Another Longbow thread.

[Rumblood]

The longbow is supposed to have better missile speed, accuracy and damage than the other bows.

How about.....no it isn't. Which makes the rest of your comment worthless.

[Cup1d]

The longbow is supposed to have better missile speed, accuracy and damage than the other bows. So the other bows should be reduced in damage and missile speed, which will make the longbow the weapon it truly is. Perhaps also add some more missile speed to the longbow.

what?

Do you remember this old joke - I can make my work quickly, cheap ang fine. But you can choose only two option.

[Aleta]

It is realistic that a bow that is very heavy to draw (and therefore slower to draw), also will have arrows flying faster and with more force than smaller bows. Accuracy on bows often means keeping accuracy also on longer ranges. So it's natural, balanced and realistic that the longbow is more accurate, more damaging and has more missile speed than the other bows. What it pays for this is that it's slow to draw. (aka low speed rating) (I think perhaps you thought of missile speed and speed rating as the same when reading my post )

[Rumblood]

It is realistic that a bow that is very heavy to draw (and therefore slower to draw),

And therefore harder to draw, which means you are using more white muscle instead of red muscle, which fatigues faster, which means it can't maintain tension as well for as long as red muscle, which means you are less accurate as your muscles achieve fatigue much faster with a bow with a stronger pull.

[Adalwulf]

The longbow was the machine gun of the Middle Ages: accurate, deadly, possessed of a long range and rapid rate of fire, the flight of its missiles was likened to a storm.

What I mean is drawing the longbow was fast a medieval longbowmen would carry approximately 60-72 arrows to battle,  But because of the weight of the bow and the strain on the muscles and back they would not shoot more then 6-10 arrows per minute. Also not to waste ammunition of course.

With that said we do need a balance in between the real speed of drawing a longbow and the strain it took to use one over time......and the only way of fixing this is the dreaded stamina bar....which I really want for crpg but will never happen.

[Tennenoth]

I remember reading a quote which goes something along the lines of "... They knew they were longbowmen by their twisted spines" - Skeletons recovered from HMS Victory (?) after it was bought back to surface.

There is already a nice balance between the fact that you could in effect loose a lot of arrows in a short space of time but you really wouldn't want to do it for very long because of the high strain it would put on you, hence the twisted spines (not surprising really).

By game balance, the longbow doesn't really have a niche, nor does it really scream to the best bow in the game. The warbow pretty solidly takes that plinth if I am honest with my outlook. All of the bows are pretty evenly spaced until it hits the longbow, I understand that the item balancers have their reasons for this although I would like to see a slight increase in the missile speed at the very least so that it has a bit more of an advantage and a desirable quality than higher damage and drastically reduced draw speed.

The longbows biggest flaw is certainly the fact that the draw time takes so long that you actually miss the "sweet spot" with your accuracy. By the time the game actually allows you to loose the arrow, your reticle has already bounced in and out, therefore making your shot more inaccurate. It's a pain in the arse and as far as I know, it's due to the low draw speed however as it was unusable many a patch ago when I originally petitions for a speed increase, this was much, much worse.
As far as I understand, it stems from the animations that we use, they are slower than the native ones given the same point ratings so 50 speed is the minimum (I found) to make the longbow at least, for the most part, usable.

The warbow, being 8 faster means that it safely misses this problem and allows you to hold your reticle for longer, because you have finished the animation before you're allowed to shoot.

I would say to bring the draw speed in line with the other bows but once again this would, in opinion, change the balance of bows again since the longbow, really, from what I see, is supposed to be a higher damage weapon at the cost of the speed.

The largest jump between an increase in damage and speed is between the tatar bow and the horn bow. You gain 2 damage (same as all other bows) at a penalty of 5 speed (as opposed to 3 in the rest)*** Maybe increasing the speed by 2 points would be a nice compromise for the longbow to (hopefully, not tested) kill off the unwanted "lag" between animation finish and reticle degredation.

This isn't really a massive compromise and won't be particularly noticable for the player base other than those who explicitly use the longbow and although it doesn't really address the issue that some people have that "it doesn't fit a niche anymore", it'll make it more viable by dealing with, what I think, is it's biggest bugbear.
Naturally, these are my opinions and they are biased, but I feel it's a reasonable compromise between actually buffing the bow to a state of supremecy and keeping it balanced.

*** Please note, I don't qualify the Yumi bow as a viable weapon and don't include it due to my biased opinion. That really does fit a niche market that doesn't seem to exist from what I have seen! :S

Also, I have nothing to with item balancing and I have little insight other than what everyone else sees, I just thought that I would share my opinion about it since I use the longbow no matter what.

[Smoothrich]

just nerf other bows and longbow will be fine..

do this, any other decision here is retarded

especially nerf the ever living shit out of the rus bow, that weapon makes me sick

[Jarlek]

-snip-

Actually there IS a niche for the longbow, but there just aren't many in that niche. I found the Longbow to be the perfect bow for my armoured 1h/archer hybrid, with 6PD 130wpf. All the bows were usable and up to par against the "peasant" bowmen (unarmoured scum!), but the Longbow was just PERFECT with that build. You wouldn't shoot faster than the others anyway, but with the longbow that would never happen. The increased missile speed actually meant I could do accurate long-range shooting; something I thought my build wasn't capable of when I used the Rus Bow. The damage was also a nice bonus, as I didn't have as much PD as most other archers. The Longbow and the Heavy Archer fit together like hands and gloves! Too bad everyone is so stuck in the "noooo, I can't have penalties with my archer! Any penalty makes me übernerfed QQ!" mindset. The penalty isn't THAT big that it matters :/

[Adalwulf]

Actually there IS a niche for the longbow, but there just aren't many in that niche. I found the Longbow to be the perfect bow for my armoured 1h/archer hybrid, with 6PD 130wpf. All the bows were usable and up to par against the "peasant" bowmen (unarmoured scum!), but the Longbow was just PERFECT with that build. You wouldn't shoot faster than the others anyway, but with the longbow that would never happen. The increased missile speed actually meant I could do accurate long-range shooting; something I thought my build wasn't capable of when I used the Rus Bow. The damage was also a nice bonus, as I didn't have as much PD as most other archers. The Longbow and the Heavy Archer fit together like hands and gloves! Too bad everyone is so stuck in the "noooo, I can't have penalties with my archer! Any penalty makes me übernerfed QQ!" mindset. The penalty isn't THAT big that it matters :/

you are wrong. Most archers only have 6 PD because getting more is useless if you want to have accuracy and longbow with 130 wpf is horrible. I'd beat you any day with my weak as peasant with 6 PD and horn bow. you wouldn't even draw your bow before you'd have to dodge  and by then your accuracy would be in shambles.

Longbow needs faster missile speed if it doesn't get a better draw speed and this I believe most that are archers would agree with.

[Jarlek]

you are wrong. Most archers only have 6 PD because getting more is useless if you want to have accuracy and longbow with 130 wpf is horrible. I'd beat you any day with my weak as peasant with 6 PD and horn bow. you wouldn't even draw your bow before you'd have to dodge  and by then your accuracy would be in shambles.

Longbow needs faster missile speed if it doesn't get a better draw speed and this I believe most that are archers would agree with.

Yes, I am obviously wrong. That's why I topped the scoreboards all the time that gen This was even during the nerf to archer body damage and before the separation of body and limb damage calculation patch. You know, when everyone whined about archer being UP.

Remember that you got to hit me 4-5 times against my own 2 on you. Barring that, I could always just charge you with my weapon and beat you to shambles. And saying I wouldn't draw my bow. Lol, so fail. The first thing I learned was to start drawing while the other archer was halfway, dodge his arrow while I was still notching mine, and then stand still, getting full accuracy as he still haven't gotten his second arrow out. Yeah, you shoot faster than me, but the difference isn't that great. But hey, I like how you completely discredit my build without ever trying it out or knowing anything about it. Just stay with your awesome archer!

That being said, balancing this on a duel is fucking retarded. I never claimed to be able to outshoot anyone (I actually said I didn't), but in a battle scenario I would most of the time come out on top. If I'm shooting at you archer, you really can't just ignore me, so I'll stop you from shooting my melee guys, usually ending in a drawn out archer duel, helping my team out like that. Whatever sides melee wins, usually dictates which teams ends up winning, but I have a much higher chance of success against the damaged remains of the melee fight who comes after me, while all you can do is kite. Oh, what's that? An archer who actually stands and fight and does it properly? Who could have guessed... I can also help out the melee guys just as well with my bow as you can, usually better since I'm not penalized by getting too close to the enemy, making the stun shots before my ally cleave them, so much easier to do. Anyone charging me would be fighting a guy with full melee capabilities and a decent weapon. Can a normal archer do that? No, running is your best option for that. Which you'd do if my melee guys won and which would lead you to get an arrow in the back from me.

But what is the point with this anyway? What I posted was a response to Tenny about the Longbow actually having a niche. Are you disputing this? Are you saying there are other bows that are better for the armoured archer/1h hybrid? Please, feel free to post and explain!

[_Tak_]

Yes the Rus bow needs a nerf its too fast and OP. Damage should be reduce 2 or it's speed should be reduce as well to match the long bow

[[ptx]]

I remembered something, today - it was promised, that with WSE, longbow would get the old archery animation back...