Horse Crossbowman - HA with xbow - help!

[Dravic]

Hi!

I would like to make a horse xbowman char. I need to ask few things:

what are cons and pros?
will I be accurate on horseback with 5 HA skill?
will I kill someone with light xbow?
how fast will I reload light xbow with 190 wpf/180wpf (second option with some wpf in polearms, for sake of couching)

And generally: will I be able to gain "frags"?

Will this build do the trick?

Level 30 (4 420 577 xp)

Strength: 7
Agility: 30
Hit points: 42
Unused skill points: 2
Converted: 4
Ironflesh: 0
Power Strike: 0
Shield: 0
Athletics: 0
Riding: 10
Horse Archery: 5
Power Draw: 0
Power Throw: 0
Weapon Master: 10
One Handed: 1
Two Handed: 1
Polearm: 104
Archery: 1
Crossbow: 175
Throwing: 1

+ 2 unused skill points (IF probably, not sure)

Hope to hear answers soon,
Dravic

[LordRichrich]

I played this class. Very fun
You will be able to kill ppl, but in several shots. Brilliant for pissing off enemy cavalry!
I reccomend those 2 spare points into power strike, just in case
You'll want to heirloom your xbow asap, at least once. If you really want, I suggest retiring as many times as it takes to get the best crossbow and best bolts
Best of luck to you

[Dravic]

Hmm... the point is in armour. My clan armor is: pilgrim suit, then lamellar suit, then heraldic. Unfortunately, 7 str lets me use only the worst one: pilgrim. Any tips? I may convert points from riding 10 to riding 6 and then put them into str, so i will wear lamellar suit, but the whole point of 10 riding is being faster on rouncey then enemy on courser + i dont want to fight in melee, of course!

[bruce]

what are cons and pros?

Pros: you're on horse, and ranged. Also crossbow has more attractive firing arcs (imo) then horse archery, since you can fire to the right as well (not as much as to the left), although you can't fire to the back & left like with a bow. Basically you zoom in, fire a shot, zoom out - think lancer, only you don't do as much damage and miss often, but you also engage from further out.

will I be accurate on horseback with 5 HA skill?

Fairly accurate. I'd call 4 HA to be quite accurate with it actually.

will I kill someone with light xbow?

If you heirloom it a few times, yes probably. You can't onehit anyone without a headshot, and these days the light crossbow damage is really meh. Consider it went from 64 prepatch to 53 postpatch, and it wasn't a high damage weapon before the patch either. Of course you can still wound people and take them down if they're wounded. Don't toy with lancers however, since a body shot even point blank + charging won't kill one anymore, and they will kill you outright.

If you want to get kills, I suggest being more or less a hybrid - some powerstrike for slashing (or lancing), once the battle is in the "mopping up" stage, and the crossbow while it's still too risky to engage in melee. I'd say it's the most effective way to use a horse crossbow... before the patch when I had one (for three generations, had a masterwork light crossbow back then), I found it to be the most effective fighting style, use the crossbow until it's safe to melee. I think I had about 50% kills with the crossbow, 40% with a sword and 10% with the horse. Had a quite decent K/D.

how fast will I reload light xbow with 190 wpf/180wpf (second option with some wpf in polearms, for sake of couching)

Quite fast - maybe 2.5-3 seconds. But: don't stick around to reload it. Zoom in, fire, zoom out, reload when it's clear (or switch to melee and slash someone then reload when it's opportune to do so). Get some wpf in a melee weapon, 150 crossbow wpf is enough.

And generally: will I be able to gain "frags"?

Yes. But you might need to slash/stab as well to get a good number, crossbow alone won't do wonders. If you take risks, you get more kills.


Also:
don't do pure crossbow. Get 12-15 str, to be able to kill people with a sword/spear/lance from horseback, too. 7 str won't cut it and you will be really gimped.

[Nemeth]

One of the cons, if you happen to encounter any decent/good enemy HA with a bow (for example Temudjin(?), sorry if I misspelled your name), you're screwed as your reload is gonna be interrupted by their hits.

5 Ha is good enough, I have 3 and doing ok (well, I still suck, but the reticule is fine), reload speed is fine but don't expect to kill anyone in one hit. Light xbow is pretty meh by itself, and as far as I know, while on horse you're getting dmg penalty (not sure about that though, I think I've read it in some HA thread some time ago). You are there mainly to destroy enemy cav, annoy 2h and force shielders to turn around making them vulnerable from another directions.

[Cheesecake]

well personally i dont think you need that much riding i have a char with 8 riding and she flies on a courser

also you can carry more than one xbow so you always have a double shot handy for those pesky horse archers and once you down them ride away and look for easier prey

[Nemeth]

You won't kill anything with two shots, not even a squishy HA. Also, double xbow means only one pack of bolts, which might not be enough. Lastly light xbow costs 5k, double means 10k, not really upkeep friendly when on a decent horse (and you wanna have a decent horse, otherwise cavalry will just hunt you down eventually).

[bruce]

From my prepatch experiences, your best bet is to use the crossbow as a harrasment tool and then using melee to farm kills once the enemy is sufficiently disorganized. Of course prepatch it was nicer, since while you did have (significantly) worse accuracy you could "lance" with lancers where my masterwork light crossbow would result in a one-hit kill at essentially lance ranges. Of course it was a sport where you generally died if you missed the shot, but eh, fun times.

And it was nice for hit->trample stunned and greviously wounded opponent type maneuvers.

But overall for infantry killing, a good melee weapon is nice to have, for those "oh look a tunnelvisioning archer in front of me" moments, which you can't kill with one shot of a light crossbow even if you do hit.

With a crossbow, you don't play the same way as a HA. Take advantage you can basically fire in the front half, imagine having a extended throwable lance which you need to reload for 3s and which does significantly less damage and you get the picture. Also, you can hold the shot... which was nice (OP) when horses did serious trample damage and you faced a shielder, since you could just shoot him if he opens up, or trample if he doesn't.

[Rumaahinen]

I have horse crossbow/spearman hybrid. With HA 4 and 138 crossbow skill it feels quite accurate. Crossbow has low damage, but compared to normal crossbowman who can perhaps shoot 3-5 sure hit bolts in battle you can shoot 15+ bolts that hit for sure because you are shooting from extremely close ranges.

I usually get 5/4 kill death ratio in battles but I think it will go up because my build is only lvl 26 and I am just beginning to learn how to play this build.

Avoid enemy archers that are aware of you, don't go too close to mob of cavalry and run from skilled HAs and you are fine. My tactic is to shoot with crossbow and when I see perfect target (archer with tunnel vision, infantry running blindly) I backstab them. I recommend that you bring some lance in battlefield, because it is waste when you cannot oneshot perfect target.

And it sure is nice to charge enemy pikeman and shoot him in last second so he flinches and after that you trample him.

And for overall bonus people will hate you and try to kickvote you every time you are last person alive, drain power from their hate and grow stronger.

[Dravic]

people will hate you and try to kickvote you every time you are last person alive, drain power from their hate and grow stronger.

I will! 20 lvl atm, great fun playing around!