In hindsight and after duelling a lot of cracced bows and arena spam, Iâm not sure if Iâm liking these changes anymore. Overall, the skill floor has been lowered while skill ceiling hasnât really moved.
I like the new heavies but the ADS lock is still annoying. The balance dev himself complained in a dev blog (a while ago), that the jump cancel gave the bow a âway too fastâ fire rate (it wasnât that fast), only to now increase the fire rate to be even higher than the one they complained about?
Bigger hitbox feels wonky on PTR as well (might be my EU ping, canât fully test it) and might be a bit too big right now, making the bow easier than intended, perhaps. Donât get me wrong, after months of self inflicted bow torture (tanked all the nerfs, np but oof), it felt awesome to try the new bow out, âat long last our voices have been heardâ type of moment.
But then again, can only really judge once itâs live with actual PvP gear and not the PTR RNG lootbox stuff. Guess I was hoping for some different changes after all (e.g. arrow projectile speed increase or ADS exit being faster, since we still have to burn through our dodges to not be stuck).
tl;dr: imma pop tf off once this goes live since they probably gonna hard nerf it again after the returning bow masters will cause melees/mages to cry in forums again, kekw. also, lets collectively pretend that this game just doesnât have any bow perks, never had
I think the double shot needs fixing as you can literally fire 2 shots at once hit box might be a bit too big. Other than that it feels much better and seems to be on par with other weaponsâ:+1:
Yeah, forgot to mention that, thats the one big bug the new bow has. Obviously itâs fun to try it on PTR, but really hope they remove it before it goes live (basically ice spike mechanic for bow now, lmao).
Other wise Iâm not sure if I can resist the temptation of using it exclusively for rock rats.
What exactly do you not like about it? Genuinely curious
Personally I dislike spear/bow builds since most âbow mainsâ use their spear 80% of the fight and call themselves cracked bows with insane aim (lmao).
With the bow buffs combined with the stamina Regen delay, it becomes extremely difficult to close the gap for closer ranged weapons. With the arrow hit box adjustment, you almost certainly have to use stamina to iframe or dodge arrows meanwhile, the bow user will either keep dodging backwards as you dodge forwards, (using less stamina than you because you are also using your stamina to avoid damage as well as gap closing) or they will pull out the rapier and fleche through you.
This might be controversial but Most close range weapons donât have very good gap closer abilities some of them seem good but are actually only so if they connect. Charge for example is really good but the recovery frames on the back end of it if you donât connect will probably cost you almost the same amount of distance that you just gained. Baby âgap closersâ have this problemâŚhigh recovery frames. Leaping strike is probably the only gap closer thatâs actually worth a damn vs ranged really, and we see how much thatâs complained about.
Anyway back to the point. The bow has all of these great changes coming and letâs say that youâre a close range weapon user who is really good at stamina management and is good with their gap closers. You do all of this work getting close to that guy shooting arrows at you ⌠only to see a riposte which you may or may not activate, the result is the same (even if you donât get stunned, they will be completely safe for that entire animation (why is riposte immune to damage during the âelbowâ part?)) And then they will fleche through you, dodge, evade, dodge and weâre back at square one. This is a 1v1 situation mind you, not to be balanced around, but nonetheless frustrating. The more consistent options vs people with rapiers are to outrange them or one shot combo them.
Super unpopular opinion: The description for Riposte says âYou are briefly invulnerable upon a successful riposteâ. I think they they should make the stun happen faster so that the chances of hitting it are better, but also for the immunity to not kick in unless it actually connects.
I assume thatâs what they are talking about when they say double shot, but thatâs not new. They talk about it like its something new. Iâve been doing that forever on live. I have always been able to do light into special super fast. Can actually do poison into pen shot super fast too.
Im going to have to check this later. I can do this on live and have done it forever. Lately it bugs out a lot but I can do it. I thought it was normal.
Heavy Shot into Pen/Poison. You can time it in a way that you just see one arrow going off, while 2 damage numbers pop up (similiar to grav well double burst, etc.). Easy to reproduce and obviously busted.
Have mixed opinions on this. In general I agree that ranged counters melee (as intended) but it can get frustrating as melee, especially vs bow. But then again, weâre talking about 1v1s and as you said, canât balance around it. Also, the rock-paper-scissor thought kinda implies, that melees counter everything except ranged and maybe itâs intended. But then again, I made a lot of bruisers frustrated cuz if you dodge everything right, youâre basically untouchable.
Itâs a difficult topic imo, since I do believe if melees get more help/buffs vs ranged, weâre back to melee world and them being the most powerful, countering every build ever. Also, I personally know plenty melees who rarely struggle vs ranged, except maybe 3-4 ranged mains on the entire server.
The invulnerability window of the riposte has been a longer topic and I agree that its too long, but at the same time Idk if shortening would be the way (especially since its STILL very easy to bait and then dodge/block).
Lastly, all your points are from melee POV which makes it a bit weird for me. Whatâs the counter-balancing part for ranged once melees cought up? I feel like if melees get more gap close mechanics, ranged need something in exchange. Otherwise ranged get CC chained into oblivion without any counter OR ranged playstyle becomes even more toxic by kiting even harder (basically running only), which Iâm sure would be even more annoying.
Right now Iâm realizing weâre both kinda have a 1v1 take on this right now, which again, is not the point. Weâll see how the patch feels on live I guess.
Oh. Sounds great. After the bugs I have on live of skills not releasing half the time, to me its just a desync and catching up all the times a skill never went off or 2.50 just vanished into thin air haha. Yeah thatâs a little busted though.
Stop aiming poison arrow at the ground bro. You are losing soooo much damage doing that. Who cares about that 120 tick when you could chest shot that for sometimes more than Pen shot if it crits.
Didnât see your link till now, idk how to say this without being rude - but thatâs a good example of slow bow play that mainly relies on spear CC/dmg.
Just as a comparison, donât mean to plug scuffed 720p footage, but you get the idea
Youâre not playing bow at its full possible speed/capabilities (yet)
That you use your own music for these vids is pretty cool, tho
hit box might be a bit too big. Other than that it feels much better and seems to be on par with other weaponsâ:+1:
Interesting
