Now to start of this I have just been playing an archer myself so I have gotten the bad end of this update in the regards to damage. The animations are fine I’d like to be able to control the release of the heavy attack on my own though. But now to the part that I do really wonder if you can fix. And I use the word fix becouse it feels like a bug. Me and a friend did some testing. I got Bessie’s bow I use star metal arrows and have 50 in accuracy. My friend got a one handed star metal sword and 40 strength. Yet his attacks aren’t only faster but he deals more damage. So my suggestion here would be to balance out the bows a bit by giving them a bit of a bite. If that is by increaseing the amount of bonus damage accuracy does or increse the damage of the arrows or bow. (if not all 3) or remove the bows from the game along with their stat. As they are at the moment mostly useless in pvp and almost useless in pve. When it comes to enemy health I at times also notice that you hit them in the side and they don’t take damage at all thats more of a bug that I have run in to.
Bows are far from useless. It is actually the other way around.
Melee weapon deals more damage than a ranged one? Wait, isn’t it how it is supposed to be?
We already had a bow meta before and the game (for me at least) became super boring yet another non-melee game.
I 100% agree…firstly the animations are awful with the bow(heavy attack i’m looking at you). Second the arrows fire like a soggy noddle at speeds that would make a snail envious, making leading a moving target nearly impossible. Last of course is…the damage. The damage of bows is laughable and really makes you wonder why accuracy is a stat at all for bows. Personally the perks probably need a rework as well…like the one where your arrows will deflect if you miss…it doesn’t really do anything except to maybe shoot under somebodies shield. perhaps they need to add an insane amount of armor pen to bows to even things out, or up the chance it can cripple. Maybe even create a new debuff called puncture would that slows enemies and bleeds them as well. It’s obvious to anyone with half a brain that bows are garbage right now though.
Melee weapons should do more damage that I do agree with. But for the moment the bows are so weak that it makes little sense to actually go for them. Bows should still be really deadly when used and now I have yet to have the chance to test how well shields holds up towards an arrow they should block them form doing any damage. But as this is a game, then some balance is needed. Im not saying that the bows need to be just as strong as a all melee weapons but they should be stronger then they are now. THe trade of for using a bow over a melee weapon is really big. I actually do almost the same damage with my melee spare weapon then with my bow. (Its a one handed sword.) And I have 0 strength. That is the balance that you must find where melee weapons are still a good choice aswell as a bow being a good choice. I’d personaly put the bows damage just below the one handed sword. Thier attack speed is still slower. And if shields can block all the damage then that leaves a clear defence against the bow and arrow. And yes shield should be a go to thing to have if you ask me.
An other way to solve the bow thing would be to have accuracy be the one thing that pushes the damage up a bit more then it does to have it compareable with one handed melee weapons. And to balance it out make the dodge cost a bit more then it does now when you have a bow equipped. As you already can’t block at all. And have tested the blocking of arrows and it works quite well so you already have a defence against bows in that.
Hardened steel (with master weapon upgrade) bow using snake arrows kill tier 3 asagarthain fighters in 4-5 arrows doing light attacks (5 arrows to not wait for poison too long) 40acc, 30str. You can easily kite them doing so. You can kite everything really with bows. Some players can even exploit the AI by standing on rocks etc. The moment you reach lvl20 for snake arrows you can kill everything that isn’t immune to poison using the worst bow pretty fast.
I did a new character today with testlive server settings and managed to get to lvl60 in less than 4h and I wasn’t even trying to do it fast. I ran around a lot testing stuff. I did not use bow much before so it was also a learning process for me. I am going to change my personal meta build after today to one using melee weapons as well as bows. Ranged option is going to be mandatory it seems.