Somehow I think stat-draining xbows were silently changed... (in General)

Anyone else notice a distinct drop in the draining ability of stat-draining xbows?

/Me agrees... where me and horseguy are concerned its basically all about who attacks and who defends.... If he attacks me he wins, If I attack him I win. Thats with him using an Exbow and me an axbow. They just dont work as well as they did.

I did not notice a change and neither has my fellow Comrade.

Alchemist drains all of his and Mikel's strength in 1 hit.

What has you specifically noticed?

I know vs EC, this does lower the strength drain of an enbow.

When fighting Failure, as an example, I can't drain all of the PL minion's ST after two hits. I used to do it all after 1 hit. The PL minion only has what, 900k?

if it has (finally) been changed I'm excited...draining 100% of STR or DEX with a single hit is silly...

I agree with novice.

Someone like The Alchemist can slap on a TOA and use a decent enbow with upgraded bolts and suck all the str in 1 hit. A bit too powerful.

However, ask Mikel or Edyit if Alchemist still drains all their str in 1 hit.

Regarding fairness, I think it's like anything else -- you make the investment, you reap the rewards.

Also, for the record, upgrading the damage on bolts doesn't increase the stat drain.

Has anyone noticed a difference in ST reduction when fighting either DT or myself?

I don't think anything has changed, I have not noticed any difference in the drain. I thought the drain might be busted when I started stalemating Draco, but it was more on the count of his Axbow hitting me quite a bit more often. The big challenge bonus was nice while it lasted :D

"Regarding fairness, I think it's like anything else -- you make the investment, you reap the rewards."

Sorry, but I just got up off the floor. FaIrness? Let us chat a bit about my 90M VB that became nothing more then a paperweight a few change months ago. Shall we?

CB is an ever changing game. Such is the risk of spending all that money on high NW items.

Does it have something to do with Failure's retraining? He changed quite a bit today. *smile* I know nothing about drain -- does it base on percentage of HP taken down? If so, he buffed his HP a great deal. In fact, he's off my fight list and he isn't even using a tattoo currently. Gotta love that MgS and a huge AMF!

It's based on trained ST of the shooter and of the defender.

Ranger, my statements were referring to the often used argument to defend people that spend a lot on their weapons. It's not cheap to make a stat draining xbow that can drain all in 1 hit.

As a note, just because something changes in CB doesn't mean it's a fair change.

Also, regarding the VB, the big difference there is that the VB became the only choice. The Ex/Ax bows are far from the only ranged choice.


On the original topic, Ranger, you'd be a good person to see if I'm still draining the same amount from you. Do you notice much of a difference? Do I even still hit you at all?

(For the record, I think the VB could be increased slightly.. it's still very "under the weather"... I'll know better when mine gets bigger.)

Unfortunately for you NS, your tank misses my tank now all the time.

I, however, agree changes made so drastically to items that people spent money on are not right in the spirit of things. However, do you not believe that 1 hit draining all of someone's strength is too excessive?

Actually you did hit my tank once.

For a massive 1 (ONE) point of damage and drained my str from 4.1M to 502,911.

Not too bad, I do not think things have changed.

Well, that's got me convinced :)

And I do think it should be possible. It's possible to completely nullify a lot of things in this game, given a large enough investment (DM for any ED, AMF for any DD, etc). Perhaps the threshold at which it occurs is too low. Someone could easily find out how much of my NW is in the damage portion, which would be a nice indicator. Given the change in weapon upgrades, I would think it'd be fair to make it cost more.

Given your one hit thing, yes, it would seem that the stat drain is still working nicely. Now if only I could 1) actually hit you with some regularity, and 2) do something to counter the massive EC, I might be able to get somewhere.

One thing I just realized that does help stat drain in terms of upgrading ammo is that if I *do* upgrade ammo, I might be better able to break through your damage reduction to more reliably get any damage. As you say, 1 point is enough to trigger the drain.

On another note, I wonder why it's so messed up against Failure. With his ST at 600k, it can take two hits to drain him. That makes no sense.

:D

Ember shot in The Grid's general direction.
The Grid looks weaker!

That is some nice drain though...2 shots would be enough to nerf most any tank in the game. Hoping to get my Exbow that high one day as well.

Somehow draining 3.5M str from an 80M weapon with 1 point of damage seems counter-intuitive to the game.

The largest MH, mine, only does 1.4M a hit with 4.1M str. Not enough to kill some armored character/TOE minions in 1 hit.

But just barely scratching my tank drains 3.5M?

I realize that the enbow needed a buff, but perhaps the pendulum shifted too much in the other direction. Perhaps the drain should be based upon damage done?

Or is this yet another case of a missile attack being all or nothing? Hit you win, miss you lose?

Why even bother with the melee portion anymore?

Ember hit The Grid with A Named Enforcer's Crossbow for no damage ===Yields no drain

But hitting for one point drains 3.5M?

Drain has never been based on damage dealt. If it was, it'd be extremely difficult to use without adjusting the base damage values, which would throw off a lot about ranged combat.

We know that there is a percentage component and a fixed component as part of the drain. The percentage component is a big reason why it drains so much from you. Maybe one of those components could be adjusted. However, right now, EC + Xbow is not a powerful combo. If the drain was skewed more towards the fixed drain and less towards the percentage drain, then EC + Xbow would be quite lethal.

I think overall, the Xbows are a lesser issue than the VB was simply because there's a ton of choice in ranged combat, and each choice is very powerful in its own right. The ELB -- enough said there. The SOD -- seriously. The Xbows -- when you build your strat around it as I have, very nice. The MSB -- from what I hear, it's devastating. At this point, if you nerf one weapon type, you remove it entirely from the selection of plausible choices.

"2 shots would be enough to nerf most any tank in the game"

Then why can't I drain Failure's PL minion?

Not sure on that one...I would assume you would shout failure first, which would then drain all of failsafe's str. On round two you should start draining Failure's str. Is that not how its working?

That's how it used to work. Now it drains the PL minion each time. But he's only got 600k ST or so. I'll grab a fight log.

I just fought and it seems to work fine for me...mind you he has no tattoo on right now. Maybe the 600k str is right on the cusp of remaining positive, so that it buys th PL minion another round of protecting Failure form the drain.

You are correct, he's one of these defensive setup guys. Gah.. I hate that. At any rate, it works great now -- but I stalemate him. Check out these results:

Monk: DI: 6,509,419
Decay: 563,579
Wall+VB: 2,017,638


And I couldn't kill a single minion. That TSA is a nice tool, especially with his level of trained HP. This shall require some more thought to overcome. Ideas are welcome.

Ok, here's another example of how stat drain seems fouled up:

Ember shot Hewteksun with A Named Enforcer's Crossbow [18571]
Miacha looks weaker!
Miacha absorbs damage [18571]
Ember hit Hewteksun with A Named Enforcer's Crossbow [16956]
Miacha looks weaker!
Miacha absorbs damage [16956]


Miacha is the PL minion with a ST of 106,611. Now, I see no possible feasible way that it should take two hits to drain 106,611 ST off a minion. Can anyone enlighten me? Oh, and before anyone says it, in a dual hit scenario, the drain should shift even if it's mid round. This used to happen on this character, and it still happens on people with tiny ST that's still positive after my EC.

Its because the PL minion is absorbing the entire hit... I have found If I absorb the entire hit with a PL minion the drain continues to hit the PL minion and not the tank. While if you do damage over the PL amount the drain effects the tank itself.

The way it's supposed to work is that if the damage dealt is under 50% of the PL capability *AND* if the PL minion has positive ST, then the drain gets redirected. If on the second hit, the damage is still below the PL threshold, but the PL minion doesn't have positive ST, the drain is not redirected. This works fine on numerous other people, which implies that the minion in question here is not being drained to negative ST until the second hit. That's ludicrous.

Ember hit Hewteksun with A Named Enforcer's Crossbow [14931]
Miacha looks weaker!
Miacha absorbs damage [14931]
Ember shot Hewteksun with A Named Enforcer's Crossbow [16862]
Miacha looks weaker!
Miacha absorbs damage [16862]
Ember shot Hewteksun with A Named Enforcer's Crossbow [16344]
Hewteksun looks weaker!
Miacha absorbs damage [16344]


There's a great example. That's one round, so it's clear that Miacha didn't lose all his ST after one hit (and this is after a 10k EC is applied). That just can't be right.

Maybe the TOE reduces the stat drain as well?

I'm now more convinced that there has been a change, because it would appear from fighting The Alchemist that the drain is inconsistent. Sometimes it takes one shot to drain Lucy completely, sometimes it takes two shots.

There is PL involved - that might have something to do with it. Also, as you say Ranger, maybe the ToE messes with things as well. The bottom line is that it's not as consistent as it used to be. In the past, it was extremely consistent how much ST would be drained, and the only variables were:

My trained ST
His trained ST
The exbow 'x'

When I fight the Alchemist, the amount of drain is constant from battle to battle.

Depending on how many times he hits my tank, I know exactly how much strength it has left, it never varies.

Do you use PL?

I ask becuase I agree that it's still constant when dealing with non-PL people. Phantom Link seems to be messing things up, however.

Also, does the darin differe depending on when he hits you (which ranged round)? I'm wondering if one hit in round 2 is the same as one hit in round 3. That'd be somewhat harder to test.

I don't have PL.

The str loss is independent of which round I am hit.

"The str loss is independent of which round I am hit. "

Well that's at least consistent with what you and I figured out a long time ago. This PL thing, though, is definitely causing havoc.

For anyone out there that wants to foul up an Ax/Exbow user, train PL. At least until we figure out why it acts so oddly....


I'm presuming, of course, that PL is the common denominator here.

The xbows only need to do damage to drain the amount they are supposed, I think making it so they have to do more damage to drain more is counter-productive to the semantics of them.