This suggestion was pre recent patch, may no longer be neededJust a suggestion to change the values for the looms of range weapons excluding throwing. At the moment there is a pretty big difference between archers + crossbowers with loomed items (bolts/arrows and main range weapon) and those without those looms; much larger than the difference between meleers for example, as crossbowers and archers can loom their weapon effectively 6 times and the increase in stats of the weapons by heirlooms seems to be too great.
For example:
Rus bow gets the following increases in stats from looming:
|Damage|M speed|Accuracy| (put in the new values)
|
29 28 |
37 39 |
101 100 |
|
30 29 |
38 40 |
101 100 |
|
31 30 |
39 41 |
102 101 |
|
32 31 |
40 42 |
103 102 |
(as you can see the increase in stats is pretty similar to before, no idea if the difference is still large between loomed and non loomed in terms of damage or ease of hitting target)
and if my interpretation of game mechanics is correct the speed increase gives a 16% increase alone (40^1.9/37^1.9), not counting the damage increase (which is a 10% increase).
Again if my interpretation is correct then the rough increase in damage from fully looming your bow is 28% (32*1.16/29).
lso the accuracy increase though it appears to be small, seems to have a reasonable affect on reticule size.The speed increase also allows targets to be hit more easily, as it gives the target less time to move out the way and gives the arrow a straighter trajectory. The combination of these increases I feel is too much and negates player skill more than it should, giving players with loomed bows too much of an advantage over players with non loomed ones.
Because I am a maths freak I will have to comment on your values for the Rus bow. The missile speed bonus does not have any effect on the bow's damage, the damage you see is the "raw damage" at point blank range (this goes into a damage equation), what the missile speed does do however is make it easier to hit. However a buff in speed of arrows is not always good, it means that at range the arrow damage will decay faster. Air resistance follows the equation F=-(alpha)v^2, which means the higher the starting velocity the higher rate of decay. Also for faster missiles the speed the person is running towards you at matters less because less is weighted on the actual arrow speed.
Higher damage on range weapons make them less accurate, depending on the accuracy part. If so, removing the accuracy bonus would mean that bows would get less accurate for each tier of heirloom. Accuracy increase is just to balance out decreased accuracy of increased damage, iirc, which then means that only damage bonus and missile speed counts when heirlooming.
Normal arrows
|Damage|
| 2 |
| 2 |
| 3 |
| 4 |
Chosen the rus bow and normal arrows as that seems to be what the majority use now, as you can see the is an increase in damage of 2 or 100%, however as I don't know quite how the arrow damage is implemented I don't think either of those values reflects how much the damage is really increased by per shot, other than that there is an increase.
I haven't done any tests ingame so this may all be utter bs (may get round to doing it, but if anyone else has or wants to, please post info
).
I have however had a lot of experience being hit by arrows and I generally find loomed archers consistantly hit 50% with body shots on my character with 59 health and 38 body armour, whereas a bog standard archer will do more in the region of 20% per arrow despite the players having 6 pd.
I realise that I have barely mentioned xbowers (will get round to it) and have made an assumption that they too have a similar problem as both the weapon and ammo can be heirloomed, not much ingame knowledge on them as I don't tend to see many dedicated xbows with fully loomed range equiptment anymore.
What I am suggesting is a slight reduction in the boosts heirlooms give, much like the melee weapons got awhile ago:
*New* Rus bow
|Damage|M speed|Accuracy|
| 29 | 37 | 101 |
| 30 | 37 | 102 |
| 30 | 38 | 102 |
| 31 | 39 | 103 |
Something like this would be better. There is still a good insentive to retire to loom your bow, but the difference between new archers and multi gen ones won't be so drastic.
(until I know how arrow damage or bolt damage is implemented I'll refrain from posting revised heirloom increases as it probably won't help
)
These are some other suggestions
Though honestly if it were up to me, arrow heirlooms would never increase damage, and just quiver size, so that loomed archery is not more damaging then melee looms. Iwould keep the bows the same though.
The solution is simple; buff nonloomed ranged and nerf the effectiveness of their looms.
If you have better information on this topic/ have a better/different suggestion or see any errors, please feel free to post and correct me
EDIT: added some useful quotes, changed some incorrect information and modified the heirloom values slightly.