>>whats the best way to learn crossbow now? stonebow or regular xbow

I just went from 0 to 34/34 in a little over 8 minutes with fully aimed shots from a one second reduced load lx and pulzones.

I'd be interested too to hear how stonebow's are performing.

I find that I seem to learn a bit faster with the stonebow and carved shards vs my sniper's lx and store bought bolts. I haven't done any real testing to prove that but just my impression from using them both. Once tinkering is released and I can carve my own bolts I'll probably revisit, but I'm too cheap to buy quads/pulzones.

sorry, meant 2/3rds as well. No edit button -_-

Bow has the same problem, it's something I can directly observe since my script outputs training times and such.

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IM: Dannyboy00001111

"Fool proof system do not take into account the ingenuity of fools, nor the power of numbers."

Well, I'd personally avoid parry, since you can't parry with ranged weapons (and parry sticks are disabled with anything held in your right hand). So probably 100/80 split between evasion/shield?

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Pants.

I haven't timed it but I am finding HX really pretty satisfying right now- oh I mean Crossbow. I still use my Museum HX and it works fine.

The two important things I believe are:
a) Wait for full aim
b) Make sure you hit

Sounds simple, but I hate- hate- hate missing- wastes my time- still trains- but trains much worse. Do what you need to do to make sure you hit them- I use Cleric wonderfulness.

I don't believe the ammo makes much difference for learning now- learning is not affected by how much damage you do- I believe it is now- whether you hit- full aim- and difficulty of target.

I go with stance shield 100, evas 89 while using my crossbow, this is because Flavius gets a bigger boost to shield than he does to evasion. Shield and HX lock almost at the same time.

Yeah I like the way crossbows train, its my main weapon. If only it would be viable in pvp now I would be very happy. I'm not sure what needs to be done but for a barbarian who was really looking forward to the predator path ( Panther/Eagle/Crossbow/Poach ) for a pvp tactic All of the things this tree was built around are broken. Stealth is so buggy its not worth using at all and full aim with quads and a crossbow lands light hits unless you catch someone laying down with no buffs and you out class them, I hope this is not the model for ranged and if it is I hope the predator tree is changed greatly.

>>full aim with quads and a crossbow lands light hits unless you catch someone laying down with no buffs and you out class them

What skill. What enemy. How many shots to kill?

Damage message depends primarily on what % of vitality you took away, so the first few hits will always message "lighter" than hits on an already hurt opponent.

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"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

Also the fact that to load/full aim with crossbows at the fastest you are looking at 14 seconds per shot. The kind of being damage done and the lack of hitting really does not seem to compensate for such a large downtime. I understand a large value to crossbows is being able to keep one loaded on your shoulder 9 more if you have space ), but still the damage does not seem to make up for the time. As said I'll get some logs and send them to you.

The problem is not so much with pve Kodius as PVP. I hunt fine with crossbows, it's my main weapon. The problem is in pvp where you can't miss and have a 32 second gap from shot to shot causing you to get destroyed. Gort, myself and a few others were talking about this last night. It seems a few things cause crossbows and some other ranged weapons to be not really viable in pvp, 1 miss rate, 2 the way damage shields work, 3 speed it takes to load, aim, fire. I don't feel crossbows should have the same hit/miss rate as melee, I think it should far harder to dodge a crossbow. I also feel 7 seconds aim should be able to be worked down with skill, 7 seconds is a long time.
From what I know, all the people who have tried to use ranged in pvp were forced to leave it for melee. I asked Gort to help me do some testing but Im not sure what would really show you what is needed other than the fact that ranged/stealth went from being only way to pvp to being not viable at all for the most part. I think we need a happy medium and right now I don't see us as having it. I hope some others can speak up to help shed some light on this subject. Ranged is one of those things that is being hurt by a few different mechanics such as hang back, damage shields, balance not helping "to-hit" like it should. I wish I could nail it down for you and point the finger at what needs fixing but I can't, and as they say the proofs in the pudding..and right now the pudding is being flung from melee and seems useless from range.



Wishful Future Predator Barbarian Heitak

Thank you for letting me know what you need to see, I was not sure where to start and this helps. I agree about only being able to get off a few shots with crossbow before melee combat. It seems a bit off that if one person has 600 crossbow vs a target with equal shield/evasion than the crossbow user is toast, I would say most players train shield and evasion and use that tactic in pvp, so right off the bat due to the option of 2 defenses being the standard crossbow becomes useless due to the combination of not being able to hit and long RTs. I buff my crossbow, they buff defense, back to square 1. If this is how bows will work than I feel poach should bypass shield completely and it comes down to stealth being "broken".

Like I said from what I see personally anyone who has tried to use ranged in regards to crossbows mainly ends up losing or being forced to swap to melee to be effective in pvp. I have the day off tomorrow so I will do my best to test and help figure out why this is. It just seems like if it was not a problem, people who have tried it would not be forced to drop it and in the end say this is not working.

>> Crossbows are slower because they do X% more damage. Eventually the engagement rewrite will assist with players maintaining distance for a short time, but eventually folks will get to melee. It isn't realistic or balanced for a crossbow user to get off more than 1 or 2 shots before someone closes on them. This is no different from using a TM spell...

I think the biggest issue here, and the one he is hitting at is MAF + Barrier. Look at it like this:

First off, MAF takes 6 connecting shots to break. It's a barrier that when combined with another damage barrier, can absorb pretty much all of the damage from a shot, no matter how ridiculously high. This alone negates crossbow's damage bonus almost entirely.

Secondly, AIM time for ranged weapons is 7 seconds. Loading + aiming together for pretty much every aimable weapon ends up taking 10+ seconds. So, at the very least, assuming no misses(very unlikely) and that your enemy uses no debil or abilities to mess up your shots(very unlikely), it would take over a minute just to break the anti-damage effect of MAF. Realistically, it would take two to three times as long. There is no compromising MAF, but there are many ways to prevent from being hit.

Third, even after waiting for full AIM, bows require a crapton more time invested then melee weapons, and are still less accurate then DRAWing with a weapon. All of that extra time invested into 'attaining higher damage' means nothing when nothing tends to land.

I observed a spar between Zerreck(Xbow prime) and Liurillas that went on for over 20 minutes. Z could not hit L accurately enough to break MAF, with Z having over 100 ranks more Xbow than L's defenses. After pelting him for what seemed like an eternity, and L recasting MAF ?twice? during their fight, he finally managed to break through it and was landing landing decent shots. Before that, he could not do any damage even with full AIMs + L immobilized. I can't comment on how well buffed they were, but they were both trying very hard. I'd assume they used every faculty at their disposal

Besides MAF needing a downtweak in its effectiveness, my suggestion to make bow more viable would be to bump up the accuracy of FIRE slightly, lower their damage ceiling(it is currently higher than 2HE), and reduce AIM time slightly.

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IM: Dannyboy00001111

"Fool proof system do not take into account the ingenuity of fools, nor the power of numbers."

>> Yes these need adjusting and it is being worked on. However, damage shields block melee just as much as ranged. If a melee attack does 10 damage, and 3 is blocked, and a bolt does 20 damage, and 6 is blocked, the crossbow should still come out ahead.

The outlier in the discussion is MAF. It blocks a fixed number of shots and operates differently than normal barriers, and it's effect is something of a time equation that scales very unfavorably for heavy weapons. What exactly is its intended effect when every magic-using guild already has a barrier, and that these barriers are, in your own words, "too strong and slated for nerf"?

Point for point in RT, it takes Crossbow MUCH longer to penetrate it, and considering how easy it is to recast, IMO it's a gamebreaker, particularly for Crossbow. In our testing of BB just by itself, Tenacity was reducing capped damage extremely heavy hits to strong/solid, and our testing has shown MAF to be much stronger than Tenacity, point for point.

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IM: Dannyboy00001111

"Fool proof system do not take into account the ingenuity of fools, nor the power of numbers."

Damage barriers -- magical and non -- need a review, not just MAF, imho. Pretty sure that's what Kodius said was already on the radar, wasn't it?

Damage reduction isn't built into the core, and would just be another bandaid at this point. I need to spend a few weeks running numbers and then increase hit points, increase damage, and keep damage barriers/armor where they are now so they have effectively no chance of reducing damage to 0.

A funny thought occured to me with regards to MAF. In other RPGs when you have a spell that ablates, folks find a quick and non-damaging method to take it down. Tossing 5 throwing blades, for example. Wouldn't do much damage but it'd take the barrier out quickly. I suppose the problem in DR is the mage can just snap a new one up, rendering the strategy useless.

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"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

There's also the non-ablatative barrier issue. For my part, I don't think Cage of Light is impressive in straight physical damage reduction, but I believe Tenacity is pretty awesome. Is that Bard Tears one ablative? Anyway, sounds like you have a good plan to check it all out, thanks Kodius.

<< All weapons are balanced to do approximately the same DPS at the same tier/weight, so if we did this we'd also have to reduce their damage bonus.

I'm not exactly sure how the weapon tier works into this equation but i have the best of each weapon available i think.

So, i did a quick update in my scripts and ran just a few samples of each. It's nothing conclusive but i think these numbers illustrate the general state crossbow DPS quite well.

EDIT: re-ran tests with quads, i forgot to close my bag that had bolts in it

Target: Misenseor resuscitant

LE:
weapon - haralun stiletto
skill - 550
method - attack, attack, attack ..

Time to kill	Swings to kill
24.751415	9
25.282446	10
34.984001	13

LX:
weapon - any other 9 second load
skill - 600
load - 6 seconds
method - full aim

Time to kill	Shots to kill	Ammo
76.275763	4	bolts
99.135014	5	bolts
102.833224	5	bolts

Time to kill	Shots to kill	Ammo
96.778108	5	quads
53.760647	3	quads
55.34473800000001	3	quads
54.298677	3	quads

Thanks Kodius.