Archer Nerf

I agree with the point you made on the ability to instakill from range however i am not a fan of the 0.2 second cooldown , that a tiny delay and i really dont think it should be added at all .

 

I was thinking of number two the other way.
If you hit someone, the 0.2 sec bow cool down comes into effect. I think that would be a better bowspam stopper then #3.
As for #1, I don't think brawl is capable of coding that...

 

I'm not going to vote because archer is my second mane class and my vote would probably be based xP

 

This is a bad idea because if you're going to get that specific with head shots you might as well just remove them entirely and convert them to true damage. Making head shots this specific is an unreasonable expectation because it is not realistic to expect most Archers - regardless of skill - to consistently or even occasionally shoot a stationary or moving target exactly in the head at 30+ blocks away.

Both of these are bad ideas. A 0.2 second cool down is so little time it would do almost absolutely nothing to Archer's ability to spam arrows. Increasing the cool down would make matters even worse. In CTF a game that has very strong mid ranged classes like Mage in the game, making it to where Archer cannot shoot arrows for a certain period of time is a very severe nerf on its short range combat ability. Moreover, Archer's shouldn't take damage for missing shots because it way over prioritizes accuracy and it would deplete Archer's somewhat small health pool which is a ridiculously harsh nerf on Archer's ability to be effective as a ranged class.

Actually, one of the biggest problems with Archer is its Punch II bow. And a better solution to Archer's power at short range is to remove that from the bow entirely. @LordCh4os made a really good point about that in this post:

"well we discussed it at length, and what we came to was that it wasn't the instakill feature of archer that was the main problem in this sense. I know people like to hate on archer for it's instakill ability, but it's easily the hardest of the 3 to pull off. Realistically you have to hit a moving target by that distance away. It takes a fair bit of practise to pull that off repeatedly, and there are a lot of well practiced archers which kind of skews the view on it. We found the problem wasn't in that itself, it was closer to that it was doing it's job countering long range but it wasn't counter-able enough short range. We thought that the punch enchantment which people sometimes overlook was actually the main problem. Let me explain, you see me and saixos tested it out. He went as heavy and acted as a fairly decent one, and I was playing the archer. I managed to keep saixos away a long time, and could have even knocked him into headshot range with that bow if I hadn't let him get close enough deliberately. The point was to see what it was like for a less accurate archer and even then I kept him away long enough for some serious damage buildup. I think I could have kept him away and even headshot him if I had kept going. We realized that it was definitely the punch that made archers harder to short range counter and by fixing that with a more mobile solution we could keep archers able to get away, not totally short range weak, but more counter-able with a higher reliance on other short range counters and less camping reliant."

 

Archer is meant to counter long range and be countered short range and so in this you're saying archer does it's job. The real question is whether or not it's doing it's job too well, which inevitably has to be yes. It's undoubtedly one of the major problems being focused on at the moment with it's instakill feature, as all three are being looked at. I'm also aware that quite a few people hate archer and so may make this instakill ability more of a problem than it really is, but it is nevertheless a problem and there should be a way to fix archer, whether it's left with an instakill ability or not.

I'm pretty sure this is feasible to do as far as hitboxes are concerned, but this would make the instakill from archer very difficult indeed. You'd make archers have to target the head of the other player, which is relatively a very small part of the body. If I'm honest this may well take things the other way in terms of pulling off the headshot, and it wouldn't fix any other of the problems associated with archer. For one it wouldn't stop people bowspamming at all. For 2 you're not encouraging the class to work with the other team members. You may well increase the number of archers at choke points where a headshot is more likely as more heads to hit. Also you're making the class less effective long range without thinking about the short range at all. Archer is also about being countered short range, and with that punch enchantment on the bow, it can keep enemies away fairly effectively. All this does is reduce the number of annoying headshots, not think about any of the other issues about the class

I read up on the rest of the posts in this thread, and I heard you say that it takes about 0.2 seconds for the archer to draw his bow. That is most definitely not the case. I haven't fully tested out how long it takes to fully draw the bow, but it is nowhere near quick enough to be 0.2 seconds. If that were the case archer could draw their bow 5 times in a second, effectively becoming some kind of crazy machine gun! That it's much closer to between 1 and 2 seconds, and if that were the case then that's at the very least 5 times the amount of time this cooldown takes effect. This cooldown is way too small to be really effective in stopping bowspamming. It's too small to allow the enemy enough time to get shelter, in fact I'm not even sure it would be enough to even be noticeable, especially at long range where it takes longer for the arrow to reach anyway. Additionally it doesn't actually solve any other problems associated with archer anyway. Most accurate archers will still get off as many headshots, this doesn't achieve anything in terms of improving teamwork and most archers use their sword rather than bowspam at short range anyhow, even if this did solve the problem.

Doing the maths here, if you miss 20 arrows you're dead without steaking. You still have to deal with the hate associated with archer because you're still able to headshot as easily. Only difference is now you have extremely limited health. Realistically if you miss 46 arrows with steak and not taking any damage elsewhere, you're still going to die. This is just going to encourage archers to camp at choke points where they're less likely to miss due to the concentration of enemies. I understand that you think that this is going to fix the archer camping thing but the fact is it's just going to encourage it because undoubtedly the archer will not want to miss the shot and get hurt, and so will camp at a choke point to ensure that this doesn't happen. Additionally, this does nothing to fix the problem of short range counterability, as the knockback still applies and you can still undoubtedly knock people into headshot range. This does bring in teamwork to an extent because archer will start to rely on medics more to heal them from missed shots, but realistically if you wanted to improve teamwork to all classes, this isn't gonna do that, it'll only improve medic teamwork.

To be honest, none of these three ideas deal with all of the problems associated with archer, and some of them won't be effective in doing the job they were designed to do. It's a good attempt at trying to fix the problems, but in reality I think these may well do more harm than good. It's more than just reworking the instakill feature on archer, as there are other problems to think about. If you make it too difficult to kill long range, you make archer an underpowered class which is the opposite of the aim of balancing the class everyone wants. Alternatively if you try and stop bowspam with cooldown, you have to make the cooldown long enough to be effective. The upshot of these ideas is that none really fix all of archers problems, and some have side effects which may make archer more annoying than people believe it already is now

 

I'm agreeing with @Admiral_Munson and @LordCh4os on this one. Not only would it make archer near to completely useless, it's not fixing any of the said problems with archer. Just take the Punch II off the bow.

 

Elliot and mrjayelectro had mentioned a tweak along the lines of having a maximum time the bow could be pulled back. After that time it would reset and you'd have to redraw it. This encourages moving around and firing more wisely as opposed to standing still and firing at will.

 

wouldn't fix every problem archer has, but that would certainly be quite a good idea. I'd quite like to have seen that idea in a thread, it's a shame I missed it

 

OR (not sure if brawl can code this) set a field of around 10 or 15 blocks surrounding an archer. When an enemy player steps or is in this field, the archer cannot use their bow and is forced to use their sword to fight that player. This would probably end up in a fight or flight situation but this may be able to stop bow spamming. Not sure if I explained it clearly but you guys kind of get it right? RIGHT?!?!

 

I've thought of a couple tweaks for archer in recent times. To deal with bow-related stuff, perhaps the Punch enchantment could be removed and replaced with Power 3, maybe 2 at the least. This makes PvP with a bow much more effective and useful. As for headshot, I personally don't think it makes much of a difference to lengthen headshot range to 40; a lot of headshots don't even look like 30 blocks anyway.

If the ability to push away close-range targets is still desired, then put a Knockback 1 enchantment on the sword. It's far less annoying than Punch 2 arrows, it only works at point-blank range, and it still punches people back a fair distance, I believe far enough even to get a shot off (thus the bow and sword now work in better harmony).

I'm not sure if this is going over the top, but perhaps archers could have an iron sword for slightly better PvP. Just tell me if that's a very bad idea. xD

Edit:

I'm not sure it's a great idea to remove the bow entirely at close range. That kind of removes the ability to fight chemists at close range.

 

I don't like the 0.2 second delay but it's good for the hacking archers XD

 

I don't like this just because you're encouraging archer to use a sword rather than a bow. Straight away, an archer having to use a sword sounds wrong

 

wrong the biggest problem is the ninja cause the ninja has vanilladamage so he needs not so many hits to kill some1 -_-
hs should stay like they are cause than the archer hasnt so many power anymore
cooldown is not required cause when you dont have anymore arrows you have to run away
when they miss 0.5 heards you will die more often
i think you dont like the archer cause it instakills you but well ctf without instakills is b4d

 

Although archers are pretty annoying sometimes, archers' instakills are fair! it requires skill to succesfully snipe a target (keep in mind they are called snipeshots now).

 

true look at chaos

if you spam arrows in one direction that doesnt take skill. if you try to hs the flagcarrier who is moving that is a little bit more difficult in my oppinion

 

Lol anyone who played CTF in old times prefers the term "headshot". If you're one of those people, I simply disagree with your opinion.

You're speaking in terms of 30-block headshots. How about 100+ block snipes to take down a flag carrier? Those are fun to get on the first shot, but that doesn't happen too often for most people.

 

Not just to support our own regular class but i am agreeing with @LordCh4os and @kevshadowslayer it's simply useless adding this to that class. It's basically like making a cake and not putting flour in. Therefore, It's not a cake, this means it's useless. If you were to make these posts on ideas of nerfing and i accept that they are ideas, just try not to go to mad if you know what i mean and take it a step too far.


@pookeythekid put a smile on my face, dat comment on term headshot doe.