Firstly, I'm posting this in General Discussion because I believe that it will attract more eyes and this discussion needs to be presented (or continued) in a manner that will expose itself to as much of the playerbase as possible.
I decided to test some of the capabilities of ranged builds that are attainable in cRPG. Below is the data that I collected on a character that had 59 hit points (24 strength and no Iron Flesh).
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I only tested two builds: one for crossbow, one for archery. The crossbow build was designed to meet the basic requirements of using an arbalest (16 strength) whilst the archery build focused on a strength based yew longbowman (30 strength and 12 athletics).
Important info regarding builds:
Arbalest: Yew Longbow Archer:
18 strength 30 strength
184 wpf 121 wpf
*Note that all shots were taken from the same distance as represented by the "Reticle for Arbalest" screenshot.
On the testing parameters:
Each shot was fired at a non-moving (no speed bonus) target that wore armors at varying intervals. The armor scales as follows: 0, 30, 50, 70. These intervals were chosen to represent base damage, light armor, medium armor, and heavy armor. No ranged weapon tested utilized heirloom points. The archer utilized bodkin arrows and the arbalest used steel bolts.
Now, for damage reports:
Archer:
Arbalest:
Estimated Hit point calculations:
Each segment on the health bar is ~6 hit points.
This leaves us with an estimated hit point damage of:
Archer Naked: 57+
Archer 30 Armor: ~34
Archer 50 Armor: ~24
Archer 70 Armor: ~19
Arbalest Naked: Death
Arbalest 30 Armor: ~54
Arbalest 50 Armor: ~42
Arbalest 70 Armor: ~34
Arbalest: 8 bolts per minute on 184 wpf
Archer: 17 arrows per minute on 121 wpf (yew longbow)
Final note: The arbalest does not have any power draw requirements, meaning anyone who has 16+ strength can use it. Additionally, you do not need to bring bolts into battle because it comes preloaded on spawn.