Alternative Marksman Buff

While it's great that marksmen are getting attention, I don't think the recent buff really achieved what the users would consider balance, nor was class identity maintained.

The first issue with the recent buff is that strafe was nerfed for 3rd job snipers by ~ 25% on average.
The second issue is that class identity of marksmen is to do large lines of damage slowly. What the current buff achieved was making marksman fire *smaller* lines of damage than bow masters, still somewhat slower than BM's (at least without SI, I'd have to see the fire times of both strafe with SI and hurricane to be sure).
Additionally MM are still succeptable to minor enemies causing an entire attack to be useless, unlike BMs or cleave classes. This can be particularly deadly at BF and HH with wraith assasins unpinning an otherwise pinned boss.
The recent patch still leaves them as the worst non cleavable single target attacker, and worse than some cleavable attackers, and does nothing to enhance their utility.
Pre Patch strafe damage: (110+(240*.65))*4*(.95*.95) = 960.26% damage per strafe
(.95*.95) represents the average between the minimum and the maximum damage based on mastery.
Post patch strafe damage: (75+(240*.65))*5*(.95*.975) = 1069.81875% damage per strafe
This might look pretty good, and it is a good damage boost. The problem is it comes at the cost of losing their class identity.
An alternative solution would be the following:
*Reduce* mastery from 90% to 80%, but add an effect that causes it to ignore 10-20% of armor. This would increase their volitility a bit, but would fit more with the idea of being a sniper / marksman.
Like others suggested, make snipe pierce weapon cancel.
Due to it's damage volitility and not being able to gaurentee 6 targets for maximum damage, piercing arrow is relatively useless. I propose a rework of the skill that removes the # targets hit damage restriction, sets the max targets to 3, and provides the damage profile of 220% damage per hit x arrows. This would provide the following calculation:
(220 + (.65*240))*3*(.95*.9) = 964.44 (slightly above pre buff strafe, but below post buff strafe by over 100%)
This would restore marksman's class identity as doing larger lines of damage and allow them to work as either a single target attacker with buffed strafe or a cleave attacker depending on the current situation and their skill build, without overpowering them.

 

So MM's get a ~10% damage buff, and on the same patch we buff NL's even further despite being the highest realistic dpm class in the game already?
I could go into an argument about this but given this response it's clear you're not interested in hearing it.

 

Every single marksman skill outside of shared skills and the 3rd job ice arrow skill is higher damage than their BM equivalent.
- Iron arrow has a max of 180% damage (though decreasing over time) vs 130% arrow explosion (which to my knowledge is still bugged with mastery not being applied).
- Arrow erruption is 180% vs arrow rain being 160% (The library lists this as 180% which is either new, a stealth buff, or wrong?)
- Snipe is a max damage line
- piercing arrow is the single largest % mob skill provided you can reliably line up 6 enemies (840% + 240%), easily beating out battleship cannon, etc. You could argue cleave skills potentially do more.
- comparably leveled xbow (weapons) are generally higher attack range than their bow counterparts, but with slower speeds. In addition, xbows have a 3.6x dex modifier vs bows 3.4x dex modifier.
That's more than enough evidence that their class identity has and always was as a hard hitting low attack speed user compared to the class with the fastest firing attack in the game.

Reducing the damage of their main single target attack and adding an extra line does nothing but try to make them mimic BMs, badly. You yourself admitted even with SI they'll never fire anywhere near the speed of BMs post buff, and thier lines will be significantly worse.

In addition, all you need to do to not nerf the 3rd job sniper class, just like how you're reverting the changes to critical throw for NL's due to how it affects training, is increase the damage per line to 80. This will leave them with a 10% advantage over rangers (640% vs 650% avg), but this is easily compensated for by the fact that they're more affected by defense as a result of having more low damage lines.

The idea of reworking piercing arrow as a cleave skill is mainly to A) give them an option of a functional training skill, since otherwise they're using arrow erruption or single target attacks except when they're bossing, and B) give them utility in bossing so they have their own identity rather than just being budget BMs.

I mean just thinking of other potential reworks of the skill so they're able to actually train in a way other than bossing or leeching, which some people do allegedly, even at high levels, would be to fix the attack speed, remove the damage ramp up, and give it a flat 660% damage.