World Archer Changes

For the four years I’ve been here, I had multiple lvl 80 and 90 archers before I got bored and deleted them. The reason why I played archer so much was due to archer's mobility, range, and damage. Though when I started hitting my head on the endgame ceiling, I also felt my head hit archer's defense ceiling.

It's no surprise that class base defense, especially for archer, needs a little tweak. At first archer's defense isn't much of a problem in the beginning to middle game because the numbers for armor and weapon stats are small. However, when archer enters the end game it gets completely demolished by bosses and mobs in general compared to other classes. You might be thinking, "but Archer is supposed to be a class cannon." And yeah, I'm fine with archer being a class cannon, but it feels more like a glass sword that breaks after a swing or two. Sure, you can have an air speed build to dodge enemies, but dodging enemies in Wynncraft works very poorly with LAAAGGGG, especially when you're in a boss room and there's a lag spike, and oh, you're dead.

Which brings me to my other problem with archer: the limited variety of builds. It's not that they're aren't weapons and armor for different types of builds, it's that the only viable options for endgame archer is a water spam spell build or an air speed build. Yes this is a little bit of an assumption and there are other decent builds, but from my own endgame experience and others, these two builds seem to be the best options for endgame. There should be more build variety with archer, and I'd love to see tank archers become more viable.

Thankfully, our lord and savior jp is reworking class base defense. So far he fixed warrior's base defense, but has yet to confirm the other changes. So I think now is the time to propose a few ways to improve archer's defense and itself in general. Note: All these proposals are subject to change and I would appreciate any feedback. Keep in mind each prong is intertwined with another, so a change of one might result in the need for a change of another.

1) Archer's defense is 75%
Pretty self-explanatory. It still is glassy and still has lower defenses than the other classes, but it's not at the point where it's unplayable. Maybe buff mage's defense to 85% to make it more equally between archer and assassin?

2) The Escape spell will now give a defense debuff from grade II and up. The duration will last as much as the speed buff and will reduce archer's defense to 60% (currently being revised).
This is the key part of the entire suggestion. It still makes archer a glass cannon, but it makes being a glass cannon optional. It may seem bad at first, but consider this. The whole point of escape is to dodge enemies, so you're not going to try to take a hit. Adding a defense debuff balances the speed buff by creating a bigger risk-and-reward situation. So if you don't want to take that risk, you can then become a tank, but without the speed buff you won't be a tank with a rocket attached to it. I see it as a best of both worlds scenario where players can become a fast, but weak sanic archer or a slow tank, but not both.

3) Arrow bomb now inflicts 20% of it's damage if you are in a two block radius of where the arrow lands on the initial bounce.
This is probably the most controversial. Everyone knows that archer's main spell is Arrow Bomb because of it's high splash damage. When I played as an archer, it didn't matter if I was far or close to mobs because I could just spam arrow bomb and one shot a horde of zombies that had encircled me. This negates Escape and archer being about precision and long range. By the spell inflicting a portion of the damage, it will make players be more wary of using the spell in close-quarters situations.

4) Nerf Arrow Shield (Kinda obvious and confirmed)
There are many different angles that you can do this. Decrease it's radius, nerf the damage, reduce it's duration. I believe @Selvut283 listed them, but I can't find the thread.

Conclusion
With these changes and more, archer can be great again. I'd appreciate any feedback, especially about the number values. Hopefully this might be added some day.

 

1) Bringing the Archer's defense up to that would force an adjustment to all classes' defenses. Mage's defense is 80% so to keep things balanced, even going by minimum, Mage's defense would need to be brought up to 92.5% and Warrior's would need to be brought down to 107.5%. JP didn't actually reduce the defense that any classes get, just made the modifiers stack in less obtrusive ways, which means while Warriors can't become invincible, Mages and Archers get a slightly greater effect from defense boosts.
2) This means you can have a ridiculously high damage output and an astounding amount of defense at the same time by sacrificing a bit of speed which can easily be made up for by an air build. No. If it should get a defense debuff, it should be always present. Using spells should not negatively affect the player.
3) The Arrow will often use up all its bounces immediately if it hits an opponent directly anyway. This would only make the Archer far worse.
4)

It also has a higher effect range than the actual shield's activation range, and the shield can last for about 50 seconds last I checked the timing before it fades. Its damage needs to be reduced, it needs to not inflict water damage, and it needs to have its blind time reduced to 1-2 seconds like all other blinding spells.

 

For 1 80% is fine. Anything below 75% I feel kinda pushes it. For 2, I'll probably have to rework. It seemed like the best option for a tank archer to be viable while still having archer be as a whole a glass cannon. Do you think there are ways for archer to be viable as a semi-tank? For 3, maybe then on the initial bounce it would inflict damage? For 4, thanks for clarifying.

 

ok

no
problems are this:
You can't shut off the speed and defense, and it lasts for 3 minutes, meaning if all poor lil' jimmy wants to do is use his transportation spell to get across the canyon of the lost, poor lil' jimmy has to suffer the consequence.
What if an archer escapes next to like another class, now they have negative defense when they didn't want it
If your fighting qira, you could use escape to get away from the drones sure, but now your gonna take more damage from qira herself, making escape useless.
Negative Defense from escape is going against using your variety of spells, as you'll no longer want to use escape because that negative defense is there
it would be fine if it was only for like 5-10 seconds after using the spell to make people want to avoid enemies, but if it's for TOO long, then they wouldn't want to use it
Lastly, all classes have a transport spell, but if archer wants to use his, then that's the only class suffering
Charge and Teleport take you long distances with no consequence whatsoever (don't get any ideas) but if archer gets a consequence, then you guess it, no one will use it
(also the spell does do damage, but only if you get close to your enemy so now if you use archers attack, you'll make yourself even more vulnerable)

so we will damage ourself if we use it?
back to the other classes spells having no consequence. This makes people not choose the archer. Although this one can be handled better, come on we don't want people to not use it
now we have people only using Arrow Storm and Arrow Shie-

o
well i mean i have to agree it's a broken spell but now we only have people using Arrow Storm

i think these ideas (more specifically 2 and 3) can be handled differently as now we only have archers using arrow storm (or bolt blizzard if your like me and use hunter instead.)

1 and 4 are alright
but come on
2 and 3 needs to be changed

alright im done

 

For 2, wouldn't all status affects be cleared if a player does /class, so the player wouldn't have the defense debuff left? I thought that's how people stopped being on fire. For the duration, I figured it wouldn't be a problem because you'd have enough speed to dodge enemies and after the fight you won't care if you have a defense debuff because nothing can hurt you (this in pve, not pvp w/ poison and all. I'm not touching pvp with a ten foot poll on this thread). For the defense debuff itself, I figured that since people have to currently work around with 60% defense anyway, so at least it wouldn't be unique to trying to solo Qira in the status quo.

But overall, I'm going to do a rework of 2. The biggest loophole I just realized is that since mages' heal clear all negative status effects, a mage and an archer can become OP. What I was originally going for was a viable, optional way for players to be a semi-tank. I like the idea of having consequences for spells, especially for archer, because it has some one the strongest spells in the game and requires more skill to use effectively. Though you are right that it would turn off players compared to other classes, and I haven't delved enough into other class spells to try to come up with ways to make them have downsides.

For 3, while it does still suffer from the aforementioned reason above, I'll edit it and make it so that it's the initial bounce that only does damage.