MabiPro: The Authentic Old-School Mabinogi Experience

Hey everyone, I figured I'd bring back a long dead horse to beat again on the forums: AR changes.

AR isn't really in a good spot right now. Because of defense on monsters in later missions as well as poor base damage scaling of the skill, while it operates reasonably well in early dungeons it falls off fast when you hit later content. This alongside the durability cost essentially makes the skill feel really bad to use with an expensive or enchanted bow. To correct this I have come forward to propose a change that ISN'T just a numbers buff like live got, but would instead aim to make the skill (and human archery in general) feel more distinct from just down scaled elf archery.

Basically what I'm proposing is this:
AR is used primarily as a crowd control skill for multi aggro situations, or when you've got a fast moving creature you cant deal with using magnums because the aim speed isn't fast enough to allow you to react should you miss. So in order to allow AR to keep both of these capabilities I propose that we change the skill to a 3 hit skill with automatic knockback like magnum on the 1st and 3rd hits, then a shot with bonus aim chance that has an increased stun duration similar to but weaker than support shot on the 2nd hit.

Now the reason I think this is better is largely because if the skill only has 3 hits the damage can be re-scaled across them. I propose 195/85/215%(495%)@rF to 225/115/245%(585%)@r1 a 20% increase in overall damage but these numbers should be tested. In effect this would reduce the effect defense has on the skill while simultaneously improving the problems AR has with durability by almost halving the cost of using it while not removing either of the core components of the skill.

Additionally by doing this instead of the g14 change it would allow the skill to act and feel differently from an improved elf auto attack since it has different methods of controlling knockdown gauge dynamically. That said, elven archery will still always outclass human archery in sheer damage (as it should IMO) since even though AR would have a similar total damage number, the shots would have to be aimed 3 separate times to get off a similar overall multiplier, while being affected three times as much by defense.

Anyway I'm open to comments or suggestions but please keep things constructive.

Thanks for reading
Alistine

I am somebody who has been asking for a Ar buff since i started on this server, I played a primary range focused character on live from g2-g15ish. And, even though id really like to see an Ar buff I personally think a g14 number change would be better suited than a functionality change like proposed

By changing its functionality to 3 shots and a automatic knockback you reduce its versatility tremendously and if we compare it to the g14 one and not the one we currently have I dont think the extra damage it would deal would outweigh that change
It also further lessons the impact of the attack speed of bows and more harshly punish missing

Hmm I'm not going to lie, thats about the opposite of what I expected to hear. In my opinion having auto knockback on 2/3 hits would actually improve versatility as you would have the ability to handle 3 targets if you're lucky or reliably handle two targets so long as at least one doesn't have ping. Additionally ping wouldn't be as much of an issue for the skill since auto-knockdown bypasses ping's knockdown counter resistance.

As far as damage is concerned the numbers I gave would have similar damage per second as g14 AR so long as you're hitting all the shots on the same target, if not slightly higher as you wouldn't have to play around knockdown immunity on t3 reset like you do on normal AR. that said I'm not 100% on the numbers since I dont have the ability to test these kinds of things.

And when you're talking about the impact of attack speed on bows as far as I'm aware current and live AR overwrite the attack delay time rather than adjust it, so it wouldn't matter either way. And as far as missing being punished more harshly, that was the point of there being 3 shots. If you miss the first shot, the second would be preloaded at 50% like normal AR while the third shot can hit a second target for knockdown.

I thought this through a lot more than I wrote since I wouldn't propose a change that I didn't think would make archery more unique of a class to play without affecting overall game balance. I'd also like to say I'm not against g14 AR changes per se, but I think that having the skill act differently would give it a better feel. Again post was just to gauge interest since I'm not sure how much effort these changes would take.

I think the idea of changing it to 3 shots is a really nice to concept to deal with defense. But I'm not a fan of the new KD. Different bows have different KD/shot. I'd just make use of that. And I think the proposed dmg% is a bit too high considering you'd be pumping out shots at a similar speed with a crazy large increase in damage. But who knows it would have to be tested to find similar dps on 0/0 mobs

Yeah the reason I recommended knockdown was so that multiaggro could be dealt with but alternatively just 3 hits with increased stun duration would handle that fine. the damage numbers are also predictions based off mags damage. I was liberal since AR is human only while elves get .5 sec mags with double shot base. the damage would overall be lower than an elf mag spamming by a lot still even against 0 defense monsters, and I wouldn't mind putting like a 4 to 5 second CD from initial use to lock damage per second

please buff ar to the same as live server...