Subject: [DIS] Mallard's Eye suggestion
asuratva wrote: ↑27 May 2025, 17:02
Hi,
Wanted to suggest improving viability of archers in swamp. Personally, I always preferred playing archer or mage, but currently, warrior is pretty much the only effective option for levelling at swamp.
My suggestion is to improve Mallard's Eye to make it armour-piercing. Specifically, focusing mallard's eye should allow arrows to ignore a percentage of target's def. Unlike crits which ignore all def, this should be easier to balance. Plus, without speed or warrior's high def, it should keep archer from being too broken.
Survivability requires running around and sniping from range. Getting hit by mobs is a death sentence 
If people think this is a decent idea, might need to consider slightly reducing the range and/or speed of swamp mobs to allow archers a little breathing room to run around.
I've made a branch for testing at https://git.themanaworld.org/asuratva/t ... rds-pierce if anyone wants to see how it feels. The changes are all in src/map/battle.cpp around line 1709. Currently I've set it ignore ~ 70% of def at 100 dex and 9 mallard's eye, but that probably needs to be adjusted by someone who has a better grasp of balance.
Oh seems I missed some really nice idea. I appreciate such efforts. And had share of ideas how to deal with issue. So far known things to try are...
1) Add some crit def on swamp mobs to reduce DPS of rage warriors a bit. I mean, to swamp specific mobs only.
2) Add some crits to banshee as they were. Its just been massively OP - but now it looks like massive overnerf.
3) Add some crits bonus to various "advanced" arrows like bone arrows. So far they make no point to buy them at 4-5GP each.
4) Perhaps make "compound" attacks, E.g. "enchanted" attacks. Technically there's quite funny construct, overrideattack() builtin. It mostly been meant for magic but it doesn't follows from anywhere magic should be the only caller. Like that, upon attack script is invoked, given target and can do whatever it wants.
5) Add some ranger-friendly mobs. That is - with strong - but short range - attacks, so warriors wouldn't like that while mages and archers would be okay since they do not have to constantly withstand hits.
6) I had idea to try items that "favor archers" - e.g. making Enchanter Amulet giving bonus to rangers "as Enchanters wearing it were". Perhaps even checking for magic presence. Item can run script on equip and its that script what decides what bonuses would be. Fact most items used primitive logic only means "feature were grossly underused". It can look up focus, make decisions, adjust values etc. Tentatively I want it to be like +18 hit -> warriors while keeping +22 to archers and give some cris bonus to archers. What would you think?
As for survivability. Consider simple thing. Archers were OP for a while, being highest DPS class in game AND unbeatable in PvP, esp optimized PvP setups. There were many reasons. One of them would be: warriors need to routinely withstand retribution, wasting stats point. Archers don't. Furtheremore, mages get huge malus for wearing heavy armor. But archers don't. Actually its maybe bug. I think at least heavy armors should have dex/agi malus. Most of archers not really using them anyway (due to lack of str to carry that?). But keep in mind archer in heavy armor is possibility. I think most archers try overaggressive setups badly lacking Hp.
When it comes to swamp in particular I would say key issue is pathetic DPS. I think fiddling with archer-specific crits bonuses on "archer" items like monocle or enchanter amulet can solve that, at least to some extent. And on my side of story I learned one thing. "The pure and simple truth rarely pure and never simple". On my side I would prefer to try gradual, "perfurb and observer" approach - tuning things instead of massive simple grand solutions - which tend to have a lot of woes attached.
On technical side I wonder: why reinvent, basically, another kind of crits, if there're many ways to recalibrate things using usual crits? Does this approach brings some advantage? Apparent downside it is +1 variable in already fairly complcated "equations" which are quite problematic to balance and +1 interaction - making "whole thing" even harder to estimate - esp various interactions in corner cases. But overall I have to say its nice, fresh look on problem and there's something in it. I just wonder what you think about mentioned ideas? On technical side I'm curious to implement "smarter items" (lore wise - "magic items having minds of its own, preferring to serve rangers, just as Enchanters were") - and "compound attacks" where script can make "dynamic" decisions. E.g. some enchanted arrows can have "magic" damage "stappled" - esp if archer can into weak magic, like some archers routinely practice anyway to do some heals.
NB nothing set in stone. Its just my ideas how to move forward on this issue.
