Bow is in desperate need of some further adjustments. The couple minor percentage changes on passives from the first round of changes are unfortunately not nearly enough to move the needle in terms of balance, especially with Fortify being massively nerfed in the same patch.
We really don’t need or want another 3 months of BowPR, which is exactly whats going to happen if you don’t take action. Bow is and has been just as much of a problem as Musket, but is not treated as such at all. Something needs to happen before S1.
I have always said that Mortal Empowerment is the root of the problem. Musket didn’t need any adjustment whatsoever as long as Mortal Empowerment was nerfed. ME affects bows just the same. And guess what? They reverted the nerf they were going to do. Thanks AGS!
It’s not just Mortal Empowerment though and it has never been just ME for both Bow and Musket. Musket has been adjusted accordingly, Bow however just deals way too much damage for how incredibly safe it is and for how trivial it is to apply damage in the first place. With or without ME. It’s inherently unbalanced against any other weapon in the game.
Bows are pretty easy now compared to Musket ngl. If Muskets are getting hit this bad, bows need to be looked at too. However, you must understand that Mortal Empowerment is a big deal for ranged.
A Bow or Musket player can kill someone very fast without giving an opportunity to the other team to kill them. This is why Ranged players shouldn’t benefit from Mortal Empowerment or atleast should only benefit half as much.
I understand it adds a lot of extra damage. All I’m saying is that even without it, it’s still overtuned by quite a bit. And honestly I don’t think people realize how Bow feels pretty much exactly the same on the PTR as it feels on live.
Very soon after the patch we’re going to be back at square one complaining about BowPR and Dex being extremely obnoxious for another 3 months.
Yeah this is the problem. With or without mortal empowerment their ranged damage considering hitbox/hitscan/firerate is too high. They should have good modifiers for executing low health targets, or apply cc to low health targets. THEY SHOULD NOT BE ABLE TO 100 - 0 LIKE THEY DO RIGHT NOW.
The bow had 3 passives nerfed (4 if you consider the fortify changes which will make the 10% fortify while ADSed into an effective 1.7% fortify factoring invig punishment and light armor), pen shot nerfed, evade shot nerfed, and rapid shot nerfed while the rapier/hatchet (two weapons commonly paired with bow) and mortal empowerment ALSO received nerfs. Even beyond that, the way crits worked has been changed, which specifically affects the bow more than any other weapon in the game.
You said: " With or without ME. It’s inherently unbalanced against any other weapon in the game," and yet the only place bow seems to really thrive in is OPR. In wars, you will see a maximum of 2-4 bows on each side. In arena, bow isn’t as effective as GS/SNS/spear and especially blunderbuss. So perhaps your grievances have less to do with the weapon and more to do with the game mode of OPR, which is the only content in the game (PvP or PvE) where ranged players are actively enabled lol.
Also at least bring forth some suggestions with examples on how to balance the weapon if you truly believe its overpowered IN COMPARISON to other weapons in the game.
With a mortal empowerment nerf and the minor damage nerfs the bow receives lets say roughly a 10-15% damage nerf. That on top of the recent attunement nerf.
The main issue with bow was not only the damage but also the survivability. With the removal of several staggers within the bow/rapier tree, that survivability has been severely hindered. Not to mention the extra hatchet death defy nerf. This means not every man and his dog can chuck on a bow/rapier bow/hatchet build and play it comfortably without to much risk.
I think it feels like it will be in a good spot post patch, but only time will tell.
Trust me from a 1500 hour plus bow player, there’s a big difference between live and PTR.
Just because 1 dex weapon has been nerfed into the ground doesn’t mean they all should be.
What do you expect though? You being up things like ‘reduced survivability’ for Bow not being overtuned when pretty much nothing changed in that regard except for the Rapid Shot Stagger lmao. In addition you don‘t factor in at all that Fortify is basically useless on the PTR, which completely evens out the very minor percentage changes that they nerfed.
I highly encourage you to actually put in the effort and spend some time on the PTR to craft BiS weapons and gear with a mate and crunch some numbers. Bow is absolutely ridiculous in terms of damage output and you want to tell me it‘s going to be in ‘in a good spot’. Trust me, it‘s not.
Lol bow players call 5% reductions in damage a major nerf… did you even read the rest of the patch notes? The fortify changes by themselves will overturn that “nerf”. Read great axe notes… then you will feel better about bow “nerf”
I had the funniest opr yesterday where I was back capping and I killed 2 bow/GS, then they came back one at a time and ANOTHER, third bow/GS showed up, killed all three of them and then a fourth bow/(rapier I think) showed up. I kited them and died when a 5th bow joined them. LOL.