I'm unhappy with the changes.
Situation before the patch:Hunting Crossbow and
Light Crossbow were underused niche weapons for hit and run, HX, or hybrids. Their damage potential was quite low because of the low missile speed and accuracy: You could only reliably hit the enemy's body from point-blank range; headshots over medium distances were really difficult. Unless headshots, these weapons barely made any kills at all.
Crossbow: More inaccurate than Heavy Crossbow, thus borderline impossible to score headshots over longer distances. The additional damage compared to Hunting Crossbow and Light Crossbow does somewhat compensate for that, but given people's levels, the popularity of iron flesh and heavy armor, this weapon didn't do too much. The only reason you'd use it is because you want to skill only 12 STR and save some skill points, perhaps for a shield, higher IF or Athl. Qualifies as a niche weapon, too.
Heavy Crossbow and
Arbalest: good all-round choices; direct trade-off between STR requirement, effective range, reload delay and damage potential (all are lower for Heavy Crossbow and higher for Arbalest).
Situation after the patch:The new niche weapons are Heavy Crossbow and Arbalest. Their additional damage barely matters because all crossbows now have pinpoint accuracy if you have enough wpf. The missile speed of all crossbows was increased to. So good players will score more headshots, and due to headshot damage multipliers, it does not really matter if the headshot was made with a Hunting Crossbow or an Arbalest. Due to the crazily high STR requirement for Heavy Crossbow and Arbalest and the desperate need for AGI-centric builds in crossbow gameplay will make it the rational choice to abstain from using Heavy Crossbow and Arbalests.
The market already reflects this change, people are giving up their Heavy Crossbows and Arbalests for looms and gold or directly for one of the other crossbows.
Summary:While it's good that Hunting Crossbow, Light Crossbow and Crossbow are no longer underused niche weapons, nothing has been gained because Heavy Crossbow and Arbalest have become the new niche weapons.
For melee players, this patch means they will get killed less by body shots and more by headshots. The damage from body shots is lower now, but in turn, it is also easier to hit the head thanks to higher accuracy and missile speed. From a sophisticated crossbow balance, I would expect different roles for different weapons, and an attempt to emphasize these roles, not an homogenization with some of them rendered useless.
What should be improved:Offer variety:
- Make one crossbow a fast reloader and reliable hitter with low damage, so that headshots are the only way to get kills with it, and body shots are really useless (hit-and-run ambush role).
- Make one crossbow a fast reloader with high damage, but unreliable aim (hit-and-run shotgun role).
- Make one crossbow a slow reloader and reliable hitter with medium damage, which is the choice of players who want to go for long-distance headshots while stationary (anti-archer sniper role).
- Make one crossbow a slow reloader with mediocre accuracy/projectile speed and high damage (classic anti-infantry sniper role, cf. arbalest).
- Leave the last one for HX.
The rest comes down to introducing reasonable STR requirements. STR requirements are your leverage for making crossbow builds strong or weak. I can propose stats if people agree with my evaluation.
Poll