I am learning drastically less crossbow experience than I was before. Has this been modified?

Over-hunting with crossbow and missile mastery granted obscene amounts of experience per shot, so I am fine with the idea of it being down-tweaked, but I feel it wad down-tweaked too much. I'm learn the same amount per shot as I am with slings now, and of course a crossbow has 4x-7x the load RT.

Assuming it's not bugged, it needs a nice uptweak. I can mind lock melee weapons 100+ ranks higher on the same critter quicker than I can the crossbow.

I've also noticed a major down tweak in exp as well, I'm backtraining at caracals with 240 crossbows and 290 missile mastery. I used to lock crossbows in about 6-7 shots, now it takes about 5 minutes to lock now. It's still quicker for me to train it now then it was in 2.0 but It's quite a difference from before.

I was locking it in 3-4 shots(I was getting 11 mind states per shot, so it was taking me four shots to technically lock it. 3 shots got me to 33/34) with 120ish(I started there with 115 ranks and am now at 127, not sure what my mastery was when I first started but now it's 150) ranks in Quartz Gargoyles. Now it just took me 24 fully aimed shots to lock off the same mobs. Now, the whole 11 mind states per shot thing was way out of whack and I've posted here and in the weapons and armor bug forums as such more than once, but I think they may have went too far in the other direction. It's taking me longer to lock my crossbow than it is any other weapon now. It's not anywhere near 2.0 crossbow skills levels of bad, but it's noticeably longer.

Although, it also may be confirmation bias and they may not have touched anything but I didn't miss once in all those shots(in Quartz Gargoyles I generally missed 1/5 of the time, give or take) and I seem to be hitting 1-2 points higher and actually killing mobs faster than I was before.

I just noticed it too.

All these stealth nerfs are seriously mind boggling. Now crossbow trains like crap again. I'm literally getting 1 mindstate after 25+ seconds? Really? That's 14 minutes to mind lock without any drain calculated in.

I guess it's time to dump bows again.

>> It needs to be uptweaked, but I could just as easily call this a shield buff as I could a stealth nerf, sort of silly to look at it as that. It's a weapons issue.

Not a stealth nerf as in gameplay, meaning a nerf by the GMs with no notice to anyone. Even a "Oh we squashed a bug" would be nice.

Has anyone compared LX to HX experience now?

With the current experience I am getting from my museaum HX, I would suspect that a LX would teach just as much per shot but with reduced load time. I was really pumped that HX was both trainable and useful now, but the new experience model really brings HX training back much closer to 2.0 and that just makes me sad. There should be some middle ground here.

The exp "fix" needs to be re-tweaked in my opinion. I was never using an arbalest or anything else that gave me 11 mindstates, I got 2 per 20 seconds or so. My locking via forester's and full aim was on par with 2HE, maybe 5-8% faster. Now it's much slower.

As to power, we brought this up earlier and it sounded like there was still some tweaking going on and one of the major factors was the need to maintain a niche for considerable crossbow/bolt improvements in the crafting system. I think that's fair and I look forward to seeing how those happen because you're right, currently on a DPS scale against armadillos (which I believe are a fairly armored creature) crossbow is pretty meh compared to brawl/2HB/2HE for me, even if I use slurbow/DSX/arbalest and pulzones.

I'm currently back training xbow and have been using a stonebow. Like everybody else I was getting really good exp gains about 6 per full aimed shot, now i'm gaining 1 per shot. I just took the full aim out and am doing a 2 second snap shot since i'm still gaining that same 1 mindstate whether I aim or not. So roughly 8-9 seconds per 1 mindstate

Sky giants are also harder than shadow beasts.

It is better than 2.0, enough that I have taken it up again.

~~~
True heroism is remarkably sober, very undramatic. It is not the urge to surpass all others at whatever cost, but the urge to serve others at whatever cost.

>>Better than 2.0- 2.0 made me think jabbing myself with a pencil would be better- HX is trainable now, but my very rough experimenting shows that I get the same per strike experience with my 4 sec broadsword as I do with my full load and aim HX. So HE trains roughly 2 to 3 times as fast for my character as HX.

I have found this to be the same as well. Bows might need another uptweak, too.

It's best to snap snot and forget about aim.

<<It's best to snap snot and forget about aim.>>

Are you hunting at level and not backtraining with a higher missile mastery? Short aims, much less snap shots, are completely worthless at level for me (crossbow is higher than missile mastery) and my crossbow vs critter is about 200 ranks over what Kodius has said my critter is. By worthless, I mean snap shots miss 100% of the time, short aims are less than 50% hit rate. Is it worth it because you still learn well enough for the misses to make it worth it? That doesn't work for me either.

As a tert, I get less than 2 mindstates per each full aim fire/poach, at 18 seconds a shot. As noted, it's not "stab eyes out with a spoon" bad like 2.0, but it's still brutal.

There's no reason to use crossbow over bow for learning. And there's no reason to learn crossbow over HT for DPS. All performance hopes rest in crafting. Maybe we get reduced RT loads possible there too, making exp more feasible?

Yeah- this is the ironic thing- snap shots and missing teaches faster than full aim and hitting. But I use HX to actually try to kill things- and at level a snap shot is a miss- anything less than a full aim is usually a miss.

Odd, while I don't use HT to much I've not had much luck hitting at level opponents period with my LT. I guess that just goes back to the conversations that came bout in the thrown folders were people were seeing different sides of the spectrum. Maybe it has to do with high ranks and stats or what not but I think Vinjince even said he doesn't have much luck with LT against an at level opponent unless he disables them first with roars. I however see no defensive penalty what so ever when I use immobilization, in fact usually I seem to miss more after I immobilize other players and creatures.

And I need to get a tyrium light throwing axe, that might help a bit but I haven't seen one around lately and never wanted to use one before the non-premie bonding potions came out.

>>And I need to get a tyrium light throwing axe

there is a kertig one in Tiddeggurs shop in crossing. Its what I use and it hits just as hard (its practically the same thing) if you can manage 4 stones heavier.

Codiax.
Forged Weapons:
http://www.elanthipedia.org/wiki/User:Codiax#Codiax-Forged-Weapons

How many minutes is it taking to lock on a mob at level? At level should mean you miss a good 1-2 shots out of 10; if it's longer than 15 minutes, post some numbers. Kodius/Socharis have repeatedly said they'd like locking to take 12-15 per weapon.

Out of curiosity, how long does it take you to lock other weapons? 5 minutes seems extremely reasonable.

--

"The ninety and nine are with dreams, content but the hope of the world made new, is the hundredth man who is grimly bent on making those dreams come true." -E.A.P.

Fixed the aim time issue: http://forums.play.net/forums/DragonRealms/Combat%20-%20Weapons%20and%20Armor/Game%20Master%20and%20Official%20Announcements/view/176

--

"The ninety and nine are with dreams, content but the hope of the world made new, is the hundredth man who is grimly bent on making those dreams come true." -E.A.P.