Archery Revamp Dev Blog
Hello, Adventurers! As promised, we have started our journey to post the 8 Dev Blogs about the spells revamp of all Archetypes! The first one is Archery, and we hope you like the changes made by our team during these last months!
Spell Tree
Active Spells
Precision Shot
Compared to other spells that deal a ton of damage in a single button press, Precision Shot damage was performing lower than we felt it should, so we decided to buff its frequency of use by lowering its cooldown so it felt like a bigger part of Archery’s gameplay.
Cooldown decreased from 45 to 30 seconds.
Disengage
Since Disengage has a really long cooldown, we thought it would fit the ability to slow the target affected by it too, since the affected target could use a mobility skill to close the gap created by Disengage no value would be achieved from its use. Now by adding a slow, we feel it has a baseline value regardless of its situation.
The ability will now apply a slow of 50% to the target hit by it for 1.5 seconds.
(New) Disengage: Shoots an arrow that deals (100% Weapon Power) weapon damage. It knocks you back by 2 tiles and the target by 3 tiles while applying 50% slow for 1.5s.
Rain of Arrows
Using Rain of Arrows previously felt out of place, it felt very immobilizing for an Archery ability which for the most part we want as a more mobile archetype. Because of this we removed the channeling for Rain of Arrows and made it a short cast time to launch your arrows. Additionally the snare has been changed to a less hindering slow and the duration has been shortened slightly.
Duration of Rain of Arrow decreased from 3 to 2 seconds.
Rain of Arrows doesn’t snare targets hit by it anymore.
Rain of Arrow applies a 30% slow to targets hit by it instead.
The ability doesn’t require you to stand still to be casted anymore. Instead, there will be a 500ms casting time for the ability. After this casting, the player will be able to move freely and the spell will be casted normally on the target location.
(New) Rain of Arrows: Shoots a rain of arrows in a large area over 2s, each arrow dealing (25% Weapon Power) weapon damage and slowing enemies hit for 30%, for 1s every hit. The shooting duration increases 0.5s per 10 Aether.
Venom Grenade
You are now able to choose where to throw your grenades.
Venom Grenade is a crosshair ability now.
Burst Arrows → Dawn Arrow
Previously Burst Arrows required a bow to be used, we felt this ability, while interesting, did not provide too much value to other class builds that may not be using a bow. Following some concepts that we already mentioned, we decided to make a spell that would cover some utility for the Archetype. We wanted to be creative if we added more control to Archery, so we made two new crowd control effects: Blind, that will make all creatures' basic attacks miss, and Confusion, prohibiting the control of movement from the target.
(New) Dawn Arrow: Shoot an arrow on a 3x3 area. Targets in the affected area will become Blind and Confused for 4 seconds.
Aether: Generate 20 Aethers | Target: Crosshair | AoE: 3x3 | Cooldown: 30
Dragons Arrow
Landing an effective Dragons Arrow was a very difficult and tedious task, due to providing no immobility to the target and having a very small surface area. While we did not want to simply make this spell larger, we have given it a slow target inside of it, to help limit mobility.
Ability will now cause a slow of 20% to creatures inside of the area of effect.
(New) Dragons Arrow: Shoots an arrow that causes the target to burn dealing (80% Weapon Power) weapon damage every second for 4s. Creates a burning ground between you and the target applying the same effect to enemies crossing it and 20% slow. Cooldown is reduced by 10s per 10 Aether consumed.
Spirit Rangers
Looking at other Archetypes “burst buttons”, we noticed that Spirit Rangers were under performing in the damage section, so we decided to increase the damage output of Spirit Rangers. We want Spirit Rangers to be an “execute button” for Archers in PvP.
Base damage increased from 35% Weapon Power to 50% Weapon Power.
(New) Spirit Rangers: Shoots nine arrows, hitting the target over 2s. Each arrow deals (50% Weapon Power) weapon damage.
Passive Spells
Fleetfooted
Trying to maintain the old passive concept while moving away from a simple movement speed constant passive, we added a trigger condition to Fleetfooted, however also increased the movement speed gained from Fleetfooted.
(New) Fleetfooted: If you get hit for 10% or more of your health by a spell or attack, increase your movement speed by 10% for 3 seconds.
Bow Mastery → Clever Adaptation
As previously mentioned, we’re trying to avoid “shoehorning” archetypes, archetype skills or passives into forcing certain weapon paths, so changing Bow Mastery was an obvious move to achieve that. Trying to keep a passive design that helps you at range, we designed Clever Adaptation. The passive’s intent is to help ranged characters that keep their distance to deal maximum damage, and help them survive if there’s a threat on top of them. Of course this passive works both ways, and will help melee builds to stick on top of their targets too, so we are excited to see your creativity make the most of Clever Adaptation!
(New) Clever Adaptation: Whenever you deal damage to a target, if it is 4 or more tiles away from you, deal 10% bonus AP. However, if the target is 3 or less tiles away from you, increase the effectiveness of your slows and snares by 30%.
Clear Focus
To change clear focus to be more consistent, we decided to increase the frequency of gaining Aether, but reducing the amount of Aether you receive from it by half. We also expanded Clear Focus to apply for any weapon type.
(New) Clear Focus: Every 5th basic attack on the same target will generate 10 Aether.
We hope you enjoy the updated changes coming to Archery, we can’t wait to share with you 7 more Archetype Dev Blogs over the next 2 weeks!
The Ravendawn Team