The weapon is in a much better place than before especially since now the “archer fantasy” is achieved . But After playing with the bow for a while and doing my own testing, I’ve come to the conclusion that there’s still a lot to be desired to properly integrate this weapon into the game.
In short: In my opinion the bows should do less damage based on the distance and should have more interesting/balanced runes
Balance & Feel
Bows are definitely among the strongest weapons in the game right now, and if used alone without a primary weapon, this is not a problem in vacuum but there are some rough edges:
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How enemies interact with the range
Enemies sight distance is Often less than the bow’s range, some enemies have no ranged combat responses, no dashes, no ranged attacks, no shields, sometimes even when they have them they don’t use them.
The most problematic thing is that: Almost all enemies can be easily eliminated by staying in a place they can’t reach or attacking them with a charged attack before they can see you. -
The targeting system
When attacking with the bow you tend to move away from the enemies, this makes The targeting system think you want to change target or makes you lose the target completely -
Sometimes arrows are missing in melee range
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Charging the bow to max should be rewarded but there is too big a damage difference between charging to max damage or charging to 80%-99%
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I find it counterintuitive that a light weapon like the bow has stamina costs and damage similar to a heavy weapon, for now it’s fine but when the heavy bow is introduced I think it’s time to reduce the stamina costs, damage and wind up times to get closer to a fast weapon
My solution is to make the arrows (which consume stamina and not the ones that consume focus) do less damage based on the distance for example 100% damage at the range where the uncharged arrows drop 80% reaches 150% of that distance, then drop drastically to 15% once they go beyond the range of the enemies’ sight or when enemies can’t reach you.
A more Drastic Solution is that the enemies even if they are hit by an arrow if they can’t reach you or you are too far away they are “missed”
Runes
The bows do not have enough runes and some the runes are no longer suitable for the new bows. All runes do little damage compared to normal arrows and it is always better to use the focus for melee weapon’s Runes instead of the bow’s Runes.
for this point I have some specific suggestions:
Multi Shot: Similarly to Frost Stream holding down one consumes focus over time instead of a single use of 100 focus, (damage should be similar in dps to normal bow or more)
Cone shot: (this rune has been changed and now the arrows actually go in a cone instead of all hitting one target, but the damage is very low and completely useless.)
the arrows should do the damage of a 75% charged arrow and should go through enemies but enemies hit by multiple arrows do not take any more damage
Fire/Ice/Lightning/Pestilent Arrow: become Fire/Ice/Lightning/Pestilent variations of Multi Shot (if you want to know just one arrow just click the rune once instead of holding it down)
Knockout Shot: a bit More damage or a bit less cost
Evasive Shot: Make it less rare or Make it extractable
New Rune “Explosive Shot”: 150 Focus, Similar to Eruption but raged and less damging, you Jump and shoot an arrow that explodes in an area in front of you
New Rune “Piercing Shot”: 50 Focus, shoots a strong arrow that goes through enemies (should do the damage of a 75% charged arrow)
Other details
Since “Short bow” and “Yew Longbow” are practically the same weapon “Yew Longbow” could scale with Dex/Str (at least as an intermediate change before the “Job System”)
What do you think?
- I like your Ideas
- I like Some of your Ideas (pls comment)
- I don’t share your Ideas (pls comment)
- I don’t share your Ideas but I would like some changes for the bow (pls comment)