Like Oaklief used to do, I plan on copying pertinent patch notes, and then making my own comments on them from a ranger's perspective. I won't normally copy the entire patch notes (you can see them at the Camelot Herald if you wish). I will also not put up this page until the notes go live (because so many things can change in testing.

Because 1.62 has so many sweeping changes to so many classes, we are designating this a "class balance patch" and will be granting single line respecs to everyone in the game (level 5 and above) regardless of class or Realm.

Always a good thing when making such changes, however, due to the incredibly complicated way rangers are forced to spec, a single line respec actually falls short of allowing many rangers to take advantage of this.

- We found and fixed the infamous "Block/Parry bug" - the one that caused players to block and parry less often when attacked by a grouped opponent. This change will have the most effect in RvR situations where you are fighting an opponent who is in a group. This fix will also fix an issue with opponents appearing to be "in melee" and having bolt spells fired at them blocked more often than intended.

Good! Always drove me nuts, although that evading arrows thing is still an issue.

- Side Positional combat styles now will work an extra 15 degrees towards the rear of an opponent, and rear position styles work in a 60 degree arc rather than the original 90 degree standard. This change should even out the difficulty between side and rear positional combat styles, which have the same damage bonus. Please note that front positional styles are not affected by this change.

Overall a good change, although is it possible to overlap some of the side areas with the front and back areas? This would serve to allow people right on the edge to have a little leeway due to the many possible movements an opponent can make.

- We slightly adjusted combat style (and combat style only) bleed effects so that higher versions go above 7 damage on the initial "tick".

Again, a good thing, although I am still looking for more survivability as opposed to more damage output

- /mbuy is now added to the command history (accessible by pressing Shift-Up Arrow)

Good for buying arrows (which we buy a lot of!).

- All Nearsight spells now have a 1 minute immunity timer.

Welcome addition, although the spell itself still lasts too long!

ARCHER NOTES

It's time to give Archer classes a bump in ability, as they have been somewhat left behind by the addition of many new abilities and spells in other classes. In this version, we attempt to bring the Archer back in line to be a fun to play class. However, it is not our intention to ever return the Archer to the sniping overpowered force that he was at Camelot's launch. These changes should make the Archer useful and fun, but not make him overpowered.

And there was much rejoycing!

By "Archer", we are referring to the Hunter, Ranger, and Scout.

General Archer Notes

- We've adjusted the way we calculate fumbles for Archery. Archery attacks have always had fumbles calculated differently than regular melee attacks. We've reworked this part of the Archery fumble calculation to be more in line with the way melee fumbles work, meaning Archers should notice a substantial decrease in their fumble rates, somewhere on the order of 1/4 what they were.

Thank you! This item alone was leading to a plethora of problems considering the high wepon skill, the high dexterity, and natural familiarity rangers have with bows. I would even advocate that the fumble rate could still be reduced further on bows!

- Camouflage timers will no longer be reset by PvE attacks. Only an attack by the Archer on another player or a pet or turret controlled by another player will reset the timer. Camouflage is designed to let the Archer scout in PvP situations, so PvE interactions should not affect its timer.

Good change! Can we make Camoflage a passive ability as far as when a ranger stealths, then Camoflage, if available, will automatically engage?

- We have seen complaints that Archers miss their targets at a higher rate then melee fighters. Please be aware that we have run extensive tests as well as looked at the formulas and have found the miss rates for Archers and melee are the same. We will continue to look into this as more reports and logs are generated by Archers, but for now there are no miss fixes.

Dead horse patrol, but I will mention it again. Our bows calculate on UNSTYLED attacks, therefore we still miss more than most others normally would since they are using styled attacks! If anything, it should be changed so that a Critical Shot will NEVER outright miss, but that's asking for a lot.

- We have modified how the See Hidden ability interacts with Archer classes. We've varied the range that an assassin can see a non camouflaged hidden archer anywhere from 1/4 to 3/4 of the current range depending on the archer's stealth spec vs the assassin's level. On average this means that an assassin will have to be within about 1/2 the range that he can see the archer from compared to how the system works currently on the live servers.

Good change overall. Since asking for the removal of several skills is not feasable, this is at least a start. Still evaluating this to see if it needs further tweaks, but overall I think most archers are happy with this change.

Critical Shot Notes

- We've changed the way that aggression is calculated when Archers use Critical Shot against monsters. Now, aggro generated from damage done by a Critical Shot is divided among all group members of the Archer. Please note that the Archer will still get a fraction more damage than any other group member, but it will now be much easier to pull the monster off the Archer once it has been hit by a Critical Shot. This should make Archers one of the better monster "pullers" for any PvE group.

Not really that useful a change. Rarely are archers truly used as a puller since we take so long to line up a really good shot! Also, our biggest problem is being able to take a hit as opposed to dealing damage (well, when we hit with our bow). We need to increase our survivability with better levels of Evade, a parry skill, or more hitpoints.

Arrows And Bladeturn

All three Archers now receive a new skill called "Penetrating Arrow", which allow them to penetrate, to some extent, Bladeturn spells. Here's the details:

More Rejoycing!

- Penetrating Arrow will never go through Bladeturns (both pulsing and single-target) on the character that cast the spell. This means that a Warden who casts a bladeturn on himself will never have his own personal bladeturn penetrated.

Good for those characters to keep them viable. Makes it necessary for the archer to carefully select their target too.

- Bladeturns cast on group/realm mates can be penetrated. So a Hero that has a pulsing bladeturn (or single target) on him from a friendly Warden can have that bladeturn penetrated.

Although many may think this makes the bladeturn casters less desired, most classes still have ways to defeat the arrow coming in (engage, lots of hitpoints, evade, etc) so this is not debilitating. Also, the bladeturn will still work against melee attacks. The classes that need bladeturn still can't get it penetrated by this skill.

- Archers receive Penetrating Arrow based on their specialization in their particular Bow skill. They get Penetrating Arrow 1 at 30th spec, Penetrating Arrow 2 at 40th spec, and Penetrating Arrow 3 at 50th spec. Lower levels of PA do less damage by not fully penetrating the bladeturn. The highest level of PA does normal damage.

As passive abilities, Mythic still seems stingy with a "Style Progression" in archery, but this is much better than nothing!

- Additionally, Longshot and Volley penetrate ALL Bladeturns, regardless of who cast them.

Nice addition! Especially considering how many bloody realm points one must spend for these abilities (which should be part of the bow spec line!).

- Please note that in this version we have made sure that self bladeturns will no longer be overwritten by other bladeturns.

Good for the cloth wearers.

Rapid Fire

The three Archers now also receive a new ability called "Rapid Fire", which allows them to release their bow shot before the normal bow timer. Here's the details:

- When an Archer has this skill, at any time after halfway through their normal bow timer they can release the shot.

- If you release the shot 75% through the normal timer, the shot (if it hits) does 75% of its normal damage. If you release 50% through the timer, you do 50% of the damage, and so forth - The faster the shot, the less damage it does.

Good call. Hopefully this will decrease the screams from people saying that "an archer hit me for ungodly damage!" Also, this keeps DPS calculations in order.

- Rapid Fire shots takes the same endurance as a normal bow shot, but do less damage.

I still have issues with the amount of endurance that any shot takes! This really needs to be looked at!

- Archers receive Rapid Fire 1 at 35 specialization level in their particular bow skill, and Rapid Fire 2 at spec level 45. The difference between the two is how much endurance they take - RF 2 takes less endurance than RF 1.

See above on endurance as well as "Style Stinginess!"

- Please note that you cannot use Rapid Fire with Longshot or Volley.

Understandable.

- All Bolts have had their cast times reduced to 2.5 seconds.

Not a popular choice, but understandable considering that many archers now have rapid fire.