Endless Quiver/Archery Mastery 3

A

Aeran

Dalayan Beginner
The Endless Quiver and Archery Mastery AA's are pretty much the uncontested "must have" AA's for a ranger. In WR, according to the AA info screen, the levels of Archery Mastery work as follows:

Archery Mastery 1: Increases your archery damage by 15% [15% increase from nothing]
Archery Mastery 2: Increases your archery damage by 25% [~8.7% increase from AM1]
Archery Mastery 3: Increases your archery damage by 50% [20% increase from AM2]

Note: Each of those %'s on the right are my own, assuming that each of the increases officially listed is based off of the base archery damage with no AA's (if it were not, they would be even larger).

Now, if you looked at the numbers it would be obvious that AM3 gives the biggest increase, followed by AM1 then AM2. In practice, however, this does not seem to be the case.

Going from nothing to AM1 I noticed a very nice increase in damage from my archery, I was very pleased that my 3 aa's went to good use. Then, 6 aa's and AM2 later, I got another (much lesser) increase in my damage. This was expected and all seems well. Then, after spending a hellacious 9 AA's (I'm sentimental) on AM3, I was super stoked to see an uber increase in my damage. However, all that I saw was only around +100 to my best crit, increasing to 1280, (with Frost Kings bow [40 dmg] and Hooked Ceramic War Arrows [5 dmg]), less than 8.5% increase from previous, while actually this gave me a total of less than 4.3% increase from previous, since criticals are double the base damage. Now, I'm not complaining one bit (I'm more than happy with our DPS), I would just like to know if there is possibly a bug in the code, or if the numbers have been changed and the AA menu has just not been updated. It seems rather odd that the numbers dont add up for such an esteemed AA.

ps. Are magical arrows (such as those Enchanted Djinni Arrows and the high dmg mage summoned ones) just mainly for show? because they are relatively hard to get (Djinni's come off of the 7th floor ToFS and the good mage ones require a costly black sapphire to make) and are only acquireable in half stack/stack, respectively. Any archer knows that we burn through arrows like nothing, and the inability of these arrows to work with EQ makes them only useful when you are bored and want the highest crit you can possibly get (in my opinion). I have nothing wrong with this, and have no desire/request to make these work with EQ (would cause imbalance I'm sure), but I'm just curious as to another possible use for these.
 
What you "notice" is irrelevant. This is from the code:

Code: 
		switch(GetAA(82))
		{
			case 1:
				damage *= 1.15;
				break;
			case 2:
				damage *= 1.25;
				break;
			case 3:
				damage *= 1.5;
				break;
		}

"Max crit" is a terrible way of measuring since it's too random. Measure flat DPS over 10 minutes instead.

Each point of arrow damage adds 7.5% to the DPS you deal - so a 60% increase in damage from damage 8 arrows for example.
 
Thanks Wiz! I guess I kinda got caught up in the wording and was lazy in only measuring a max hit. I assumed that since it said 'archery damage will go up x%', then each shot would simply go up x% also. This reasoning got me thinking that since each shot would go up x%, then my max hit would also go up by that much. I never really bothered to realize that these increases could take place through average DPS instead of max hit, now I get it. Anyways, thanks for taking your time to clear this up :)
 
EQ Nerfed?

Last night I noticed that under my AA select window. The Endless quiver AA has been changed slightly. The descriptions were similar to the following:

(Former) Endless Quiver: Lets you never run out of any non-magical arrows
(New) Endless Quiver: Lets you never run out of any arrow that is 3 dmg or less.

Now from a roleplay perspective, I can see how magical arrows are immune to Endless Quiver (I thought this was a great idea). They obviously have some sort of magical traits that just wont allow it. However, I dont see how it makes sense to make a limit on the specific dmg an arrow has. The current standard for any EQ Ranger is the hooked ceramic war arrow ( I think thats what they're called ) which are 5 dmg. I dont see a reason why we would be deserving of this nerf, with perhaps the exception that either:
1) We are currently doing too much damage
2) The new fletching will provide for better arrows (dmg > 5) that will make archery overpowering.

I think the general consensus is that rangers are NOT currently overpowered. Perhaps if new fletched arrows are soon to be found, we can tag those as 'magical' so they dont work with EQ. Or maybe just move the cap up to dmg 5 arrows so rangers can maintain their current DPS.

Please feel free to comment about anything, thanks in advance

:)
 
General consensus is irrelevant. A ranger with AM3, frost kings' bow and 7 damage arrows will outdamage a rogue with better equipment. This is not reasonable to be combined with an endless arrow supply.

RP perspective doesn't matter in this case. Balance perspective does.
 
I would agree that a ranger with AM3, Frost King's bow and 7 damage arrows would be a bit unbalancing. However, how does a ranger with AM3, Frost king's bow and 5 damage arrows (as it has been) compare? Are we too close to rogue DPS with even 5 damage arrows, which is why we are being now limited to 3 dmg?

Currently, to the best of my knowledge, 5 damage arrows are the absolute best that work with Endless Quiver. Better arrows are yet to be fletched (or have just recently popped up), so we are using 5 dmg arrows, not 7 dmg. So either:

1) We are too much DPS even with just 5 dmg arrows
2) Arrows more than 5 dmg (7 perhaps) are soon to be found that would have been usable with EQ.

If the former is the case, then theres nothing I can do. But if the latter is the case, may I suggest to either:
- Code EQ to work with 5 dmg and less arrows
- Keep EQ working with any non-magical arrow and make the new arrows (with dmg more than 5) to be magic

Thank you for your responses, sorry if I seem persistent and annoying but I just want to understand whats going on :p
 
Ahh alright. Thank you for clearing that up, I have no problem with this if its to balance classes. Quick questoin: Are Frost King/AM3/EQ rangers still the #2 DPS after the nerf (compared to other classes of equal gear)?
 
i have a problem with that change. i had the impression that the balancing between dps classes was pretty good before the change. i'm playing a well geared ranger with 300 aas, but i must admit, that i thought about quitting or starting a new character class more than once. mainly because rangers SUCK. yes they do, unless they have a shitload of aas, a king's bow and a nice arrow that works with endless quiver. i remember times, when it was next to impossible for me to get aas without people that were "grouping" with me (in fact it was more like power-leveling because i couldn't contribute much other than add a little damage). it was a hard and long way to get there, but recently i discovered: wow, i do some serious damage. more than a wannabe-rogue even. suddenly eq gets nerfed and i'm really happy that i wasted time and money on a useless skill called fletching. perfectly geared rangers with 300 aas aren't supposed to outdamage wannabe-rogues with 10-50 aas, or what?
;(
 
You apparently didn't pay attention.

I'll rephrase:

A 7 dmg arrow ranger did more damage than a better geared rogue.
A 5 dmg arrow ranger did the same damage.
A 3 dmg arrow ranger did around the same damage as a equally equipped monk.

It's not balance for rangers to outdamage/do the same damage as a better equipped rogue, no matter what the "general consesus" or "your personal feelings" on the matter is.

Why would you need 300 AAs to do good damage with a bow when only 50 are required to get all bow AAs, by the way? :)
 
So uh... the only thing stopping rangers from doing above rogue DPS is rarity/price of 7+ dmg arrows?
 
Ponden said:
So uh... the only thing stopping rangers from doing above rogue DPS is rarity/price of 7+ dmg arrows?
Click to expand...

Correct. But considering you're shooting away something like 400pp/trash mob with 7dmg arrows it's not gonna get anything commonplace, so don't you start any balance drama now.
 
Bobothedino: You've proven yourself time and again to be unable of rational discourse. I suggest you cease posting on these forums and go somewhere where ridiculous one-liners that have nothing to do with reality are appreciated.

Thank you.
 
Wiz said:
What you "notice" is irrelevant. This is from the code:

Code: 
		switch(GetAA(82))
		{
			case 1:
				damage *= 1.15;
				break;
			case 2:
				damage *= 1.25;
				break;
			case 3:
				damage *= 1.5;
				break;
		}
Click to expand...

Wow I never thought code from everquest would look that simple, i'd always imagined SOE code looking like this:

Code: 
 float archeryMasteryBenefit[4];
 archeryMasteryBenefit[1] = 0.15;
 archeryMasteryBenefit[2] = archeryMasteryBenefit[1] + 0.10;
 archeryMasteryBenefit[3] = archeryMasteryBenefit[2] + 0.25;

 arrowdamage = rand()%6;

switch(GetAA("ARCHERY_MASTEY"))
{
 case 1:
  bowdamage += bowdamage * archeryMasteryBenefit[0];
  break;
 case 2: 
  bowdamage += bowdamage * archeryMasteryBenefit[1];
  break;
 case 3:
  bowdamage += bowdamage * archeryMasteryBenefit[2];
  break;
}

if ((thisPlayer.weapon.getName().equals("Bow")) || (thisPlayer.weapon.getName().equals("Short Bow")) || (thisPlayer.weapon.getName().equals("Logn Bow")) || (thisPlayer.weapon.getName().equals("Huntars Bow")) .. etc .. {damage = bowdamage + arrowdamage;}

:p
 
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