Here's some changes we'd like to make to Arcane Archer sooner rather than later. We expect we may come back to Arcane Archer in the not-distant future to address additional issues we'd like to get to. We consider this a strong basis for improvement in some of the primary Arcane Archer features. There are some specific abilities that we consider underperforming that we want to address but may not have time to get in very soon1.

Arcane Archer


Action Boosts reduced to 1 AP per rank
DC Based Arrow Stances: Includes Terror, Paralyzing, Banishing, and Smiting Arrows:
Each becomes one rank, 2 AP.
Each has a saving throw of 20 + Wisdom Modifier + Enchantment Spell Bonuses
Each enhancement taken grants +1 DC with Enchantment Spells.
Paralyze and Terror become short durations, but no additional save after the initial save. Short in this case is about 6 seconds. If you keep shooting one target, it can continue to be Paralyzed or Terrored. If you can keep a line going for Improved Precise Shot, you can keep this going on multiple enemies. To control maximum enemies, you'll need to frequently switch targets.
Paralyzing Arrows: On save, chance to apply 3 seconds of -10% Movement and Attack speed.
Smiting Arrows gains a chance to apply Deconstructed (slows attack speed, reduces fortification by 25%, and inflicts a 25% penalty to Repair healing)
Banishing Arrows gains chance to inflict Pull of Reality1 on each hit.
Pull of Reality1: -1 PRR, -1 MRR. Stacks up to 25 times. 5 stacks fade away every 3 seconds (if no new stacks were added).

Elemental Arrows (Corrosive, Flaming, Frost, Shock)
Increase base damage to 1d8.
Damage scales with Spell Power. Exact amount TBD.
Each additional Elemental Arrows increases damage by +1 die.
Each enhancement tier from 2-5 has a new multiple choice option, "Elemental Damage", that increases damage by +2 dice (for a maximum of 7 dice if you select only one damage type).
Tier 5 Elemental Arrow damage (Improved) also scales with Spell Power.
Force Arrows scales number of dice with Elemental Arrows, and also scales with spellpower

Shadow Arrows (Core, 18 levels of Ranger):
Gains: "Passive: Equipped bows gain +1 Competence bonus to Critical Damage Multiplier"

Mystical Archer (Core, 20 levels of Ranger):
Dexterity bonus increased to +4

Slaying Arrow:
Depending on DPS testing, this may be decreased or increased in power. Yes, if we've injected too much power into Arcane Archer, this is where we will probably pull back on some of it. We don't expect to fundamentally change the design of this ability, but it's not healthy or good design for so much of the power of one enhancement tree or build to be in a single ability like this. (And yes, we understand just how powerful and vital it is for certain builds, but that's part of the problem.)


This accomplishes a few goals:



DC based abilities2 have long been a bane of Arcane Archers. They were often extremely strong when obtained, but had no way at all to scale up towards higher levels, which has only gotten worse over time and higher levels. Reworking these abilities was a key feature we wanted to get to sooner rather than later. This has meant we've wanted to adjust how some of those abilities work as well, and in particular wanted Smiting and Banishing Arrows to feel more impactful on attacks that were not criticals (while not simply adding damage).
Elemental Arrows were simply too weak, and also didn't scale into Epic levels. These changes should make them feel pretty powerful in heroic while also having some good options to scale into Epic. The addition of multiple choice options gives players some meaningful choices on how to progress.
Those two changes, especially focusing on Spell DCs and Spell Power, help with the lore and flavor of Arcane Archer as well. While not strictly necessary for gameplay, we like to support this when we can. It also gives us a means of differentiating Arcane Archer from other potential bow users. We know this isn't a large and fully realized group of build choices, but we certainly want that open as a development path, and hopefully they won't look all that similar when we get there. Fighters focusing on bows should be viable, for instance, and wouldn't be likely to invest heavily in Spell Power or Enchantment DCs.
Some of the other changes are really quality of life, keeping up with the Joneses, and things we can quickly and easily do.


Again, we want to say that we don't think this is a perfect or even a complete pass for Arcane Archer. As an example, it pains us to leave Dispelling and Shattermantle shot as-is, and we've been discussing some other possibilities with the Player's Council. Those abilities really need a larger redesign - potentially touching on things like a redesign of Dispels across DDO, for instance, which we just don't have time for right now. But some of us having been pushing to get some of this came out sooner rather than later!

This is, of course, a design-in-progress, subject to change from testing, math, deep insights of wisdom, a million kobolds with typewriters, or designers unscrupulously trying to fit a bit more improvement in when they should probably get on with Level 30 work.



Thanks for your thoughts and feedback, and may you always be fighting in the shade!



Footnotes, Vargouille? That's so outdated. Do you think you're in the module years?

1. (TM)

2. I'm going to recommend that when you fight in other planes, some enemy monsters should inflict Pull of Reality on player characters...

3. Developer Trivia: Some of the choices here in particular relate to technical hurdles that we've spent some time investigating working around but are probably not worth (even more) time. If you look carefully across DDO, you may note a relative lack of saving throws on most player abilities which are triggered passively. (Shiradi's Nerve Venom, for instance, was always intended to have a saving throw... it just didn't actually work, so got redesigned some at the last minute!) It's not that it's 100% impossible to do some of this kind of thing, but the amount of extra work is staggering (compared to even moderately simple abilities, can take 20-40 times as long to create). Even getting the saving throws we do have here is a bunch of extra work that doesn't really help anywhere else in the game, but at least applies to four abilities. This is also part of why they all use Enchantment Spell DC bonuses, rather than Terror Arrows using Necro... err, I mean, you are clearly enchanting your arrows in any case. So it's a lore reason! That sounds better, right? And therefore part of the flavor is that Arcane Archers specialize in Enchantment. It all comes together, somehow. (No, we're not going to base monster saves assuming you have 4 levels of Arcane Archer to get better Enchantment DCs... but if some Elf Wizard wants to go for it, well, we love somewhat crazy builds.)

Even if elemental arrows scale with 200% spell power, it's still going to be shit DPS, or am I missing something? 

Also, why would they use Wisdom modifier for DCs?  Isn't it supposed to be an Arcane Archer? 

We expect we may come back to Arcane Archer in the not-distant future to address additional issues we'd like to get to.

designers unscrupulously trying to fit a bit more improvement in when they should probably get on with Level 30 work.

(We are still talking with the player's council about balance changes, but I wanted to give a teaser on what we are looking at for Manyshot and Ten Thousand Stars since it is relevant to this thread.)


We are considering changes to Many Shot and 10K Stars. We want a design that throws out fewer projectiles for server and client performance as missiles are actually expensive. We also want a design that doesn't require a doubleshot debuff.

Manyshot redesign: For the next 20 seconds you add your base attack bonus * 4 to your Doubleshot and Ranged Power. Using this ability places Ten Thousand Stars on a 30 second cool-down. (You no longer have a Doubleshot penalty applied.)

Ten Thousand Stars redesign: For the 30 seconds you add your Wisdom to your Doubleshot and Ranged Power. Using this ability places Manyshot on a 30 second cool-down. (You no longer have a Doubleshot penalty applied.)

Our goal is to make these abilities more efficient without reducing the overall DPS of ranged characters using one or both of these abilities.

Sev~

The cooldown doesn't change.

Doubleshot will only provide one extra projectile, even if it goes over 100%. At the higher end this will mean that the ability essentially just rounds out your Doubleshot to 100%.

Sev~

If this is the AA tree, couldn't you make an Elf or Helf 12/6/x build to get the DWS crits and the AA crits from the elf AA tree?

I know you are spending some AP to unlock it first, but most of those are adding DPS.

You will need to be 18 ranger to get both the +1 crit range and multiplier.  At that point, you may as well go pure ranger and get the DWS capstone.

You will need to be 18 ranger to get both the +1 crit range and multiplier.  At that point, you may as well go pure ranger and get the DWS capstone.

Here's some builds we're explicitly considering for AA and Manyshot/10K changes:
Pure Ranger Archer, primary AA secondary DWS
Pure Ranger Archer, primary DWS secondary AA
Monkcher 6/12 Monk/Ranger (+a couple extra levels... somewhere?) using both 10k and Manyshot. This build doesn't get +1 Critical Multiplier in AA. The development team is divided on whether or not this is enough to balance getting 10k Stars. A cage match has been scheduled (by which I mean DPS Testing). Should this not be enough, we are explicitly open to ideas. There are a lot of options on the table, most of them are undesirable for one reason or a nother.
Elven Pure Monk'cher AA: Gives up DWS.
Elven 12 Ranger 6 Monk: 31 points to get Crit in AA, 21 points to get crit in DWS, 14 points to get the Elven AA tree (so you don't need 18 Ranger for the AA Core Crit) This is potentially the worrying build!

You are wrong.  Varg specifically mentions the 12/6/x Elf build as a possibility with this post:


You do not NEED 18 ranger to get +1 Crit Mult and +1 Crit Range. 

Then remove thunderholme pack and thunderforged items and that will balance the system back i think.

Indeed.

PURE Rangers FTW!

BTW...this also sounds to me like Holy Sword is less likely to get nerfed considering another class besides Pally can get, more or less, the same benefit.