Again, I am stealing, erm, borrowing from Oaklief I hope he doesn't mind! The thing that makes me the most sad is that there are so many issues and concerns that really have not changed in the past two to three years.

This list is modified with each version, to provide the developers with a quick list of the top concerns of rangers. As always, if you are aware that a certain issue or bug has been addressed, or if you are aware of a new issue or bug that is not on the list, please contact me so that I may verify it and let the developers know about the change.

Specialty Arrows - Adressed under the Fletching page.

Line of Sight – Not as bad with the release of Frontiers and Catacombs, but there are still a lot of strange LOS issues that cause many headaches for archers.

Line of Sight Check Timing – Fixed by 1.62

Line of Sight and Switched Targets - There is a bug that allows an archer to target someone, draw a shot, set it to autorelease, target themself, and shoot the original target when the arrow is released. There is a concern with this bug that if you target a mob, draw a shot, target a second mob, and then hit release it will still hit the original mob if its in range, which often gets two mobs pulled onto the group along with any of their friends.

LOS and Keep-Induced Lag – Fixed by 1.62

Volley Arrow Count - (This had been fixed, but now seems to be back.) There are situations where archers will start to volley, take the time to set up the shot, but the stack they are drawing from only has 4 or less arrows in it. Volley will only fire the arrows remaining in the stack, and shoot less than 5 arrows without "grabbing" arrows from the next stack.

Accuracy Bug – Addressed by 1.62. There is still a lack of "styled" attacks for bows though.

RvR Issues – Fixed by 1.62

Death Arrow – Fixed by 1.62

Neo the Shade Continued - In this case the shade going Neo is even more impressive! An archer will use whatever abilities they have in order to spot a stealthed assassin, line up a shot on the stealthed assassin, and of course he evades the shot, and remains stealthed (so now he is evading arrows coming from folks he can't see, and not giving himself away).

Shield Blocking - Although addressed in a ptach note, the archer community is still unhappy about the effectiveness of shields versus people who spec to 45+ in bow.

Critical Shot – it has been asked why archers completely miss their targets after spending extra time lining up a shot. While making critical shot work 100% of the time isn’t right, there are suggestions that if the critical shot misses, it should do normal damage instead of being a miss (unless bladeturned or all damage is absorbed by armor); in other words, it should never completely miss the target. The initial concern for this came from having lost a whole archery attack due to the changes to quickness.

Critical Shot vs. Stunned/Mezzed Opponents – Critical shot works against stunned opponents (but not mezzed opponents) after their weapon delay has run out after their last attack. Prior to that point, the archer will be interrupted when attempting to draw on the target. This seems to be inconsistent. Either critical shot should not work at all on either stunned or mezzed opponents, or it should work on both stunned and mezzed opponents as they can’t take any defensive action.

Volley (and Longshot) Animations - Make these shots look special. Even though it may single out an archer as using these skills, it adds variety. Especially for Volley where it looks as if the archer is not doing anything while performing volley.

Critical Shot and Switched Targets – Fixed by 1.62

Interrupt Timing – the interrupt period during drawing actually extends into the aiming period about a half second AFTER the draw animation finishes. This is confusing, and the timer for interrupt should be matched to the timer for the draw animation.

Pet Interruptions – it is our understanding that attacks by grey-con opponents are not supposed to cause interruptions, and yet recently grey con pets have begun interrupting archery (and presumably spell casting). Casters have a quickcast ability to counter this, but archers have to switch to melee to kill the pet, usually while being hit by enemy players for high damage.

Missed Arrows – when an arrow misses (true miss, damage totally absorbed by armor, or bladeturn) it sticks in the target exactly like a hit. There is a plethora of ways to discover where hidden archers are, so this nonsensical sticking in the target should be removed in the case of a true miss if not in all three cases. I know this is a tricky issue, but archers would appreciate something being done.

Coordinated Fire and Bladeturns - Fixed by 1.62

"Target is out of range" – this is a really annoying message when you line up a shot on a stationary mob and are told that you are in range, then when you go to release (and neither you nor your target has moved), you get told its out of range. I suspect this may be related to server-client communication (client knows you stopped to draw, server ghosted you ahead one pace into range then snapped you back out of it by the time the shot is released - similar to the fixed "must stop moving to sit" message when I know I've stopped moving already).

Changed Target – if an archer draws with a target selected, and then changes to a new target, the shot will still hit the original target if it is within range. Any second shot will hit the new target, and has been the cause of unintentionally pulling adds on my party many times because of this that don’t give grouped bonuses. There is an exploit using this bug that allows an archer to target someone, draw a shot, set it to autorelease, target themself, and shoot the original target when the arrow is released.

Drawing After Being Mezzed - if an archer is AoE Mezzed with a bow in hand while stealthed, they cannot draw after the mez wears off until they change to a melee weapon and then back to the bow. This does not appear to happen every time, but fairly frequently.

Endurance Costs – normal shots for archery cost endurance, not just the archery styles. This is a disadvantage compared to tanks that can keep using their primary attack without costing endurance, and compared to casters who do have limits to casting based on power but still have a nearly full bar of endurance to sprint with.

Endurance Drain – Now that archers get Tireless for free, we are not sitting as much as we used to, however, we still feel double penalized by using endurance for non-styled attacks, and the innability to make any attacks once out of endurnace.

Arrow Costs – arrows that keep us in the correct damage range are keeping us in near-poverty conditions; a change was mentioned a while ago, but never made it onto Pendragon or the live servers, did it fall by the wayside?

Arrow Choice – the decision of which type of arrows to use is based on determining the expected total loot from each kill, dividing by 5, and seeing which arrows cost around that amount. That’s fairly cumbersome, since it takes trial and error, and careful bookkeeping to determine average loot for target mobs at each level. It would be very helpful if arrows received color-cons based on this formula to help new players determine which arrow types they should be using. This is somewhat inaccurate due to changes in loot when hunting with a group and number of arrows shot at mobs, but it gives a decent rule-of-thumb that can be modified due to circumstances.

Bladeturn Spells – Bladeturn is supposed to have a 100%*(archer level)/(caster level) chance of blocking attacks. It has been demonstrated that the actual chance of bypassing bladeturn is much less than this would indicate. Not only that, with the age of the game, and most archers having stuck it out for this amount of time, everyone is basically level 50.

High Level Pulsing Bladeturn – Fixed by 1.62

Relic Bonuses – relic and keep bonuses are possibly too high for front-loaded damage classes (assassins, archers, and bolt mages). With three relics, a keep or two, and buffs rangers are consistently hitting damage caps on yellow targets. When a ranger's damage cap is over 1000 using a top end player crafted bow that's a bit much. When Midgard had all the strength relics shadowblades were hitting their cap on standing level 50s in epic gear, which meant a lot of one shotted mages – at least you can use bladeturn against an archer. We are mostly pointing this out as its causing a resurgence of the “nerf” cries against rogues. This also applies to our melee, but as that’s naturally weaker for archers its more apparent with our bows.

Darkness Falls – Basically fixed by Sojouner level 5 ability.

Critical Shot Message – there is currently no way to differentiate critical shots from normal shots using the log. We used to rely on the printed delay, but needed tenths of a second to tell which was which. In some cases now both the normal shot and the critical shot appear to have the same delay printed. Can we please get the damage line to indicate "You shoot the target with your bow and hit for total damage (attack-type vs. armor-type modifier) damage" on the normal shot, and "You critical shoot the target with your bow and hit for total damage (attack-type vs. armor-type modifier) damage" on a critical shot.

Longshot Message – the only way to differentiate Longshots from normal shots using the log is to look back to see the message when you drew the shot. Can we please get the damage line to indicate "You longshot the target with your bow and hit for total damage (attack-type vs. armor-type modifier) damage".

Volley Message – the only way to differentiate volley shots from normal shots using the log other than noting the lack of subsequent draw shots (hard for a parser to recognize). Can we please get the damage line to indicate "You volley the target with your bow and hit for total damage (attack-type vs. armor-type modifier) damage" for each of the 5 volley shots.

Rapid Fire Message – there is currently no way to differentiate rapid fire shots from normal shots using the log. Particularly as there is no indication that rapid fire shut itself off when a critshot or longshot or volley was made. Can we please get the damage line to indicate "You rapidly shoot the target with your bow and hit for total damage (attack-type vs. armor-type modifier) damage" while rapid fire is toggled on.

Rapid Fire Icon Greyout – Fixed 1.69

Quiver - Finally added in ToA and SI clients! Now, about the graphical quiver....