Game Mechanics Integrate Archer Weapon Powder Specials w/ Abilities

> Be archer.
> Defeat enemies, gain levels.
> Unlock many cool abilities that upgrade melee attacks.
> Melee attacks get stronger, go further, multiply and lock-on to targets.
> Become right-click master.
> Absolutely demolish the many formidable opponents of Wynn, Gavel, and beyond.
> Collect powders from said opponents.
> Slap some powder dust onto bow.
> Charge T4 powder ability.
> Fail to fire a single arrow further than like 7 blocks.
> Realize that powder makes arrows weigh as much as TCC.
I cannot post links yet so refer to youtube (watch?v=J2njCh32Fu4) ^^^
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More specifically, Quake, Chain Lightning, Curse and Air Prison all shoot out a singular arrow (even with Double / Triple Shots) that weighs like 3x a normal arrow for some reason, and does not benefit from any abilities that buff melee attacks.
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My proposition:

Archer powder specials should interact with abilities that
upgrade normal melee attacks.
(And remove the weight debuff)
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Disclaimer: I'm not that good and I'm only level 103 on Archer currently. I've beaten all dungeons except EO and all raids except TNA.
Also, I'm a Twain's Arc enthusiast, as you will see.


Abilities that buff archer melee attacks:
- Power Shots
- Homing Shots
- Double Shots
- Triple Shots
- Twain's Arc

To start, integrate powder special with the abilities above by letting the powder special retain all of the physical properties of a regular melee attack.

Basically, if a regular melee attack with Power / Homing Shot is upgraded to go faster an have lock-on, than the powder special would be exactly the same but trigger the powder special on hit instead of the regular melee damage.

And similarly, if Double / Triple Shots makes you shoot multiple shots at once, than the powder special version would have two / three shots that can apply the powder special*.

*But only apply the effect once per target, a full Earth / Lvl 5 Quake Triple + Homing Shot build would be pretty broken if Quake could land three times on one target. The idea with the above is to spread the effect to as many targets as possible, not stack multiples of the effect on a single group of targets.

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Secondly, remove the weight debuff on powder special archer melee attacks. It makes no sense.
Powder is not heavy. So why does it make arrows weigh so much more?

I'd like to think instead that canonically the bow powder rubs on to the arrows and into the air, causing the player to sneeze, leading to a misfire.

Also, this weight debuff seems to be a bug due to the lack of integration with archer's abilities that buff melee. I'm no dev/coder, but if the powder specials are integrated with the abilities than this debuff might just go away without further changes.

However, if this is intentional for balance, I'd rather have the problematic archer weapon powder specials have a small debuff specifically for archer than have to deal with the metal-footballs we have now.

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It also makes for some counter-intuitive gameplay: in order to hit enemies with the powder special, they need to run towards the enemy, awkwardly lob the powder special arrow, and run away.

Since archer melee range is generally around the same / a little less than Arrow Storm / Bomb's range, it's less awkward to powder special opponents from melee range than the current powder special arrow's paper-ball-catapult range.

Finally, Twain's Arc. As shown in the link / video above at 0:33, you can't use Twain's Arc when a powder special is ready, because both use crouch as the activation. Instead, Twain's Arc should just shoot the powder special projectile. When you have the powder special ready, using Twain's Arc will charge up like normal and shoot what would have been your normal powder special melee attack as a Twain's Arc attack. I believe this makes sense because Twain's Arc does melee damage, not spell damage. Also, Twain's Arc charges powder specials, so why not have it fire them as well?

For example, if you have Quake ready, and fire it via Twain's Arc (+ Phasing Beam), the targets hit would all get Quake'd once.*
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Remember that as it stands now, you can fire your powder special and now trigger the bow's attack speed cooldown, so you can rapid fire a powder special into a Twain's Arc. This proposed change would actually make the powder special melee count as a Twain's Arc laser and put your bow on cooldown.

For the sake of slow attack speed melee builds that use Twain's Arc, I personally think that Twain's Arc + Powder Special should still retain some of the Twain's Arc damage, but with a debuff. Maybe instead of doing 300% Melee it does 180% when combined with a powder special. This is because a slow attack speed bow charges Powder Special in three melee / Twain's Arc hits, so losing every fourth Twain's would be effectively cutting your damage by 25%. Remember that Twain's and Powder Special share the same activation key so this proposed change would basically make you shoot Powder Special every fourth hit whether you like it or not (if you only shoot Twain's).

In an ideal world there would be a separate button to activate powder specials for Twain's, but I think that's too complicated and probably would be a headache to dev. (Actually, all of this probably is, sorry...)

Why implement this?
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1. Class Playstyle
Archer's range and speed lets it get away with having less defense than the other classes because the archer can stand pretty far away from opponents and confidently dodge dangerous attacks from enemies. However, in order to cash in on your powder specials, you need to get pretty close to the enemy to activate them. I think archers should be rewarded for staying on the edge of their abilities / melee range, because that's how the class is most effective. (Think cycling Arrow-Storm / Bomb in the Eye fight, it sucks to have to walk up and lob your powder arrow because you might get caught with the ginormous purple tentacle thing it spits out).

2. Teamwork
If the archer can throw powder specials cross-map, it would be the only class able to do so. This opens up a lot of possibilities where an archer could reliably stun a bunch of TCC minions to let an Assassin go to town while it stays in the back. Currently, I wouldn't even think to try that because it would require aiming the potato-sack powder special arrow, getting close, jumping / Escaping onto platforms, etc. Another possibility is an archer throwing Air Prison for a stun, or Curse for a debuff.

Side note: If you've been paying attention, you might've noticed that I have not mentioned Courage up to this point. Courage uses the player's body as the area of effect and not a bowling-ball weighted arrow, so none of these changes apply to this special. If Courage would use a regular melee arrow's projectile instead of the player's body as the source of the area-of-effect, the archer could theoretically damage enemies / buff players far away from them, but this kind of goes against the whole point of the special (i.e. "Courage"). Also, for a self buff the archer would either have to stand right next to an enemy and shoot it or arrow the floor, losing Frenzy / Focus, so it's a bit counter-intuitive.
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3. Satisfaction / Fun
Part of what makes the gameplay loop of kill, level-up, unlock new ability, repeat so fun for archer is that you get to experience your basic spells and melee turn into weapons of mass destruction. As shown in the beginning, it's a little disappointing to discover powder specials don't have any synergy with any of your abilities, especially because you don't really start focusing on powder specials until later on when you need to lock in to beat some harder Quest bosses like Death, Destroyer of Worlds, Qira, etc.

Additionally, Powder Specials stack Frenzy and Focus and even get bonus damage from Focus so might as well lean more into the idea of having Powder Specials be another way to reward archers for keeping their stacks up.

Also, imagine if you could pull this off^ with a Twain's Arc or Melee from far away without having to lob a billiard-ball powder special arrow.

^I cannot post links yet so refer to youtube (watch?v=UWKN-11O1U0)
^If you want the build, share this with more people and if this post gets like a thousand views I'll make a post about it.
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TLDR: Make archer powder specials work with archer melee ability upgrades, remove the 10-ton weight attached to the powder special arrow projectiles, make Twain's Arc shoot powder special as part of Twain's Arc laser.

Edit: spelling lol
Edit 2: formatting

 

uhhh
'only'?
that's two levels away from the (practical) max

literally none of the other classes get this so and archer is the only one with any kind of special attack in the first place. Mage, shaman, warrior, and assassin powder specials all originate at your location, so archer already has the advantage. Also, Pyrokinesis doesn't affect powder specials right now, and that's basically Twain's Arc but bad for mages so. Mage powder specials also do not apply winded. Shaman does not get three (or five). Warrior doesn't get the range boost from Luster Purge I don't think, nor does it trigger Massacre. IIRC Satsu is the only ability that directly calls out powder specials. But we'll assume for this post's sake that all of the other classes would get parity for their own abilities.

I think this has more to do with shift-firing arrows, but idk.
Also it's not that much worse I don't think. I can land them from like ten blocks away, which is usually the limit for aim as well.

we'll assume this isn't difficult to code at all

Well, this would certainly make Epoch Tierstack players and Wanderer's Purpose Tierstack players and even Hesperium Tierstack players made. But this does remove a lot of the jank, so I'm 50/50.

powder specials are so unintegrated because powder specials I believe were added in Gavel, which was ten(? don't quote me on this) years ago. Meanwhile Spellbound (update that added abilities) turned three this year.