For the assassin loving, or hating Devs

[jumpmaster12]

One thing I think the assassin class needs to gain is makeshift arrows, and lose the contrived weapon line. Not saying contrived weapon isn't good .../cough, it just seems useless to me as a raider when I use 20 stacks or so of arrows a night raiding on a weekend with the new mostly ranged encounters my guild is encountering in KOS. Yes I understand my class isn't a primarily ranged dps class I have played my assassin for almost 2 years now. BUT.... we do a good deal of dps and a large number of raid encounters are all becoming ranged or jousting where i use my bow coming in and out of the joust and waiting for joust call. Just a thought since arrows are so expensive and a complete pain in the [Removed for Content] to make

[HellRaiserXX]

<div></div><div></div><div>Learn to joust.  Any encounter can be jousted and timing the AE is really easy with swarm pets on the mob, AE goes off all swarm pets die, joust in unload dmg joust out and fire away with arrows. Also, resists play a huge role in KoS, get your resists up to 7k+ depending on the type of mob you face and you can just sit in there and do damage.  You will have to sacrifice some stats for the resists, but it is a lot more DPS than the bow. So no I don't think we need a makeshift arrow, from what rangers tell me they still spend tons of money on arrows even with it.</div><p>Message Edited by HellRaiserXX on <span class="date_text">04-08-2006</span><span class="time_text">09:53 AM</span></p>

[Fahrenheig]

/agreeAlso, contrived weapon is a great power.  Since there is no minimum range it's great for throwing out on the inboud of a joust to keep the dps going.<div></div>

[jumpmaster12]

Reading comprehension goes a long way.... raidng for a year I KNOW how to joust. I can fire 3-4 arrows in the time it takes for contrived weapon to repop meaning my bow while waiting for the "in" call is the greater DPS while using contrived to switch to combat mode, also meaning I am going to do the most DPS I can to a raid encounter. Try actually understanding the post before responding. I am saying that I am growing tired of being one of two classes that has to spend 2 pp a day to raid and be effective between poisons and buying arrows, and we should have a makeshift arrow also. I know how to play my assassin and top 1,200 dps often and stay top 3 DPS of my guild 95% of the time.<p>Message Edited by jumpmaster12 on <span class="date_text">04-08-2006</span><span class="time_text">02:25 PM</span></p><p>Message Edited by jumpmaster12 on <span class="date_text">04-08-2006</span><span class="time_text">02:26 PM</span></p>

[Crychtonn]

<div></div><p>SOE just need to cut the merchant cost of arrows by 90% and fix crafted arrows.  Make crafting arrows into a single combine that creates 99 at pristine level.  Everyone wins.  Assassins and rangers don't have to go broke buying arrows and crafters can make arrows fast and cheap that people can afford.</p><p>This hurts no one and helps all classes that use ammo.</p><p> </p>

[Hadanelith]

<div></div><p> </p><p>Unfortunately, Crych, Arrows (and ammo on whole) cost what they do at least in part to bring Scout "repair" costs up in line with Tanks. From what I've seen so far, the average tank in T7 spends 50-60g per FULL 100% repair... I only spend about 35-40 (depending on if i have my T6 Fabled on, or T7 Legendary with better stats... Stupid tiered repair costs make T6 Fabled slight more costly). Depending on how much Fabled they have it can flux, naturally.</p><p>However, the cost of arrows is a bit absurd, especially for Rangers who use them for their primary DPS. For this, I have already made a suggestion in other boards that a new form of crafted item known as a Ranger's Quiver should be made available. My suggestion is that a Ranger's Quiver should cost roughly 20g for a Full Repair, but be a 1-slot non-bag item that fires unlimited arrows so long as it is above 0% Condition. There could be a type of Quiver for each type of Arrow for each Tier, so roughly 42 quivers in all. (6 of each tier, 1 each Piercing / Slashing / Crushing for Standard and Rare quality.) This would, effectively, cut Ranger's Arrow costs down by 1/4 or more; a particular Ranger friend of mine says that he spends about 2pp per raid night on T7 Arrows. Even a 30g Full Repair cost for a Quiver would help him immensely.</p><p>Unfortunately, I have to insist that Ranger's Quivers be, appropriately, restricted to Rangers only. They are the sole melee class in this game that uses ranged attacks as their primary mode of damage, and are currently the sole victims of these exhorbitant ammo costs. With proper jousting (and only using my 3 ranged combat arts WHILE jousting or soloing) I only need to refill arrows about once a week. I don't mind biting the bullet for about 1pp once a week, it's no big at all.</p><p>-Hadanelith Raswrolski, 70 Assassin of Legacy, Kithicor</p>

[Crychtonn]

<div></div><blockquote><hr>Hadanelith wrote:<div></div><p>Unfortunately, Crych, Arrows (and ammo on whole) cost what they do at least in part to bring Scout "repair" costs up in line with Tanks. From what I've seen so far, the average tank in T7 spends 50-60g per FULL 100% repair... I only spend about 35-40 (depending on if i have my T6 Fabled on, or T7 Legendary with better stats... Stupid tiered repair costs make T6 Fabled slight more costly). Depending on how much Fabled they have it can flux, naturally.</p><p></p><hr></blockquote><p>I'd have to completely disagree with you on this Hadan.  Ammo cost have nothing to do with 'Scout' repair costs.  If there was some type of ingame 'balance' for repair costs then why would it only be for scouts.  Where is the extra costs for all the preists and mages. </p><p>The reason tanks tend to have higher repair bills is they usually have the most fable equipment.  And the reason they have the most fable equipment is it drops the most.  Every plate tank I know is near or all fabled out with backup fable sitting in bags.  If you were wearing as much fable gear as your tanks then your repair bill will be just as high.  The game has always been favored to give more fable gear to plate wearing tanks then any other class.</p><p>The issue with ammo costs isn't a new one.  It goes all the way back to when the game first came out.  Back then ranged CA damage was tided into the ammo being used.  This was fine for early levels but once alot of people got into the upper 30's and then 40's and 50 it was a big problem.  Remember back then rangers only had one makeshift skill and it summoned T3 carbonite arrows.  So anyone higher then that had to buy all their arrows just to have their CA's do good damage.</p><p>The ranger community tried for a long time to explain this to the Dev's and begged for changes.  Like adding higher level makeshift skills, having crafted arrows easier and cheaper to make or just lowering the cost of merchant arrows.  In the end the Dev's did none of these things and just removed the link between arrows and CA damage.  After the change it didn't matter what tier arrow you used as it had no effect on CA damage.  It's why from then until LU20 rangers ran around with bags full of T1 or T2 arrows.</p><p>LU20 may not have relinked CA damage to arrows but it did make auto damage a significant part of ranger DPS.  If a ranger doesn't want to end up doing T3/T4 damage they have to use tier appropriate arrows.  And now we are all back to the same issue that was here when the game came out.  Being forced to spend huges amounts of money on ammo just to play a class.  It's something that needs to be fixed and I just pray it doesn't take as long as it did the first time.</p><p> </p>

[LoreLady]

I compleatly agree with you crychtonn    I also think assassins and rangers have some ranged skills that need to be increased - assassin DPS plumets when jousing simply because of the contrived weapon line, and the assailing blast line.     Rangers and assassins should not have to pay the extensive amounts of money we pay inorder to maintain DPS. It is only worse now because quality arrows are required for roughly 30% of our ranged damage.    I am not going to debate repair costs - simply because you said you have fabeled gear, I have legendary and treasured. Legendary and treasured are going to cost less.

[Hadanelith]

<DIV> </DIV> <DIV>Well, for Conjurorers specifically, the Pearls seem to balance out the costs a little... ... ...</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>Ok so that's total BS. Blatantly stated, I think that Ammo Costs were kept high b/c Assassins and Rangers, in particular, had an incredibly high ability to kite when the game first came out. It would take me a while, but last April or so when I started, I could kite the Windstalker Rumbler and other various low-level epics entirely solo without even having Adept 3's or Masters. It took a while, but when you got 2-3 Rare Replacer drops and low-level Masters off these mobs, solo, you made a decent amount of money. Rangers were even better at it... and Ammo Cost was never adjusted, in my opinion, because of this ability.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>Eight to Twelve Live Updates later... Rangers and Assassins can't solo anywhere near as well as they used to, and now the classes with the lowest repair costs (Conjurors / Wizards) have the best ability to solo and gain money. Between a CNJ, NEC, and WIZ, our guild has a nearly limitless stream of Masters, and those 3 players have a nearly limitless cashflow... Though I do concede that since their Masters generally cost more to buy, this is SOMEWHAT balanced in an abstract fashion.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>There's really not a lot more to say on the matter. Historically, melee classes have always been more expensive to play... from the start of EQ1 and possibly even beyond. Our equipment has always needed to be top-of-the-line across the board for us to perform at potential, and EQ2 made it so that we have "spells" that also need to be kept in-check. Casters, on the other hand, really only need to keep their key stats up and buy their Masters; I know people probably have all sorts of arguements against this but when you get down to the basics its true. Casters (including healers) are often able to stay out of AoE range, and thus don't have to worry about Resists as much and can retain most of their Power even when in resist gear. A Wizard can INT-himself out and get not only the highest hits / lowest resists on his spells, but also get the most power... conversely, Scouts have to raise STR for damage, AGI for Power, HP / STA for the sake of surviving the AE's that we do eat (inevitably more than Casters unless the AE range is absolutely massive / unavoidable), and debatably INT for Poisons. Tanks have a similar issue in needing STA for HP, AGI for Avoidance, and STR for Power / Damage... while retaining Mitigation.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>As I've said, I don't mind continuing to pay the current Ammo Costs as an Assassin, for very little of our DPS comes from our ranged skills. I feel that Contrived Weapon is alright as it stands simply because it's what I'd call a "Transient Skill," in that it's mostly to give you some DPS while moving in / out of Joust. A reduction in its recast time to 30s would be all I can suggest. Assailing Blast line, however, definately needs an upgrade; its cast time makes it almost not worth it given that it can give 0, 1, or 2 extra hits (usually 1 mind you, but sometimes nothing) at essentially the same damage as bow auto-attack. The main problem here is the truly absurd amount of money Ranger have to pay... and I've provided what I feel to be an adequate solution to that problem. Ranger's Quivers would still be relatively expensive to repair, but far cheaper than what they're currently paying. At least with Ranger's Quivers, if you die less you pay less... whereas with normal Arrows you pay the same regardless unless you have REALLY slow rezzers =p</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>-Hadanelith Raswrolski, 70 Assassin of Kithicor</DIV>

[DemonSlayer]

I AGREE!

[Greenjel]

<DIV>Yeah, a seriously simple fix to put the prices more in line of "fair" would be to simply knock down the price of every tier respectively.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>T6 arrow prices become t7, t5 arrow prices become t6 etc...I usually have no problem affording the LAST tier (it's still noticeable, not completely irrelevant) but the current tier's price often forces me to carry a mixed stack and change them up depending on the situation...I hate micromanaging arrows, but money's tight on pvp servers.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>Noone really seems to mind the price of poisons, crafted or npc bought, they're a lot more in line.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>Seriously needs looking into.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>-Revile</DIV>

[Hadanelith]

<P> </P> <P>Yeah, poison prices aren't bad at all. I have a crafter on my server who makes 3 half-stacks (10 each Grandmaster of Ignorant Bliss, damage poison, debuff poison) for 50g... and he only asks 45, I throw in a tip to make the number even =p</P> <P>Even though I go thru two stacks of twenty a week... and don't go through arrows ANYWHERE near as quickly as a Ranger... the poison prices don't really hurt at all. Arrows are a whole nother story; at nearly 7g per stack of T7 vendor arrows, it costs me as much for 6 stacks of Arrows as 3 days' worth of Poisons. Then consider a Ranger easily goes through a quiver a day if they're an active, raiding player...</P> <P>It's disgusting.</P> <P>As my college semester IRL winds down here (exams next week) I'm going to start a "Petition Thread" to get the Ranger's Quivers idea truly motivated. Arrows really aren't that bad pricewise for everyone else, considering that Assassins use the next highest amount of arrows (generally) and even then we don't use many. If a Tank complains about arrows costing too much, they're just being stupid... Tanks primarily use arrows to pull with, and by no means do you need top-tier arrows just to gank a mob.</P> <P>-Hadanelith Raswrolski, 70 Assassin of Kithicor</P> <P> </P> <P>PS: I realize that tanks have the -option- of using Ranged Auto on joust fights... but seriously... if a Tank ranges in a fight, does the Mob take any damage? =p</P>

[Dragonsviperz]

<DIV>We do pay alot of money, we are probably the most expensive class under Main tanks. I'm around 6.5gp per repair, 7gp per arrows(Adamantine arrows), Poisons..heh...Grandmaster Bliss, Caustic, and Warding Ebb, at 1gp per vial and I order atleast 30per week of each, and tip the alchy so a 1pp per week. I do wish we had something other then Contrived Weapon...I like it and all, but getting like extra ammo or something would be nice for us. Or like being able to use Apply Poison on yourself as well as someone else would be nice. Rangers do kind of get off easy with a small fraction of payments with their bills. Would not ask for anyone to pay a penalty Hen, but just add an equal for us, like Summon Poison/Apply Poison to self, or give us some type of Summon Arrow.</DIV>

[Graton]

<div><blockquote><hr>Hadanelith wrote:<div></div> <p>Yeah, poison prices aren't bad at all. I have a crafter on my server who makes 3 half-stacks (10 each Grandmaster of Ignorant Bliss, damage poison, debuff poison) for 50g... and he only asks 45, I throw in a tip to make the number even =p</p> <p>Even though I go thru two stacks of twenty a week... and don't go through arrows ANYWHERE near as quickly as a Ranger... the poison prices don't really hurt at all. Arrows are a whole nother story; at nearly 7g per stack of T7 vendor arrows, it costs me as much for 6 stacks of Arrows as 3 days' worth of Poisons. Then consider a Ranger easily goes through a quiver a day if they're an active, raiding player...</p> <p>It's disgusting.</p> <p>As my college semester IRL winds down here (exams next week) I'm going to start a "Petition Thread" to get the Ranger's Quivers idea truly motivated. Arrows really aren't that bad pricewise for everyone else, considering that Assassins use the next highest amount of arrows (generally) and even then we don't use many. If a Tank complains about arrows costing too much, they're just being stupid... Tanks primarily use arrows to pull with, and by no means do you need top-tier arrows just to gank a mob.</p> <p>-Hadanelith Raswrolski, 70 Assassin of Kithicor</p> <p>PS: I realize that tanks have the -option- of using Ranged Auto on joust fights... but seriously... if a Tank ranges in a fight, does the Mob take any damage? =p</p><hr></blockquote>berserkers can do some nice dmg with a good bow and adamantite arrows actually. the increase to bow dmg helped everybody. with our dps mob buff we can do pretty fantastic dmg with a bow right now as well.to the larger point, i drop a ton of money on arrows also and being able to summon ones that matched the tier would be nice. my biggest priority change thought right not for assassins would be the replacment of muderous design with a straight deaggro. making apply poison a self that went in it's own poison slot would be cool also.</div>

[Hadanelith]

<P> </P> <P>... Who the heck is "Hen?" Its Hadan, Hada, or Had if you wanna shorten it &gt<img src="/smilies/8a80c6485cd926be453217d59a84a888.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /></P> <P>I'm not in full Fabled of T7 yet so my repair costs are a bit lower (only 4.1g / death thus far) but I'm honestly fairly satisfied with what we, as Assassins, have to pay for arrows. In all reality, stepping back to use my 3 bow shots (especially that piece of stage-prop crap they call Assailing Blast) tends to marginally lower my DPS if for no other reason than the cast time alone. This is, of course, assuming that I'm not having to joust and thus using them during in/out calls.</P> <P>Contrived Weapon couldn't hurt from a minor damage increase, but overall, it's fine as it is. Really. In fact, it has a nice little perk to it: It's a ranged move that counts as a direct melee hit. Why is this such a wonderful thing? The Corsolander in Vyemm's Lab... and any mobs similar to him. Shoot him with arrows, no DS proc... so while the raid's ranging, nobody notices he even has a DS. But here's Hadan, sitting back shooting... uses Contrived... and gets hit for Fire damage that NOBODY else has taken yet. I give an aside to my guild leader that I think it has a 1k-ish DS... he says a word to the Brigand to check it... Sure enough, it's there, and the call's made not to melee him at ALL. Much confusion saved just because of Contrived counting as a direct melee even though it's a ranged move.</P> <P>Watch, now that will get nerfed I bet >_<</P> <P>Point stands that the cost of arrows only really hurts Rangers. Every single shot they fire is another 7s, and it adds up over time. There's not another single class in the game that literally has to pay for each and every attack they make =/</P> <P>Also, I'm assuming that Berserker's ranged capacity is an exception to the rule. PLD / SDK just have to sit back and nuke since they can't even use ranged weapons, and I've never heard a GRD brag about ranged capacity. Not sure on how MNK/BRU do w/ throwing weapons, and BRG barely have a reason to use it (AE immunity and whatnot). Unless you actually plan on going to a fight where melee is totally disallowed, there's really not much reason for anyone other than RNG and ASN to keep a FULL stock of tier-appropriate arrows... and RNG go through them much, much faster.</P> <P>Class balance will never be 100% perfect... so unless you want to see Rangers stealing some Assassin abilities, quit pleading for more Ranger-like abilities.</P> <P> </P> <P>-Hadanelith Raswrolski, 70 Assassin of Kithicor</P>

[Dragonsviperz]

Hen + Had...sorry lol..

[Graton]

<blockquote><hr>Hadanelith wrote:<div></div> <p>... Who the heck is "Hen?" Its Hadan, Hada, or Had if you wanna shorten it &gt<img src="/smilies/8a80c6485cd926be453217d59a84a888.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /></p> <p>I'm not in full Fabled of T7 yet so my repair costs are a bit lower (only 4.1g / death thus far) but I'm honestly fairly satisfied with what we, as Assassins, have to pay for arrows. In all reality, stepping back to use my 3 bow shots (especially that piece of stage-prop crap they call Assailing Blast) tends to marginally lower my DPS if for no other reason than the cast time alone. This is, of course, assuming that I'm not having to joust and thus using them during in/out calls.</p><hr></blockquote> backing out while using contrived weapon and then hitting headshot and heading back in does not lower my dps, it raises it. keep in mind that i not only get headshot but a bow shot as well which can be quite hard hitting with adamantite arrows. i space out my bow attacks so that each will be coupled with a regular bow shot since those can crit for over 3k themselves. i've found the bow enchances my dps more than ever since the lu 21 changes. assailing blast is completely pointless post proc change, i can't argue with you there. a regular bow shot does more than the ca itself. that one really needs to be redone.<div></div>

[Dragonsviperz]

Faltering Blast from t5 was the best bow attack ever, procs plus great dmg from each arrow. Now, 1 Auto attack is more dmg then Assailing Blast at master. When they first nerfed the Blast series from t5 to t6 it wasn't that bad because we still had the proc dmg from the attack, but now that the proc dmg only comes from 1 arrow...its really stupid. I still use the attack though. Contrived Weapon is a good skill...but I would like something of Summon Arrow kinda of skill still.