Suggested changes to barbed arrow

[OMWiener]

Just wanted to do some brainstorming on how to make barbed arrow better. So please keep the criticism constructive and the flames out.

1) Make the skill non-stackable, but make the bleed (perhaps with a legacy) do 150 damage each tick

2) "When an enemy is struck with a barbed arrow, his defences are lowered , giving the hunter added chance to hit do great damage hitting vital parts" In short barbed arrow would apply a buff to the hunters crit % for a short amount of time because the mob is wounded. The cooldown would have to be a lot higher to be balanced, but it could be something like:

- Buff: +20% ranged crit chance for 20 sec CD: 2min
- Buff: +30% ranged crit chance for 20 sec CD: 3min


Discuss.

[Scappydog]

A good idea, but the ranged crit would have to ignore the 15% cap otherwise it would be pointless really.

A better idea would be a +% damage rather than crit. Agree with the higher bleed damage though.

.

[OMWiener]

Well i wouldn't change both. Either they buff the bleed damage or change the skill to a buff, which would make it a bit more interesting to use.

Yes, you could add +% damage, but there is a higher chance of being OP then i believe

[Sidamos]

The damage of the bleed needs to be inline with the damage of the other skills.
Clearly atm the bleed damage is too low compared to the powercost. 150 per tick
would be away too much. I think a total of 250-350 bleed damage would be fine.
Atm it's like 100-120 or so or ? Haven't used that skill for ages...

For the trait:
Instead of "crit chance" or more ticks I would like seeing something like "During the
dot is active, armor of the monster is reduced by 5% or so. Or ranged attacks do
5% more damage. That would be inline with the other traits which increase damage
to ISB/SB and Penetration Shot.

Another scenario:
The dot is stackable like the fire dots of the RKs and the trait works according to that.
(that would still mean the damage of the bleed needs to be set inline with the power cost)

[Silmahad]

I really like the idea of a debuff ability for barbed arrow. I would like something like lowered B/P/E or armor reduction of mobs.

As I watch the new raid encounters like watcher 2.0, Gurvand 2.0, Turtle 1.0 (I am sure there will be a turtle 2.0..), it's all about buffing and debuffing. I want to be as essential as a loremaster, a captain or a rogue and not being (at least) interchangable with an RK (In truth I would kick a hunter for an RK at the current state of class balance).


Problem: The rogues will cry. Many rogue players understand there class not as a damage dealer class, but as a primary debuff class. In MoM they got nothing for this class abilities. They got more damage and now Turbine took even that partially away by the weapon dps nerf.

So I guess the best solution would be a scaling dot damage, so that the dps output from that skill is in line again with lvl 60, with QS and with the power costs. At least some damage again to get closer to the new god class, the RK.

[OMWiener]

The damage of the bleed needs to be inline with the damage of the other skills.
Clearly atm the bleed damage is too low compared to the powercost. 150 per tick
would be away too much. I think a total of 250-350 bleed damage would be fine.
Atm it's like 100-120 or so or ? Haven't used that skill for ages...


Could you elaborate why that would be too much? BA's get a dot like that. Personally i still wouldn't use the skill if it did only 250-350 damage over 20s (unless the debuff is added on top of that)

[Redeemer]

BAs don't have anything (except 5min cooldown VT at rank 7) comparable to the up-front direct damage a hunter has.. you can't have everything ;)

[OMWiener]

BAs don't have anything (except 5min cooldown VT at rank 7) comparable to the up-front direct damage a hunter has.. you can't have everything ;)

And a BA has a lot of utility that a hunter doesn't have, so what's your point? It's not about comparing classes. My point was that something similar is already in the game (it wasn't about comparing the two classes), so why would it be too much, especially pve wise?

Fact is that originally Barbed arrow is a Dot, but is hardly noticeable. In the end there's only two options you have if you wanna change it. Either make the bleed worthwile (ie higher) or change the skill completely as per above suggestions.

btw the hunter version wouldn't stack like the BA does.

[Sidamos]

Because we would have a skill which only costs alike 90 power but would do like 1k damage ?
That's why i wrote the damage needs to be inline with the other skills. A tick for 150
would be abit overpowered in pve except you add an reuse time of 30s or 1min. I don't
even think about traited. None of our traits gives such a damage bonus.

The 250-350 bleed damage was for untraited barbed arrow. That would be like 50-60 a tick.
High enough so that barbed is useful again but not too high to make it op.

[agoracy_]

Although I haven't yet dinged for 60, I find the barbed arrow less useful, almost useless, if not, completly useless. I will try to be objective and keep biased opinions out of my ideas.


-Increase the damage done by the BA with 25-30% (let's face it, they won't make from barbed arrow an uber shot, so let's be realistic about it, 25-30% more damage is fairly reasonable, considering the current damage done by this skill.

-Make it something similar with the penetrating shot (no induction time and a cooldown of 1 minute, or try to accord the cool down with the damage done by the skill (aka - more damage = more seconds on cool down)

-Increase the tick damage to 90-100 per tick, still, not sure about it as I don't know the damage done by this skill at lvl 60 (I get only 17-20 per tick, with crits of 50, also having trait equipped). The chance crit for tick should be lowered, but I think the DoT should generate a total of 300-350 damage (with the damage done by the shot itself, it should be good)

On the other hand, the barbed arrow could be transformed into a de-buff shot (I know it have some effects as it is, but still, not good enough to make it more usefull, the higher damage done by the scourging blow is not enough, I could say it it's a half of debuff. The barbed arrow should have 2 possible effects, wounding chance (increase the critical chance for other skills with 20% (on wounding) or simply X% chances to get a crit on other skill after the BA was used. other can give feedback on this as well, as I think I lack at imagination when it comes about debuffs).

- Make the barbed arrow generate more focus, so you will use it to get your focus bar up quicker.


All these combined can revive the barbed arrow, as I said in the introduction, I find it useless, a waste of space on the quick slot bar. Please consider that I am new to the game, and I still have a lot of things to learn (only lvl 46 atm).

[OMWiener]

Because we would have a skill which only costs alike 90 power but would do like 1k damage ?
That's why i wrote the damage needs to be inline with the other skills. A tick for 150
would be abit overpowered in pve except you add an reuse time of 30s or 1min. I don't
even think about traited. None of our traits gives such a damage bonus.

The 250-350 bleed damage was for untraited barbed arrow. That would be like 50-60 a tick.
High enough so that barbed is useful again but not too high to make it op.

Aye, i agree with the current cooldown it would be abit much, but i'd rather have a dot worht using on a 1min CD then a dot not worth using at all.

150 might be too much. 50-60 base damage i could live with if they add a legacy to increase to 80-100 a tick or change the trait as you suggested (+ranged damage or -x armour)

[Scatha the Worm]

IMO I would ditch it as a damage skill completely and transform into a self-buff (rather than debuff) of the 30% ranged crit chance described above, 3 min cd, and with the related trait (BA bleed +ticks) transformed to reduce skill cd to 2 min.

[Lenin_]

I was thinking that it would be interesting if barbed arrow will add some reactive feedback or something, like, while barbed arrow is up on mob:

Quickshot - actual bonus effect will be improved even more depending on stance [in S:S better slow, in S:P higher chance for crit, in S:P lesser threat]

Swiftbow - will improve the bleed effect of barbed arrow (can stack maybe?)

Penetratin shot - will have 50% chance to remove one corruption

Merciful shot - higher chance for devastating hit

The current power cost/bleed damage will stay unchanged, maybe some tweaks with cooldown and duration will be needed.
Also it will be impossible to re-apply barbed arrow continuously (like shoot new one when the duration is 1 second before expire).

[MordecaiWard]

I think that just the damage is not scaling well with level increase and weapon DPS.

I think that to ask 150 for 20 seconds is exagerated (1500 damage) for a skill that we get from level 1 is exagerated.

Easy way to fix without overpowering it would be:
- Reduce power cost to QS value.
- Increase total damage to 2 times QS.
- Increase snare effect to 20%. (10% is barely noticeable).

With this BA is marginally better than QS (non counting snare from SS) but it loses its benefits if spammed.

So when doing a boss figth out of SS the skill sequence could be modified to include BA as an opener with good benefits without being overpowered.

QS would be used for thread down and BA for extra damage and snare.

In order to make it good for soloing I would then modify SB to add more damage or maybe a stun in the case of critical.

As to add a buff to BA I do not like the idea because after all it is a bleed so it should add a debuff to target and not a buff (its semantics but still).

If damage/power consumption should be kept then I would vote to add a damage per hit component like marks or pack hunters. Bu tis too repeated.

Another idea that would be innovative could be to use a similar mechanics than WE kiss in WAR. For example:

"Barbed Arrow:
Does XXX damage initally.
Does YYY damage each 2 seconds during 20 seconds.
While target is moving do ZZZ damage additionally each 2 seconds.
Slows target 10%."

If moving damage (ZZZ) is something like 100 damage then BA would become a excellent kiting tool for PVE and nice addition to PVP (another icon to look at) without being OP.

[MéLAnoR]

not gonna happen ..