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Advanced DPM optimizations for Bowmasters at HT

Discussion in 'Guides' started by Selquin, May 28, 2019.

  1. Selquin
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    Selquin Headless Horseman

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    Unlike other high dpm classes such as NLs or Heroes, BMs do not have stance/shifter to prevent them from being knocked back when getting hit. Since you are forced to stop attacking to move back into position, your dpm is reduced everytime you get hit. BMs are somewhat unique in the sense that minimization of movement is far more important for optimizing damage compared to other classes who can ore or less hold 1 button down.
    This guide will be a compilation of a variety of techniques/strategies that I have come up with that help optimize your overall DPM at HT as a BM (most of this probably applies to MMs as well). Much of the information here will be needlessly detailed for beginners. In fact I doubt many experienced players will even bother implementing some of the tactics here. Nevertheless, I find myself inclined to dump this obscure information somewhere, so I hope you find some useful gems in the following ramble.

    A. Preheads
    A1) Minimal forward walk after KB -
    Difficulty - low
    Usefulness - low

    Both preheads have 1 attack that will knock you back all the way to the wall. If you get hit by this attack you will have to walk forwards in order to hit the head again. A common mistake that I find people doing is that they walk too far up after getting KBed. However after you get KBed, you merely need to walk up just far enough for the head to be in your hurricane range. There is no need to keep walking up further and waste time not using hurricane as you will just get KBed all the way back to the wall again once the head uses its next KB attack. The following is an image of how far you need to walk up to hit both preheads.
    [​IMG]
    [​IMG]
    Where I am standing in these screenshots is about how far you have to be to hit the preheads

    A2) 2nd Prehead no walk back
    Difficulty - low
    Usefullness - mid

    An interesting thing to note is that HT's attacks will always knock you towards the left. On the 2nd prehead the head is on your left and the wall is to your right, so a normal attack will knock you towards the head. If you merely hold hurricane and never move back after an attack, you will keep getting knocked forward towards the head until a KB attack which sends you back towards the wall. By doing this you don't waste time re-positioning after every hit. Now you might wonder what happens if the head doesn't cast the KB attack for too long and you get too close to the head. This usually doesnt happen to often, but if it does you can just react to the animation and move backwards when you are as close as you can possibly get to the head (picture shown below).
    [​IMG]
    Note in this SS I am as close I can get to the head without falling off and the head is preparing to attack, so I have to release hurricane and walk backwards.

    B. Leg and Tail
    B1) Hurricane Hold on leg
    Difficulty - low
    Usefulness - mid

    When the body first spawns and your party is killing the leg, this is one of the few situations where you can mindless hold down hurricane and not worry about anything. People are often tempted to walk out of the rock and past the crystal to see their character, but there is in fact no need for this. Staying in the range of the rock actually lets you avoid some stuns with Iframes from the rock, and there is no point in walking up wasting hurricane time if you are going to get KBed back anyways.

    B2) Dodging the tail KB
    Difficulty - High
    Usefulness - High
    This is possibly one of the most useful strategies in the entire guide. The tail is very annoying for BMs as it spams a KB attack that knocks you all the way back to the wall forcing you to slowly walk back in range. While NLs and warriors can get away with being brainded on this part due to their stance/avoid, we BMs have to get somewhat creative here. Luckily for us, the tail does a very obvious animation before using its KB attack(it lifts its tail up before slamming it down for the attack). So when you see HT lift its tail, you can actually jump into the arm above you, take the touch damage, and use the invincibility frames to avoid the KB attack. It will probably take a couple of tries to get the hang of the timing, but its fairly easy once you get it.
    [​IMG]
    Note in the SS that the tail is about to come down as I take the damage. (Also note how our NL friend has no need for these fancy tactics!)

    It should also be noted that you don't actually have to jump every time the tail attacks. This is because sometimes you will get hit by another attack from the arms/heads before the tail slams and get invincibility frames that way. If you are experienced with the head attack animations you can actually can tell if you are going to get hit before the tail slams and jump only in the cases where you would get hit otherwise.
    The difference between a BM who does and doesn't use this technique is night and day, I would highly recommend learning this if you can tank the arm touch damage.

    C. Right side
    C1) Wing damage is worthless
    Difficulty - low
    Usefulness - High

    If you are hitting the wing as a BM while the right head isn't canceled, you are effectively doing no damage. This is because on almost every run the wing dies to cleave damage + ranged damage when right head cancel is on. There is no point in wasting time hitting the wing when the right side is bottle necked by the head and arm HP. Because of this you want to get to the top platform and hit the right/mid head as soon as the cancel expires. I think most people understand this so I wont say more.

    C2) Consistent Rope climb setup
    Difficulty - mid
    Usefulness - High

    Ah yes the age old archer struggle, who doesn't enjoy getting knocked off the rope? Due to the right head cancel turning on and off, you will often be forced to move from the mid plat to the top plat as the cancel wears off. If you jump randomly to the rope you will often get knocked off. There is however a consistent way to always get to the top platform without falling. The method is as follows:
    1. Stand on the right side of the mid platform and wait to get hit by HT
    2. As soon as you get hit and knocked towards the left, run to the left edge of the mid platform and rope on the rope.
    3. Climb to near the top of the rope, but before you reach the top jump off the rope towards the right to land on the top platform.
    Step 3 is a little vague, since the indicator for when you camp jump depends on your jump stat. You can practice the rope jump on a normal rope anywhere to get a better feel of how it works. To demonstrate what step 3 looks like, here is an example of me doing this on another rope.
    [​IMG]
    Note how my character is in the jump animation before she lands on the platform. This is a general technique that can be used to get up ropes a bit faster. In fact it is particularly useful for getting up the rope between the mid and top platform on the left side as well.

    C3) Mid head cancel right head non-cancel
    Difficulty - mid
    Usefulness - low

    There will be situations where the mid head is weapon canceled and the right head is either not cancelled or magic cancelled. In these situations you can of course only damage the right head. However, when the right head attacks it ducks down out of your range and you can only hit the mid head.
    [​IMG]
    In this moment you can't do any damage with hurricane, so to be efficient you should buff (SE, soul arrow, focus, summon bird) here so you dont have to waste time buffing later. Another option is to use arrow rain here, as it actually will hit the right head. There are similar situations on the left side.
    [​IMG]
    [​IMG]


    *C4) Hurricane Buffered Momentum Cancels (only for the real pepegas)
    Difficulty - Super High
    Usefulness - High
    https://forum.maplelegends.com/inde...um-cancels-an-obscure-piece-of-bm-tech.26358/

    D) Left Side

    D1) The Wyvern Jump
    Difficulty - High
    Usefulness - High

    This is one of my favorites since, as far as I know, I have not seen anyone else use this technique. Due to the existence of sub-optimal bishops, very often BMs end up getting stuck with the wyvern aggro. This is particularly annoying on the left side when dark wyverns start to spawn, since every time you get hit you have to rebuff. It turns out that you can actually jump over the wyvern's dispel attack. This is particularly useful when you are standing on the mid platform and the wyverns are aggroed on you. You can wait for the wyverns to fly near you can jump right as they are about to attack.
    [​IMG]
    (One again note how our NL friend stands firm having no need to actually dodge attacks!)

    D2) Standing at the edge of mid platform (OUTDATED, refer to D4)
    Difficulty - low
    Usefulness - mid

    The mid platform is useful for BMs when they need to hit mid head, particularly when the left head is cancelled. When you are trying to hit the mid head you should stand at the edge of the platform otherwise some of the arrows will fly upwards toward the left head.
    [​IMG]
    Note how if I stand in the middle of the platform some arrows fly upward.

    D3) Hitting the left head from the mid platform
    Difficulty - mid
    Usefulness - low

    If you move far enough to the left, you can actually hit the left head 100% of the time.
    [​IMG]
    If you just want damage on the left head, this is actually a bit better than standing on the top platform as you cannot hit it when it ducks. The downside is that you can get knocked off the platform if you are standing so far to the left. However on runs where the mid head dies first, you can use this strategy and merely walk towards the right before the left head attacks to avoid getting knocked off. This is also somewhat useful when the mid head cancels and you need to wait for the rock to drop before climbing the rope. You can stand on the left side and hit the left head a couple of times before the rock drops to get some extra damage off.

    D4) Rope grab buffering to focus left arm/mid head
    Difficulty - mid
    Usefulness -mid

    see - https://forum.maplelegends.com/inde...ffering-a-simple-and-useful-tech-at-ht.27517/
     
    Last edited: May 28, 2019
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  2. akashsky
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    akashsky Horntail

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    After reading this guide, I want to make a nightlord. Seems like a much easier life.
     
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  3. Jase
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    Jase Mixed Golem

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    this is the kind of the OCD level efficiency I like to see
     
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  4. Althariisa
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    Althariisa Slimy

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    Good guide!, everysec of lost dpm its a great loss at a run where time is against you, its really good info for Bowmasters.
     
  5. Soniii
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    Soniii Mixed Golem

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    Amazing GUY SKARMORY!!!!
     
  6. OhDoggo
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    OhDoggo Selkie Jr. Retired Staff

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    Something else that I feel might increase DPS in theory, is a trick i like to use with strafe. It's generally only viable to use when there's one mob attacking, so during any boss fight that only includes one boss, namely the ht pre-heads and zak. If you're observant enough of when one of the pre-heads uses their attacks, mid-hurricane animation, you can time a strafe to trigger during the animation you get hit/knocked back and you will see yourself fire off strafe in the momentary stun when you get hit. If you get hit mid-hurricane, your character won't continue hurricane because of the micro-stun, but strafe will fire in the time frame where you generally can't do anything. It could also have something to do with how macro's que on top of each other (if you spam macros, you'll sometimes notice that it'll play the next macro even after you stopped pressing the key) as i use strafe on a macro. I'm not sure if it'll work without a macro, but maybe try testing: hurricane -> split second before getting hit, press strafe-macro and bypass the micro-stun -> continue hurricaning -> repeat
     
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  7. OP
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    Selquin
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    Selquin Headless Horseman

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    That is a good point! I have thought about doing this before as well, it could also be useful for a section C3 situation where you strafe before the head ducks. Assuming you are frame perfect and strafe on the last frame before getting hit, you would shoot 4 arrows of strafe compared to a final arrow from hurricane, getting you 3 extra arrows. I have yet to try this in practice, but I might give it a shot next time I'm feeling particularly tryhard.

    EDIT: An issue I just thought of with this strategy is that its inefficient if you end up dodging the attack since you just end up strafing instead of hurricane. At higher levels archers actually get a fair amount of avoid, in fact I counted once during a prehead session that I dodge about ~35% of attacks. Still, think can be useful for hitting heads before they duck!
     
    Last edited: May 29, 2019
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