Hunter class

[Dodge]

Having spent most of my time on phase 3 being spent on hunter I feel they need a fair bit of work put in to them.

Lets start with the game play of the class.
The hunter a present is a very boring class to play, you have to kill mobs one by one which I could understand if they did massive damage but they don't seem to. These server files allow mobs to see you from far away and if you end up getting two or three mobs on you at the same time you just end up running around in circles around your pet.
The only pet I really use is the level 35 one which won't take long for everyone to get. It looks as if it is doing some form of aoe spell but which does not appear to be working as it only hits a single target. The health pool on the pet is very high (bit to high).

lets move on to spells which I think is the big issue.

Will start with my biggest issue... AOE spell. Hunter really needs a spell like static shot or something light lightning which hits in a straight line, maybe even something with a damage area of icestorm. Hunter really needs aoe to keep people playing it I think.

Spell damage on most of the single shot skills seem to be around the same and double shot is the only one worth using.

The a speed spell has a massive cooldown which is far to much.

High shot? There needs to be a skill to go over walls as you have to be line of sight at the moment and most maps are dotted with insinvisible walls.

Hiding ability? Having fairly low hp, ac and amc and having to kill mobs one by one why is there no hide type spell to allow me to kill that one mob without having to run around and around?

Iceshot type spell does not work often at level 3.

Hunter pet. I spoke about it briefly above and think if it is to be used to take mobs agro (aoe pet) while I pick them off one by one I have no healing to keep it alive.

No protection spell? There is no spell to give me increased defence for a brief time.

I am not going to get in to the PVP part of the class yet as I feel that can be looked at once the class is sorted.

I do like to idea of the hunter class but I don't feel it really has a place in the server just yet. why would I pick a hunter over a wizzard is the question I keep asking myself?

I will be online tomorrow and Thursday if the gms want me to come and test the hunter With them.

May I add before everyone has a go that this is just my opinion and I am sure I am not as much of a hardcore player as most on here.

Dodge

 

[TheDayIDie]

Having spent most of my time on phase 3 being spent on hunter I feel they need a fair bit of work put in to them.

Lets start with the game play of the class.
The hunter a present is a very boring class to play, you have to kill mobs one by one which I could understand if they did massive damage but they don't seem to. These server files allow mobs to see you from far away and if you end up getting two or three mobs on you at the same time you just end up running around in circles around your pet.

The only pet I really use is the level 35 one which won't take long for everyone to get. It looks as if it is doing some form of aoe spell but which does not appear to be working as it only hits a single target. The health pool on the pet is very high (bit to high).

Ok so maybe we need to look at making some of the spells a little more unique, maybe like healing randomly, randomly red poisoning, giving out a buff or something to mix it up and make other pets more desirable. If the team could get some community feedback on this.

Will start with my biggest issue... AOE spell. Hunter really needs a spell like static shot or something light lightning which hits in a straight line, maybe even something with a damage area of icestorm. Hunter really needs aoe to keep people playing it I think.

Yep, understood. I agree there might need to be a couple more AOE spells but we need to find and use magic images that relate to archers and then code them in accordingly (static shot and piercing shot from Chronicles) may be a start but we will have to discuss this. Our vision of a hunter is high damage single target. Unfortunately the damage hasn't reflected what we want through previous phases and we have been trying to up it throughout.

Spell damage on most of the single shot skills seem to be around the same and double shot is the only one worth using.

We have tried to make this happen, spells like IceShot and PoisonShot should give reduced damage because of their ability to poison / slow. Other spells should be increased damage but I don't know off the top of my head how the damage varies between spells. It can be looked into.

The a speed spell has a massive cooldown which is far to much.

I can't remember if this is intentional, we can look into increasing the spell duration or reducing the cooldown. Something for DVS and xx69xx to discuss.

High shot? There needs to be a skill to go over walls as you have to be line of sight at the moment and most maps are dotted with insinvisible walls.

There should already be a skill, don't know if it was missed out in the npc but it should be called MentalState.

Hiding ability? Having fairly low hp, ac and amc and having to kill mobs one by one why is there no hide type spell to allow me to kill that one mob without having to run around and around?

Personally I feel it would make archer feel too tao like with pets, hiding and poison. I don't know if it was given to you but the spell Deception should be a suitable evasion spell. This spell may need tweaking though as I currently think it's spammable which is not what we want :P

Iceshot type spell does not work often at level 3.

We will look at the formula for chance to slow.

No protection spell? There is no spell to give me increased defence for a brief time.

Again I thought there was a spell like this (it may have been taken out) will add it to the tracker for xx69xx to discuss.

My answers in red, answers may be different to what i've put as I have not been in contact with DVS or xx69xx for a while. I'll add the issues to bug tracker for them to look at while I get back to revision. Spent plenty of time resting now :P

 

[Stavros]

Whole reason I loved archer on chronicles is static shock. Without a piercing shot type of skill levelling will be worse then Taos

 

[OhBaby]

why not give hunters a PVE Buff?

a skill learned at low level like 16 "On The Hunt" they are hunters - should be good at slaying monsters.

a buff cast able on self only
gives % damage increase vs mobs only

level 0 - 8% - 20 seconds - level 16
Level 1 - 16% - 30 seconds - level 16
Level 2 - 24% - 40 seconds - level 26
Level 3 - 32% - 50 seconds - level 36

this will enhance their solo leveling or group leveling without having to change the class alot.
can also make it so bosses arent affected by this buff damage (like the damage buff only calculated with extra damage if the mob is level 59 or lower as most boss/subs are 60+. or make it go off the non TU-able feature on the DB? so if you make it so you cant TU boss using the DB function it also means you cant get the damage amplification on it - just to save you coding new things into DB may as well reuse whats already there)

 

[WargodSius]

why not give hunters a PVE Buff?

a skill learned at low level like 16 "On The Hunt" they are hunters - should be good at slaying monsters.

a buff cast able on self only
gives % damage increase vs mobs only

level 0 - 8% - 20 seconds - level 16
Level 1 - 16% - 30 seconds - level 16
Level 2 - 24% - 40 seconds - level 26
Level 3 - 32% - 50 seconds - level 36

this will enhance their solo leveling or group leveling without having to change the class alot.
can also make it so bosses arent affected by this buff damage (like the damage buff only calculated with extra damage if the mob is level 59 or lower as most boss/subs are 60+. or make it go off the non TU-able feature on the DB? so if you make it so you cant TU boss using the DB function it also means you cant get the damage amplification on it - just to save you coding new things into DB may as well reuse whats already there)

To do that they'd have to write some alterations to the actual core code in so that

a) spells can differentiate between humans/mobs and apply a bonus on the fly. Looking at the code recently (just now) I can't see this being easy.
b) have the whole file set coded to have two types of 'enemy', boss and not-boss.

It would be a very good solution, but seems drastic.

 

[OhBaby]

To do that they'd have to write some alterations to the actual core code in so that

a) spells can differentiate between humans/mobs and apply a bonus on the fly. Looking at the code recently (just now) I can't see this being easy.
b) have the whole file set coded to have two types of 'enemy', boss and not-boss.

It would be a very good solution, but seems drastic.

A) since all monsters are coded, can a check not be performed against that? if target is in X list then do damage calculation if not then do nothing.
i.e when you code in a new mob on these files you have to create new AI. which when your adding it on the M2server.exe you add to db and select it from that drop down box? so you can use this.
if target is using anything from that list then do extra damage if not then it is not calculated.

B) you can just use the function thats already in the DB, im sure there is a setting "can TU" which is either true or false in which case will always be false on boss so just make the buff call that function.
if its false in "CAN TU?" then extra damage from buff will not be calculated.

would be a 2 stage if check but should work?

 

[DevilsKnight]

a) spells can differentiate between humans/mobs and apply a bonus on the fly. Looking at the code recently (just now) I can't see this being easy.

Yes they can :P

b) have the whole file set coded to have two types of 'enemy', boss and not-boss.

As bieber has already said use the mob level or TU check.



Dk

 

[thedeath]

To do that they'd have to write some alterations to the actual core code in so that

a) spells can differentiate between humans/mobs and apply a bonus on the fly. Looking at the code recently (just now) I can't see this being easy.
b) have the whole file set coded to have two types of 'enemy', boss and not-boss.

It would be a very good solution, but seems drastic.

for the record 'a)' is super easy lol the code to 'hurt' players is a totaly different procedure as the one to hurt anything else

 

[TheDayIDie]

Yes it would be easy but what is the main purpose of this? To increase archer damage which could ultimately be completed by adjusting spell damage?

 

[OhBaby]

Yes it would be easy but what is the main purpose of this? To increase archer damage which could ultimately be completed by adjusting spell damage?

to give archer(hunter) a PVE buff. enhancing all their spells or damage increase would just tip the scales on pvp too much this is why it needs to be PVE only, it would also be alot easier to balance the class.

with this buff it would give hunter the tools he needs to be single target damage like you intended but without breaking PVP and bossing.
it is impossible to give a class extreme single target damage without breaking pvp.
if you give him more AOE like suggested above then your just turning it into an auto attacking wizard and not single target monster hunting machine like your intentions.


end of the day its only a suggestion, im rolling warr as always just dont want this class to be redundant and no one want to bother leveling one.
everyone likes to be a sniper going pewpew on mobs and seeing big dmg, would make it alot more fun to play one.

 

[TheDayIDie]

As far as im aware the only thing op pvp (so I've been told) is the default attack due to the shift lock. I now understand the reasons behind the buff though. I'll consider it, hopefully dvs or xx69 sees this and adds to the tracker

 

[OhBaby]

As far as im aware the only thing op pvp (so I've been told) is the default attack due to the shift lock. I now understand the reasons behind the buff though. I'll consider it, hopefully dvs or xx69 sees this and adds to the tracker

yeah its not their pvp thats broken its that people find them boring/slow to level, what im saying is you cant increase their damage without thus breaking pvp.
so i suggested PVE buff as an alternative solution to giving them aoe spells so they stay as intended, single target damage monster hunting class.