Archer - Auto Attack

[Richard]

First off why would any competent Archer be anywhere near the mob unless:

a) The fight mechanics deem necessary i.e. "WoW falling ceiling" mechanic
or
b) Applying Subtle Release

There are no other reasonable explanations as to why you would go in melee-range so anyone complaining about an Archer melee-range AA "animation" needs to just insert foot into mouth.

In regards to AA in general FFXI did not give Ranger AA because:

a) Arrows don't stack to 6 billion like in WoW or other MMOs
and
b) Arrows don't cost a retardedly small amount of money like in WoW or other MMOs; Arrows mean something

The cooldown timer on a manual /shoot will be equivalent to a timed AA on any other class and weapon delay will play a HUGE roll in said cooldown timer. (INC FFXI gear referenced) An ARC using Lamian Kaman (260 delay) will have a smaller cooldown timer than a MRD using a Horror Voulge (489 delay).

What all you people should really be worrying about is how they plan to nerf ARC down damage wise to be balanced with other DPS classes.

[Lienn]

Well, now ARCs will play like this:

a) Get into close range and AA.
b) Load multishot, which now will also have timer, during AA.
c) Move out of melee range, foeseeker, buff, light shot, barrage, bloodletter/shreker + shadowbind.
d) move into melee range again and repeat.

This will make it much better for tanking purposes IMO. ARC will have an enmity spike but in a planned instant instead of during all fight. And its not like doing 2 steps forth and back during fight would be that bad.

I liked the change. Its not like they're nerfing the class...they are just offering a new option of how to play it. If the player prefer he can just stick with the very same way he plays right now since ARC actually has 3 basic attacks so you can just alternate light > heavy > close to keep the DPS going.

[Richard]

Well, now ARCs will play like this:

a) Get into close range and AA.
b) Load multishot, which now will also have timer, during AA.
c) Move out of melee range, foeseeker, buff, light shot, barrage, bloodletter/shreker + shadowbind.
d) move into melee range again and repeat.

This will make it much better for tanking purposes IMO. ARC will have an enmity spike but in a planned instant instead of during all fight. And its not like doing 2 steps forth and back during fight would be that bad.

I liked the change. Its not like they're nerfing the class...they are just offering a new option of how to play it. If the player prefer he can just stick with the very same way he plays right now since ARC actually has 3 basic attacks so you can just alternate light > heavy > close to keep the DPS going.

Bad ARCs will play like that sure. You will do twice the damage by staying at range and shooting than you will AAing in between multishots/ws. No one should manually be multishotting unless Raging Strikes is up anyways and that can be timed between shots. Running back and forth is a) a waste of dps stime standing still b) likely to kill you with mob aoe.

[Lienn]

Dude, you don't know if there will be any difference between melee and ranged DPS. You cannot do this kind of affirmation before its live.

And multishot will have recast time so yep you can time it between shot (specially since you will be shotting manually...just like now...so if you can't time your multishot between shots there's something wrong there =P) but you will have a much bigger cooldown while readying it...prolly much bigger than the one of you stepping foward to melee.

But, anyway, we ill need to wait to see...maybe the cooldown isn't big enough...maybe it is decently big...who knows. Its just funny we already having the "bad ARC" play style comment from a system we don't even have the specs still.

[Arya]

First off why would any competent Archer be anywhere near the mob unless:

a) The fight mechanics deem necessary i.e. "WoW falling ceiling" mechanic
or
b) Applying Subtle Release

There are no other reasonable explanations as to why you would go in melee-range so anyone complaining about an Archer melee-range AA "animation" needs to just insert foot into mouth.

In regards to AA in general FFXI did not give Ranger AA because:

a) Arrows don't stack to 6 billion like in WoW or other MMOs
and
b) Arrows don't cost a retardedly small amount of money like in WoW or other MMOs; Arrows mean something

The cooldown timer on a manual /shoot will be equivalent to a timed AA on any other class and weapon delay will play a HUGE roll in said cooldown timer. (INC FFXI gear referenced) An ARC using Lamian Kaman (260 delay) will have a smaller cooldown timer than a MRD using a Horror Voulge (489 delay).

What all you people should really be worrying about is how they plan to nerf ARC down damage wise to be balanced with other DPS classes.

Well, now ARCs will play like this:

a) Get into close range and AA.
b) Load multishot, which now will also have timer, during AA.
c) Move out of melee range, foeseeker, buff, light shot, barrage, bloodletter/shreker + shadowbind.
d) move into melee range again and repeat.

This will make it much better for tanking purposes IMO. ARC will have an enmity spike but in a planned instant instead of during all fight. And its not like doing 2 steps forth and back during fight would be that bad.

I liked the change. Its not like they're nerfing the class...they are just offering a new option of how to play it. If the player prefer he can just stick with the very same way he plays right now since ARC actually has 3 basic attacks so you can just alternate light > heavy > close to keep the DPS going.

@Richard

It's not unreasonable to be concerned about a ranged class being given a melee range auto-attack. Sure you can just refuse to go closer as you've already said (and as I suggested earlier too), but that may potentially put us at a dmg disadvantage versus melee who will be making use of their auto-attack. This is of course assuming that auto-attack dmg (even if small), is worth the effort of the movement. If it is, then as Lienn said, we'll have to get used to moving backwards and forwards, although as I tend to stand near the edge of where I can range attack from (as I like to take advantage of the fact that a ranged attacker doesn't have to be caught in all AoE's), it'll be a little more than just "2 steps".

And RNG DID have auto-attack in FFXI, you used melee attacks just as planned here (ie: daggers and axes generally). In fact, before the original "nerf" of RNG, IIRC (it has been a long time since I've played RNG, and so although I was there at the time, my memory does get a little hazy now) it was commonplace for many players to sit in melee range to gain TP faster before releasing weaponskills. AFAIK, TP gain with auto-attack will exist here (if i'm mistaken, someone please correct me), which again brings another reason why we may have to move back and forth if we want to gain TP more efficiently.

@Lienn

Yes, I think your suggestion of how we may have to play ARC might be right (although obviously only time will tell). I agree, the fact we may be spending time moving back and forth and relying on auto-attack between timers (and I'm assuming that therefore there will be a reduction in the speed of special skills being used - of which Light Shot would now be considered as it too will have a timer - unless SE balance the timers very well after a little tweaking), could indeed result in less hate generation by ARC, making the tank's job easier. Or did I misunderstand what you meant about tanking?

I don't think this is a nerf as well, but I don't think that we're being given another option. I think the way this is potentially being implemented will encourage/force (depending on your view pick the word of choice) us to change how we play if we want to remain "efficient" Archers.

However, until we see what the timers are like and what TP gain and dmg from auto-attack is like, we'll have no idea whether we have no choice but to move between melee/ranged distances, or be able to stay at ranged distances (as the benefits of dmg and TP from auto-attack will be too poor to warrant the effort), or whether things will be so good with auto-attack that we'll choose to stay in melee range (at the cost of potentially reduced dmg from ranged attacks).

Guess we've all said what can be said about this?

[Richard]

Even with the initial Ranger nerf in FFXI the main form of TP generation was always /ra not /nin melee. Axe/Dagger in XI had a B- rating and the only thing that came remotely close to the DPS was Ridill / KC spam for TP.

Ranged attacks always did more damage than melee AA in FFXI and to think that it would be different in this game is pretty ignorant. But yes time will tell. Less than 2 weeks in fact.

Lastly if you need to manage threat by going into AA mode then your tank is doing something wrong. You have Quelling Strike, Sough Speak and Chameleon for a reason.

[Alaltus]

I've been playing archer for sometime and i find that i spend alot of my time using multishot/trifurcate, i dont really see where ranged auto-attack is supposed to be needed. Now if they nerf the attack buffs so that they no longer stack on all 3 arrows then maybe... but then i can still see myself wanting to tp through multi-shot. The way archer is now is what makes archer unique imo i dont really see enough benefit in removing that.

[Lienn]

Even with the initial Ranger nerf in FFXI the main form of TP generation was always /ra not /nin melee. Axe/Dagger in XI had a B- rating and the only thing that came remotely close to the DPS was Ridill / KC spam for TP.

Ranged attacks always did more damage than melee AA in FFXI and to think that it would be different in this game is pretty ignorant. But yes time will tell. Less than 2 weeks in fact.

Lastly if you need to manage threat by going into AA mode then your tank is doing something wrong. You have Quelling Strike, Sough Speak and Chameleon for a reason.

I just marked a spot where you just overlooked the main point here. In FFXI it was indeed some major difference between melee and ranged attack...but that's part of 2 points that don't exist here (at least until now).

a) In FFXI the damage was directly connected to skill, which weakened melee weapons used by RNG if compared to ranged weapons and made the difference much more expressive.

b) Here you don't have (and by what Matsui said never will) the melee weapon. Since you only have the bow it will be the reference for both melee and ranged damage.

This said, i do agree that melee damage will be lower than ranged...it must be...but i do believe that the damage/accuracy difference will be restricted to the arrow you're using. If you're in melee range you use bow's attack and accuracy...and if you use ranged attack you will have bow+arrow attack and accuracy.

But i do am concerned about this too...so much i already tossed SE some suggestions regarding this matter, including the suggestion of a basic action that makes you automatically pull back outside melee range when you use it. This would make the "moving back" almost instantly, not affecting the player's DPS since you would be pulled back by your attacks' effect.

@Arya: Yep, you're correct in both replies. But its that thing...right now we're just guessing stuff based on what we saw...its like we doing a jigsaw...we only got a buch of missing pieces still so we're trying to understand the image based on the pieces we have. ^^

[Dakin]

Well, now ARCs will play like this:

a) Get into close range and AA.
b) Load multishot, which now will also have timer, during AA.
c) Move out of melee range, foeseeker, buff, light shot, barrage, bloodletter/shreker + shadowbind.
d) move into melee range again and repeat.

This will make it much better for tanking purposes IMO. ARC will have an enmity spike but in a planned instant instead of during all fight. And its not like doing 2 steps forth and back during fight would be that bad.

I liked the change. Its not like they're nerfing the class...they are just offering a new option of how to play it. If the player prefer he can just stick with the very same way he plays right now since ARC actually has 3 basic attacks so you can just alternate light > heavy > close to keep the DPS going.

This is how I feel about your post

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7_KIzbktgJk

[Kaida]

I was hoping that we would club them with our bows