Vaynard's archery rant (in General)

After talking and thinking over my poor little axbow a while, I've come to the decision I really dislike archery. Let me tell you why:

1. Extra damage- not a bad thing in itself, but when the ELB is among the cheapest to upgrade and hardest hitting weapons in the game, does it REALLY need extra damage? Plus you get more damage yet from BG plus your archery.
2. Extra ranged round- again, not that bad by itself. But with the extra damage and the most overpowering weapon in the game, this means that if you put in the money you are nearly guaranteed 3 ranged kills versus most teams.
3. The drawback- here's where my problem lies. There is no reason to not use archery if you have a bow. Compare it to Bloodlust. Sure, bloodlust deals more, but you must make it to melee to use that one, and it sure doesn't add extra attacks. And archery sure doesn't increase damage you take from the enemy at all. Look at UC, and you see that when you use that you need to equip a special set of armor and can't use a massive melee weapon, so you're stuck with certain things. When you look at it, the only negative to archery is that it takes a miniscule amount of experience trained into it. Really, in the sake of balance, shouldn't there be some cost or downside to this very handy skill?

As it is, bows already have the best weapon in the game in their midst, the Elven Long Bow. Do they really need a skill that has several different positive effects, an item to boost archery more yet, and no negative at all?

My solution: well, this would be up to Jon of course. I'd just like to see the xbow / bow playing field leveled a little bit. The way I see it, archery is unbalanced and needs at least some sort of drawback to using it. My suggestion would be to leave archery as it is, but have the archer not do any action the first round of melee. This would basically be where they get their extra ranged round from- skipping the first melee one. Anyway, it's just an idea. So please- flame away.

how about just creating an xbow skill? with ToE mages you can't nerf archers

lol, please, let's not get started on the whole overpowered ToE mage argument. I don't even wanna touch that can of worms. I'm not arguing that yes, this would hurt a tank vs the already powerful ToE mage, I'm just arguing the fairness and balance of the archery skill.

And yes, a new xbow skill wouldn't be a bad idea either. Any thoughts?

I cannot see why you do not love your axbow. Moser's character Cau certainly does. He opperates on the principal that if I get two strikes on your tank first ranged round (or more) then I can really hurt your DX and then drop you in melee with a bloodlusted Morg. It works very well, leverage in a good DX score and nice nice big DB's and as long you can hit them a couple of times right off the bat, you can bring almost any sized tank down to size quick. (I think he nerfs like 50% of your DX a shot). Anyway, I feel that you are trying to fix something where you really need something added. Be it a skill or a new crossbow. Consider that a compound has a better base than any crossbow, ex/as/ or otherwise. Crossbows do not seem to be trully intended to do a lot of damage, but have specialized applications. So you might just need to add a crossbow with a 5 base that can be used for dealing damage to be happy with the damage from a non-bow application.

I had a thread at the end of last change month called I want a new crossbow. With the addition on NW/PR, it seems the natural progression would be to add another xbow and sling, or change the upgrade cost on the current non-archery ranged weapons. Give people a reason to use the other ranged weapons and the excitement may never end :P

Evasion doesn't have a drawback.

Yet again no one cares about UC :)

UC has a drawback :p

imo crossbows could use a small boost in power indeed.

best way to do that would be making the upgrade prices a bit cheaper.

Historically, in Europe, crossbows were banned against being used against fellow Christian states due to the horrific damage they did compared to bows, but this isn't a history based stats game, but more damage would be great.

Very true, but have you ever tried to fire a xbow. Its very very slow going. With a bow you just have to pull the arrow out of its quiver, put on the string, aim and fire. A heavy xbow needs to be cranked to be able to load it which is a very time consuming process.

In medieval times, knights etc... used to keep one at the ready, fire it then charge into battle.

Of course the chinese made the repeating crossbow but that was more of a light crossbow that did poor damage and had poor armor penetrating capability.

So if we want to go reality, the crossbow, at least the heavy type, would only fire once a melee round if that much.

A single shot 10x or 12x crossbow, that would be ridiculous! ...I like it.

It would have two advantages over the ELB making it worth using. first is that a hit usually means death and the second is that it would be cheaper on ammo costs. Can't say it's overpowering either since the max amount of minions it could kill is one.

And then once you make explosive shots hit all the minions on the opposing side, then you'll finally have balance.

Some fight data, just ran 11 BA on my fight list:

An Assassin's Crossbow [4x42] (+101) worth $18,501,714

6/6 11,215
5/5 9,080
5/5 10,172
5/5 5,969
7/7 12,257
6/6 12,108
6/6 23,342
6/6 23,308
6/6 10,895
6/6 21,496
6/6 21,730

Oh, and my ST is 361k right now, that is some lame damage (not counting DX drain).

Missing the bolt stats. Can't make much of a judgement without them too.

Oh Vaynard, this isn't CB1. :)

I thought the crossbow debate was dead, nailed shut, buried and rotting by now. How can dig up such a horrible thing? ;)

I guess I wasn't completely clear. Yes, I think that axbows deal puny damage despite huge NW. However, my main point was, and still is, that archery is too good for its own good. Extra damage, an extra round, an item to boost it, and the best weapon in the game all seem a little excessive together, don't they? Again, what is the downside to archery? Every other skill has a drawback (except for perhaps evasion which isn't that useful for most of us anyways).

Evasion does have a small drawback. It's now useless with a pair of DB s.

DB s are easier to raise the evasion on than the skill, so if you have a pair, you have no reason to train the skill.

Ranged as a whole is unballanced. Because of the turn based system, ranged *has* to on average do less damage than melee to make melee worth considering.