ranged background is weak

[radinms]

Hunter is weak.
To start at hunter is a strange choice, but some people prefer it.
Why?

[onget]

large rock

[Sprucery]

You have a ranged attack which kills everything dangerous on D:1 and D:2 which are the most dangerous levels in the game.

[dowan]

No they're not. And no it doesn't. That's a reply both to the OP and Sprucery at the same time.

[Sprucery]

Well, I can only speak for myself, but of all levels, most of my deaths happen on D:1 and D:2.

[Magipi]

Well, I can only speak for myself, but of all levels, most of my deaths happen on D:1 and D:2.

That is universal. However, I don't think a starting bow or whatever is good enough to reliably kill " everything dangerous" on D:1 and D:2. Large rocks are good enough, but that is the exception.

[daggaz]

Unless I'm playing some ultra squishy book-starting build, I find that the floors around D7 to D9 are the worst. No good god abilities (usually), crappy equipment still, can only get one skill semi-decent by this point, and all sorts of bad things start loading, like packs of orcs with priests and sorcerers, killer bees, etc..

[dowan]

I suppose it depends on the type of character you usually play. I find a lot of my deaths happen around d5 to big orc packs with priests that I stupidly overcommit to, d9-d10 to unseen horrors that I stupidly refuse to just teleport away from, sometimes lair branches if I'm playing a caster, and a lot of the time I stupidly get into bad situations in vaults and die that way. Occasionally I actually win, but that's statistically insignificant compared to all the deaths...

[dynast]

The problem with ranged background is finding a decent ranged weapon.

[mopl]

The problem with ranged background is finding ammos

FTFY

[greedo]

Ammo generally isn't that bad, just choose an alternate melee weapon for very squishy guys, one that requires little skill to be good with. Hunter is just one of those backgrounds that is really great for species with the aptitudes for it and really bad for everyone else imo.

[dowan]

The biggest problem for me with the hunter background is the fact that you start with a shortblade. I don't really want to try to rely completely on a ranged weapon, and I certainly don't want to use a short blade (Both because they're weak overall, and because they take more button presses to kill stuff with).

It's excellent on a troll, since you just drop your short blade and use your claws and throw stuff, it's not bad on an ogre, both due to large rocks and the fact that it's usually fairly easy to find a M&F weapon of some type pretty early. Overall, it's generally a little awkward though.

[greedo]

Honestly it's more the tedium that makes non-throwing hunters suck. Who really wants to weapon switch over 200 times before lair? It'd be nice if they had "garbage" and "piles of sticks" in addition to stones and unbranded arrows so if you're level 8 and find a newt, you can just gun that sucker down.'

With throwing hunters, you're using a main weapon mostly, and just hit f when you want to use your big guns.

[archaeo]

Ranged combat is really strong in Crawl, and the backgrounds specializing in it are mostly fine, insofar as having some kind of ranged attack to use vs. serious threats in the early game is really helpful when you're at your squishiest. Once you hit the midgame and start getting ammo gifts (because most of the time you'd have to be crazy not to go Oka or Trog), ranged becomes seriously overpowered and the only drawback is the tedium of managing ammo.

If you flatten the growth of ranged's power, made all ammo mulch, and then made ammo a lot more plentiful (ideally to the point that oka and trog could stop gifting ammo), it'd go a long way toward fixing the problems with it, imo.

[neil]

Honestly it's more the tedium that makes non-throwing hunters suck. Who really wants to weapon switch over 200 times before lair? It'd be nice if they had "garbage" and "piles of sticks" in addition to stones and unbranded arrows so if you're level 8 and find a newt, you can just gun that sucker down.'

With throwing hunters, you're using a main weapon mostly, and just hit f when you want to use your big guns.

  Code:

auto_switch = false
        This option will allow you to automatically switch to an appropriate
        weapon when firing or attacking in melee, as long as the one you are
        wielding and the one you switch to are both in slot 'a' or 'b'.


[Berder]

Hunter/AM are really weak. Ranged weapons do less damage on d1 than melee or spells, in a part of the game when that's really important, and they have limited ammo which means you simply cannot specialize in your ranged weapon if you're trying to go for a reliable win. So instead you should usually use your ranged weapon as backup for melee as soon as you find a usable melee weapon.

But then compare it to Artificer or Assassin, which are played much the same way - a blowgun or wand of flame is far more powerful backup than a few skill levels of a ranged weapon.

http://i.imgur.com/LmfLifZ.png

[duvessa]

Hunter/AM are really weak. Ranged weapons do less damage on d1 than melee

HuFi, starting skills, long sword, vs. hobgoblin:

  Code:

            AvHitDam | MaxDam | Accuracy | AvDam | AvTime | AvSpeed | AvEffDam
 Attacking:      4.4 |     12 |      53% |   2.4 |   138  |  0.72 |      1.7
 Attacking:      4.4 |     11 |      54% |   2.4 |   138  |  0.72 |      1.7
 Attacking:      4.3 |     12 |      54% |   2.3 |   138  |  0.72 |      1.7
 Attacking:      4.4 |     12 |      53% |   2.4 |   138  |  0.72 |      1.7
 Attacking:      4.4 |     12 |      54% |   2.4 |   138  |  0.72 |      1.7

HuGl, starting skills, quarterstaff, vs. hobgoblin:

  Code:

            AvHitDam | MaxDam | Accuracy | AvDam | AvTime | AvSpeed | AvEffDam
 Attacking:      4.3 |     12 |      61% |   2.7 |   115  |  0.87 |      2.3
 Attacking:      4.4 |     12 |      60% |   2.7 |   115  |  0.87 |      2.3
 Attacking:      4.4 |     12 |      61% |   2.7 |   115  |  0.87 |      2.4
 Attacking:      4.4 |     12 |      62% |   2.7 |   115  |  0.87 |      2.4
 Attacking:      4.4 |     12 |      61% |   2.7 |   115  |  0.87 |      2.3

HuHu, starting skills, hand crossbow, vs. hobgoblin:

  Code:

            AvHitDam | MaxDam | Accuracy | AvDam | AvTime | AvSpeed | AvEffDam
 Attacking:      5.7 |     14 |      65% |   3.8 |   130  |  0.77 |      2.9
 Attacking:      5.8 |     14 |      65% |   3.8 |   130  |  0.77 |      2.9
 Attacking:      5.7 |     14 |      65% |   3.8 |   130  |  0.77 |      2.9
 Attacking:      5.6 |     14 |      65% |   3.7 |   130  |  0.77 |      2.8
 Attacking:      5.9 |     14 |      65% |   3.8 |   130  |  0.77 |      3.0

HuHu, starting skills, javelins, vs. hobgoblin:

  Code:

            AvHitDam | MaxDam | Accuracy | AvDam | AvTime | AvSpeed | AvEffDam
 Attacking:      6.1 |     15 |      60% |   3.7 |    93  |  1.08 |      3.9
 Attacking:      6.0 |     14 |      58% |   3.5 |    93  |  1.08 |      3.8
 Attacking:      6.1 |     15 |      58% |   3.6 |    93  |  1.08 |      3.8
 Attacking:      6.0 |     14 |      58% |   3.5 |    92  |  1.08 |      3.8
 Attacking:      6.0 |     14 |      59% |   3.6 |    93  |  1.08 |      3.8

[Berder]

A good point. However, hand xbow is the strongest possible starting weapon for Hu aside from throwing, and throwing has even less ammo. Also observe that Fi has far superior defenses than Hu.

[duvessa]

killing the monster twice as fast and from the edge of los is a pretty good defense imo

[Berder]

All the other things I said still apply. It's more relevant to compare Hu ranged weapon to As blowgun, Gl nets, or Ar wands.

[Siegurt]

All the other things I said still apply. It's more relevant to compare Hu ranged weapon to As blowgun, Gl nets, or Ar wands.

Well, of the ones you mentioned, nets are more limited even than hu javelins, as are needles (although they might do more damage per needle, so it is hard to do a direct comparison) and Ar wands you get almost no refills for at all, and each shot always mulches.

[Berder]

All the other things I said still apply. It's more relevant to compare Hu ranged weapon to As blowgun, Gl nets, or Ar wands.

Well, of the ones you mentioned, nets are more limited even than hu javelins, as are needles (although they might do more damage per needle, so it is hard to do a direct comparison) and Ar wands you get almost no refills for at all, and each shot always mulches.

When the thing is an emergency option instead of a primary attack it doesn't matter so much that you only have a few of them. It matters more that each one is powerful.

[Siegurt]

All the other things I said still apply. It's more relevant to compare Hu ranged weapon to As blowgun, Gl nets, or Ar wands.

Well, of the ones you mentioned, nets are more limited even than hu javelins, as are needles (although they might do more damage per needle, so it is hard to do a direct comparison) and Ar wands you get almost no refills for at all, and each shot always mulches.

When the thing is an emergency option instead of a primary attack it doesn't matter so much that you only have a few of them. It matters more that each one is powerful.

So you're complaint is that hunter isn't as unlimited as a melee attack, but isn't as good at being a long range emergency attack, but is in between on both counts?

[Berder]

So you're complaint is that hunter isn't as unlimited as a melee attack, but isn't as good at being a long range emergency attack, but is in between on both counts?

Yes. Also, if you switch to melee asap (as you generally should) then once your melee attack becomes more effective your ranged skill, the ranged skill becomes only for popcorn, the same function as a 0-skill launcher. The ranged skill only helps in the transitional period and it doesn't help a lot when compared to As/Ar.