Bow Nerf Together Patch 1

Wicked Feedback
21

I did other tests (in Late Game) and the bows with a directional dash in the running attack are quite balanced, the bows that don’t have one are very penalised, becouse to reposition yourself you have to use the dodge if you stop attacking without dodging it takes a long time before you start running (about a second).

And at medium range (where you do 100% damage) you have to reposition yourself more often, if you have a light load it’s ok because the dash It’s very fast and you can immediately start attacking again but with the roll or walking/running you lose too much dps.

For charged attacks I think not because:

The most important thing for that is the fact that the arrows fall, before you could get so far away that the enemy AI didn’t know what to do, now, however, the maximum range corresponds to correct AI behavior, so at most you could do a charged attack and then you have to fight because the enemy responds.

There are still occasions where this doesn’t happen but I believe they will be fixed (Crucible is often still cheesable because of the level design but if they improve the AI ​​further the problem should be solved).

Alternatively a good solution would be that the damage could remain the same but charging the attack takes less time

For Runes Im sure it should work like that, because:

In the future you will get as many weapon combinations as you want, so I might as well have a bow and a staff, and charge focus with the bow and use the staff runes.

In my opinion, to prevent something like this, the runes of all weapons should have similar damage to each other, and to feel like mages they will have to have spells that cost more focus and wands and staffs should have more Gain focus, furthermore the focus should not be able to be obtained outside of combat (so no focus from food and gathering resources)

But to discuss the implications of this is a separate topic.

in my opinion the running attacks of the bows should always make you move in the direction you are running, I talked about it here: NEW BOWS Movesets and Runes can be Improved

I think it should have it (for the issue of mob behavior).

Makes sanse, poise damage too.

I think that aspect of the game and combat should be separated, now they will add enchantments for tools, there could be an enchantment that lets you get focus, but I don’t think it’s correct that you get focus without fighting only if you have collected resources, without your tool being enchanted.

Agree but I don’t like the numbers you proposed.

I believe that the damage should never go below 25% because at that point it doesn’t make sense not even for the stamina you use and it’s a very bad feeling the maximum range (the fact that the arrows fall) is sufficient to not let you cheese the enemies, I don’t know that makes sense that the arrow does 5% of the total damage when hit at max range.

In my opinion the distribution should be similar to this:

120% Damage (Totally melee) (now is 100%)

20E608~1
20E608~11920×1080 489 KB

100% Damage (little more then Spear Range) (now is 100%)

205C26~1
205C26~11920×1080 640 KB

75% Damage (little more then 2 Spear Range) (now is 50%)

2022E6~1
2022E6~11920×1080 496 KB

25% Damage (max Range) (now is 10%)

200916~1
200916~11920×1080 481 KB

3 Likes
22

Maybe you misunderstood my proposal but the minimum I expected was 40% at “out of range” distance.
Your proposal is way more punishing than mine.

23

I read it wrong mb :sweat_smile:.

1 Like
24

From a gameplay perspective, the damage dropoff is hard to understand.

For example, with melee and magic, when you hit your target you always know how much damage you will do (besides crits and buffs).

Damage diminishing makes it feel harder to predict, and adds another level of difficulty.

Magic users always want to be as far as possible, melee want to be as close as possible.
Bow users now need to be not too far and not too close. Visually you don’t know exactly where the range is.

The solution is to reduce the target lock-on range.

Melee movement runes already have a maximum distance, and would not affect them.
Right now magic users can still do what bow users used to be able to do, attack enemies from across the room without enemies attacking them (cheesing).
By reducing the targeting range, it maintains the predictability of damage, while also strictly dictating how far Moon wants us to be able to attack from.

25

If the range you’re showing still allows for 100% damage, then it’s absolutely fine. Anything beyond that would be overpowered.

The bow was clearly overpowered, which is why it got nerfed. You’re literally asking for it to be strong enough to kill anything from a safe distance ,something that clearly shouldn’t be possible, and something the developers have repeatedly said they do not want to allow.

1 Like
26

I think you’re putting a whole lot of words in my mouth that I didn’t say homey. I’m asking for Bows to have room to maneuver. Enemy comes toward you, you move away, in dance to keep your effective range. But at the range THAT close in the pic, there is no room for any of that. They swing at you once and they are in melee range. There is no setup and assault on approach.

In addition, a few bows have a slide-forward for their sprint-shot. Which now does nothing but put you in harm for barely any benefit of damage. This would not be so bad if action-input queued. But nope. The animation has to completely finish before you can do something else, like Rune-Evasive-Shot for instance.

There is a middle ground between no longer being an Archer and being a mile away. You should be able to dance in an area that is decent enough that if the enemy does come toward you, there is a window for reaction and evasion. That is not overpowered.

3 Likes
27

That’s incorrect for 2 reasons:

  • rune magic has a built-in maximum distance
  • projectile magic does not seek the target
28

There are still abilities that will seek the target if you can target them, like Fire Blast or Armageddon.

Projectiles, magic or arrow, will seek the target if you can target them, they just have a very small turn radius. This is also true for melee runes like Crushing Slam, also that rune can have you turn on a dime.

29

Very few, with limited seeking abilities (so much so that they sometimes miss stationary targets) and very expensive in focus.

None of these things applied to bows.

I don’t like they have been rendered unusable and hopefully they’ll made a good choice again, but quite frankly I was astonished when I first used one and saw the arrows were heat-seeking missiles.

30

I don’t understand your point about rune maximum range if it doesn’t apply to bow? Very few runes have this maximum range, typical maximum range is the target range.

This used to be true for bows as well until the projectile drop.

31

We’re probably discussing different aspects of the issue.

What I’m referring to is the fact that the “infinite” range and the heatseeking attributes of arrows made them work unintentionally cheesy with the environment: you could position yourself even outside of aggro range and mow down some bosses without ever engaging them.

With magic you could not do the same because it has

  • limited uses - focus runes are the only ones with some seeking projectiles
  • limited range and no seek - stamina runes can target an enemy, but the magic itself will not reach it if it’s too far/high/low, meaning once you have expended your focus you have to engage the enemy.
32

I think the most annoying thing is losing focus when you dodge back. I’d be happy with keeping the current nerf but not losing focus that easily.

33

In a coop game I have been playing a Fire rune caster and the other playing an archer.

I was able to casually hit for 60-80 damage (not including burn damage and bonuses) with a stamina rune vs the archers 20 damage (even tried with lightning damage and it was worse even with trial an error for gear).

Then with the focus cost attacks spending 150 focus I can hit for 1200 to 1800 in some cases, but the archers focus attack barely did 100 to 200 damage while spending 200 focus for that rune.

There is quite a difference in damage, making my friend regret using archer and also dimming the potential fun in coop.

We spent ages trying to work out how to get their damage up to where we are in the game not realising there is even falloff damage. None of this is explained in game!

I get that people have work arounds - eg heavy armour and blink, but peoples play styles should still be viable regardless, make it falloff damage when the range starts to go beyond the cheese range, not when you take 2 steps back from melee (it kind of defeats using range attacks all together) or at least make the range similar to the magic runes, as I feel that range seems fine too

1 Like
34

Thank you finally someone else who talks about the elephant and imagine mages are like this since 2 years but they instantly nerfs bows.. feels personal to me lol

35

Oooo there is a 200 focus cost bow rune? Which one?

36

I’m sure you’re pointing out that the person quoted is using hyperbole, but just in case, there are no 200 focus bow runes. Only Arrowstorm at 150, which I have had bad luck dealing great damage with, and Flipkick Burst at 125.

No runes above 150 focus at all, I think, outside of focus cost increases?

Surely noone would exaggerate numbers to complain about a nerf they didn’t like. (Multishot and Coneshot, at a cool 100 focus, can still mostly keep up with magic.)

1 Like
37

Arrow Storm is massively underbudget for the cost. It’s tied to a single target for 150 focus and the damage it deal is not significantly higher than alternatives which cost 2/3 of that and cleave to boot.

But I’m sure they have yet to work on true rune balance because the fact is it would be wasted work until the class system is in and proper balancing can be done around it.

1 Like
38

I appreciate you pointing out those cost differences. I believe he was using arrowstorm and It is possible that the cost increase was due to plagued gear too. We were pretty focused on trying to get the archers damage up and figuring out what we did wrong.

My original response was more to point out that even with character progression of pumping similar stats into a main with bonuses from gear the resulting damage output seemed quite underwhelming for being around level 26.

For the mage even choosing between the different focus cost runes still seemed to fair better with less minmax thinking.

We also didn’t know until I started reading the forums about damage drop off with archer because it just felt like a bug impacting the way the archer was affected. I can understand the reduction in cheese play from archers and agree with making changes, it’s just that they might have overcorrected.

39

I think that’s the consensus, yeah. I’m also completely with you that the drop-off should be mentioned in-game, and that the mage–archer difference is felt strongly right now.

I find building an effective archer much less obvious than building an effective mage too, partially due to rune selection being more of a mixed bag, but also because of stamina and speed considerations and the state of quivers.

My hope is that the abilities and runes of the upcoming Archer class will guide players better towards the intended experience and give better build guidelines.

40

after finally playing a bow character for a while i have no gripe with the damage drop off: you get roughly half a screen, a tiny bit more, of full damage. it’s ok, you don’t need to be further in

my gripe is with how arrows move. all the bows shoot arrows that move through air like they’re going through honey. that deletes the impact feedback satisfaction for me.

runes have it. charged attacks have it (but now are pointless since you can’t really stand and charge in mid range for 2s)

but the damage is fine. and yes it should be documented somewhere easy to see