Archer
Archer
Archer
Archer
Thaumaturge

To:

Gladiator
Archer
Archer
Archer
Archer
Archer
Token Marauder
Thaumaturge.

Oh, and the marauder needs to stand in the corner and not do anything. He's just there to boost the archers.

[Verecund]

Which wouldn't be an issue of the encounters themselves are balanced, as they should be, as everything else should be, etc. etc.

But, simply nerfing archer damage to have slightly less damage just because they are out of range (though logically sound) is somewhat of a flat change, in that the Archer would still have little real engagement in fight mechanics (unlike other classes that have to stay within a certain range).

Although, maybe something along the lines of a slight damage nerf IN ADDITION to a range nerf (as well as having abilities to increase range for a limited amount of time) would be slightly better design in that the player would have to engage actively in order to better help their healers out, or avoid AoE debuffs, etc.

(Although I still hate the above because it simply dumbs alot of things down into a "mana war", which is okay for some encounters but just flat out boring when it is monotonously the focus of every fight).

[Physic]

thing here to realize, is that archers got a couple hidden buffs in this game, without them realizing it.

The economy changed, a lot due to leves being the best exp, and people sharing them all the time. People now have more money than they know what to do with.

Also they increased the amounts of arrows made with a synth by 10, they alos increased the amount of items you get when making the items to make arrows, the increased the supply of crafting arrows by a lot

They increased your stacks from 99 to 999, this means you can carry way more arrows, you pay less of a price inventory wise, and you need never fear running out of arrows in combat again

these combined to make arrows almost a non issue anymore, back when each synth was 3 arrows, required glue, and horns and what not, back when archers needed people to hold arrows for them, and when spammin quick nock and multi shot and volley might actually depelete your arrows in a long fight, then maybe more dmg was justified, maybe, but not anymore, at the very least you must admit it shouldnt be as powerful as it used to be, because it used to be a lot more expensive, and you think expensive equals dmg.

That aside you cant weaken archers too much because although they take no dmg, most healers would rather have a more effective DD and let thier aoe heals be put to more use, than take someone who can only damage for less

The answer is lower their dmg a bit, or the skills that give them that dmg effectiveness, and increase thier utility. They are supposed to be the person who can effect battle, they need thier situational arrows, arrows that can lower defense, blind mobs, change a weakness etc lower emity etc, they should be the long range dudes who can alter the course of battle even more than lancers, because they can do it from a distant position.

The other solution, and probably the better one, is to actually use party battle mechanics, Boss NMs need to hang out with each other, mobs of different types need to hang out. Some monsters should have more hatred for ranged attackers, or healers than others. Break the trinity down, or at least make it more complicated by including multiple mobs, and new tactics shine. Then your defense actually matters, you may actually have to stop shooting when A NMs pet eyes go crazy if someone shoots thier boss. you might actually need 2 healers, or someone subbing heals, Or the Dps provided while tanking on a marauder or pugilist might be worthwhile to burn down lesser enemies, lancers heavy trammel aoe might be useful, and the accuracy check for subbing it might be worthwhile.

These types of fights will be more entertaining, and use more of our skill sets. This is the type of things that need to happen imo

[Shampooo]

Haha you don't need to stun an ability that only hits your tank because everyone else is out of range. When all your members are archers there are only two critical roles. The tank and the tank healer.

Which is why FFXIV only has 3 real jobs. The other ones are useless.

Didnt you say to look to the future? i think we're all hoping for more dynamic fights to come where we're required to do more than tank and spank. Maybe we'll have some encounters where AE dmg will be flying all over the place requiring ranged fighters to change position often. This would then make archers do less damage, and if they do get nerfed then they would be worthless to bring to the fight. Hopefully SE stays true to the word and brings very unique fights to the game where some fights maybe have archers being top DPS, where as some fights may have pgl or other melee being top DPS. That being said, some classes are already more effective at fighting certain things due to different damage types. Also, thats what makes this game great and the armory system fun, your not locked into a certain job or class. if you spend the time you can rank up which ever class you need and bring w/e is most effective to the fight. There will always be one role doing more dmg on a fight than another, why bring the less effective class. lets say we have big giant super strong crab NM, we're gonna see a giant group of pgl beating on the NM, who cares if they are in range of AE, i dont know any healer who wont switch his heals to AE, from there its just positioning, you can have one healer healing everyone taking dmg.

[Peregrine]

Which wouldn't be an issue of the encounters themselves are balanced, as they should be, as everything else should be, etc. etc.


Sigh :/

Dude, if they could fix it your way they would have. Years ago. There's nothing you can do. Ranged attackers are inherently broken and imbalanced. The only viable solution is to nerf their damage OUTPUT. Period. There is no other solution. If you give other players party boosts, the archers will simply pick up a token player and continue shooting things at range with immunity.

At this point, this is such a predictable discussion that if there is ANYONE in this thread who didn't see my last post coming as a response to "give jobs party boosts", they just need to play more games before arguing.

There are three jobs in FFXIV, with the potential to be a 4th.
Gladiator
Thaumaturge
Archer
And anyone who makes the remaining archers better even with one less archer.

This is the disgusting reality many of you all demand with your laissez-faire attitudes. It is the only outcome unless you nerf archers' OUTPUT.

[Peregrine]

Didnt you say to look to the future? i think we're all hoping for more dynamic fights to come where we're required to do more than tank and spank.

This is the MMO genre. We're at maintenance. There is nothing new under the sun. If these chronic problems with archers haven't been solved in 7 years of trying, they won't be solved unless you do what needs to be done.

Reduce their output. End this nonsense. They don't get slowed. They don't get petrified. They don't get hit. They don't get stunned. They don't get paralyzed. They don't get stomped. They don't get anything. They just keep shooting.

[Verecund]

Sorry for the extended edit.

But, there is not just one solution to a last-gen problem, believe it or not.

[Peregrine]

There is one solution. The one that needs done. The one that always needed done. The only one that shut rangers and their machinations down.

Reduce their output compared to the close-quarter DDs. You cannot solve it any other way. Try. Go ahead. There is no cap on posts that I know of in threads. Now is your chance to do it YOUR way, because I already know my way will work.

The developers have NO IDEA how to fix this problem without doing exactly what I've proposed. Go ahead. If you think you can fix it, fix it. This thread's still open for a reason. Thaumaturge and archer are up on the chopping block as we speak.

[Verecund]

Your only solution has been to reduce damage output.

So basically, there will still be fights where everyone rolls archers so that the healers only have to focus on healing the tanks, while the archers can sit safely far away dealing slightly less damage than before. It may take longer, but it is the same essential damn thing that we have now.

[Nephera]

The typical industry solution is just make it easier for ranged damage dealers to pull aggro if they dont pace themselves and give them flimsier armor. If they pull hate off the tank boom they're dead within seconds.

Damage dealing typically isnt balanced like "Well they have range so they shouldnt hit as hard as melee classes" its balanced like "Well they have less armor so they should hit harder but will get overwhelmed if they are attacked" this keeps one type of ranged dd from being a flat out better choice than another because of what they can do besides damage deal.


Edit: "There is no other way to solve this problem"

haha are you serious? Nearly every mmo with more than one type of ranged damage dealer had/has this problem, in an industry full of creative minds you really think nobody has come up with different methods?