Xbow suggestion (in General)

Okay these are the elite ranged weapons
Elven Long Bow: Base damage - 6
Mage Seeker: Base damage - 5
Axbow: base damage - 4
Exbow: base damage - 4
SOD - base damage: 5


Anyone see anything odd about the above weapons?

bow does the most damage, and sling of death does more damage than 2 special crossbows. Aren't crossbows supposed to be stronger than bows? So wouldn't crossbow have 6, and bow have 5 and sod also or maybe even 4 on SOD. But okay its elven bow so lets say we leave that at 6, and say crossbows have special ability so lets say 5 is fine, mage seeker seeks mages, axbow seeks high dex, and exbow seeks high str but why in the world is mage seeker base damage 5 and axbow/exbow base damage 4? they are fundamentally the same just target different minions but their class of specialness is the same, honestly they should all be the same base damage....which 5 sounds reasonable. we can say ELB is justified in having 6 cause it doesn't have special tracking or special ability so we give it extra base damage and cheaper + to hit upgrades as well as have archery available to fire more cause its faster right? makes sense. Sod is the elite of slings and has splash damage, 5 is good damage but perhaps its overpower its a freaking rock lol you are throwing how strong can it be and why is the rock stronger than a sharp bolt of axbow/exbow that would penetrate armor?

SO what i'm saying is at least incease axbow/exbow base damage to 5 to make it balanced and that iwll make more sense since its in same class as mage seeker. Other things that can be done in addition to last suggestion is to decrease base damage of SOD to 4, it already does splash damage which is its special thing but it is a sling should be less-damage dealing itself.

Cool extra feature: maybe give the top 3 special xbow special ability to penetrate AC? Either ignore it completly or penetrate 50% through AC/TOE resistance sort of like VB does. Afterall you guys see movies? don't the bolts from crossbows always pass through armor and actually wound/kill the enemy, but bows can still get deflected, depending on how strong they are shot of course but they have to be curved, whereas xbows always shoot more straight cause of more power/tension/force in the mechanism.

Okay. I managed to, with a huge effort of will, not post a *xbows are op thread. I have -no- problem letting them deal more damage. But I have a GIANT problem with them dealing more damage AND still completely neutralizing a much larger tank because DX advantage means nothing nowadays.

There's already NO counter to the crossbows except for having multiple damage dealers. I choose to use one damage dealer (an admittedly flawed one) and so I felt silly for complaining about a strategy that beats mine when I make the choice to use this strategy.


I agree. The crossbows are pathetically weak. But as long as the crossbows are out there taking tanks down to 100k DX or 15k ST or whatever, I'm against ANY boost to them. If you want to fight up against tanks, then be prepared to deal no damage to mages because of it.


A couple of positive comments though:

1) If the effect of the crossbows was reduced, I'd definitely agree that crossbow damage should be upped.

2) I love the idea of making a Heavy Crossbow that pierces through armor. Take the bow that already exists, make it rare and add a vorpal effect. (not to the ex/axbows though. You're basically asking for a high damage, armor piercing tank destroying bow. uhh... No ;P)

3) I believe ranged damage in general should be increased a bit (except for SoD. Those are ridiculous). Or Jon needs to re-think tanks all together. Because right now a tank either needs to be on a melee based team (3-4 minions with tons of support) or it needs to be with another damage dealer. Basically, the time of the archer is gone. Same for the single mage (though I feel less sorry for mages as they're far more flexible, from my experience). No one wants to poor a millions of CB into a ranged weapon to simply discover that they HAVE to have another damage dealer to take down 4 minion teams. And don't confuse what I'm saying. I'm not saying "Awww. Pity the single minion archer". The archer itself is flawed, no matter how many minions you put with it. Fights don't end in under 6 rounds anymore, unless you're packing silly amounts of DM and Fireball *smile* ;)

at least those 3 xbows should have damage same since they are class same so make them either all 3 to be base damage of 4 or 5. But if they are all 4 i Don't understand why a sling would do more damage so that should be 4 as well. Although i really think those 3 xbows shoud be base damage 5. perhaos like you said add another bow or xbow that can pirce through AC/ToE, or make existing top 3 xbows damage 4 and give them the piercing ability as well? I see ELB do crazy damage as well as Mages, but seems like my own xbow for some reason is weak even though in damage dealt. Sure it can target a specific minion, dx, str, or mage, but it should do decent damage when it does, with base damage of 4 its weak....

Take this 4X2500 and compare to 5X2500 or even 6X2500, i not sure how formula exactly works and assuming STR is same using there is a clear difference in the product based on base damage, those with 5 have 25% more damage than those of 4 damage, and ELB with 6 damage has a 50% advantage in damage over 4 base damage weapon. meaning if with same STR and damage one does 100K damage, the ELB would do 150K damage, and SOD would do 125K.

The regular crossbows are serverely underpowered.
The special crossbows' abilities are serverely overpowered.
The special crossbows' damage is "meh".

A better name for the crossbows would be a dart gun. You don't use them for the damage, but for the effect. Also, the MSK does more damage because it doesn't continuously lower the DD of the enemy, like the two crossbows.

I'd be fine with bumping up the Heavy xbow to x5, so it'd be slightly useful. (It'd still be fundamentally worse than the SoD, but at least moderately useful)

However, the specialty ones drain way to much to make them do damage too.

Well they do drain and mageseeker doesn't so why isn't mageseeker base damage 6 then? it strong but only figres regularly, whereas archery gets to fire more and i beleive is cheaper to upgrade + to hit right?

Regarding axbow/exbow they do drain but you have to take into account, how much they drain depends on the X multiplier according to Wiki, so you have to pump that a lot, i looking at most crossbows and most people actually pumping the + to hit rather than X which is fairly low on top 50 axbows/exbows obviously except the very top ones obviously. Also draining is only effective versus tanks, but not mages at all or tanks that you can't hit perhaps. So a high damage-dealing ELB tank or fireball/MM mage can kill you in ranged before you can even start fighting, or if you are not dead you surely will be in a few rounds of melee. There are some work-around I guess to survive longer but you are already at distadvanage if you lost a ton of HP in ranged with only benefit is to have drained some STR or DEX.

call me old-fasioned but didn't xbows way back be more powerful than bows? I remember heavy crossbow being the strongest one until the ELB came along.

I agree bumping heavy crossbow damage to 5 or maybe even to 6 would be interesting. Perhaps introduce a new crossbow, elven crossbow and crossbow skill? Perhaaps get rid of light crossbow and just make heavy crossbow --> regular crossbow?

You are correct, Viperboy...

...HxBow used to be the butt-kickin'est weapon evar, but then ELB came along. But it was still good.


Then CB2 came along, and "heavy crossbow" was translated as "spitwad shooter," and damage was adjusted accordingly. We have no real crossbows.


I agree, though, that the specialty bows are insane.

As everyone else has been saying, I also share the opinion the ExBow's ability is overpowered but if Hxbows got a boost I wouldn't complain.
(minihijack)
The SoD actually does horrible damage (x2470 with 2.5m str does about 150-190k damage which to me isn't overly impressive) and the splash which it was designed for is easily countered by GA so it could use some loving itself.

i have an idea, how about make mageseeker not only seek mages but effectively lower/reduce their DD trained sort of like axbow/exbow drain stats. and perhaps lower the base damage to 4 then?

"i have an idea, how about make mageseeker not only seek mages but effectively lower/reduce their DD trained sort of like axbow/exbow drain stats. and perhaps lower the base damage to 4 then?"

Because if it isn't broken, don't fix it. The MSK is fine the way it is. We don't need an MXB as far as I'm concerned.

"i have an idea, how about make mageseeker not only seek mages but effectively lower/reduce their DD trained sort of like axbow/exbow drain stats. and perhaps lower the base damage to 4 then?"

Because the Exbow and Axbow are extremely overpowered when highly upgraded. If anything we need less items that drain like that.

Rave, lol.



The MsK is NOT fine the way it is. Though most people say a simple damage boost would be sufficient.

/me thinks Jon is too busy and you'll have to wait for these changes until next month. /me runs away chuckling.

Lol titan. xD

Agreed.

Starting ST: 5,310,000 / 4,500,000

No EC or anything else detrimental to my ST cast...

Round 1

Ember shot Jake with A Named Enforcer's Crossbow [26393]
Jake looks weaker!
Jake's Guardian Angel smote Ember (12971)
Ember shot Jake with A Named Enforcer's Crossbow [31860]
Jake's Guardian Angel smote Ember (15977)
Ember shot Jake with A Named Enforcer's Crossbow [18077]
Jake's Guardian Angel smote Ember (8999)


Notice only one of those shots weakened my tank...

Ending ST: -1,237,376

also notice his 495 AC.

oh yeah, that wasn't about damage comparison at all so much as the one-hit neutralizing both the 54m XP I have into ST and the 120m nw in my weapon... Though ya gotta love numbers like:

"Soul Devourer's explosive shot hit Jake [83746], Jack [165482]"