Here's the thing: arrows are USELESS right now for woodworkers. Why? Because vendor arrows are cheaper, and woodworkers can't really offer a product that makes paying the extra price worth it. I'd be interested to know how many woodworkers even bother to stock arrows over totems. Honestly, while I'd say most tradeskill classes are hurting right now, woodworkers are right down at the bottom of the pile (along with the poor, poor weaponsmiths). How to keep woodworkers happy? They aren't happy right now at all. I hate to drag back to Endless Quiver, because I think there are more solutions than that (though making rangers pay for their primary means of damage, when they offer NOTHING but damage, is again, very, very unbalanced, whether you pay 1cp or five plat), but when EQ was introduced in Shadows of Luclin, very specialize arrow types were introduced as well (I THINK these were elemental damage arrows, it's been a while). These arrows were pricey to create, and were sold at very high costs, but since you only needed one of them once you had earned EQ, it was worth the price and added a little extra to what you could do, while allowing you to specialize in damage types base on what mobs you were fighting. On the fly, my solution toward fixing the arrow insanity making Woodworkers unhappy would be somewhere along these lines: let Woodworkers continue to make what they can make now (and possibly bump up the return/and/or lower the fuel costs so they can compete with vendor prices) but also let them make /specialized/ arrows that actually do mean something in gameplay. Let them make rare arrows again. Let them make arrows with specialized damage types (elemental, divine, magic, etc.). Let them make arrows that have some sort of effect to them (debuff, snare, whatever). And then limit what type of arrows actually works with Endless Quiver/summon arrows/CA usage, blah blah whatever, so that it adds useful flavor, but doesn't take a massive flying leap into the realm of overpowered. I don't mind spending coin, even a lot of coin, on extra utility/damage...my beef comes in when I have to spend a ton of coin just to do what I'm supposed to be able to do in the first place. Another option would be to let woodworkers create some sort of specialized arrow summoning kits, akin to how the Deathtoll bows work now (minus the T8 arrows, of course). But that seems something of a more clunky patch job over two problems to me, unless it were implemented very carefully. Bottom line, ranger and woodworker problems are actually linked: we require so many arrows that we can't afford to buy from the NPC vendor, let alone a player, and they can't make a product that either offers more than the vendor product to make up for the price, OR is cheaper to make that they can price it lower than the vendors.
Arrows are pretty much borked for woodworkers, and there are several steps that need to be taken for them to work at all, and I figure this will be painful as hell. First off what is that decides the minimal price of crafted items in eq2 today? Fuel costs. So to effectively lower the price on arrows, there has to be more arrows per craft, and/or lower fuel costs for arrows (give arrows a special fuel ingriedent f. ex). Second off there is slot usage, if the price on arrows is lowered the 99 stack will be worth less, and therefore to make gold on arrows a woodworker will have to sacrifice more inventory and broker slots, which again would hurt them. Therefore the max stack of arrows (ammo) would have to be increased as well. This would again help to counter our inventory problems and plat spending issue, however we still use 2000-8000 arrows a day (depending on what you spend your gametime on). So the cost of arrows would need to be lowered considerable for it to still be effective. And that still doesn't justify the balance issues with other classes not having to spend the same ammount on ammo. I am having big problems seeing a solution at all. If arrows was worth dirt [expletive haxx0red by Raijinn], no woodworkers would bother making them anyways, and we would end up buying from vendor anyways. So something needs to be thought up here, and I have no idea what would really fix this for both woodworkers and rangers, However something needs to be done. Cause atm it isn't working for either, and IMO this is worse for the rangers than the woodworkers
Making arrows is one of the dullest and most tedious things I've ever done as a woodworker, 25 arrows for a pristine combine, at however long that takes, filling a reasonable sized quiver is repetitive boredom, woe is you if it's a bigass quiver
I may have missed the mark here, as my ranger is still in the 20s, but to me the simplest solution to this would be... 1, make all ranged ammo stack to 500 instead of 99 2, make crafted arrows return 100 per combine instead of 25, and reduce the price of vendor bought arrows by half 3, make all reclaimed arrows summon 4 times more arrows than it does now (240 for level 62 master). then you are bascially getting 4 times the amount of arrows as you are now from either crafting or reclaimed arrows, woodworkers will be favored over vendor bought arrows, which they may or may not like, and you can carry enough arrows on you to last a day or two at least. As i said, my ranger is still very low, and I doubt I would ever raid with him. but even at level 20 i had noticed that i was spending more on arrows, poisons and repairs combined than I was actually making adventuring, and of the 16 or so toons i have taken to the mid to late 40s, he is the only one that has been a loss in terms of coin.
Seeing as this thread has dragged me in so much I happend to mention it to one of my friends ingame. And it was suggested that I should /feedback this every day and that I should get as many other to do so as well. Fact is Devs don't respond to forum posts very often and we don't even know if they have read this thread. Therefore I am asking all you to /feedback this every day. Don't make it too demanding or rude, but every day mention how bad this really is. And frankly I don't care if you have a master and the AAs to counter this, or a DT bow. Fact is it is a problem and not everyone have the luxury of this. Therefore I am on my knees beggin you, I want to see this fixed in one way or another.. Maybe even something temporary until they think up a proper solution. So please if you have some minutes spare everyday spend them on writing a small feedback.
Agreed. If I were to get one of the DT bows tomorrow, it wouldn't solve the problem for anyone but me, and the percentage of rangers that will ever see DT, let alone get lucky enough for a drop, is very, very low. Additionally, T7 is not the last tier SOE is going to introduce...so that ammo is good for THIS tier, and probably for T8 too, but it will be obselete in T9, and then you're back where you started if no change is made to counter-act this problem.
I second this one - the only part that bugs me.. Is they said they were looking into it about a year or so ago and we arent hearing about it - or seeing results.. Some word on how this is progressing, or a deadline would be nice.. But as it is - I spend most of my time on EQ2 talking to people and gathering arrows.. As well as doing things around the house etc. Luckally I have the time infront of me with my 3 week break *flaunts my break infront of everyone*!
We should all try to get more people aware about this thread and hopefully get them to join the /feedback movement
Just thought id add that with all this goin, you forget about a few small things, noone is constantly fighting 100% of the time, simply cause of the time it takes for certain timing, i mean if you go all out in the start of a fight then you will most likely pull aggro off the main tank, so simply because of all this you gotta add about 20 seconds between each in every fight also counting the time it takes for pulls or running to your enemy, and if any downtime. Just try adding all that in with the math, cause im pretty sure not every ranger is constantly firing arrows unless its a raid thats usually a different story tho, now this doesnt make that much of a difference might5 change the time a little but only maybe by 5-10 minutes at most, so you still go through alot of arrows just not that fast, and if you halfto ration your arrows between going in for melee as well, i know we dont deal anywhere near as much melee damage as we do non melee but itll help the coin a bit, its kinda what i halfto do or else i will run out and im broke ot begin with
I am pretty sure LoreLady knows this, only thing is there are too many variables adding 20 seconds is just as unrealistic as not adding anything at all, we rather use the pure numbers for examples cause it makes it easier on both ends. This is because if you do alot of pick up groups you will never fight with the same speed twice in a row. LoreLady just shows and proves how fast you in theory can use 2000 arrows, which is only slightly above 1 hour. You should of course always take these numbers with a pinch of salt, but Seeing as what they show is so extreme there would have to be a substansial difference in the starting numbers for it to really matter in the ending result.
The point is: It DOESN'T MATTER. I don't care if we go through 2000/hour or 1000/hour, the fact is we spend a LOT of money to be able to do our job. No other class has to do this. Most other classes aren't even aware we do this. I have LITTLE problem with spending 50gp on poisons every weekend, spending 2-3pp on arrows is just INSANE.
time ago when i was a hardcore gamer, i used to play arround 10h a day or even more, during the last part of that time, i played to FFXI a ranger ninja. i farmed 8h then played 2h =D that was expensive lol... but yes we have a problem with that in eq2
Thanks for defending me - its appreciated.. I cant sub in the math for downtime unless you give me a two hour raid and show me your parsing for 50 min - and you know what.. Your still going to use 80g in that raid.. The info posted on there shows approximate information , and you can sub in how often you have downtime in your raids/groups per hour as well - just look at the total time in your parser to figure out where you are realisticcly spending money on arrows.. I still find it funny how our spell allows us to claim arrows at a 1:5 ratio - and the ichorstrand allows us to claim arrows at a 1:1.6 ratio (arrows foraged to arrows used) And gwyn - I totally agree with ya.. Again take those numbers to your own downtime, and its still ALOT of money - a soloer does earn more money per mob than say a raider, but a soloer also has less time and cash and guildhelp (generally raidguilds want to get everyone mastered quickly) than a soloer (dont bring up soloers/raiders debate please ).. Both sides hurt from the consumption, both sides have valid points, both sides should /feedback. No one here is saying that soloers and groupers dont have a arrow problem.. Lets be honst here, whats the likelyhood on someone who "purely" solo's that has m1 reclaimed arrows - or even someone who has just started raiding.. They are going to be paying 1/4 more than whats listed above. Adept 3 version, 5 hours of fighting, 6 plat normally...6*.25 = 1.5 more plat..
I am only on 10+ hours a day on the weekend, I work normal hours but I'm on almost 7 days a week so almost hard core. I try to raid 3-5 times a week if I can get it and doing grouped instances half the time I'm not. Arrows are a constant problem for me and many of the other rangers in the guild (6 - lvl 70 raiding rangers, the guild can NOT afford to keep us in arrows). We have a few rangers that are lvl 70 woodworkers, they cannot afford to make the arrows. Cost of producing the arrows is one silver less then buying them and the time it takes to make enough for a 32 slot quiver is outrageous. Woodworkers won't make them, they don't even want to make them when you ask for 2000 and they have to make 25 at a time. They can sell totems and go adventuring instead. Every woodworker I've asked feels the same way. Arrows for the amount of consumption we use are too tedious to bother with, I only get rounded and bodkins made for the Amorphous Drake and only use them then. So I'm not buying the whole lets make woodworkers feel valuable schtick. They aren't fletchers they're woodworkers, throw them other bones to feel valuable arrows are pretty boring. Although I'm sure we'd all like to see some cool arrow choices. I carry a full 32 box and the full quiver of arrows and if I do the 3 EoF instances A, B, C (Acadechism, Blight, Crypt) or MMC and a raid I'm out. I cannot summon them fast enough. A 3 or 4 hour group in MMC or Kaladim will clean out my quiver as quickly as a raid. I've had to refuse instance groups so I can solo or craft to summon arrows for a raid that I won't be making any money on. My last DT raid (with a different guild) was a 6 hour raid I used over 25 GM poisons, nothing dropped I could use. With 23g in repairs, approx 75g in poisons not counting the potions for str, warding and remedies plus arrows I'm looking at a 3plat bill for a night of entertainment that netted me nothing. After raiding DT for going on 4 months now and never seeing the named bows drop raiding with different guilds to maximize my chances I'd have to say watching my money and arrow supply is a constant struggle. And these are normal arrows that do nothing for my dps. I have a wizard in my guild that occasionally buys me arrows now before a raid, I feel so bad but I take them anyway. And due to my money going for being a ranger I cant afford the 20+plat it would take to buy the M1 of the spell which I know won't solve the problem. If they won't give us interesting adornments maybe they can help with the arrows. My 82 AAs are spent in the Multishot, Focus and Poison line, I cannot afford the dps drop to go up survival its hard enough as it is when you're in that mid raiding range without the big bows.
i consider myself a casual player. i might raid 1 time a month. i group with guildies and frinds about 25% of the time and solo the rest. If i soloed as fast as i could i would still use more arrows than i can summon and i have the M1 of the 62 summon spell.
Well, if I'm in a raid or a group instance, I AM fighting nearly 100% of the time. So those arrows get used up in a heartbeat. Something definitely needs to be done to address this.
After endless quiver was added to EQL, it was stated several months later what a huge mistake that was. Once a consumable is no longer consumable, every instance of creating specials for it must balance around the fact that some could keep that special forever. Imagine it with food for example. There is a quest drink that grants 40% haste. If a player got the benefit from, but never actually used that drink, they get a significant advantage over others. What happened in EQL with endless quiver? Everyone got 1 of each type of special arrow and never had to get any other arrows again. I believe that arrow consumption is a problem too. I do not however want something like endless quiver. I would rather keep the door open for special consumables in future expansions. As others have stated, I think the best thing would be for CAs not to use arrows, but check to verify an arrow is available in the quiver. That would keep people from being OOA but still able to use CAs and cut down consumption of arrows
