i just wanted to stop by and say that you are not the only person who understands how powerful this bow is. it’s hard to defend something you know how to use well vs others who don’t. It’s very much like the many arguments that ‘elf is the weakest char’, it’s highly subjective to player skill.
i swear by this bow, on all difficulty levels, but i do agree, the ammo is so low that only the waystalker can properly benefit from it well enough through her ammo management skills.
the heavy attack DOES do more damage and also staggers targets. you don’t need a citation from the developers for this, try it out in actual combat. shoot light attacks at a horde vs heavy attacks. shoot light attacks at a boss vs heavy attacks. shoot at elites. whatever it takes for you to understand that heavy attacking with the bow vs light attacking with it has very different usages and scenarios.
are you serious? you posted a video of a bow being shot at the ground? this is not evidence of ANYTHING. goodness. at least link a video of hagbane being used against hordes or a patrol of stormvermin using light/heavy attacks to compare the differences.
It’s clear to me and Oenkrad that you don’t know how to use the bow, yet are trashing it.
Hagbane bow advantages:
- decimating high density groups of enemies.
- Fire and forget on specials. (Legend difficulty: 3 heavy shots on leech, 2 on unshielded SV, 2 on packmaster, 3 on gasrat, 2 on firerat/ratling, 2 on berserkers etc)
- much faster draw than the longbow.
- no zoom on bow. (more peripheral vision when heavy drawing unlike longbow)
- staggering of large groups on heavy draw. (very good CC)
- party getting overwhelmed everywhere? Spam your whole ammo pile to save the team.
- rasknitt casting will get interrupted by the poison dot.
- wrecks patrols. Kills off regular SV and troops, leaving only shield SV and chaos warriors.
- A boss-killer weapon. Try drinking a str pot and heavy attacking any boss and watch them melt. Even without a str pot, each heavy arrow you land stacks the poison damage on it. The DOT will tear the bosses down at a very constant rate provided you can keep landing shots.
Disadvantages:
- Friendly fire. You have to learn to aim it such that the aoe stagger/damage hits clumps of enemies but not your friends.
- Shielded units: You have to spam arrows on them to break the block, before your arrows can penetrate their worn armor and do damage. Otherwise hit them from the back or sides while they are distracted.
- Low ammo capacity. For the power of this bow, it’s understandable that they reduced the ammo count for it. Use waystalker class to maintain ammo.
people are probably gonna ignore what i wrote or find ways to counter my arguments, but based on my personal playstyle, it’s the best bow for me.
Longbows are too precise and slow, good for sniping and skewering but bad at everything else.
Swiftbows lack punch and damage, they don’t stagger, and they don’t do aoe damage.
Crossbows have an extreme reloading time, although burst damage is fantastic. also class locked.
The hagbane to me is an excellent all rounder. As with most arguments, people don’t know how to use it well, but instead of learning how to use it, pass it off as useless. Well, i guess that’s good, maybe devs will buff it and it’ll be even more powerful in my hands.