Game Design A Couple Suggestions On How Archer Could Be Balanced/nerfed

I am aware that class balancing is probably an age-old argument, but with the release of 1.20 and the lack of changes to classes (besides vanish 2 mana), I thought I might make a couple suggestions.


Archer is probably the most popular class in wynncraft and for good reason: It is arguably the best for both pve and pvp. It’s superior range, damage, and mobility make it an ultimate killing machine, and because of its nature it is a bit hard to balance with other classes. There are however things that can be changed listed below. Tl;dr at the end.

1. Arrow shield
   
   
   1. While this spell is cast, there is a weird aspect where attacks (at least arrow storm, which is the most important in this) spawn from the edge of the shield instead of from the character. This completely ruins the trade off of survivability for damage, as casting Arrow shield allows you to deal more damage while also having more survivability, as you are able to get all the damage of arrow storm off without having to get close at all. Even if all mechanics of archer were kept the same besides this one, it would be a big, but not build changing, balance to the class. Moving the arrow storm back from the shield edge also encourages archer to have to make a decision between not casting it, risking their health for the amazing damage of getting all three streams to hit, or casting it, keeping archer from getting close enough to do the same damage, but giving a lot more survivability.

POINTED OUT BY THE COMMENTS: The way arrow shield works means that it would block all the arrows if this was implemented. However someone else suggested that there could be a way to simulate the origination towards the player by spreading out the points that the arrows from, which I think is a great idea. Another possibility is to make arrow storm originate from outside the shield area even if it is not active, and the spell is nerfed in some way to compensate. Another more extreme way is below, where you just can't attack at all when arrow shield is up.

1. 1. Things like enemy spells in pvp should immediately dispel arrow shields, similar to how fall damage or ranged attacks from pve do. Melee attacks should also either completely dispel or at least remove charges from the shield.
      
      
   2. I believe that having Arrow shield out for an extended period should have consequences, like assassin’s Vanish as they are similar in their uses. This could be through a mana drain, however I believe that this is a bit extreme. Instead, mana could be taken away every time that arrow shield loses a charge in a fixed amount, such as two, punishing people who spam it for infinite protection and somewhat preventing archers from being able to cast it a second time once the shield has run out. If this is implemented, arrow shield should probably be buffed in some way, such as being able to block projectiles.
2. Melee
   
   1. I believe that archer arrows as of now do not need to directly strike an enemy to deal damage to it, which is understandable, however this gets a bit out of hand when it comes to pvp. For pvp, this hitbox should be at least reduced a little bit if not completely scrapped to balance out the fact that archers can snipe from many, many, blocks away, making it quite overpowered when it comes to ambushing hunted people who are just gathering. The below change to arrow storm would also aid in the reduction of this ability.
3. Arrow storm
   
   1. There isn’t much about this spell that I would change, however I feel like it’s kind of aesthetically boring. With a name like arrow storm you would expect it to go minigun style and spray all over the place, however instead you get three neat streams of arrows that never deviate from their path. This just isn’t cool, and I believe it should be changed so that arrows fire in front of you with a deviation of up to 20 degrees to the right or left, up to 5 degrees up, and up to 2 degrees down. This is less than the deviation of Arrow storm currently, however the fact that it will do much less damage from further away balances it out.

TL;DR: Stop arrow storm from casting at the edge of arrow shield, make enemy spells in pvp dispel arrow shield, (maybe) add a mana consequence for keeping arrow shield up or for consuming charges, require arrows to hit to deal damage in pvp, make arrow storm a random spray, however more focused horizontally.


If there is something I should add or if enough people agree that one of the suggestions is stupid, just let me know and I’ll change it!

 

1.1 agreed
2.1 hunted was a mistake
3.1 no one likes randomness for no reason

 

The reason that attacks generate from the edge of arrow shield's radius is because the visual effect uses armor stands, which your arrows hit and bounce off of, meaning that if they generated from the player it would become quite literally impossible to damage anything because your arrows would phase out of existence half a meter from your face.

 

It may be worth placing the attacks there by default. (although there's the possibility of losing the very short range targeting, I don't think that's a big deal)

 

Without Arrow Shield, Arrow Storm looks like the first one. With Arrow Shield, it looks like the second one--but would it be possible to make it look like the third one instead, where the arrows all spawn already spread out (as if there was no Arrow Shield but they skipped the first meter) instead of all starting at a single point away from the player? That would solve the issue of Arrow Storm currently being more focused at long range when combined with Arrow Shield while still preventing the armor stand issue.