[Official] Marksman's Bootcamp!

[Grilvhor]

Hey all,


You can talk here about his balance, his role, his skills, his stats, your love for him.

The objective is to avoid hundreds of news topics on the subjects, the forum is flooded enough.

Also if Devs have a look at the topic they can quickly see the player base global opinion and balance him according to that.

So please stay positive, no trolls, make suggestions and such.

Developers say:

Thanks and care for those flying arrows everywhere!

[Dakiaris]

The marksman is honestly my least played class because I find it to easy to use with it's on demand minions when and where you need them along with the general strength of the class. I can't say the class is op but it is when in comparison with some of the other classes... The closest to being as good as the marksman is the necromancer at the time of this post.. Anyway onward to the meat and taters of my post.

Arrow Turret / Multishot Turret - I'm judging these 2 together because honestly they are fine as is both of them function almost like on demand minions for the marksman with a built in synergy that functoins like the necromancers summon mastery... I find them to be fine as is after the most recent change to allow the normal turret to gain health/damage based on multi turrets rank.

Multishot - This skill is buggy and not shooting as many projectiles as the tooltip indicates and I noticed that the initial *middle shot where you're aiming* is 10% weaker then the side shots.. No idea if it's intended or not but this is a buggy skill atm and I'll come back to this later on after it's fixed and review it at that time.

Homing rocket - I find this skill to be kinda op but the base of 100 damage with 50 per point and small strength scaling turns it into a ok skill. I do see a reason to change the proc rate to be 1% +1% per rank and to lower the range so that it flys around 1.5x your normal attack range so that you still have to be at least semi close to the danger.

Arrow Rampage - This skill is SOOOOOOOOOOO good I honestly don't see any real need to change it... The base damage seems low but it has good scaling with strength so I find this fine.

Landmine - The base damage isn't that bad but I suggest giving it a skill synergy with grenade throw. every 15 points here makes greande throw out 1 more grenade *+2 grenades at 30 giving it 3 on proc*

Grenade throw - Havn't found any issues with this it has a scaling of 25 per strength and the chance and base damage both feel fine. My only suggestion here is every point in this gives Landmine +50 damage *+1500 to landmine if you 30/30 it*

Critical strike - This skill suffers the same pitfall as the vikings just not as bad due to the damage boost of Agility... My suggestion here is to give it a synergy with Agility where every point here extends the duration of agility by .15 and every point of agility grants +5% critical damage.

Agility - I don't find any problems with this skill I would suggest a skill synergy with critical strike here though. Giving critical strike +5% critical damage for every point in agility would give a good synergy between the 2 skills. Rank 30 would be +150% bonus crit damage


I'll come back and change this as I get another marksman to 80 since I lost all my test characters.

[Grilvhor]

The Marksman is the class i play since i started hero siege few months ago, i’m really dedicated to him.
My hour count with him must be 100+, lvl 145 in MP and playing in inferno actually.

PvE wise, I think he is pretty balanced and doesn’t need major rework, just a few tweaks here and there.
I won’t compare him to other classes.


General suggestion:

Please make his skills scales with swiftness more than strength, that would feel more legit and RP for a Marksman right?
Under are some ways to do it.

I’ll speak now about each of his skills.

“Criticals”

200% base damage.
+1% critical chance by level.
I got it lvl 42 so it’s 42% criticals, which is huge.


My suggestion:

Add bonus "critical damage" scaling with swiftness to go higher than 200%.
The more swift I am, the more I hurt enemies in their weak spots, increasing my critical damage.

Arrow turret and multishot turret, max 2@15 points.

Medium damage and HP, I mostly use them as shields, their dps is not interesting past nightmare difficulty.

My suggestions:

I would like a cap of 3 at 30 points, maybe extend cooldown to balance this: 15 seconds or so.

Turrets could have the ability to launch missiles scaling with the marks skill, boosting their lackluster DPS.
They would then become more than shields that agro enemies.

I mean either INCREASE their DPS in a funny way and keep their HP the same or…
Turn them into actual DEPLOYABLE SHIELDS with no attacks but more HP and armor.

Turrets are just in the middle, neither good at tanking nor at dealing decent damage at high difficulty.
IF I had the choice I would go for a turret that launches missiles too, maybe lower attack rate to balance DPS. :P

Multishot skill on auto attack:

I like this skill even if it’s bugged right now as morgue rabbit mentionned.
If I had to adjust it I would do that:


My suggestion:

Lower the angle of the arrows in a tighter way, I would like it to feel like a shotgun shooting arrows lol. This would make it better to focus fire on single targets without having to be in close range to hit with all arrows.

Add some damage scaling with swiftness.
The more swift I am, the more I shoot enemies with precision and hurt them.

Grenades:

Grenades his the marksman’s skills that scales best with his strength, great damage and good procing rate.
To me the range of the grenade is bad, it is too short!

It’s like if the marksman doesn’t have the strength in his arms to throw it more than a meter away! :D

To hit with grenades I have to stand too close to my victims, which puts me in too much danger for a ranged Hero called a marksman, especially considering enemy threats at high difficulty.

My suggestion:

I only suggest increasing the range of throw, scaling with strength is fine.

Arrow Rampage:

Great skill especially for clearing maps of bushes and stuff.

Damage progression by level is NON-EXISTANT!
+1 damage or so per level, it’s just useless to level it beyond level one!

I admit it scales correctly with strength but still, do something about that please.

Suggestion:

A +100 boost per level is a minimum, I don’t play in normal for a long time now! :D
Scale it with swiftness.

Homing rockets:

Great skill, hit enemies from afar with medium damage, nice procing, only works in open maps so this is balanced to me.
To people who say that the range is OP and should be nerfed I answer this:
-Half the maps of the game contains many obstacles that stops missiles in their way, making them “middle to short range”.
The true advantage lies in open maps. (act 1, some dungeons etc…)

My suggestion:

If range is to be tweaked, scale it with swiftness but keep it as a long range skill in the objective.
Implement an exploding animation when missiles hit an obstacle, it’s weird just seeing them disappearing when hitting a wall. :P

Landmines:

The concept of landing mines is nice, the actual implementation is bad imo.
I almost never use it.

1.When using the skill, marksman put the mine UNDER HIS OWN FEET?

Omg I just killed myself! Normally! :P

2.Damage is poor! Around 3K damage at level 30 with no scaling.

Nice in normal and maybe nightmare, forget it above that difficulty.
Morgue rabbits suggested to scale it with grenades and I like the idea.

My suggestions:

Don’t put mine under my own feet, throw it in front of the hero like one meter away.
Scale it with something to make the damage worth it through all difficulties.

Agility:

nice skill with good procing.

My suggestion:

For RP reason, speaking of Agility, I’d prefer a boost in strength and critical DAMAGE or CHANCE.

I mean, when I’m under agility I’m like super focused, I can shoot the enemies in their weak spots easier dealing more damage.

So why running faster? I’m fast enough already, if I want to run fast I’ll go and play sonic the hedgehog. 


I love this class and i guess i'l love it even more when it will be more coherent.

thanks for reading folks, see you around!

[charcoal_man]

I mostly main the Marksman (somewhere in the lvl 150s). Thoughts for those starting the class:

Critical Strike - Not bad, but not really useful given various relics as compensation.

Arrow Turret/Multishot Turret - Solid talents, good scaling. Useful as a form of CC or for enemies you don't want to get near.

Multishot - Max this skill out first (with a point or two in turrets along the way). With max Swiftness (8 attacks/second), this is absolutely brutal.

Homing Rocket - Max this second. There's a few relics that mimic this effect and all of them seem to stack with it.

Arrow Rampage - Excellent (nearly) fullscreen AOE.

Landmine - Not very useful. Fast CD, useful if you can dump 3-4 of them on the boss spawn location prior to spawn, but not really otherwise.

Grenade Throw - Barely more useful than Landmine. Short range throw means by the time an enemy comes into range they'll be hit by your basic attack faster/more.

Agility - Not bad, but not brilliant. Procs occasionally, but mostly just good for bosses. If you constantly auto-attack and have a high Agility, it'll help make up for lack of Speed pots early on.

Suggested point distro, when possible:
Multishot > Arrow Rampage/Homing Rocket > Turrets > Agility > Critical Strike > Grenade Throw > Landmine

[voltumel]

today, is the best char of the game.

the only thing i have to say is that the marksman skills SHOULD SCALE WITH DEXTERTY, never with strength, because is a ranger char and agility is the main skill.

but besides that, it's well balanced.

(i speak spanish, sorry for my bad english)

[Tarengar]

its a reason i dont play marksman anymore,what type of bow user uses str for damage in any rpg style game.

[Dakiaris]

Dungeons and dragons with a mighty bow it uses strength modifier for more damage.

[Coldbody°]

I don't know if anyone else is having this problem since the update, but my marksman is healing the enemy every time I attack, the only thing doing dmg to the enemy is my turrets and passive rockets, I got my first item on him and it's just the Razer Blade, does it have something to do with the - STR?

[Panic Art Studios]

Originally posted by Coldbody°:

I don't know if anyone else is having this problem since the update, but my marksman is healing the enemy every time I attack, the only thing doing dmg to the enemy is my turrets and passive rockets, I got my first item on him and it's just the Razer Blade, does it have something to do with the - STR? :tlove:

probably -strength so needs to be taken a look at.

[Not Roy™]

I play marksman, I love it. The only scary thing to me is the range on the "Grenade Throw". It feels sooooooooooo short that I'm all together just too scared to use it. That might just be me though. :P

[joof]

I'd really like to see Agility proccing properly. It seems like it's not really following the % amount that it actually has. I have it at 71% procc chance and yet sometimes I sit there 30 seconds while smashing out 8 Aps without getting a procc. But overall I really love the changes to grenades and everything - Just a bit sad that you don't see the scaling of strenght in multiplayer and that the procc chance of homing rockets got nerfed :D! Keep up the good work.

[Grilvhor]

Why do I end up using the marksman mainly with his auto-attack and not using his active skills at all?

This is because Multishot + criticals + High STR gives him a great DPS.


That DPS is fair, i'm not saying it should be nerfed.


But his skills are just (almost) useless in terms of Damage and utility compared to his AA.


So i find myself using his skills rarely and when i do it's not for their damage output.


Turrets:

I see them as weak shields, only real function for them at HL.

Still i don't like the two turrets skills for the reasons mentioned in my previous post.
They would better suit an "engineer" class, as in Team fortress 2.

Mines:

The mine is still a bad skill even if it now scales with STR for damage.
It's explosion radius is 1 tile only or so with mediocre damage?

I'd rather see the skill replaced by a new one that would be more interesting for a marksman.


Arrow rampage!

Arrow flies all over the screen, an enemy can be hit 5 times or so.

Damage increase per level is only 1 point, useless.

Damage scaling is nice with STR though.

This skill is practical for clearing a map from bushes and stuff or killing low level enemies.
But arrows flying from left to right of the screen seems kinda weird no? :P


I'd prefer a skill that makes the marksman shoot arrows in an AOE pattern all around him, think like the skeleton marksman attack with which they destroy our turrets everytime but apply it around our Marksman in a medium range.
Arrows falling from the sky


I like the new grenades skill, nice damage and decent range now.


I'd like those 2 skills, turrets and mines, to be changed to skills that better suit a marksman/archer.


I'll drop here a few ideas:

-Flame/poison/ice shots

For a few seconds, one of this effect is selected randomly and applied on markman's auto-attack arrows.


-Deployable Shield

Marksman deploys a stationary shield behind which to take cover from damage.
The shield take aggro from enemies as turrets actually do.

I guess i'll have other ideas later, what do you think guys?

[joof]

I'd like to see a sort of weapon enhancement like the samurai has with the different elements like you mention with arrows, because just like you say both turrets and the mine are utterly useless.
I drop turrets for tanking and use the arrow rampage to clear urns and crates to save time. Overall I would just really like to see different procc skills and maybe switch out one of the use skills for a single shot with cooldown like in Diablo 2. This shot could be a stun shot that with every level in it stuns for a longer period of time and maybe has a 10-15 seconds cooldown with a stun duration of ~5 seconds at level 100.
Maybe make one of the skills that the marksman has a group buff of some sort so you aren't there for just the damage purpose but you serve like a group utility.

[Dimple]

Could we get the Marksman to say "My bow will be my guide!" when he does his flurry of arrows, in a MIGHTY Norse voice?

Just a thought :]

[bertboat]

Homing Rocket skill description says "Gives a chance that Marksman's attack _becomes_ a homing rocket."

I'm playing right now (1.4.0.3) and I see that when the skill procs, I see both an arrow and a missile, both doing damage to dummies. Is this intentional?

It's easy to see since I have 25% chance of shooting a missile. I am pressing an attack button once with short pauses to see this happen.

[Grilvhor]

Originally posted by bertboat:

Homing Rocket skill description says "Gives a chance that Marksman's attack _becomes_ a homing rocket."

I'm playing right now (1.4.0.3) and I see that when the skill procs, I see both an arrow and a missile, both doing damage to dummies. Is this intentional?

It's easy to see since I have 25% chance of shooting a missile. I am pressing an attack button once with short pauses to see this happen.

I just noticed that when i launch a rocket i do not launch arrows and it sucks imo as it kills my DPS.

It was better the way it was before, now I feel punished when launching a rocket.
I don't even know their freaking explosion range.