Time to give up the Bow?

Archery just needs some better weapons imo and maybe add a quiver to increase swing speed. The speed of a heavy x bow is complete bullshit. A halberd swings nearly twice as fast. As far as the hitting % I don't have a problem. In fact last time I played CTF I used my scribe archer and a ag bow and for the first time managed two kills. I'm telling you now. Reflecting a explosion and then an Ebolt then a nice shot timed with a purple to finish them off. With some practice it's a deadly combo and hard to kill when you're 7x GM chugging pots and bandaging yourself.

I also play a Provo archer. I can make 40k an hour trying unless pfr stops by to say hi. Lol Provo archer is the best support character for group play I think. Heal people. Provo mobs. Still do decent damage while doing other stuff to help the group

Yes, its odd that there is no quiver for archers, the arrows come out of the backpack instead.

It's not "period" correct. That's usually the argument when archers mention making some changes or adding content. Like the dexxer vs tamer argument. Dexxers risk everything to go make 25-40k an hour while tamers bond their dragons that have been trained up to GM in everything and if it dies....no big deal. Res it and restock on regs and grab another 2k set of armor a few hundred bandages (takes me about 5 mins to get completely back up and running) and you're back to slaying shit. What did the tamer lose? 10 mins max and 15k at the max if they were full in cash and about to make a bank run.

sorry got off on a tangent there.

New idea. Maybe add a repeating cross bow. Make it fire 8-10 shots fairly quick, like broad sword quick then take 5 seconds to reload. I don't completely agree with a special attack for archery I think ranged attacks are enough of an advantage if we can get the swing speed up and either let oak bows do more damage or add runic fetching kits.

Poison and exloding arrows could be cool but there would have to be a way to control them. So an archer couldn't just go in and shoot explosive arrows that are doing huge damage. Same with poison arrows. Make the poison arrows come in lots of 5-10 maybe. Still I'm not 100% on board with these either.

I could be wrong but I do not remember heavy x bows taking so long to shoot. Never really used x bows much but the bow seems a little slow too.

I don't have an Archer, but this caught my attention. If this above is correct, then Isn't Archery the only Weapon Skill that the Accuracy Bonus works correctly?

Weapon Skill = Chance to hit plus Base Damage
Tactics = Damage not chance to hit

So why would an "Accuracy Tag" on a Weapon add Tactics(Damage) instead of added Chance to hit(Weapon Skill)?

If the Damage Tag(Vanq) is adding the bonus, then it should be Tactics, I don't play weapon users here, ill go test it

Tested: The Accuracy is what adds the Bonus to Tactics on Regular Weapons, and Archery on Bows, to me that says Archery works correctly and the other weapons are not working correctly. Accuracy is the "Chance to Hit"(Weapon Skill) not Damage(Tactics)

I believe we're supposed to accept that the magical accuracy allows the user to better find the soft spots on his target to inflict more damage. From a mechanical point of view, magical bows add to archery instead of tactics to avoid an unbalanced level of damage to heavy crossbows with tactics mods. I don't think that'd make archery over-powered, really, but I think the accuracy bonus fits into our modified archery system pretty well. Archers still need some love.

I'm not bashing Archery, I'm sure they do need some love, especially in the repair department. I am curious though.. what kind of increased hit % do you get with a Supremely Accurate Bow of any Damage Modifier? That really peaks my interest in Archery with a plus Skill of that magnitude if it translates to actual hit %.
Sustained damage from increased hit % from the faster Archery Weapons could be interesting................*considers adding Archery*

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I think the prevailing opinion is that range is the special ability. I'd just be happy if good magical bows were easier to come by (in relation to other weapon types.)

Pretty sure Hatecrime and myself have been running archers for a long time, only difference is he is hybrid and myself scribe. This has been talked about up and down. Only thing that is lacking in archery for myself is accuracy. Also Telamon has said he was eventually going to do something to both archery and parry. you can check out Swiftfeet on the website and my youtube ctf videos and learn to archer until changes are made. And yes you can achieve 15+ kills in CTF.

Up to 12%, depends on range.
It pairs with taming very nicely since accuracy is best at 2 tiles. Just stand behind your pets.

There are some good ideas here and elsewhere in this thread. It could being back archery on a level with other weapons.

What would this template be?

Lore
Taming
Vet
Tactics
Archery
Anatomy
Magery

use pots and magery for healing yourself?

100 dex for 3 second pet heals
40 int for moongate
85 str

I like talking about templates.. Lots to be considered.

A while back I tried out a bunch of different tamer setups and found weapon skill, tactics, anatomy, taming, lore, magery and med to be the most personally gratifying. What I found was that since I already had another tamer the dex-tamer just wasn't going to be my general purpose or big game hunting character. Given that, I targeted creatures that my tames could handle with only magery to heal them. Magery was more than enough for most situations and the med gave me more freedom to travel around. While I wasn't using archery it did occur to me that it might be the most fun to use in this format, though.

Oh, and just to be precise and honest. . . . What I meant to say was that's the most personally gratifying of the dex-tamers to me and that template is no longer part of my repertoire .

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Good point…Med is extremely useful when using magery. Takes a while to regain 40 mana to gate you and your pets out.

It doesn't make any sense to me that the special hit for archery is that it is ranged.

In T2A no weapons had special hits and archery was ranged.

In UOR all the weapons got special hits except archery which was still the same as T2A.

Archery became even more under balanced when they added special hits to everything but archery.

Balanced archery would be giving archery the simple benefits that all the other weapons have: special hits, repairable, runics, decent DPS on heaviest weapon type, and chasing power.

I find Maltman's points convincing about the disadvantages of archery.

However, I suspect that archery will always be inferior to melee weapons and that this was one reason for introducing elves in Mondain's Legacy. It evened things up somewhat. Less str, more dex and int, and of course elven bows. In a purely human version of UO, archery will always be the step-child marital skill in the game. However, I wonder if by changing the character stats when creating a character at the start, some of the disadvantages bows can be minimised (creating something of what we might call a "half-elf"). Used as scouts and in reconnaissance could be an interesting challenge.

Lets review history:

During the actual UOR era, the archer mage was one of the most widely used templates on some OSI shards. The issue being that anat/eval giving wrestling did not enter into the equation until publish 16 (which only lasted about 6 months until AOS came out). For the first 2 years of UOR, if you wanted to be a mage, you couldnt have anat, and the standard template was:

Archery
Tact
Mage
Med
Eval
Resist
Wrestle

In this regard, archery had a large advantage in that it was ranged. Also, Runics did not exist until publish 16. A big issue with the balance in archery is that we are emulating a period in time that never truely existed

An anat/eval tank mage was a nonexistent template. Anat/eval defensive wrestling came with the implementation of power scrolls. With only being able to fit 6 skills in a template, a 7x char was ineffective and a non-competitor except for starting chars. Its almost as if it was a concession to those who could not obtain power scrolls. I had a fencer mage on siege, and since i was not heavily invested in this shard, my template was as follows:

(4 year old accounts had a skillcap of 720)
110 Fencing
110 Eval
100 Tact
100 Anat
100 Mage
100 Resist
100 Med

I was completely ineffective against the 115 and 120 6x mages/dexers. I did fine against the random scrubs Id run into but against any serious pvper i was toast.

On this server, not having anatomy on a weapon char is inconcievable.

That was not the case during UOR. We are combatting issues that did not exist.

I like you're creativity Kishember, but I think a large majority of the imbalance can be fixed simply by giving archery head-shots. (25% like all the other weps)

If things were balanced then archery should actually be slightly superior to all the other weapon classes because it requires an additional resource, arrows, at 7.5gp per shot. (750gp per 100 shots. or if 50% of the shots hit and do 15 damage each, thats 1gp per damage dealt)

Great history lesson Jig. I didn't know any of this.