So! I'm liking the bow changes so far. I think though that there are a few things that are a bit too overpowered. I'm using the battle longbow and the ice-adder arrows and soot-stained arrows and that combination w/dual load is dropping people down from 100% to 10-20% vit with one fully aimed shot. No debuffs or anything. Using my regular arrows, drake arrows, and some of the other arrows though.. they seem to be working correctly.

Basically, it seems the arrows that deal elemental damage are OP. The "random" attack might be happening every single time?

> fire

The spectral grey fog shrouding Uritel churns rapidly!
Uritel's silver glow flares.
< You fire a soot-stained arrow at Uritel. Uritel barely fails to block with targe.
The arrow lands an earth-shaking strike (14/22) that painfully mashes several toes of the left foot.

The soot-stained arrow lodges itself shallowly into Uritel!
[You're nimbly balanced and in good position.]
The spectral grey fog shrouding Uritel churns rapidly!
Uritel's silver glow flares.
< You fire a soot-stained arrow at Uritel. Uritel barely fails to block with targe.
The arrow lands a demolishing hit (15/22) that drives the kneecap clean off the left knee and savages the surrounding ligaments, stunning him.

The soot-stained arrow lodges itself deeply into Uritel!
[You're nimbly balanced and in dominating position.]
[Roundtime 1 sec.]


> fire

The spectral grey fog shrouding Uritel churns rapidly!
Uritel's silver glow flares.
< You fire an ice-adder arrow at Uritel. Uritel barely fails to block with targe.
The arrow lands a demolishing hit (15/22) that thumps painfully on the toes of the left foot.

The ice-adder arrow lodges itself shallowly into Uritel!
[You're nimbly balanced and in strong position.]
The spectral grey fog shrouding Uritel churns rapidly!
Uritel's silver glow flares.
< You fire an ice-adder arrow at Uritel. Uritel attempts to dodge.
The arrow lands an earth-shaking strike (14/22) that freezes the entire left thigh and sends spidery cracks throughout, stunning him.

The ice-adder arrow lodges itself shallowly into Uritel!
[You're nimbly balanced and in dominating position.]
[Roundtime 1 sec.]


> fire

< You fire an ice-adder arrow at Caidie. Caidie fails to dodge.
The arrow lands a devastating hit (17/22) that rips into the right calf, lightly stunning her.

The ice-adder arrow lodges itself shallowly into Caidie!
[You're nimbly balanced and in strong position.]
< You fire an ice-adder arrow at Caidie. Caidie attempts to evade.
The arrow lands a spine-rattling strike (16/22) that rips through muscle and organs, cutting the foe cleanly in half.

The ice-adder arrow lodges itself deeply into Caidie!

* Caidie is slain before your eyes!
[You're nimbly balanced]
[Roundtime 1 sec.]


All of these were one dual loaded shots with HEALME in between. No roars going. Bow skill is within "range" of evasion and shield.. fifty rank difference at most.

I figured I'd test a couple other things as well for comparison. Crossbow at less ranks than bow, but still within fifty ranks of shield and evasion is able to connect with strong hits. I tested with TM, and TM with 200+ ranks more than shield and evasion missed or was blocked every single time.

So, bow seems stronger than before, and OP with those elemental arrows. Even with Manifest force up, I'm landing extremely heavy (9/22) hits.

Based on current systems and future development with ward barriers, plus my testing with TM and the huge disparity of ranks (in the favor of TM), I'm thinking bow might need to be tweaked some more.. or other systems brought up in line with the bow rewrite.

First this probably belongs in the Lore folder under Shaping.

Second there have been no combat balancing/changes done in Test regarding bows, so everything that's in Test should be what you see in Prime. As to that Kodius moved testing of new bows to Plat so I don't think he's making any more changes in the Test instance, though I'm sure he'd like to hear what you have to say.

As to the OPness of elemental damage arrows, most players wear armor with almost no elemental protection. So seeing them do more damage against players isn't surprising.

>>RE: Prime vs Test.. odd results then maybe, but I've tried shooting my own characters before (recently) and it hadn't been nearly this successful. But I get where you're going with that.

Yea, there is oddities in Test, but that is the answer Kodius gave every time one is brought up. I think we'll have to wait till it hits Prime to really test new bows in combat, unless Kodius loves torture and updates Test and Plat at the same time.

>>He did this at my request and I tweeted to get some more testers into DRT to check out bow damage and related stats

Thank you.. Now here is what I think..

Shortbows just seem to not hit hard enough vs longbow Even taking into consideration they aren't supposed too.

The damage dealt is INSANE either way.. a barb or ranger could realistically kill someone in two shots. Please..don't over undo it..Id love to two shot someone with my bow..however I'd hate to be two shotted with someone elses ;) Happy medium maybe??

Also ..the ability to use bow seems crazy borked after you take damage? Like two solid hits..then whiffing? This seems extreme.

Thought there was a huge difference in arrows but I will have to retest based on injuries I think as these really do cause a bit of a problem.

Thanks for the fun..

>>He did this at my request and I tweeted to get some more testers into DRT to check out bow damage and related stats. :)

Missed that tweet. Cool, I'll jump in and play with it. Sorry about any confusion.

>>Missed that tweet. Cool, I'll jump in and play with it. Sorry about any confusion.

Quite okay! It was from @Naohhi, not @DragonRealms.

There are arrows and tier 4 bows on a barrel in Crossing, Midton Circle in Test. Feel free to grab them and some arrows.

---
NaOH+HI

>>Are the defensive player targets wearing armor? Barriers? For many years I've been bugged that bow damage is too low, and that possibly led to me overpowering the longer RT load variants.

Sorry missed this.. Yes to armor and no to defensive buffs I personally had up eagle and bear.

<< One dual load, on average, was dropping my target (as described above and previously) down anywhere from 50% of their health all the way down to 15%. Shooting Caidie with fully aimed dual loaded shot resulted in two deaths (with heal me in between), and Naohhi died once. She wasn't buffed up >>

Oh man, that seems bit much to me too. And I'm a ranger with ranged as primary. Hope big K has time to look at that soon.

Bluefalcon

>>I don't see how players are dying from a single dual shot unless the Overkill mechanics are coming into effect. What is your bow skill versus the targets' defenses?

Just tested against a thief (with appropriate thief buffs).. barb w/875 bow & eagle vs a fully healed thief with 1100 evasion and.. I forget the shield, but I think 800-900. Took him out in one dual load with battle longbow and drake fangs. Their view of it:

Drunstan fires a drake-fang arrow at you. You barely fail to block with targe. The arrow lands an apocalyptic strike (So that's what it felt like when Grazhir shattered!) that deeply rends a smoldering wound into the right bicep, lightly stunning you.
The drake-fang arrow lodges itself shallowly into you!
[You're smashed up, solidly balanced with no advantage.]
* Drunstan fires a drake-fang arrow at you. You attempt to dodge. The arrow lands an apocalyptic strike (So that's what it felt like when Grazhir shattered!) that shatters every bone in the left arm, ripping it from its socket.
That would have stuck if there was anything left to stick to!
The drake-fang arrow falls to the ground!
* XXX was just struck down!
Your death cry echoes in your brain as it quickly dawns on you that you have just died! Already, you feel the tug of eternity upon your soul and you struggle to remain tied to this world.

A chill takes the seat of your soul as your remaining spiritual strength bleeds away steadily. However, you are comforted that you have curried the favor of your god, which will greatly improve the course of your resurrection or reincarnation.

Your body will decay beyond its ability to hold your soul in 140 minutes.
You don't feel particularly confident after this.
A panicked scream pierces the air. "Murderer!" You notice the nearby citizenry staring at Drunstan briefly, before most quickly run off in fear.
[You're somewhat off balance]

Oh, so it was the attacks not having RTs. Yeah I don't know what to say about that.

---

"I have no data yet. It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories instead of theories to suit facts."
- Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Sherlock Holmes

Looking at all this data is interesting to me. Part of me is thinking a majority of this damage is coming from the elemental damage compounding on things. Because my experience shooting the new bows against drakes a while back were very different. And I was barely able to get any damage on them at all. Unless things have been adjusted since then. I haven't tested things recently, or used the new arrows yet.



~Van

>>I toned down the damage from dual load's second arrow a bit.

My concern here is the inconsistency I was seeing with dual load. One firing, I'd completely whiff, the next I'd hit hard on both. The second thing is, I'd miss on the first arrow and hit hard on the second. I know as bow stands now, I don't get that much inconsistency with firing and not sure which way is intended. If you toned down the second ..then the missing completely will really stink.

For reference.. battle shortbow ice adder arrows and eagle form over 900 bow on my test barb (skills aren't updated over there.) and full on all shots.


PS yay roars are great over there.

Big thank you to all the testers we saw yesterday. :)

Hope to see some more of you checking out stuff today. We'll make sure there's some non-elemental (still new) arrows stocked on the barrel for testing.

---
NaOH+HI

Just curious if test and plat are synced? I'm seeing a massive drop off in damage today from just last night.

DPS on a new ash competition short bow with capped elsralael arrows = one half of melee weapons. It's taking me 40 seconds (dual load, full aim) to take out elder dillos where it took 6 seconds under the old system (which I agree was too low).

A competition shortbow is unlikely to be very effective against the heavy plate armor of dillos. You might try with a heavier bow and see if you get better results.

---

"I have no data yet. It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories instead of theories to suit facts."
- Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Sherlock Holmes

I'll have to pop over to Test again and try some more of the PvE stuff. Last time I was there, it took me like 20 or so arrows to bring down a drake. Which was nearly 2x more than what it probably should have taken, according to damage balanced on Prime.

While I agree that damage levels may always have the potential to exceed a fair level, keep in mind what people are using as their control scenario. At some point, yes, you are definitely going to see huge damage potentials. Especially if you are using the most powerful bow, made from the absolute best wood, with the most powerful arrows, compounded with elemental bonuses, with an eternity of aiming time. Let alone any buffs or whatever you throw on top of things. You are stacking so much, and then being baffled by the results. If things get balanced to compensate the scale of damage, using this absolute most damage scenario as the 0 point, standard expected damage, then everything else will just seem completely underpowered, and pointless to use. I feel like DR already has enough of this, if it's not the absolute most epic weapon evar then it is unusable garbage, mentality.



~Van

I am asking you to test with harder-hitting bows to get a better overall picture.

You may also be confusing the changes to dual load with changes to shortbows.

Comparing to TM is not a good approach here. TM will usually edge out bows because they require mana. The counter to this is players can use TM and bows/claymores simultaneously and double up on damage. I don't have a good solution to this yet - and Dual Load may not be it.

When TM Foci come out my hope is they will result in similar balances and adjustments to TM. Fixing the overpowered stuff and boosting the underpowered stuff.

---

"I have no data yet. It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories instead of theories to suit facts."
- Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Sherlock Holmes

<<Comparing to TM is not a good approach here. TM will usually edge out bows because they require mana.>>

It's not a real cost when mana limits don't really push you to stop casting regularly. I don't mind the whole TM and weapons parity thing we were sold on back when 3.0 was put in, but now it seems like staff is willing to accept the tacit notion that TM will be the most efficient damage dealer in the game; that's a far cry from parity.

Since I can't find the test I posted a while ago with the highest Moon Mages in plat, the highest Nekro in plat was kind enough to jot down a few numbers for me.

Nekro - 91 disc, 80 Intel/Wisdom, 814 TM.

Barb - 100 strength, 90 agility, 973 Bow.

Numbers are simply from 20 young Wyverns per test. Vivi was the spell used for TM, all casts were full target. The short bow used was an ash competition, the comp bow was a hickory double-backed bow, all shots were full aim. Arrows were capped elsralael.


Casting vivi at 30 mana the nekro averaged 4.7 casts to kill, at a 56.4 second average per kill.

Casting vivi at 40 mana the nekro averaged 3.85 casts to kill, at 46.2 seconds average per kill.

Casting vivi at 50 mana (mid point of the spell range) 3.54 casts to kill, 42.54 seconds average per kill.

Using Short bow - 5.68 shots to kill, 47.4 seconds average per kill.

Using Comp bow - 3.9 shots to kill, 46.9 seconds average per kill.

Considering mid-point casting is supposed to be comparable to bow damage, the stat and rank disparity (160 ranks), I think the numbers point to the superiority of TM. Doesn't this show there's room to boost bow damage across the board?

>>A competition shortbow is unlikely to be very effective against the heavy plate armor of dillos. You might try with a heavier bow and see if you get better results. <<

I haven't tried this on test yet, but I may have to since I'm bows primary. My concern for short bows is this. If high end short bows aren't effective against heavy armor, why would I use one? Even if it is a little faster, I'd probably still use a longbow and get much better punch against all targets. PvP I'd use it to try and get a stun in, PvE I'd use it to kill faster. Unless the RT is drastically different between the two bow types, I'm not going to worry about a 1-2 second difference in load times. The only reason I'm not using a comp bow in prime is that they aren't craftable so they have much weaker hits than a capped longbow.