Please make Axbows effective again!!! (in General)

Please, please, please.

Pretty please with a cherry on top.

The PL nerf of axbows is destroying strategy, especially with tank vs tank battles.

Instead of choosing to use the axbow to nuke someones dex, you nuke the dex of a wall. Big freaking deal!!!

The largest axbow vs Crisis does only 40k max damage which is easily nerfed by a low level PL. What is the sense of even having axbows or exbows in the game at all. They are about the same value as a Tulwar.

Instead of having a nice choice of using an elb to do damage or an axbow to hurt the other tanks dex, you have one choice. Bow or no bow. The axbow is now out of the equation.

C'Mon Jon, see the light and make axbows and exbows useful again.

Or will we all have to hope and pray for a unnerf during the next changemonth which is 3 months away?????

I agree, and I don't even have a specialty xbow (nor a tank, for that matter *smile*).

I just don't get the xbow deal with PL -- it seems entirely tacked on. Couple that with the fact that the axbow and exbow were introduced in the game to breathe life into the xbow factor, and I'm still just sort of dumbfounded by that whole part of PL...

I agree and find it very disappointing that a changemonth has come and gone without a fix. We can hope, but I fear your last line will be the reality.

maybe he didn't like the must have nature of them, believe me, with the new crop of single ToA tanks comin your way, you'll love your ax

If he didn't like the "must have nature" of them he should have changed them somehow, or just deleted them and given owners some cash. Leaving them in limbo is the worst option.

I don't understand why the stat drain is linked into the damage absorption.

Wouldn't it be better to leave the original target getting stat drained, and just the damage transfering tot he PL minion?

If you want to add in a counter to Stat draining, why not have Amulets of Invisibility counter them in some way?

I tried to sell my 63M NW axbow via auctions.

Central Bank would not even give me 20M for it. Not even 1/3rd its NW.

How pathetic have these weapons now become?

When he decided the Cloak of Balrog Flames was overpowered/unneeded, he gave their owners appropriate cb2 while removing them from the game.

If he thinks axbows and exbows are not for this game anymore, he should do the same thing.

I agree 100% with Borderliner, the limbo these weapons are in is bad for the game as a whole, and the worst option for them.

But as I said in my first post, the largest TOA tank vs Crisis does only 40k max damage with the largest 'x' axbow. So even a small PL (which can be boosted with dex items) can nerf it easily. So can someone please tell me how an axbow can be useful in cb2 right now.

A compound bow is easier to upgrade and has a higher base damage. Therefore it is even a better option then an axbow/exbow right now.

"...you have one choice. Bow or no bow."

Slings are an option, even though exploding ammo VERY rarely, if ever, spawns in auctions.

"... you have one choice. Bow or no bow."

Ranger, that's still two choices =P. Sorry, just poking fun at ya.

Jon, I'd have to say I agree with Ranger on this. HOWEVER, something tells me you just might have a larger plan for these that we don't know about. I would certainly hate to see these weapons sit as they are.

The are effective, just not against every team. They are going to be key to taking down the coming crop of single minion ToA tanks, which is what I suspect they were made for. The drain on them is too high for mortal 4 minion teams to stand, therefore you can trade resistance to FB/CoC for high resistance to tanks. Maybe up the base damage and lower the % drain.

i also agree, i do see a use for them, and t be undermined by a low level PL is sick. it was mentioned that this is now tankblender...shouldnt axbows and exbows share that future of tanks vs tanks.

so far jon has done a good job, a damn good job with the last changes and the addition of the new supporter item, but to only leave out the xbows is understandable to the extent of say of next change of the month.

They don't not work against some strats, they don't work on most strats. The only strategy they will work against is a single minion tank. There aren't that many single tanks out there. Every tank team is usually a 4 minion team, which can easily afford 1 skill spot to have a 25k level PL on it.

If PL is to re-direct the drain, can't it at least be tied into a percentage based on the level of the xbow and the level of the PL, wouldn't that be a lot more fair? As it stands if any team is threatened by a ex/axbow, they just get a small PL.

There would be outrage if a 25k level AMF put 0.5 against a 1 million level CoC. It would also be silly if a level 25k EC cancelled out 200k strength and dexterity. Something should be done about PL. It's extremely unbalanced.

Amen...

I would like this change too. Hopefully it will happen, can anyone see a significant reason it should not be changed?

OK I will drop in my 5 cents.

Basically, when I was figthing in the top 5, WAY back when, the axbow was the only ranged weapon to use. I was stubbornly clinging to the elbow and my archery as it was nerfed several times. In the end, the axbow was the "no-brainer". The combination of a massive pth on the axbow and BL and the big morg, was the only way to go. The axbow would hit for no damage basically, and then you were done as the big melee crushed you without mercy and your massive DX was cut in half (or a little less). When the axbow was nerfed with PL I thought yay! here comes the elbows. So I am not so broken up about it, but I do believe that the change swung it too far in the other direction, so I would not mind a change to the axbow/PL nerf, but I would like it kept in mind how dominating the axbow was in the upper levels, and would like to see any change made help keep choice in ranged weapons instead of swinging like a pendulum from one extreme to the other.

P.S. the changes to the tank damage was definately a step in the right direction for promoting choice vs. hey NUB go single mage. Now tanks are a viable choice. And Im with Sut, choice is good.

Duh, forgot the most important part, a suggestion.

My suggestion would be to make axbows immune to PL effect, but to drastically reduce the amount of DX robbed per hit. at x40, a 40% reduction per hit is too massive. The effect is too great. Perhaps a flat DX drop, regardless of X. The X is necessary to do damage, but if it does, all axbows drop 10% per hit. That way axbows wont dominate, but you can unnerf the PL effect.

Or leave it but make the curve steeper on upgrades, indeed. A good point!

Don't ranged weapons also get the fixed X upgrade cost melee weapons do, to bring their damage into line with everything else and make them linear?

The base damage of 4 is much much lower than the 6 that makes the ELB so powerful. The only real power of Ax's and Ex's lies in their drain capability

Been contemplating the way to regain usefulness for the drain xbows since PL first was announced.

Two tweaks could easily fix it. First, raise the necessary absorption for the drain deflection from ~50% to ~66%. Second, raise the base damage on the two drainers to 5x, slightly lowering the damage upgrade cost and raising the pth cost curve.

You'd have a solid "best" xbow that would drain more often. The slight increase in the absorption necessary would force players who rely on PL to protect their tank's stats to make the decision to either pump more xp into PL (considerably more with the increase in damage), or build their tank more evasive with DBs/AoI/skills. Either way, 250k xp into skill won't completely nerf a $60m NW rare into a state of near uselessness.

On a side note... you raise a good question, GL. What is the new formula for the drain weapons now?

How about having PL do the same again ST/DX drain as it does against damage. For instance, you have a PL that will absorb 60k damage so it would reduce the ST/DX drain by 60k instead of the PL minion taking the full drain. What ever the PL minion reduced the drain by would then drain their ST/DX.

Please fix this. I even insta-d my axbow up in trust of Jon's eventual fix here. I hope I don't end up in Ranger's situation... although an insta to his looks tempting! ^.~

"Don't ranged weapons also get the fixed X upgrade cost melee weapons do, to bring their damage into line with everything else and make them linear?"

Indeed they do.

nobody saw that the recent change affected the ax/exbow?

it increased the 'x' available for it.

according to the wiki each 'x' will drain 0.33% ST/DX now with the decreased blacksmith costs you can drain more. still useless but made better from the last change.

Flamey, even though A/EXBows can now potentially drain massive amounts of statistics (If it's still 0.33% per X, the top AXBow would drain 330% dex per hit...), they can't do enough damage to get past PL absorption.

And really, bar a single minion team, which teams don't use PL anymore?

Yes, you drain more. But who cares when your draining a walls dex due to the fact that the axbow is only doing 40k damage and your opponent has a 200k effective PL?

Doh! It's not 33% per hit, it's a small constant per X. Around 225 per X. So the top AXBow drains (in addition to the 33% per hit) 225,000 dex per hit.

Hmm... For AXBows to not be effected by PL, the direct reductions will have to be reduced.

should the damage go to the PL and the drain to the target?

PL is still way too overpowered when comparing it to the drain of Exbow / Axbow.

Point is, before the physical damage change, that AXBow was about X100 (Ranger, would you mind confirming this if you can remember your old stats?) so had a direct reduction per hit of ~22,500.

Now that the X is around 1,000 that drian has increased tenfold. 225,000 per hit is staggering!

If you can find a target without PL to get your drain to work anyway...

It was x50. If the drain hasn't been changed it should be. I don't use PL :)

So that drain should have gone from around 11,250 dex per hit to 225,000?

11k DX per hit before the change? that doesn't sound right/worth 60M NW

Going by the wiki it would have done 16.5% + the constant before and 330% now.

Versus An Enforcer's Crossbow [4x120] (+35)
My starting ST: 224,307/150,542
3 hits - ST: 34909
4 hits - ST: 6650
If I was smart I might be able to work out the constant and then the % drain from this :(
I can say it is big and looks like it hasn't been changed. Thats a huge drain form a 2M nw bow.

I'm not taking the PL's side, i know that the ax/exbow is underpowered. I have a 1 mil NW Exbow lying around not doing anything, I had to buy an ELB because the exbow was crappy.

all i'm saying is due to recent changes, you can't say nothing has been done, even if it was the slightest change to advantage the ax/exbow, something was still done, i said this to stop the "nothing has been done last changemonth, and nothing will happen for another 3 months" posts.
also PL's effect got put down a little bit, even if it was a little bit it was still put down.
seriously to see some statistics after the recent changes you would see that Ax/Exbow has gone UP, and PL has gone DOWN. even if this had no major effect, something got done.

Jon can change anything whenever he likes, i think the quarterly changemonth was there to stop people complaining about not enough changes, and so people would know something was going to happen.

I have a feeling something will change before next changemonth, though probably not concerning the ax/exbow.

This post might of gone a bit off-topic, sorry for that.

"This was an Exbow now its an Ex-Bow [4x457] (+70) 10M NW" hits me for about 5K damage per hit but takes my ST from 224k to -177k in 2 hits.

My axbow was x50. At the time I remember the following.

Vs Imp when Imp had 1.6 Million dex, 2 hits from my axbow would drop his dex to about 1.0 Million, 1 hit would drop it to about 1.3 Million.

So 300k per hit from my x50 axbow.

That is about 20% which is a nice percentage from an axbow as massive as mine was/is.

I have no problem with keeping the drain about that level 20% for an equalivent to an x50 axbow. My axbow got converted to x976 with the new rules. To make the number even, I BS'd it to x1000.

However, 0% drain due to PL is foolish.

It's not 0%. It's just not on the minion you want it to be on. Did you ever determine how much DX your x1000 bow drains (on the PL minion, obviously)?

I love it, Jon basicly says plain and simple what the answer to this question is, and no one even mentions it. Every time someone has to up PL they become weaker vrs FB and CoC, it's a very slim tight rope to walk. So the idea that someone can just "train more PL" endlessly isn't exactly correct. It's a choice, same as everything else.

Yes, Jon said what the answer was, a linear upgrade curve.

However, that does not stop the fact that the highest 'x' axbow hits Crisis for only 40k damage. Using a linear upgrade, DAWG would have to up his axbow 2.5x to get to 100k damage. That would be get his axbow to at least x4500 from its current x1500. At 9k per 'x', that would be 27 million more NW just to overcome a 200k effective (about 75k learned, given bonuses you get to skills with dex items) PL.

Not very cost effective to spend 27 more million just to overcome Jayuu's current PL.

Not to mention he can easily raise it to make DAWG or anyone else spend more money.

Good point novice, I think what Jon is triying to point out is that with upgrade costs at roughly 9k/point now, if you really want your bow to be worthwhile, you can add 5 or 10 points a week to your bow to bring it above (eventually) the PL levels of your opponents.

That is a fairly drastic change, even with my small bow, I was lucky to get one point a week under the old upgrade costs. Since the implementation of the changelog, I have added about 18 points to my axbow, which cost me roughly $162k which was a little more than what one point would have cost me under the old upgrades....

I know it isn't what we are looking for, and I have no idea for the uber high score players if it is even feasable to get enough dmg multiplier to make it work, but at my lvl and with the chars on my fightlist I feel like there is at least a chance now.

I think a 5x dmg multiplier would make it a lot more feasable, modification of the current 50% PL absorbtion would go a long way (make the PL minion absorb more of the dmg in order to absorb the stat drain) Or make the PL minion train stats in order to absorb the stat drain.... just a few suggestions from nobody :)

on another note, (i don't know how accurate this is and it seems low to me) If you look at the Spell/Skill page under Stats, it shows for every percentile of active characters (top 5%, top 50% etc.) that .9% of minions have PL trained....

Nov, I don't believe the linear nature of the upgrade costs has fixed things, its only going to be the usd spenders that can hope to get past many PLs with a Ax/Ex bow and they are going to find it pretty tough versus high AC/ToE. Like I said Freed's bow is only doing 5K damage to me at x497.
I really don't see many having to put PL up to deal with Ax/Ex.
It does seem that the drain is now way too much if you can get it through.
PS. I think we are in the minority in realizing how PL can make teams much worse versus FB/CoC.

VP,

You forget that under the old system the NW of the weapon added to its damage.

Please do not get me wrong. I have asked for a linear upgrade system for weapons since the beginning of cb2 and think this change is fantastic. However, the problem is with PL and axbows/exbows. With a decent AC and a TOE, there is no way an axbow can do enough damage to effect battle outcomes.

But perhaps this is what Jon wants it to be. Only uber axbows will matter, and even then they will have to be quite uber to possibly have their desired effect. That is draining dex from tanks.

Well, when PL causes a linker to go to 0 hitpoints, he stops draining hits.

It should be that when PL causes a linker to drop to 0 Dex/Str, he stops draining stats.

Tie the stat drain to stats and the hit drain to hits and bookkeep them separately. That would make it more fair. You could still train cheap dex up on your PL minions or cast a Haste/Strength spell to deal with stat drainers, but it would at least cost you to do this.

This would enhance strategy without changing the idea of what Jon is trying to do with PL.

mit: best idea ever.

Mit:

Outstanding idea. Lets hope Jon is watching this thread and does something before the next change month which is still almost 3 months away.

And would at last make the "tacked on" nature of the specialty xbow draining at least be consistent. That really is a nifty idea...

I'll add a tip of the hat to those before me. Mit that is a superbly elegent idea. So simple I'm surprised nobody else has suggested it. I'm annoyed I didn't think of it myself!

:)

*elegant oops.

I mentioned in a post shortly after PL was introduced that PL minions should be forced to train Str/Dex in order to absorb ST/Dex drains, but Jon overlooked it then, and am guessing will continue to do so now, but.... We can always keep our fingers crossed!

Bloody brilliant idea! :D

What it would add is the choice to also train Str/Dex on a PL minion, to absorb more Str/Dex reduction.

I'd have PL remove 10% of the stat reduction as it does with damage.

Bloody brilliant idea! :D

that is a brilliant idea.(only posting this, so jon can see how many of us want it!)

i don't say any downside to it at all.

i like it! gimme gimme gimme

bump?

c'mon nobody is interested in this idea, it would make Ax/Exbows effective and still have PL to be effective...

I think we've shown adequate interest, Flamey. *smile* Hopefully the idea has made it back to Jonathan so he can mull it over...

Well, here is an idea.... Instead of taking away the PL effect or (instead of the current idea) the DX or ST drain when pulled away with PL should hit their HP. So if the axbow would drain 50k ST then it drains 50k Hp from it instead. Just thought it would allow it to get something out of it. And teach those walls a lesson.

GW, not sure that would work out as well, with the way str/dex drains are calculated now, they would be doing more PL dmg through drains than they do actual dmg..... Not that I would complain...


Anyway, I would just really like to hear from Jon as to whether he plans on modifying anything else with the bows or not so I could dump my axbow, pick up a new weapon, and make the required strat changes.... Hanging around in limbo is really crappy!