20 replies to this topic

[medication]

Justification
Allright, before I start this I should introduce myself, no ?
Started playing before all crit-stats got changed, but after the reset. My main crit is ranger and I have leveled two to 29-30 before I had to leave first time. Now leveling 2 again, and they should be hitting 25 soon. I have access to total of 5 arch rangers in the account I share with a bud (he is far more fond of thieves).

Ok, moving on to the issue, namely a kind of useless skill at the moment, called Flaming Arrow (before stamina gain change it was used in PvP mostly timing it so it would provide 6 hits on one stam hit). In its current state it hits aprox same as Rapid and has a slight chance of poisoning and if succesfull the poison deals whoopin' 1 dmg.
Seeing how this is a lv28 skill, it should be a tad better, don't you think ?



Suggestions
Easiest way to fix it would be adding actual poison dmg to the skill and making it usefull again, lets say, if managing to poison player OR monster, it deals 30 dmg in it's duration of 30 seconds (meaning 10dmg every 10secs). It would not be cumulative and once poisoned, a person/monster wouldn't be able to get poisoned again untill cleansed or untill duration of poison passes. As you can see it's not some major boost in dmg but if not taken care in longer duels it would certanly be usefull.


Another easy way to fix it would be to make the Flaming Arrow actually deal FLAME/FIRE damage to monsters, and make some monsters more acceptable/resistent to it. Example: monsters on Mount Frostborn would be more likely to get hurt by fire, in which case you can add a little table of dmg not too different from some of the weapons that can hurt hydra:
Yeti - Flaming Arrow does 1.25 dmg (an 80 dmg hit would actually be a 100 dmg hit)
Minotaur - Flaming Arrow does 1.10 dmg (an 80 dmg hit would actually be a 88 dmg hit)
Hydra - Flaming Arrow does 1.50 dmg
Scorpion - Flaming Arrow does 0.85 dmg (it's not scared of fire and lives in desert?)

To balance it out, introduce some monsters that would generally be same as others (like Fire Scorpion) but will have higher/lower resistance to fire.



Lets get creative
Change its name to Poison Arrow and make it deal poison dmg (oooh ?), where it could have base dmg 10% less than current Flaming Arrow, but would deal greater poison dmg, 45 in it's duration of 30 seconds (15 dmg every 10 seconds), with chance to poison at 5% at lv 28. Gain of 1% to chance to poison for each level after that (Arch Ranger would have 7% chance of poisoning it's target with each hit). It would not be cumulative and once poisoned, a person/monster wouldn't be able to get poisoned again untill cleansed or untill duration of poison passes.



Lets get creative pt II
Now imagine Poison Arrow is implemented, an arch ranger has 7% chance of poisoning. Taking it to another level if possible to write in game code:
Every day at 0:01 hrs server time a set of 5 or 10 tomes (books on poisoning, where you can read few pages about creation of different poisons, I would even write it myself) would be scattered across the world of Nightmist, on random squares (set of squares predetermined so it wouldn't be in cities) and the only way to find them would be by /examine. If none or some are not found by the 0:01 hrs server time next day, locations would be reset, then a set of new 5 or 10 books randomly placed on squares (mt frostborn, desert, harabec, royal forest, sewege, barrier forest..you name it). Sometimes (if main staff wants it) a 1 or 2 would be able to be found in some remote pawn shop, or some other shops on occasion.
What does these books do ? Simple, gather a set ammount (lets say 3 or 5 but different volumes ie volume 1, 2 and so on) and take them to some old ranger that will teach you how to properly use what's written (there will be parts missing) if you pay him good (say 100k) and when done, your chance to poison will raise by 1 or 2%
Introduce a max limit of Chance to poison where it'd get capped at say 20% and you got yourself a ranger facelift.



Riding the creative wave
Crimson Serpent Bow
Base damage: 20, Can be used by: rangers, Description: Made by hermits in the desert, in a secret proccess using skin and blood of red serpent, this crimson bow emites a strange green glow making every arrow deal strong poison damage. When held in your hands it seem as if it is alive and moving, but your grip on the bow is steady and its arrows are deadly., Level needed to equip it: 28, Magical: No, Vamparic: No, Armor: 0, Strength modifier: 0, Intelligence modifier: 0, Dexterity modifier: 0, Constitution modifier: 0, Wisdom modifier: 0, Charisma modifier: 0, Poison chance: 5%, Poison/30s damage: 5, Monster damage table: , Mana leech: .


So, this bow would give additional 5% to Chance to poison and 5 dmg to Poison damage making the Poison Arrow deal 50 dmg/30s. If shootning Rapid with it, every hit would have 5% chance to poison and deal 5 dmg over 30s.

[Penguin]

hmm.... I'm liking it....

(btw there is a minor typo in lets get creative part2, last paragraph)

[Deval]

Medication, I never realised you had the abilty in you to design and flesh out an idea like this.

I really do love this idea. The only thing which I think may need to be taken into consideration is the planned grading of poisons in the game. (Please let me know if this has already been implemented.) In the 'to do' list, it is planned that poisons be allocated a 'type', each of which with varying severity. E.G (In my own terms) Severity 1 being the weakest, severity 2 being a little stronger, 3 even stronger still, and so on and so forth.

I'm not sure, but I get the feeling this addition would probably assist your idea rather than work against it.

Regardless, I think your suggestion is brilliant and I fully support it.

[Shane]

Very nice idea, 1 suggestion though. Instead of changing Flaming Arrow to Poison Arrow why not keep the Flaming Arrow and make it deal fire damage as you suggested but give the rangers a choice between Flaming Arrow and Poison Arrow. So in the skills list for a ranger you would have Track, Hypnotise, Forage, Dual Shot, Rapid Fire, Flaming Arrow, and Poison Arrow.

[alone]

Dude, you so rock.

[dillinger]

dylan hearts archy...and this idea

[Oasis]

Ideas great, but do rangers really need to get more powerful?

[trigger happy]

i love the idea but i got one suggestion to add to shane's...how about lvl 1-30 you can choice which arrow you would like...like morphset for druids..you only get one of the arrows and then the rangers wouldn't be geting alot more powerfull and people like Oasis who wonder if this is to much power for rangers would have no arguements i dont think...but i would like this all much better if you could not have both arrows..other than that i love all this lol...and i also love rangers

so i totaly support this idea

[Consumed]

Nice

[Bean]

In all technicality they wouldnt be getting more powerful.

They SHOULD have been this powerful to begin with, but a screw up with the poison coding *I can only assume its that....* made the ability essentially useless. If it were changed to this, It would reach its original intended power.

And you can drink pots fast than someone can flaming arrow, the same can hardly be said for RF.

[medication]

About introducing both (or a choice between) Poison and Flaming arrow as skill, I'm just thinking that any unplanned change to a class would have greater chance of happening if it was in a smaller scale. Adding flame dmg to Flaming arrow and than redoing whole monsters table to make them sensitive/resistant is probably a lot of unplanned work and is less likely to happen (I just posted it so that staff can see there are easier options )


About Poison arrow making ranger more powerful, I am gonna say it's not happening and here is why (if idea as whole introduced):

-Poison arrow would (or should) have about 10% lesser base damage than current Flaming Arrow
-Chance to poison would also be very low, 7% at Arch
-If Books would be implemented the max Chance to poison would be 20% (1 in 5 hits)
-If Books would be implemented it would take a rather long time to find them all at rnd squares and max out the Skill
-Poison dmg itself would not be too big but it would provide a steady source of dmg, plus even with max poison dmg at 45 and max 20% chance to hit, you'd still probably have to use whole stamina to get one hit in. Now, with 10% less base dmg, even if your hits are all high hits, you're bound to make 25-35 LESS damage on actual hits so poison dmg would give you only 10-20 dmg extra
-You would have 10 seconds (1 round) to cleanse the poison before taking any damage
-Let's say even the Bow gets implemented, it has 20 base compared to 21 Enchanted Bow has, and the extra poison dmg is only +5



The main point is that a lv28 skill should be something you look forward to, something really good that you can make use of. With making it Poison Arrow, not only will that make the skill very usefull, but it will introduce a new style of strategic playing without making ranger overpowered.

[Raith]

I love this idea, the books part is brilliant. I really hope this gets put in the game!

[Raylen]

The books part is awesome, i love it. Rest of the idea is pretty damn hot too

[Squee]

I like how it doesn't really make Rangers stronger...just more useful.

[Deval]

Considering the idea gets put in, after a bit of thought I have issues with the use of the term 'book', and the fact that they randomly appear in the wilderness. I'd say it would probably be more fitting that the ranger actually go hunting for a 'Fungus' of some type, with a more potent poison. The reason I suggest fungus is that it's a subject often related with illness/poisoning. Also, in my opinion, you could possibly bump up the spawn rate of the 'book' or 'fungus', but make it so that one must use the 'Forage' skill to locate it.

[alone]

You could get different sorts of fungus/plantlife growing in different areas, with a varying chance to find them while Foraging..?

I dunno... I had to contribute something

[Bean]

Or you could have random temple/idol type structures appear randomly. All of which would have an inscription upon them with clues to where these 'fungus' would be found.

This would make it much more fun IMHO, but Im sure everyone would say its too 'hard' with that idea. I dont think it should be so easy that everyone has it within a month, or even a year. It should be a very confined upgrade.

Im not sure If I read this in the post or not, but perhaps their could be three different types of fungus/idol/whatever. One which increases the overall damage of the poison, one which makes the poison happen more often *Increases %*, and then a final one which is pretty much useless. The last one would be in there to even further seperate how many people would have these upgrades.

Whaddya think?

[medication]

As long as it's simple I'm fine with it. Books (as in old dug up papers, or found on bodies of dead adventurers) or Fungi or whatever you ppl like is good as long as it sticks to the idea (where you need to find stuff). Plus if staff notices that there is a very low chance of finding those items (in course of few weeks) they can always up the amount of items scattered or put them closer to cities.
Come to think of it, rnd server time should probably be best, so there's always a chance of finding something on a any given square.

[Mec]

I don't like it. I don't know why either, my little newb self doesn't like it, big deal. I can't find any problems with it however, so I'll just come up with something a little different.

Here's a few thoughts I have:

1. A flaming arrow is not going to be very hard to extinguish.

2. Where's the ranger going to get the fire?

3. The only thing special about a flaming arrow is its going to hurt a wee bit more and might set a stationary object on fire.

And so suggestions:

1. The flaming arrow might do a bit of square damage.

2. The flaming arrow might 'stun'.

Poison doesn't really make sense for a flaming arrow, I agree with your there. Renaming it poison arrow might work, however, poison percentage should be determined by intelligence, a smarter ranger should be able to make a more potent poison and aim it more lethally.

The books aren't good though, it should be a boss drop, or perhaps instead of /examineing, foraging.

Just my lil' ol nweb self's thoughts.

[Squee]

Were it a boss-drop, rangers would max out their Poison Percentages extremely quickly.

[Mec]

Make it a ranger-only area. Without a healer, a boss drop would be near impossible if it was difficult.