2013-06-10, 08:28 AM
I'm really curious to see what specifically makes arrow blaster so bad to use. In theory, it sounds fine: a hurricane that has more damage, aimability, and the ability to hit more than one creature, in exchange for loss of mobility. So other than the fact that it can't be kept active for more than 15 seconds at a time, how'd that end up so much worse off? Did they disable AFA on it? In all the videos I've found so far they've barely used the skill at all and just spam uncountable arrow, so in the 5 seconds it's used I can't tell what exactly is wrong with it, aside from being buggy in its current form.
Overall, I think a lot of the changes they made to BM's are rather good, with a few exceptions that are rather atrocious and that clearly need to be fixed before this leaves Tespia. 40% defense for 20 weapon attack is useless, and clearly needs a change. Wound shot seems fairly pointless, or at least extremely difficult to use effectively, as you'd have to predict when something is going to heal within 10 seconds before it does. Maybe if they changed it so that if used within a few seconds of a boss healing, it deals damage equal to 60% of the damage healed? Kind of disappointed that there's no changes to mortal blow: I for one do like the skill as it is now, since it's helpful with mobbing, sometimes turning 2-hit kills into 1-hit kills, but it would've been cool to see some added effect that could help with bosses. How that would work, I don't know, maybe just slap a passive damage dealt to bosses % increase onto it or something. I kinda wish puppet was still around in some form for BM's, but it does make sense with the new focus for it to be a marksman thing and not a bowmaster thing. Feels weird not to have arrow rain anymore as well, but I always felt that skill didn't really belong on an archer anyway, and uncountable arrow seems like a good tradeoff (albeit one you have to wait until 4th job for. At least inferno isn't redundant.).
Some of the things that I really like: the new mobility skills look great, having a faster and more adaptable jump should make positioning a lot easier(although I'm still kind of wondering what point there is to a downward jump), Steigeisen is great, giving another way to get around mobs without dealing with touch damage, and since it can be used midair as well, moving through maps quickly should be a ton easier and less annoying. All the skills that focus on giving greater and greater procs the more you attack are good, like concentration and armor piercing. Always wanted more ways to avoid seduce.
Quiver is one that could go either way; if it works the way I think it does, it's a great addition. If it just automatically cycles through each set of arrows as you use them up with each shot of hurricane(or arrow blaster, if that becomes a functional 4th job 1v1), it should be great. Magic arrows would essentially be a second AFA, poison arrows would give reliable DoT, and automatically switching between arrow types would mean you're not wasting any time constantly refreshing a DoT that's got plenty of duration to work with. Draining arrows provide an easy way to keep your hp up so that you can save pots for 1/1's and the like, and depending on how they're capped with hp recovery, I think I'll really like them. One of my biggest problems with drain arrow was that despite the fact that it's supposed to heal 50% of my maximum health, it really only healed about 15% because of not factoring in any HP boosts at all, including the 40% hp boost from spirit link(the fact that if it happened to activate mortal blow it only healed mortal blow's '5%' and not its '50%' made that even worse). Advanced quiver looks good, and really it looks fine if all it had was its passive effect. While the only real benefit to having the quiver size larger is that there's more time in between refreshing the DoT of the poison arrows, the amount of extra power added on to each arrow type looks significant. Magic arrows, when active, would occur as often as AFA, and cause more damage. The active effect seems less generally useful, but it's good for specific situations where you know you want one type of arrow much more than the other two, perhaps using only drain arrows at a heavy hitting boss or using magic arrows when you know you're safe and only need more dps. It'd be even more useful if it was a toggle instead of having only a 30-second period, though.
That's what I'm thinking so far with these changes for gameplay. As far as animations, I don't mind all the green. Green's always been the color of archers. The amount of blue they put into it seems strange, though, especially since blue was always the wind archer's big color. More red and gold wouldn't be bad, and aside from color schemes I think the animations themselves aren't bad.
Overall, I think a lot of the changes they made to BM's are rather good, with a few exceptions that are rather atrocious and that clearly need to be fixed before this leaves Tespia. 40% defense for 20 weapon attack is useless, and clearly needs a change. Wound shot seems fairly pointless, or at least extremely difficult to use effectively, as you'd have to predict when something is going to heal within 10 seconds before it does. Maybe if they changed it so that if used within a few seconds of a boss healing, it deals damage equal to 60% of the damage healed? Kind of disappointed that there's no changes to mortal blow: I for one do like the skill as it is now, since it's helpful with mobbing, sometimes turning 2-hit kills into 1-hit kills, but it would've been cool to see some added effect that could help with bosses. How that would work, I don't know, maybe just slap a passive damage dealt to bosses % increase onto it or something. I kinda wish puppet was still around in some form for BM's, but it does make sense with the new focus for it to be a marksman thing and not a bowmaster thing. Feels weird not to have arrow rain anymore as well, but I always felt that skill didn't really belong on an archer anyway, and uncountable arrow seems like a good tradeoff (albeit one you have to wait until 4th job for. At least inferno isn't redundant.).
Some of the things that I really like: the new mobility skills look great, having a faster and more adaptable jump should make positioning a lot easier(although I'm still kind of wondering what point there is to a downward jump), Steigeisen is great, giving another way to get around mobs without dealing with touch damage, and since it can be used midair as well, moving through maps quickly should be a ton easier and less annoying. All the skills that focus on giving greater and greater procs the more you attack are good, like concentration and armor piercing. Always wanted more ways to avoid seduce.
Quiver is one that could go either way; if it works the way I think it does, it's a great addition. If it just automatically cycles through each set of arrows as you use them up with each shot of hurricane(or arrow blaster, if that becomes a functional 4th job 1v1), it should be great. Magic arrows would essentially be a second AFA, poison arrows would give reliable DoT, and automatically switching between arrow types would mean you're not wasting any time constantly refreshing a DoT that's got plenty of duration to work with. Draining arrows provide an easy way to keep your hp up so that you can save pots for 1/1's and the like, and depending on how they're capped with hp recovery, I think I'll really like them. One of my biggest problems with drain arrow was that despite the fact that it's supposed to heal 50% of my maximum health, it really only healed about 15% because of not factoring in any HP boosts at all, including the 40% hp boost from spirit link(the fact that if it happened to activate mortal blow it only healed mortal blow's '5%' and not its '50%' made that even worse). Advanced quiver looks good, and really it looks fine if all it had was its passive effect. While the only real benefit to having the quiver size larger is that there's more time in between refreshing the DoT of the poison arrows, the amount of extra power added on to each arrow type looks significant. Magic arrows, when active, would occur as often as AFA, and cause more damage. The active effect seems less generally useful, but it's good for specific situations where you know you want one type of arrow much more than the other two, perhaps using only drain arrows at a heavy hitting boss or using magic arrows when you know you're safe and only need more dps. It'd be even more useful if it was a toggle instead of having only a 30-second period, though.
That's what I'm thinking so far with these changes for gameplay. As far as animations, I don't mind all the green. Green's always been the color of archers. The amount of blue they put into it seems strange, though, especially since blue was always the wind archer's big color. More red and gold wouldn't be bad, and aside from color schemes I think the animations themselves aren't bad.