I've talked to the balancers about xbows and they told me its made to be harder for players than regular ranged classes, because the balancers for xbows base it off their 8 years of skill instead of the skill of the average player who wants to go xbow but they are going to be absolute trash because they dont have the same experience as them lol. https://gyazo.com/d13d7e35628e565b5ecad08466a861d5 https://gyazo.com/883c8748ce5ddc26e7ee64a6ab8578c6 https://gyazo.com/57f0ec097927c564f1bd66f306aab706 xbows need a buff but they wont get one because people cry that Dave, Davos and Elderly Woman/Desire are good with them no matter what because of the 8 years of experience with them so they will always be good, but xbows have been literally destroyed and people who want to go xbow cant even come close to the same kdr as archer/thrower metas. If they nerf ranged or they dont it wont really matter unless they extremely nerf it, players like Luker, Furry, Tomba, Frumpty, Hancock just to name a few of the NA Archers will always be great at it no matter what from the experience they have playing archer and it will still be "too OP" to some people and they will continue to cry about nerfing ranged.
Lol, I've talked to her about this as well. I've never seen anyone besides her, me, Dave and I think Rider go better than 1:1 KD (2:1 I think I havent seen any besides us 4) with xbows this strat on NA. Highly possible I've missed some, but I've seen a lot of people try it out and then instantly respec for melee or archery. Always laugh my ass off when I do sub 10 damage with a +3 heavy and +3 steel bolts in a strat battle to the torso/neck areas. Can't even 1hko with a headshot either. I finally just swapped my strat hero back to my melee character, not worth it lol.
Funny shit is, people still want to nerf it besides xbow players being non existant in strat battles and I've seen very few in NA1 as well. You're just worse than Archers in any way besides per shot damage (archers have better rate of fire, more ammo, better access to side arms (especially if you want to use an arb, which is the only true way to do good with xbow), with better rate of fire they also have better damage per second as well) and throwers can practically make you worthless cuz you cant retalitate if they decide to stand 5ft away from you and just chuck shit in your general direction unless you charge them.
Furthermore, the WPF reqs also pigeonhole you into being a very high agi build. I run 15-27 and I'd have more AGI if I could (only lvl 32 on my xbow). Used to be able to run 21/18 with decent melee stats and wouldn't be forced to run away whenever I get someone rushing me. Now I really have no choice if I don't want to be instantly one shot by any melee build.
IDK here's some late night ramblings on xbow.