Archer's Instakill

Instakills are getting removed, no need for this poll.

 

Wait really?
Yay

 

Not yay

 

Pretty sure no1 is going to play archer anymore after the removal of the instakill.

 

Not my fault

 

The only way archer is going to be playable after it's instakill ability is removed is if tipped arrows from 1.9 were added. Mainly, arrows of harming.

 

Arrows of harming is exactly the same as buffing the power on the bow, and giving it any other tipped arrows would make it too much like elf.

 

OK. How about a "dazed" effect. When you get headshotted, you receive blindness and wither (giving a bleeding out effect).

 

might as well just use a ninja

 

Ninja's don't have wither. Plus, the blindness from a headshot would last longer than a second.

 

so ninja's eggs would become pointless because you can have an archer that does the same+extra dmg

 

No. You know how hard it is to get a headshot.

 

Yo let me put in my input:

Archer's Instant Kill is... stupid. I'm not going to say it's overpowered, or whatever, because it's not, but there's no denying that Archer can be a frustrating class to fight. There are various reasons why I think Archer's instant kill doesn't fit well in CTF, and as much as I love the class I'll try to explain why.

First of all, I think Archer's Instant Kill is spammable. I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing that a class always has access to its Instant Kill. But it shouldn't be something that can be used nonchalantly. Look at Assassin: You get one chance to Instant Kill every 20 seconds, and if you miss you're probably dead. Although Assassin is dumb for other reasons, it still demonstrates that risk-reward quite well. Archer can spam all the arrows it wants, and with proper positioning can kill a lot of people and be pretty hard to avoid, effectively slowing down the pace of the game.

So here's a rework I wrote for this class a few months ago. There are some things I don't like about it anymore, but the full idea is there. It fixes the aforementioned spam problem stated above. It's pretty long, so if you want to skip it I've written a TL: DR below.

TL; DR: Basically, Archer can super charge their bow by continuing to pull it back after it is fully drawn back. Damage increases as super charge increases, up to a cap of +5 hearts (Which is 10 Hearts total, or an Instant Kill on Chemists/Ninjas). If the Archer fires the bow, pulls out another item while charging, dies, or does anything besides holding right click with the bow, they lose all their super charge. So basically think of it as drawing the bow back for longer.

Instead of being an Instant Kill, headshots deal true damage. In conjunction with a max charged bow shot, you can get Instant Kills at range, but only with a super charged bow (which takes approximately 4 seconds to draw back)

And there's a 1 second delay between shots where the bow doesn't work.

So this rework essentially stops Archer from being able to throw out Instant Kills. There's still threat of getting true damage from afar, but it's not like you're screwed unless the Archer caught you off guard and charged a super arrow. And at close range, they can't spam arrows to get you away from them, so now it's going to be legitimately difficult for one to escape if you get near them.

Another issue with Archer's Instant Kill is Steak. This seems kind of weird. Steak makes Archer's Instant Kill annoying? Well, this is a more in general thing with Instant Kills, but yes, Steak makes Instant Kills, and a lot of other things imo, broken. Think of it this way: Medic has 10 Hearts of health, 6 Steak (another 24 Hearts), and 44% damage reduction. That basically means you have to deal nearly 70 Hearts worth of damage to kill one, not to mention natural regeneration. However, if you can deal just under 20 Hearts of damage in one blow, you can kill a Medic Instantly. That means for any non-Instant Kill class, you have to deal less than 20 Hearts of damage per hit. And that's not including even squishier classes like Ninja or Pyro or Assassin. Even the highest damage-dealing classes like Heavy can have trouble killing players with Steak unless they pin them in a corner.

Instant Kills bypass all of this, all the Steak, everything. In the case of the Medic, who can effectively take 70 Hearts of damage but dies in 20, you're killing them way sooner than they should.

Steak is a poorly-designed mechanic that tries to emulate PvP soup and fails because CTF isn't just PvP. Classes should rely on natural defenses like Armour or even a literal Health Pool via health boost potion effects, not Steak. Various fixes could involve: nerfing Steak to only do Regeneration instead of Instant Health, have Steak not work if you were injured recently, and/or buff classes Health/Armour of the squishier classes (like Ninja has less than 1/10 of theoretical health than Heavy) along with overall damage buffs for other classes.

If classes can die faster to regular damage more easily, then Instant Kills won't be as jarring anymore. Honestly, unless you're in a hard counter situation like Ninja on Mage or Elf on Dwarf, there's really very little danger to being attacked unless you get Instant Killed. Because of Steak, and all the mechanics put in place because of it, CTF becomes a slower game that gets disrupted easily by Instant Kills. With better damage capability that isn't limited by Steak, it'll be easier to invade flag rooms, recover flags, and could help put more importance on the midfield aspect of the game as it becomes easier to kill enemies before they reach your flag room instead of having them run right past you.

Also true damage is a stupid mechanic and I wish my Archer rework didn't HAVE to rely on it but it's the best way to get it to function in the current state of CTF with all the current mechanics.

TL; DR: I can't TL; DR this, it's a rant of a lot of my thoughts of this game. But basically Archer spam sucks, and Steak is a stupid mechanic that I think isn't that good for the game.

 

Ahahahahhaaahahahaahha

 

wait how da faq do you rework archer but keep the insta-kill. There's actually no way to do that, it'll still just kill someone with one arrow.

 

it will isntakill by using its mind not its arrows!!

 

My problem with archer isn't its instakill. It's how archer can just spray arrows down in a semi-populated area and rack up kills with no punishment or concern for missing. I would gladly keep archer's instakill if the archer was punished for missing.

Also remove punch. That enchantment doesn't make archer any stronger. It just encourages archers to bowspam.

 

I don't think archer should be reworked in my opinion. If we're changing everything that one hits then pyro, ninja, and archer should all get a nerf.

 

Exactly. Instant Kill isn't inherently bad, it's the way Archer uses Instant Kill that makes it such a frustrating thing to deal with. The fact that Archer has barely any penalty (besides having to wait to draw back their bow slightly) for shooting an arrow is biggest thing that makes it so frustrating. Any person can fire into a crowd and land an arrow. The Archer, who's main goal is to pick off enemies from afar with precise shots, shouldn't be able to mow down an entire group of players or spam2win.

Another thing I don't like about Archer is the fact that arrows don't render properly which makes them hard to avoid at times but there's not much you can do about that.

There can be varying levels of effectiveness in an Instant Kill. Although am Instant Kill will always kill someone that it hits, if you make it harder to hit, then it's more balanced. You can already see this with Archer. Imagine if Headshot range was 5 blocks. That'd be crazy OP. But no, it's longer than that, and that's what makes it not as insane. If you can devise a way to make a player work for their Instant Kills, you can balance them. And there are plenty of different ways to make headshots harder to land.

Saying that all Instant Kills are overpowered because they do the maximum amount of damage possible is just comparing two abilities only by their damage. You wouldn't call soldier underpowered because it can't kill people quite as fast as other characters, much like you wouldn't call an Instant Kill overpowered just because it can kill someone if it lands a hit.