Discussion about archery, and sniping people

[dragonxkai]

I'd rather see some sort of line of sight thing for walls(make wall slits a thing if you want to see out, but you can be shot through those), that way you don't have to worry about all the other buffs/debuffs for archery.

another thing I'd like to see would be bodkins(a type of arrow with a heavy shaft and square tapered point(pyramid)). these would have some armor penetration making archery a viable combat skill. I'm not saying ignore armore 100%, but if you can punch a guy in steel plate and have 30% of the damage still hit them(and not break your hand), a bodkin should do 50% armor penetration easilly. could be made same way as current arrows, just use either nuggets from either any hard metal(making them good early mid game) or steel(which would take longer and force them later into mid game for quality to be worth using)

For armor penetration, Metal Arrows work just as well.
It basically reduces the armor's capability when a shot is taken with that weapon.

So if your wooden bow will hit for 120 damage, 30/30 (50% armor negate) points on the overall target's armor and 120 damage will be spread evenly from what remains, or do direct damage. The value is half the weapon's base damage split into two values so -60 = -30/-30.

If a person is wearing only a q10 chainmail with 75/75, your arrow negates 30 points on each value, then impacts the 120 damage on it.

So instead of 120 damage nullified and 45 armor hp damage done to the chainmail...
120 damage -45 damage ignored = 75 damage left - 45 damage to armor = 30 damage to shp!

Nugget type and quality should play a role in the base 'armor penetration %' and quality increases the value on the same multiplier (10/40/90 as 1x/2x/3x).

Stone Arrows = NONE!
Bone Arrows = 6% armor negation at q10. (q90 arrows would do up to 18%! XD)
Metal (Bronze & Cast Iron) Arrows = 12% armor negation at q10.
Wrought Iron Arrows = 24% armor negation at q10.
Steel arrows = 48% armor negation at q10. (Steel is still very hard and annoying to make!)

Sample List of basic armors and how q10 steel arrows affect it (q10 armors) with q12 wooden bow:

Code: Select all

Chainmail = 450 HP | 75/75 armor absorption | -29/-29 arrow negation | 46/46 armor absorption when hit by steel arrows
Bronze Armor = 500 HP | 100/100 armor absorption | -29/-29 arrow negation | 71/71 armor absorption left
Leather Armor = 150 HP | 25/25 armor absorption | -29/-29 arrow negation | 0/0 armor absorption left (100% of the arrows damage is dealt) (Since the armor has no absorption anymore, it takes 100% of the armor damage as well!)

A high quality wooden or ranger bow, with good quality steel arrows will pierce through the toughest armors.
Although the calculation is per armor, damage is still spread evenly so either you'd want the armor negation to be the same over all armors, or have it be split per piece of armor.

If someone is wearing a full set of armor and has up to 150/150 absorption as a sum, I'm guessing the most fair implementation is to even the armor negation across all armors evenly... So a q10 steel arrow and q10 wooden bow would do -29/29 divided by the number of armor pieces, to each armor...

EDIT: OOPS I thought the base damage of the wooden bow is 120, but it seems to be 110 as listed on the wiki.

But I still find it strong. A Q40 wooden bow has a base damage of 220 damage, so q10 steel arrows would use 48% or (110 / 2) = (55/55 divided by x) number of armor pieces. Since you can equip about 5 armors (the shirt armor included), it's 11/11 armor negation per armor. You'll still do 220 to 95/95 (remaining absorption points) btw which deals SHP damage!

Q10 ranger bow does 300 base damage, that alone would make for a very very powerful armor negation with steel arrows.

[dragonxkai]

I'd like to add to my post on metal arrows, that I realize that perception plays a HUGE role in the armor penetration, since low perception will result in higher chance of minimum damage going in, and the likelihood of a q10 steel arrow being absorbed or deflected still occurs.
Yes it can reduce a 150/150 deflection/absorption ratio to a small amount, but if the damage is small, it would do no SHP and only mere damage the armor or be deflected.

Since it's your perception vs the opponent's agility, having high agility with high armor is a good bet to raise the chances of surviving a armor piercing shot.
But with high quality armor comes with heavier agility penalties.

I do have a optional idea with shields to play a role in deflecting arrows.

As shields are rarely used in overall combat, this should make them more valuable against rangers... They are shields for a reason.

A wooden shield, when equipped, has a 15% chance to deflect the arrow entirely. Arrows can get stuck onto shields and be recoverable if you managed to block them. The arrows shown on a shield is easily removed by right clicking your shield in equipment screen and choose 'remove arrows'.
If metal shields are implemented, the ability to recover shields is zero, but you get 30% chance to deflect arrows in the first place.. By metal, means a combination of blocks, leathers, and any (bronze/iron/steel) bars.

[bekill]

Why not just add Perception into the damage formula for Archery similar to the way Strength adds to Melee Damage? Does it really need to be more complicated than this?

[parisparisparis]

Why not just add Perception into the damage formula for Archery similar to the way Strength adds to Melee Damage? Does it really need to be more complicated than this?

im pretty sure perc is in the damage formula.

[SuperNoob]

Why not just add Perception into the damage formula for Archery similar to the way Strength adds to Melee Damage? Does it really need to be more complicated than this?

im pretty sure perc is in the damage formula.

he means perception adds to damage like strength does when attacking with melee or UA. right now your total damage is based on your weapon and arrow, your perception does nothing but lower that number((.5*(yourPerc/targetAgi)*MaxDamage), but has no say in any actual damage.

I'd have to say I disagree with the idea...even though it makes sense

[rye130]

I'd have to say I disagree with the idea...even though it makes sense

Then why do you disagree?

Its unlikely we will see any major changes to archery as the entire system needs to be redesigned to be more consistent with the rest of combat system. Until a complete redesign of the system is done I don't think anything should be done about being able to kill with ranged weaponry as sniping people is really its only use and you can already protect yourself from that by simply not afking outside, or get a perimeter wall far enough away that you are out of render distance when afk. If people think a change is absolutely necessary than I support base damage being nerfed some while adding penetration damage as many have suggested before.

[SuperNoob]

I'd have to say I disagree with the idea...even though it makes sense

Then why do you disagree?

it makes sense that if you have really good perception you could aim for weak spots in armor(like the opennings in a helmet so the wearer can see for instance), but with the way the game currently works it would make it far too overpowered...

as you said archery is a small part of what would need to be tweaked to make it more viable in combat

[Servant_Girl]

Since the game and therefor ranged attack were originally balanced around the default client, your sling and bow attack range should only be the the default sight range. Before you rage at me bear in mind that they were intended to be balanced that way when coded.

[rye130]

Ranged attacks don't need another nerf

[Galad]

Maybe but when someone produces a game has to support the player base too and if one notices that huge majority of players use a specific client mod like ender's has to at least adjust things like archery to work well with such ranges too. Otherwise should open up source to people like ender so they can work out a fix about it in co-operation maybe, cause this way is troublesome.