Out of curiosity, which of the big 4 roguelikes has the best archer class?

[Amnekian]

Nethack was god awful. DCSS was quite fun, but it felt stale. I'm yet to take a dive in this game. Thoughts?

[Derakon]

Depends on what you mean by "best". For a long time the Ranger in Angband was a rather munchkiny class -- good at melee and spellcasting, and unparalleled at archery of course. It's had its melee and spells nerfed a bit since then.

Ranged combat in general is quite competitive in Angband. The damage output isn't quite as good as melee (unless you find really good gear), but you can stay out of range of enemy melee attacks. Similarly, it's not as consistent as spells, but your only limit is your ammo, instead of your mana which can be drained quickly.

Interface-wise, you'll want to get comfortable with the 'h' and 'n' commands. 'h' does "target nearest monster and fire the ammo in your first quiver slot". This cuts way down on keystrokes. 'n' does "repeat last command", which is helpful for if you want to use nonstandard ammo -- just select your target, fire once manually, and then repeat commands to keep firing the special ammo.

[Djabanete]

Out of curiosity, which are the 4 big roguelikes? I suppose Angband, NetHack, and Crawl are obvious, but the fourth?

[T-Mick]

ADOM, I suppose. Never played an archer there though. Of the other three, Angband has the OP archer.

Tab will also quick-fire to the nearest target, at least in FAangband.

[Patashu]

Out of curiosity, which are the 4 big roguelikes? I suppose Angband, NetHack, and Crawl are obvious, but the fourth?

ToME4? (or Dungeons of Dredmor sarcasmmarks)

[Amnekian]

My bad, yes, the forth one is ADOM.

[AnonymousHero]

I don't tend to play archers, but from what I've played, both V and Sil seemed quite archer-friendly. (Not as in "overpowered", but the UI was reasonably efficient.)

[PowerWyrm]

Archers in ADOM are clearly the most OP. Ammo with slay brands will kill anything in a couple of shots, this means the nastiests undead, demons and dragons. And level 50 makes all your ammo piercing...

[Estie]

Archery in vanilla angband is not really a viable path by itself. There is no archer; rangers have some advantages when using bows, but basically archery is used by everyone and as a support skill.
There was an attempt to make archery a mainstay attack option, with easy to get ammo in huge ammounts and protected from getting destroyed by dungeon wear and tear, but most of that has been undone again. As it is, its an option for burst damage that doesnt really burst.

It still has some use, but if you go and expect to play "an archer", youll bound to get disappointed.

[Philip]

Except for the fact that a Ranger is almost twice as good as anyone else at archery, and only has support spells and a small amount of melee, the fact that archery reliably does more damage than say, melee for many characters etc.

Ranger is a specialist archer, he is super powerful as an archer, what more do you want?

[Estie]

Except for the fact that a Ranger is almost twice as good as anyone else at archery, and only has support spells and a small amount of melee, the fact that archery reliably does more damage than say, melee for many characters etc.

Ranger is a specialist archer, he is super powerful as an archer, what more do you want?

Twice as good ? Not when I play them

But that isnt the point. For an archer to be a class, I would want archery to be the prime choice for killing things, the way melee is for most characters and magic has become for the 2 casters (at least for long stages of the game), with the mana cost reduction for offensive spells and increase in mana potion supply.

Sure, I can kill everything with arrows and it isnt (much) slower than using melee, but for efficient play I want to conserve those arrows. Playing a mana only mage is fun. Playing an arrow only ranger is tedium.

[Timo Pietilä]

Twice as good ? Not when I play them

But that isnt the point. For an archer to be a class, I would want archery to be the prime choice for killing things

Twice is actually underestimate.

Ranger primary method for killing is archery. If in your way of playing it isn't then you are doing something wrong. (wrong as in non-optimal). You can kill a Great Hell Wyrm before it gets a move with cold-branded seeker arrows with +10 speed clvl 40+ ranger with a good longbow. Melee and spells don't get even close that killing power.

Try bookless ranger sometimes. They are ridiculously easy, especially now that ID is no longer a serious problem.

I have proposed this before and I think it is still valid: we should swap spells between rogue and ranger. Rogue should be the one with almost all spells and ranger the one with only utility spells.

[Derakon]

Timo is right, but at the same time, killing everything with arrows as a ranger isn't really practical, because ammo breaks. That means that your awesome ammo has to be conserved, and you have to use the crap stuff for killing basic mooks. And while archery with slay/elemental ammo is amazing, archery with basic (+0, +0) ammo is merely rather decent...and you can't keep it up for long before you have to head back to town to resupply.

A high-level ranger with a longbow of extra shots +1 gets 4 shots/round, though, and there is no possible way that any other damage source can compete with that. That means they're getting actions 4 times more often as any same-speed monster in the area; it also means that even if each shot only deals 125 damage they're still beating out both melee and spellcasting for damage over time in most cases, while still avoiding melee and not depleting their spellpoints.

[Estie]

Twice is actually underestimate.

Ranger primary method for killing is archery. If in your way of playing it isn't then you are doing something wrong. (wrong as in non-optimal). You can kill a Great Hell Wyrm before it gets a move with cold-branded seeker arrows with +10 speed clvl 40+ ranger with a good longbow. Melee and spells don't get even close that killing power.

Try bookless ranger sometimes. They are ridiculously easy, especially now that ID is no longer a serious problem.

I have proposed this before and I think it is still valid: we should swap spells between rogue and ranger. Rogue should be the one with almost all spells and ranger the one with only utility spells.

The smiley was supposed to indicate humour. Maybe its not obvious, but I was referring to my rangers usually not finding great archery items.

I know how much damage rangers do. I still dont value their archery as a full main attack, rather as support, for the reasons me and Derakon stated.
Being able to kill a GHW earlier than others is certainly nice, but imho doesnt make up for the hours wasted with picking up arrows (or with "suboptimal" melee, which I prefer). Others milage may vary.

One way to instantly elevate rangers to an archery class would be to get rid of all arrows. Just assume a wielded bow shoots them, without actually having the micromanagement played out. Give bows a reasonable damage (less than current damage with optimal arrows).
Note that I am not proposing such a change, merely giving an example of what I would consider an archery class.

As for what I am proposing: for me, archery would need a slight buff back to where it was a few patches ago to be useful again. Most f the time I just dont bother, and carry ammo out of habit rather than to actually use it.

IF I was to make a real archer class, I d try this: remove magic ammo of all kinds; only normal ammo exists. It comes in large stacksizes and is cheap.
Only launchers come with magic properties, as before.

This alone makes for an effective, but boring archer. A melee warrior has to work to reach melee range. To give the archer a similar task, have archery NOT work in melee range. If that is not enough....increase the minimum shooting range by 1 more square.

Wether Id be happy with this archer I am not sure; but I´d want to play it and see.

[Timo Pietilä]

IF I was to make a real archer class, I d try this: remove magic ammo of all kinds; only normal ammo exists. It comes in large stacksizes and is cheap.
Only launchers come with magic properties, as before.

This is interesting suggestion which I'm not at all disagreeing with. Now that shooters can have slays you could remove them from ammo (as well as ammo branding spell). You could add whole new world of ego-shooters. Multi-slay would have to be achieved from shooter instead of carrying multiple different stacks of ego-ammo. Branded shooter should be rare.