Archery and the lack of a Special Attack

I'd like to stir up the dust with an idea thread regarding Archery and its lack of a Special Attack. All other weapon skills have a special, except Archery.

A couple ideas I've had, or heard, or read:
A running shot, wherein a shot can be made without stopping, on the same 'chance' rate of all other Special Attacks. I believe the number is %25, unless I'm mistaken there.

As we've all heard and dreamed, poison arrows. They should be very expensive and require a GM Fletcher with Poisoning to craft. Potentially decrease impact damage due to the poison 'deteriorating' the arrow?

A stun shot, like the mage stun or paralyzing blow, but damage halved on a successful stun shot.

A blood letting arrow, when target is hit, target 'bleeds out' X amount of HP over a 4s period of time.

Anyway, just kicking off the convo on potential ideas for Archery to get an up in combat. Any feedback welcome, so long as it's on topic.

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Armor piercing!!!

Nice addition, considering mages wear armor in this era, it would apply to all fairly enough. If an arrow gets an 'armor piercing' hit, damage is applied at a 0AR level? Or perhaps %50, as the armor would have 'slowed' the penetration?

Also, agreed Gideon. I like the concept of poison arrows but man it could get real overpowered, real fast.

Bleed is nice, but it would have to do less than poison or you may as well jsut have poison

I like the Stun shot the most I think.

Armor piercing would be my next favorite idea.

Don't like the running shot.

Poisoning arrows & Armor piercings were ideas I brought up a week ago in irc. I would only agree to doing that if archery/bows weren't nerfed. To much nerfing going on lately to pvp skills and mechanics and archery has always been under rated in PVP until AOS came out with special abilities for them. The % chance to hit with a DP/AP arrows would have to be lower other wise it would make it to op with numerous archers and Stunning with an arrow would not be a good idea. A good idea would to make the phoenix drop special feathers that you can craft special arrows with making the arrows hard to get and rare while giving a reason to farm the phoenix. Those are the only terms I'd agree with other wise my vote is to leave it the way it is.

Stunning(albeit temporarily) with Ghoul's Touch bows was possible prior to this era and wasn't an OP game changer, but useful, however expensive. The up to 4 second unchangeable stun/para we have here is truly much more significant in terms of immobilization and cost. Special moves brought on the removal of charged weapons and archery was left in the dark.

With a chance to para/stun on hit, it probably wouldn't be so bad with the existing hit chance maybe.

I don't know where you were going with the phoenix idea, but special in what way? I'm not interested in rare arrows, so much as useful arrows.
If you don't mind, I'll carry the thought of phoenix feathers further and impose the idea that arrows crafted with phoenix feathers could be, dare I say it, fire arrows.

In the end, I think poison or any kind of special arrow will be a harder stretch of coding to implement. Which makes me curious. Has any other shard tried this and to what end?

I play a faction archer but havent gotten to get much time on it. Losing stamina from every form of dmg really hurts archery, the next being that you can quickly run away while on horseback. The delay between stopping and shooting is not feasible in pvp, the arrow needs to be released upon stopping. Maybe having wrestling in combination of archery improves accuracy to allow shots while moving. More testing will be accomplished in the coming weeks.

Era accuracy is out the window at this point since people have fought against ideas saying this is not an era accurate server even though they want data proving things were era accurate. So era accuracy & data is pretty much pointless as an argument on forums at this point concerning anything. Either way just putting my two cents in but i've recently playing another game so whatever happens I guess happens, it's of no concern to me anymore what happens here after what i've seen lately. However ghouls touch etc was all pre renaissance era (T2A) & the special abilities being spoken of was After renaissance, Archery pretty much sucked this Era.

I'm not gonna go into detail about the phoenix dropping special feathers to make special arrows because it's pretty self explanatory, but it's just an idea I don't really care to further explain or if it gets added or not.

I'm definitely seeing the 1s delay to actually fire, when stopping. I was fighting a single regular lich, with a silver power bow, for like five minutes because it could gheal through the bow cycle. That's an aside though really with liches being epic here.
The concept of coupling Wrestling with Archery for a special move is definitely cool. Although the other weapon skills don't require that, it's certainly a decent idea for balance.

This conversation has nothing to do with accuracy to an era. Simply possibilities to make Archery a decent skill, that it actually became, when Special Moves were added for it.

Pro:

Archery has range
Some of the highest damage
Fun to roleplay

Cons:

Requires 2 ammunition types (no ammunition = worthless weapon)
Slowest hit speeds
Cannot hit on the run, need to stop for near 2 seconds
Only 2 handed; Can only heal/cure with bandages whilst equiped
Stamina is drained severely by all types of damage = even longer firing duration, drinking a refresh only lengthens the duration.

Things that can help boost Archery:
Quicker firing upon re-arm, firing on the move, or quickly firing as soon as you stop moving.
Stamina drain needs to have less impact from all dmg sources (except maces)

I don't think there should be a stun shot, there is already stun punch and spear paralyze blow.
Poison arrows sound cool but I don't think that is what archery needs (poison would probably out do archery damage HAHAH)
Phoenix feathers would be easily camped and controlled, maybe have others out there like stone harpy feathers.

So overall I feel my biggest archery gripes are accuracy, rate of fire decreased by multiple sources and firing on the run.

For what special effect/benefit are you thinking?
That's my biggest question regarding the feathers from other animals is what would the effect be?

Something I think that would be cool is if an arrow had a 10% chance to 'explode' on the target. Once hit, it would give the same delay as the explosion spell. It would do both arrow damage and magic damage and could use the users magery to determine the damage. It would not use any mana.

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Very nice expansion on the topic Gideon, thanks.

That really makes the most sense, pushing Archery into the realm of a Primary skill, not just add-on.
I was looking for ways to make it awesome as a secondary weapon skill, but that spread makes a lot more sense.

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clearly the special move for an archer would be a scatter shot, slowing the opponents movement and therefore making the archer have his way at him

I never remember having to stop so long to shoot. I don't know why the delay after stopping moving is so slow. I think an amazing idea to help balance Archery and it's lack of special attack combined with rediculously slow attack speed would be the old special abilities like ghoul's touch/dragons breath/etc... Maybe faster shooting speeds wouldn't hurt. Only problem is fletchers would be even more useless then they are now if ghoul's touch and such were added to magic weapons. WHY WAS THERE NEVER A RUNIC FLETCHING KIT!?

I think we should get runic fletching kits

and

GM made bows should get bleed effects

while

magic bows have a chance to have ghoul's touch/dragons breath/etc.

That way gm made bows are still viable and magic bows don't become obsolete. Gives players more options when choosing a bow.

Dont forget gm alchemy + archery to shoot explosive arrows!

Purple arrows, undoubtedly.