Did you not see that vid? AAS literally took 2/3 of the pala's HP. Tell me if I'm wrong but to me, that seems good DPS.
Yea, I know, I am the howitzer in that video, if you didn't notice the usernames.
AAS is good against people with crap defence.
Against high defence, the damage drops like a rock.
At high levels of the new Drakos instance, I used to do 1 damage to the monsters there with AAS, with a lavalon crossbow at around +12.
No idea on the technical stuff, but yea, it drops like a rock against defence, I think.
Damage:
While the base damage per hit is low. The TOTAL potential damage can be insane.
Potential damage is potential. Most other classes (every other?) is potentially able to do potential damage than us in that same period of time.
Ease of Use:
YOU HOLD DOWN A KEY UNTIL THEY DIE HOW DIFFICULT IS THAT. And I am being serious with this. Anyone who says it's more than that is full of crap. You launch them into the air and they stay there. There is almost ZERO animation lag with this skill. And it will hit them even if you are off-center. Or if they are above you. It make take skill to use in conjunction with other skills, but it takes ZERO SKILL to use this itself. Anyone who says its hard to kill anyone with AAS either: A. Doesn't have a very good frame rate or B. Doesn't have enough AIM (which shouldn't be a problem for PF/Sentinel), c. Suck as a PF/Sentinel, or D. LYING THROUGH THEIR TEETH. PF/Sentinels should have ZERO trouble launching anyone in a battle eventually since they have so many cast based skills. There are only two things that can rectify this. And I will mention them next.
For most skills for other classes, you press one button once.
And damage equivalent to many shots of AAS is dealt.
And then, you press another button, dealing damage yet again.
And you repeat that sequence until they're dead, maybe moving around a bit. (every 3rd class except the mages and archers have a decent ground lock combo.)
If you're going to bring up Sentinel's instant launches, which really
are easy to use, complain about those directly, not their follow-up skill.
Difficult to Escape:
The ONLY things that will get you out of AAS are Impervious status (this goes for Gambits since you cant launch a Pally/Dragoon who is already in this state), Block (Ninjas and Paladins) and frequent missing. And you best have an absurd evade for that since PF/Sentinels have AIM out the ass and one or two misses wont always save you anyway. And air-teching DOESN'T ALWAYS WORK. In fact it works rarely unless they are launched so high thee are off screen. Hell you can be hit even after you air-tech. And it really doesn't matter if you do. You will just be launched again.
This is true, I'm not going to deny this.
Well, lag does get you out of AAS sometimes too. But that's not unique to AAS or reliable at all, so meh.
All I can say is to avoid being launched (or even hit by any other skill at all, regardless of which class it's coming from) in the first place, if you don't have any passive defensive mechanism.
Look, there are a lot of skills that can be considered OP and cheap. But NONE of them are as easy to use, as damaging, and as difficult to avoid AND escape from than AAS (Paladins didn't really count back in the day since they were more defense than offense in PvP, though now they can do BOTH and as you can see in the vid I posted and many others, even a Dragoon can be beaten to a pulp with AAS) Face it. You guys have been in the limelight for a long time now. You need to be knocked down a peg and you are lucky that a nerfed AAS (which is better than it was but not fixed) is all you are getting.
It's easy to use, yea, you press and hold one button while in range.
But that's after launching the target.
In 1v1, sure, it's impossible to escape from, assuming the archer has 100% hit rate on the target, there's low lag and the target doesn't have block.
In team match, you're vulnerable as long as you stand there shooting. (there's a slight delay after each shot, so you can't run away that fast.)
And since when were we in the limelight in either PvE or PvP?
PvE was all mages or jesters, while PvP was dominated by paladins and ninjas (and trappers, but definitely not ballistas). (sorry, can't remember the names for the classes here)
(Actually now that I think about it, the only one who will suffer from that nerf will be Grens since AAS is pretty much all they have in PvP. PF/ get a frickin INVISIBLE TRAP PASSIVE.)
You missed out their traps' new nuke damage. (new to NA server, at least)
And sorry, I assumed that you already knew about the future 30% damage nerf for AAS in PvP.
From what I heard, archers' AAS became somewhere near useless after that point.
And I was mostly speaking from the specialists' side.
If Barunson wants to disable AAS for Sentinels, go right ahead... (though the QQ from there will be way too much to handle)
