Skeleton archers don't work because of their multi-shot attack

Skeleton archers as a concept are fine. Multi-shot as a concept is fine. Unfortunately they don’t work well together. Multi-shot is a skill that can be dodged. By simply moving. And the AI, as much as it even exists here, cant make use of it properly. The skeleton archers will constantly use their multi-shot when everything on the screen is dead or try to shoot several mobs who are aggroing towards me and miss more than half of their arrows. This begs the question - if their AoE is so unreliable why even have them?

Multi-shot should have been changed a long time ago to something else. There are so many other things to give them, from explosive arrows to debuffs for the other minions/the player to take advantage of, so why stick with this broken skill?

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Got your point, even tho I love the skill. Maybe, Rain of Arrows or something would do the trick?

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Fire Arrow feels alright for me honestly, I don’t really see what’s the problem ^^

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Minions will never be as smart as the player and they shouldn’t be. All they need are attacks that are not skill shots. Attacks that are consistent instead of being hit or miss. Melee minions in general are fine because they hit whatever is in front of them. Totems are also fine, they either have homing attacks or AoEs making it important to know where to place them but they’ll do their job regardless.

Skeleton archers do not feel the same. To utilize something like mutli-shot or split-shot or whatever it is called you need to position yourself right. They obviously cant do that and creating an AI to allow them to do that is similarly pointless.

Rain of arrows could be an excellent idea. You always know where it’ll go and how many enemies it’ll hit, it should be a superior skill.

Right now, minions are totally dumb. When they didn’t see their target, they’re shooting walls lol. They are should run closer to target, avoid obstacle, until target is in sight, when it’s out.

I run straight archers and aggro catching golem so I only relate to half your issue. Them skill shotting without LoS into walls and rocks is super annoying and wastes of skills so I would love for them to learn either A) They can’t shoot through obstacles or B ) They need LoS to hit things.

I’m currently doing a skeleton archer/mage build and they seem to be doing fine. Of course they miss some shots, but that’s why you have an army of them firing,

The biggest issue im running into with the multishot skill is that they will often all use it at the same time, which is overkill, and usually do it into a wall and not hit the target at all. For whatever reason, it seems their ai doesnt deal with walls only when using that skill.

The ranged minion AI does not do well with walls in general not just for that fire arrow skill. But that is a hindrance in most minion builds for lots of ARPGs. But you can re-summon them for a reason. I usually re-summon 2x archer + 1-2x mage when I go around a corner to a lot of mobs.

Hi, all. Bustar40 your concern is valid and it’s on our radar. I’ll bring it up in our next skill design meeting on Tuesday. I’ll monitor this thread for suggestions too if you guys have them.

Well, one suggestion would be proper line of sight so if mobs are behind a wall the archers will attempt to get into position where they can see them instead of shooting the wall.

Another suggestions would be the usage of debuffs, something like the Rogue companions from Diablo 2. The archers don’t seem to be big damage minions, so pushing them more into utility might be good.

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