Rebalance bow? Thought's?

Hey, have you ever thought about rebalancing the bow?

Right now campared to other weapons the damage, and other stuffs with it is a bit unbalanced.

Let’s compare it.
Bow build with 20str, 20agg, 50vit, 40acc and 20 enc will most likely outplay any player with a melee weapon because of the damage difference and lack of speed on most weapons.

You will need 3-4 clean hits with a bow to kill a light geared player. Compared to spear u need 1 full combo (wich u cant land since u will get cancelled 9/10times between 2nd and 3rd hit) + 1 more hit to kill a light geared player. And since you almost have infinite with hyperarmor with heavy attack on bow and possibility to cripple, knockdown and spam light attacks in a much higher speed than any other weapon kinda.
U also have range. Is it really meant to be that strong compared to other weapons or have you just done something wrong? It’s been like this for a while. And it gives me a throwback to early 2020 when bow was really strong, but this is almost worse if u count it in after effects, knockdowns etc.

And this is from PVP perspective, I dont think it’s that strong against PVE. But in PVP it really is.

1.) Remove all hyper armor from bow. So you can’t use it in melee range, because you will get staggered and would have to charge the bow again.

2.) Observe how the change in Step 1 plays out and then do more adjustments if needed.

Since Funcom NEVER does step 2, because they care a damn about PvP, it will never get balanced.

I am proposing no damage nerf here, because it would make the bow even less effective in PvE.

1 Like

Probably yes. But never saw anyone say anything bout it when bow wasnt like this before. My wild guess is that most PVE people mostly uses it combined with a melee weapon.

But the way bow works now in PVP is pretty boring. You can have a decent fight with someone. And then when 30% hp left u either dead or low hp, and getting knocked and unable to heal since bow just will spam lights to cancell it. And if u dont have gasmask he will just shoot gas arrows to make it impossible for you to even get 1 hp up.

Or allow player (firing bow) to be hit, and have there aim be off and not lose the bow charge.

Personally… any game that stops that charge animation for bows when hit, is PURE Garbage. Its just now how it works…

At best you’ll make my aim off… XD At worst, I miss fire the bow.

They could also find a away to add 2 stats to weapons/armor. PVE and PVP stats, so they can calculate damage differently for better scaling.
Beats Nerf/Buff the mess with PVP/PVE unfairly.

But i the phase the game is in now. It must be available to cancell it’s charge, since with all other weapons u can cancell their hits with hitting them first

Right now bow is as much a melee weapon like a range weapon, since u do huge damage both from range and close range.

You can’t thou with out destroying PVE side of things. Its gotta be done in a manner that doesn’t harm PVE. Being hit in PVE is much more common do to how fights work out.

You’d turn one of my fave weapons into pointless “Fight Starter” if I couldnt ever keep a charge in combat =/

Stay further away? I mean how do you expect playing as an archer?

Mobs reset when you do that.

Actually here’s the real question. Why are bows even a problem -now-? Nothing has changed with them recently. Are you all posting about this now because they became some meta, or because of some silly video someone posted recently showing a consoler actually getting good with a bow on controller and wrecking people who have absolutely no exposure to bows unlike PC users?

ah I forgot about the heal nerf. Well yeah, the poison/acid arrows should be changed then to not prevent healing.

1 Like

But all the other things have changed.

No more animation canceling.
Healing canceled on hit.
And knockdown with 4th perk accuracy (people figured out how to (ab-)use it.

Animation canceling affected all weapons, not just main ones. Besides that was an exploit, one I never used and had no issues with ranged before.

Healing being canceled on hit has been in the game for over a year.

And I’m not buying the idea it took people 3 years to figure out how to use the knockdown.

This is a situation of trying to find a problem for a solution. If Archery was being used to the exclusion of melee, then we’d have an issue (its not). If archery is being used as much as melee (its not) then it would actually be balanced. A point spent in Accuracy should equal a point spent in Strength. For some reason people believe it shouldn’t, despite the attribute costs being the same.

1 Like

Omg take a chill pill not everything is about meta and what’s not. It’s just how the game experience is with it.

Before u could heal like Axel said now u cant. So losing 1/3 of your hp in one arrow (even more if hollowbone and mother bow is used.) How could that possibly be fun?

When all other weapons been nerfed healing nerfed, they cant buff a weapon with that much freedom that much. They cant have a range weapon that does more damage close range than a melee weapon.

Then we’ll have to agree to disagree, dodging arrows or blocking them with shields isn’t something I find unfun. Just yet another challenge to overcome. And if the archer isn’t supported, then its going to be extremely fun and satisfying when they go splat.

If they are supported, well that’s my own damn fault for not having my own support. I’m not going to ask for changes to the game because of my own deficiencies.

Yet they change weapons, items and whole mechanics STRICTLY for PvP but sure, they don NOTHING for PvP after all.

Now, I am not claiming that they SHOULDN’T make changes with PvP in mind. Weapon balancing absolutely should take PvP into consideration.

There was an entire mod designed to make bows useful back when they were … well trash. This was common on private modded pve servers because you know, some people like to use bows.

You can thank the new healing system for that, tailor made to suit the PvP crowd. (Not claiming that is what PvP players WANTED, just that it was designed with PvP in mind and screwed everyone equally.)

This was a fantastic change which was greatly needed.

This was the opposite of the above…

I’m all for an open discussion about bows. I would like to see them before more useful without being devastating in PvP or contrary rendered useless in PvE. I like the idea that Axel had.

Bows SHOULD be used at range, not up close. So you should have a bow for range and if / when they get close swap to a melee weapon.

2 Likes

Posting this as a demonstration of how the bow is used.

Especially scene at 2:38

1 Like

Ye try that… what you gonna do when your out of stam? Key with bow is to wait most of the time. Let’s say the bow guy is hitting one shot. He will wait for dodging then shoot again after the I frames, now that player is 1 hit away from dying and will most likely have to run but problem is… bows is also range and will 1 hit you still if you trying to get away. And if the bow has support it will be over in a second.

Bows also have some kinda glitch where u can precharge it while dodging wich will make it extra hard to compete against it. In my opionion bows should be like any other weapon in damage. But still have the ability to knock people down and cripple them. But do that and also make 1/3 of your hp… no thank you.

Bows have atleast not been trash in PVP for the past ~years. It was a very good support weapon. And like I said in my main post this is mainly from a PVP perspective, so if they can manage to fix it between players and NPC it would been appreciated. Me myself never use bow when I do the PVE stuff. But I still seen people doing okey with PVE too. Even before this huge damage bows was a thing.

I cant say it wqs designed for either PVP or PVE. It felt like devs got some unhappy people complains about it and decided to change it without to much thinking into it.

I know alot of people would like to see some heal like ambrosia back, ( me included ) but with slower heal and that is cancelled if you get hit. And having potions go through damage still. Because now PVP is more like… fight get 70% hp run to a safe spot to try heal. And if archer is on your butt just try what I wrote but do it again and again and again.

I cant do anything else than totalt agree. Sadly

I made a mod during that time that did just that. In fact I had to tell someone to stop using it the other day because they were asking about why vanilla bows weren’t delving in some other mod’s discord. I hadn’t updated the mod in like three years so the delving stuff wasn’t apart of my data tables.

With that said, I’m pretty experienced with how well archery can work in PVP. I’ve done balancing passes with test cases involving 50+ combatants at a time in raids on multiple servers.

But like I said, some people think attribute points in STR should be worth more than attribute points in ACC. Had these same arguments in 2018.

2 Likes

If you mean me, absolutely not. But there should be balance. Str builds there is none that does so much damage with heavy attacks like bow does. And also if it was, it should not been the same since most of the times u dont have the same effects like u have with bow. You have like I mentioned before, knockdown and cripple. And cripple someone with bow is super easy, and also the huge damage and range.

There is almost no possible way to get away from that. And also not avoid get hit from it. So either let it be a range weapon but dont let it be a good close range weapon too.