Archer Post 1.19

[Coglin]

Haven't really done the ifrit fight, why are archers useless there?

They are not useless. Its just that morons, fools, and idiots, confuss less then optimal with usless.

[Arya]

They are not useless. Its just that morons, fools, and idiots, confuss less then optimal with usless.

By "less than optimal", you mean things along the lines of not having Sentinel...etc... from other melee jobs?

I think it's unfair to expect that only "the best" of a class should only be able to participate in a particular fight. If you're looking to promote people playing together and enjoying gameplay, fights like Ifrit need to be balanced enough to allow the majority of players in all classes to be able to enter. I agree that there are always those that play their chosen class diabolically and are completely lacking insight into this, but even if you can play ARC fairly well, I think it's still a larger challenge to do Ifrit than with other melee classes.

I don't see most melee skills as meshing well with ARC. Those skills are for players up close, and a lot of the time are wasted on ARC. We could do with a separate set of skills that melee don't get that augment what we need to do specifically (and obviously to counterbalance that we would lose access to melee skills and they to ours).

I'm a die-hard Archer and have continued to play since recent changes, but am not convinced in the arguments suggested above.

So, what benefits do we get in return for this damage reduction?

Being able to range? Well, it is true that we can stand further away than melee (losing the "auto-attack" we've been given - why this was ever done if you're trying to keep a ranged class ranged I don't know), but we are still close enough at times to get hit by AoE regularly. If we're going to be proud of our range, it could do with being a little further to make it a true "plus" of being a ranged class (ie: we don't do as much damage and we can be squishy, but seeng as AoE doesn't reach us, we can keep going that little bit longer when other classes get pounded flat up close).

Arrow types? As already discussed, this idea has gone out of the window to date. It would be nice to be able to choose mob-specific arrows to improve damage. It would be nice to have effect arrows like in FFXI (eg: sleep, stun, poison, elemental attributes...etc...) if we're being pushed down the path of support.

Better defense? Nope, ARC only has access to soft armour. We're pretty much still as squishy as before, so that's not changed.

Future planned changes such as BRD? It's hard to justify changes now if the potential reason is months away from being brought in. That just shows SE don't care whether they temporarily kneecap classes as long as their timetable is unaffected. If this was planned because of BRD, these changes could have been made at the time BRD is brought in.

My Questions/Suggestions

1. Why can't ARC's be given the choice as to whether they want to be damage-dealers (in which case they should be given more damaging skills like a decent 3000TP skill to be able to truly compete with the other melee classes), or supporters (in which case you take a hit in the damage stakes in return for support ability access)?

2. When it is brought in, could Musketeer be the flip side to BRD? ie: Aim for ARC being middle ground damage/some support skills, BRD is less damage/more support, and Musketeer is high damage/no support (ie: the "stereotypical" glass cannon everyone always talks about)?