Archery/Ranged....explain in simple terms please? (in General)

Ok, can somebody explain to me in idiot terms what I would gain by training archery?

I have a single tank, with evasion trained. I'm using a large rented ELB, with lots of PTH from both the bow and my ToA. I'm hitting doubles and a lot of triples. I_don't_miss unless evasion is in the mix.

So, what exactly would archery give to me that I don't have now? Would I hit quad strikes where I'm hitting triples now? I've read the Wiki, I understand the increased chance to hit stuff. But I don't see what difference it would make in comparison to my current set up.

Confused of North London. ;)

without archery, you are supposedly only getting 1/5th of your plus to hit, I always assumed that included plus added by the ToA, however from what you're saying, that was apparently wrong...

So a +100 elb would act like a +20 elb, if you had a 1.3 mil ToA to boot, with archery you'd have a good likely good chance of quads consistently in round 3 of ranged...and the possibility of them in the first round of ranged...

I finally saw a quad hit against a 0 dex minion in round one the other day...I was excited...

I honestly think the effect of Archery should be increased, the damage the elb does is enough of a bonus when you include bgs, even with the frighteningly harsh penalty of training the skill. I'd like to see things changed, but can't quite decide how.

I do think the PTH from the ToA is not included in the chance to hit equation. In the old days I'd expect a +102 ELB to hit; and I'm not entirely surprised that it does. But my old bow was +16. And I was hitting triples with that too.....

So either the whole archery/chance to hit thing is broken. Or it doesn't include ToA PTH.

I'm still confused though. And, I always thought archery worked fine as it was before! ;)

novice, it has nothing to do with PTH, it is CTH.

Archery apparently affects the Base CTH of Ranged. with an ELB you have a 100% Chance to hit, so, I believe if your DX is equal to their's and you have 0 PTH you will still hit them, of course with no evasion involved.

Unless I'm wrong on that, but No, Archery doesn't affect PTH, CTH is done first then DX and then PTH comes into play, that is from the wiki.

The simplistic way of understanding it *I think* is that the ranged penalty applies to dex vs. dex, before any P2H comes into play. If your dex advantage is huge, like say vs a 20 dex mage, I don't think the ranged penalty will affect you at all. Likewise versus a smaller tank who's dexterity you already outclass by many times the size, you probably don't get affected much. Where archery will become necessary is versus those opponents with big evasion, dbs, or both. Without archery you may very likely have no chance to land a single hit on them. With archery, you'll land hits (even if they may be single hits).

sorry, Nerevas seems right.

CTH affects whether you hit at all, even before DX and PTH (in that order, I believe it is)

If you hit a majority of your fightlist with a ELB and without Archery, don't switch, the Evasion is doing you wonders, whether you know it or not, I think you'll lose opponents by retraining to Archery.

Johnny, take the ToA off for a couple of fights, see how much difference it's PTH makes. ;)

Ok, without the ToA I have 400k dex, approximately.

No triples, but some dex gap double strikes, lots of single hits, and lots of misses. However without checking each opponent one by one I can't tell if those misses are evasion connected or not!! I'm going to look through and see.

BRB

Ooh, lots of evasion. Which doesn't cause me to miss with the ToA. Gotta love bonus PTH!

hmm. Still don't see what difference there is between what I'm doing and using archery. It seems like a bit of a waste of XP. I get far more out of using evasion.


I was never planning to switch; just couldn't and can't understand why people keep saying a ranged focused tank should train archery. If you have a bow just equip Belegs. Simple.

If you intend to continue using a melee weapon and regularly seeing fights last into melee, then evasion is the superior skill.

If you intend to end fights in ranged, there is no comparison to archery. It's the only skill that increases your attack in ranged rounds, simple.

The downside to archery is that you can't beat most five minion teams in ranged alone.
Whereas evasion is useless against mages.

Both can be more useful than the other depending on your average opponent.

Diabolik struck deep into Ifrit with Khaos Bow [1754247]
Diabolik struck deep into Ifrit with Khaos Bow [1102203]
Diabolik struck deep into Ifrit with Khaos Bow [1291271]
Diabolik cries "Yabba Dabba Doo!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

;)

Right. I really need to increase my ranged attack! Lol Mr C, how much more effective can you get?!?!? ;) And the thing is, it's not the size of the bow. I was doing this with my last bow as well. Triple strikes with a +16 bow.

Oh well, I'll go back under my stone and carry on doing whatever it is I'm doing until somebody stops me. Safe in the knowledge that my evasion tank is a very effective way of hitting 2 million score with a MPR of less than 650k....don't tell anyone or they'll all want one......

That's not right... :O

I just hit 2 mil score, well over 200k MPR than you and I have more NW and I had to rent a 20 mil MH in the process.

Evil!!!!! ;)

:)

Johnny, this new bow you've rented, the one that's let you hit a 2 mil score with 700K MPR, and land triple 1 mil hits in ranged.

How much PR does it add?

Khaos Bow [6x2400] (+102) (Elven Long Bow) $34,664,131 $40,000 3 days 1 / 2 days 00:41:41 rented by The Wizard Of Was;
back in 06:59:15

It's under his WA.

So that's a big fat nothing then? ;)

His tank hasn't got more powerful and his rewards haven't decreased at all from using this Bow.

/resurects dead horse

Come on poeple, do you think the Tank would be in the 2 mil score range if it *wasn't* using a Bow? The MPR/PR would change at all though.

*wouldn't :(

The bow and the MH are both rented, but the MH is quite small, mostly because most of my battles don't go to melee, so it wasn't worth renting a bigger one.

Yes, all that is hidden underneath the WA!

73% wins in 24 hours is quite a price to pay for that score ;)

lol yeah, but I'm having fun. ;)

The way I think about archery is this:

Without archery you will be hitting 20 dex mages/enchanters who do not have a decent evasion or high set of DB's.

Not too bad to take out the low dex "blockers" typically in front of tanks and mages. You will also hit, multiple time Wall type minions.

However, without archery you will typically miss opponent tanks that have a nearly equal dex, or minions with high evasion/DB's.

"However, without archery you will typically miss opponent tanks that have a nearly equal dex, or minions with high evasion/DB's."

Well, that's what I would expect to happen. However against Shade's char, whose tank has twice the dex of mine I hit doubles.

So, what gives?

Ok, stupid. HoC.

But still I'm hitting tanks with twice the dex. Should I be able to do that on PTH alone, without archery?

For instance, Miteke's char Tank Killer. Casts an EC of 546023, which reduces me down to about 240k dex. His tank has about 740k dex and still I manage to hit him once a round, without fail.

So that's obviously PTH at work, because there is a lot on my char between the bow and the ToA. But as PM says, without archery I'd expect to miss when the dex gap is so high...


I feel like I'm missing something somewhere....

johnny, try attacking that charcater without your ToA, see if it's the PTH form that that's helping. :/

It's definitely the PTH. My confusion is the assumption that I have made, like many, that unless you use archery you're not guaranteed that PTH hit. Looks like my assumption is wrong. Unless Jon can clarify?

;)

mmm, without any sort of tattoo - and only 700k st/400k dex I can still take most of my fightlist. Double strikes against low dex chars rather than triples but....

ok, I've been doing some more testing:

And I think it is to do with ToA PTH. I put on a MCM and elven cloak. Which boosted my dex by 40k to 446,770. Against some of my fightlist there were suddenly people I couldn't hit at all. I'm now using a little ToA of level 370 (tiny!) and putting that on instead of the MCM and cloak lost 33k of dex but I could hit the people I couldn't hit without it. I wonder if the ToA pth is out of whack somehow. It would explain why I'm getting funny results in ranged...

I'm going to leave this alone now.

(until the next time I pick at this..lol)

I've felt that something still wasn't right for a long time, if you give us a table of fights, we might actually get a fix...

Thus far, Archery is still the most specific skill ever, as it is almost always useless...

JW, your bow is +101, doesn't over 100 PTH guarantee at least one hit?

novice, didn;t you already make a table detailing the information?

whatever that was, Hatchet, Jon sad he fixed it, so It was before something was changed, which would seem like irrelevant data to me, now.

"Flamey, 3:05 PM EST
JW, your bow is +101, doesn't over 100 PTH guarantee at least one hit? "


Flamey, that's what I want to know; does having high PTH from a weapon AND the ToA mean that I can be good with a bow without training archery? Is that how it is meant to be? If so, then what is the point of archery if you can achieve the same effect without it...


:/

Yes it does, I believe.

But I should rephrase what I was saying. Having 100 PTH will guarantee you another hit if you're equal DX and no evasion/DB is involved, at least that is how I always thought it was.

It's weird, Most of the high-end weapons originally started with ToA-based teams, so why did people bother with the PTH so much? big ToAs give you heaps of PTH.

They were all ToA teams; you need to have an advantage over each other!

If you don't give us specific examples of all these weird occurences you think you're getting its going to be nothing but speculation and confusion as always.

More than likely we're simply seeing the results of him fighting people with evasion where the defensive dex is so high it negates most or all of his dex and it comes down to pure P2H to land hits - at which point with / without the ToA can make all the difference between hitting.

Neveras, I think you're right. PTH is what is going on.

I'm going to leave it now, because if I can be a good little archer without archery then that's a good thing...probably.

;)

brainflash;

Am I simply missing something here?

With dex alone you get a certain amount of strikes right?
Then PTH +100 gives you another strike, +200 another one and so on..
So Chance to Hit: Is that simply another strike mechanism? Which by not training archery I'm not going to get?

Are they all simply separate parts of the strike mechanism - two strikes from dex, one from PTH and another from the CTH giving me a quad for instance?

If that's how it works then it all makes sense; and nothing is weird...

'Chance to hit' is the name coined for the dex portion of the to hit process. ;)

Johnny, read this: http://www.carnageblender.com/wiki/To%2dhit

Thanks for that NS!

I can see how things work now. And based on that, what I'm seeing is how things should be working - unless Jon has something to say on that.

Which takes me right back to my original question - what would I gain by training archery. At lower levels that xp spend is not a lot, but up at higher levels, if you're training ST quite high...just for an extra hit. An extra hit might be useful against a big wall or the damage dealer, but wasted against enchanters...

I won't be training archery anytime soon....

In theory, you're supposed to see huge to-hit penalties when using a bow and no Archery. Perhaps you can find somone with similar DX as you that did train Archery, and they could borrow your bow to see if this is indeed the case.

It is also not well defined where this "20%" deal comes into play. Since to-hit is additive, it could either be:

0.2 * DX CTH + PTH

or

0.2 * (DX CTH + PTH)

That's a big difference, and you are implying the former -- that is, with enough PTH, who cares about the 0.2?

Note that your DX bonus can max at 166 for hits one and two, and 150 for hits 3 and above. That's 33% and 30% with the 0.2 applied. So you're still getting, assuming a max DX advantage, ~30% added to your PTH.

I was expecting the bigger to hit penalties. That was where my confusion lay. The archery increased CTH I definitely wasn't seeing, but neither was I missing shots very much. Still aren't, with only 400k dex and the 100 PTH on the bow. The ToA is only about 10k in level so isn't giving any real bonus to PTH.

:/

Pats his oversized ToA ... and smiles at Wizard of Was ;)

lol

Archery appears to only effect your bows plus to hit, it has NO effect on dex based chance to hit (according to Jon in a previous thread), and from what JW is saying it sounds like ToA plus to hit is also in play without it.

So then, use a ToA, Train High Dex, leave your ELBow '+' at base and pump all your cash into 'X'.

Job done. ;)

novice, you are saying that it's (DX CTH) + ( 0.20 * PTH ) ??

That would make Johnny's bow be +20 instead of +100. A +29 is required to guarantee a hit with max DX advantage.

"So then, use a ToA, Train High Dex, leave your ELBow '+' at base and pump all your cash into 'X'. "


Not far off what I was doing before I changed to mage: ToA at max tattoo, highish dex and an ELB heavy on the X and low on the PTH (+16). Double strikes mostly, but triples too against low dex opponents.

;)

If he's getting guaranteed single hits and sporadic double hits, then your conjecture, novice, may be possible. Of important note is which round we are talking about, as round penalties are in play for rounds 1 and 2 definitely, and the jury is still out for round 3.

I know Jon said Archery (or lack thereof) doesn't effect dex based chance to hit, seeing someone without Archery getting triple hits means that the ToA's plus to hit isn't chopped the same way that the elb's plus is. So a ToA/Bl tank with an ELB is still worthwhile, and as PM has once said, training Archery with anything less than a +150 elb is a giant waste.