I like the fact that the devs balanced the heirlooming a bit concerning horses and shields, but the heirloomed stats on crossbows + bolts are insane.
Here the stats of arbalest and steel bolts normal/MW.
Arbalest
missile speed: 60
weight: 3.8
accuracy: 96
difficulty: 15
speed rating: 18
missile speed: 60
max ammo: 1
thrust damage: 79 pierce
missile speed: 64 (+4)
weight: 3.8
accuracy: 99 (+3)
difficulty: 15
speed rating: 21 (+3)
missile speed: 64 (+4)
max ammo: 1
thrust damage: 87 pierce (+8?!?)
Steel Bolts
weapon length: 63
weight: 2.3
weapon length: 63
max ammo: 12
thrust damage: 8 pierce
slots: 1
weapon length: 63
weight: 2.3
weapon length: 63
max ammo: 13 (+1)
thrust damage: 13 pierce (+5)
slots: 1
So in the end you get a massive +13 damage and substantial increases in all the other stats as well, these increases are the same for every crossbow.
Is it just me or is this way over the top?
With all respect i would like to remind you to do math... Crossbows dont get bonus to damage or any stats (not counting reloadspeed and accuracy) from anything in game. PowerDraw archerbuild can get 100% damagebonus, meaning that if that one would get half bonus in his/her heirloom statraises, it still ends up being same ammount of added damage.
Sure boost is quite huge, but so is crossbows crappy without heirlooming at moment. Bolt speed is pretty much joke as atleast with lighter crossbows it feels more like placing bolt to hang mid air and hoping that someone runs into it.
What i personally would like to see would be slight reduction in crossbow base damage and making bolt speed and damage raise with wpf. so that builds really going for crossbow by putting wpf to it would have bolts flying with speed that would allow them to hit anything without needing to hope that they get lucky and someone dodges by change to their bolt hanging and slowly gliding throught air.
And before anyone goes saying "but thats not realistic, crossbow launches bolt at same speed as long as it is same crossbow lauching it, no matter who shoots it"... Newsflash: _SO DO BOWS IN REAL LIFE TOO_
no matter how much better someone is at aiming with bow, with same bow & arrow, they just cant make it fly faster. But still bows seem to get damage and projectile speed boost with wpf.
Would also solve whine about crossbows not needing any skillpoints, after that they would end up needing weaponmaster for user to get wpf points to get crossbows wpf up for them to get better.
wpf 1 crossbows could have lower damage and maybe even slightly lower projectilespeed to discourage "but people can use them as sidearms" whine and usage.
bottom point, ones putting wpf points in them would end up getting proper weapons with fast enough projectiles to even sometimes hit targets that are aware of them (unlike currently) and sidearmwhiners could be happy to know that they took less damage becouse user had no extra points of wpf in crossbows.
For some reference, when used in ranged duel, currently mastercraft lightcrossbow with 170 wpf can be used to duel slow archer, if timing of user is near perfect and acher has bad aim, as minimum time user needs to be stationary when reloading is just less that time archer needs to end shootinganimation and getting bow back up for next arrow. Wpf 170 needs some serious wm and dedication to crossbows with current system, also crossbows have str as req, so wpf boosted system would not cause them to be one attribute wonders. In addition things already cost more that bows (not that there is nothing wrong with that).
Crossbows currently are allright in other areas but projectile speed, atleast with lighter crossbows slow projectilespeed requires targets to be completely stationary (and not know your aiming at them) or shootingrange to be meleerange at maximum.
With heavier crossbows (arbalest and heavy crossbow) well i think kind of idea is that they can again sometimes oneshot someone with that heirloom progression, what other boost they could get or what else boost would have any idea in it. Becouse there isnt any multipliers applied to damage, 8 points ends up being something around 10% boost to damage max anyways, for arbalest that will cost much, take 2 slots (meaning only 1h melee or cheapest staff if one wants to shoot more that once with it), reload slowly (meaning in most events one wont end up shooting too many bolts with it), thanks to how movement is handled have extremely hard time hitting anything is targets are even half aware of shooter aiming at them (and thanks to long reloadtime dodging isnt nessessary for most of time, as crossbower will end up spending most of time reloading instead of aiming in normal conditions.) and as all projectileweapons (atleast on my computer) suffers from high rate of bolts just vanishing on impact with target player thanks to lag (sure all other projectileweapons have this atlast on me, but with bow thanks to high arrowstacks and high firerate its wont matter all that much).
Sure current meleeweapon heirloom bonuses are quite small and atleast comparing just purely numbers those are quite big looking, but cant say my masterwork lightcrossbow would be overpowered, atleast without heirlooms even 7 bolts wont bring blackarmor user down (thats highest i have been able to deliver to someone using black armor, in ultimate feat of accuracy and blackarmoruser just noticing "hey i simply dont need to dodge"), most leatherarmored targets are 2-4 hit frags and naked targets 2 hit kills (sure complete peasants die to 1 hit, but hey they get fragged even by other lvl1 peasant by 1 hit of peasantknife, same knife that will 100% bounce of anyone armored with anything costing 20gold or more for upkeep for couple more levels)
Edit: oh yeah, one of reasons i dont use heavier crossbows much anymore on my crossbow chars is that i got kind of fed up by nonheirloomed arbalest not being able to onehit kill even naked people running around exept quite rarely.
