ExBow Drain Change (in Debates)

I haven't decided yet for myself if even I think it's balanced, but I figured I would throw this out there to spark some debate on the topic.

What if instead of draining STR for the PL minion, it converts the STR drain into some proportion of extra HP loss, say a 3:1 ratio.

PL is supposed to just transfer damage over, it doesn't really make sense in my mind to transfer STR drain as well, since the PL didn't get hit by the ExBow, but the minion that did get hit didn't take damage.

A 1:1 ratio would be a bit unfair as the ExBow can hit for 100k and drain 5 mil STR on that shot, you might even need a 100:1 ratio or something along those lines.

This would allow the PL wall minions to protect thier tanks even better, and I think flow better contextually with the game, and add some more damage to the ExBow against PL teams.

Hit me up with your pros/cons.

con: makes the exbow even more powerful (that some/most people say it is)

No, the exbow was created to fix a problem, (not that I think it's working or doesn't need to be changed) but the exbow/axbow are specialty bows, and were never supposed to do any sort of 'large' damage.

So it's not a complaint that the ExBow can deal damage and nerf a tank, just that it can nerf a tank. Which only really affects teams that rely on only physical damage.

What if we made damage and hit a ratio of dex and str?

So your say attack value is 75% dex + 25% str, which is compared against thier dex to hit.

Then your damage is 75% str + 25% dex.

So even if a team nerfed your str to nothing, you can still do some damage.

Even AMF doesn't reduce magic damage to 0 unless it's base level trained, I don't think the ExBow should either.

With this change you'd need to run both a high AxBow and ExBow to drop tank damage to near nothing.

Or even better, how about a NSC type item for physical damage. Scales to be around 25 to be max feasible bonus.

Call them Ogre Gauntlets. For each +1, protects 1% of your total STR from EC and ExBow drain.

So protects up to 25% of your str, the tradeoff would be STR boosting gloves vs ogre gloves. Same as the tradeoff mages have to think about.

25% per drain? Or 25% overall?

If its like the NSC then it would be per drain

overall is what I had in mind.

So if you had 10 mil STR and +25 gloves, you could get drained down to 2.5mil.

Just like when AMF gets put on you, and NSC pushes the % back a little.

Ogre gloves would just give you a little more percent back.

However if you want it per drain, I suggest 2% per +1, so it would cap at 50% reduction in drain per drain hit.

Sadly, this won't work. First you need to remember that a 50% drain in str is only a 25% reduction in damage. Second it doesn't matter how much % drain it would protect because no matter how much it would end up protecting all of a tank's str through PL.

Novice is a good example of how this already works right now. When I hit his tank with my exbow his PL wall absorbs the str drain. If I drain 100% of his PL wall's str then the next hit will drain on his tank. However if I only drain say 80% of his str on the PL wall, the next hit will also be absorbed by the PL wall and only drain 80% again. The PL wall's str is still above 0 so the next hit is absorbed, repeat, repeat, repeat. In the end I don't drain any str from his tank at all. You can see with the gloves protecting str, all they need to go on is on the PL wall. No matter how hard the exbow hits all the drain would go over to the PL wall and the PL wall would always have a protected amount of str.

I guess one way to allow it to work would be that it interferes with PL. In other words a tank wearing the gloves would not be able to use a PL wall for support.

And a PL wall wearing the gloves would have PL completely disabled, rather like PL disables VA.

I don't see the PL issue as a problem, but rather a feature. For those who want to invest that much into a PL member, great.

See that's just it, it would still be fine nem.

Say you had 8 mil str, but the drain was going to be 10 mil and you subract 50%, you are left with 3 mil. Next round you get hit for another 10 mil and you're at -2 mil.

As long as the drain can be significantly greater than your STR, I think it'll be ok.

Ah, you are not saying that a % of the str is protected but rather that the % drain is reduced by a %.

Which non single minion Team doesn't use PL... And if you find one, tell them they should!

GA users... the other passive powerhouse

I always thought Exbow was to solve a problem, I thnk where it is now is fine. But lately I have been having thoughts about the Axbow, does anybody think its a plausable idea that when it drains Dex it also takes a stab at your Evasion beyond the trained effectiveness of Dex. that would put a easy means to cripple RoBF Evasion.

I don't see the reason to add RoBF into that statement when there are almost no active users of RoBF evasion. But that would be an interesting thing to consider about making the axbow very useful.

Just let the Axbow also drain skills... I've been waiting for skill drain FOR YEARS.

I heard 20% CTH and + was an extremely balanced counter to bows.

Heck delete the exbow altogether and just have the ax with skill drain.

And nem, I did offer both suggestions on the gloves.

% drain reduction and just a % minimum limit.

Both would work, as long as you coded the minimum limit to be treated as 0 for the ExBow, so it wouldn't target anyone already at thier bottom limit if there was someone else above thier bottom limit.

For example:

Your tank has +20 gloves, he gets drained down to 20% of his max STR first. The ExBow will now target the other 3 minions before just targetting the first minion in line because that 20% of max STR is considered -1 or 0 or whatever the coding value is.