Why do you do this with so many things that has overperformance, Fatshark? You completely gut what something is and make it so watered down that it has no meaningful substance to it. You didn’t tune it a little at a time. You took a sledgehammer to it.
Before the nerf, the bow did too much damage too quickly, but the bow still had identity. When you look at the Moonfire bow now, what is its identity?
Its identity should be a specialty energy based weapon with high damage, but with limiting factors. It’s the only thing that makes sense for it, given Kerillian’s current weapons. Rather than lowering the energy regeneration or just changing how it uses the energy and maybe toning damage a bit, you:
Dramatically reduced damage output.
Removed the tiny AoE it had.
Adjusted the DoT output to a charge time, rather than keeping it simple with “charge and no charge”.
Nerfed the energy capacity(only 4 shots now).
For the AoE, who even complained about this or why would they? The AoE was microscopic. The only time it had noticeable strength is when enemies would waterfall or hyperdensity would take place; things that shouldn’t be happening to begin with. The AoE had a niche use.
To further emphasize on the energy and damage, Frostysir even did testing with the shots. The charging doesn’t even make a noticeable difference. There is also no indicator for the “4” tick charge of the bow.
The only thing you needed to do was alter the damage a bit and reduce the energy regeneration. Give people a reason to be more conservative with it. Having to fire a bunch of shots to kill or have it regenerate quickly doesn’t do that and just doesn’t make much sense. “Infinite ammo” isn’t really a big factor because of how well people can keep/gain ammo to begin between traits or other factors, before they reach the next ammo supply.
Time is one of the most valued resources in this game. Damage over time loses value the longer it takes to kill. This is because after a certain point, people will default to another tool to do the job faster and more efficiently. Why waste time with a bow that takes a bunch of shots and extra time to kill something, when I can fire a single arrow with another bow and get instantaneous results while also recovering my ammunition?
I think this summarizes the current state of Moonbow pretty well. Plus since you can only shoot a limited amount of arrows per second (before you run out of energy), it is very punishing in case you you miss. In other words: High-risk, low reward.
I honestly think this is also fundamental problem with this games ranged weaponry. Ammo rarely matters which in turn makes balancing infinite ammunition weapons like these nearly impossible without absolutely overturning them. Sure it is possible but it would require level of numbers tuning that won’t happen with a single patch or even two.
I do agree with the general sentiment tough. Moonfire was somewhat over nerfed and really stripped of its identity. Then again the weapon still works as a 2 shot kill everything for those who cannot headshot with longbow.
Its identity was a swiss army knife weapon that did everything without the need for paltry things like accuracy or talents. How the hell was that ever going to be balanced? Draw out the dot to an absurd degree? Nerf the energy regen to a full minute?
The reality of the situation is that Fatshark released something completely overtuned that had loads of upsides and zero real downsides. If they were going to do anything to actually take the weapon down an appreciable amount then it was going to have to be gutted because the very concept is completely anathema to balance.
And what exactly do you call it now? Just longbow that can’t even headshot most things when hitting fully charged shot? That’s like literally the most unsatisfying thing about it currently. Sure the previous variation was stupidly good but fatshark could have gone so many ways with the nerf instead of what we got now.
Nerf the AOE to the point where a blast only clears low tier infantry, lower energy regen a bit, make it deal little damage if bodyshotting armor. Reduce the damage so it doesnt oneshot maulers, at least not without stat investments.
There´s a lot of stuff that coulda been done rather than just dumpstering it, especially if removing a part of it (the AoE) was already decided.
Like you can just start by removing that stupid double dot interaction. If you pump an aoe shot it should do direct dmg + 1 instance of dot. This alone neuters it against most targets quite a bit. If it proves to still be too poweful in testing then nerf the dot numbers accordingly.
Instead we went full nuclear on the change before even trying something less drastic first.
It’s still essentially a longbow with infinite ammo that requires no talent investment. It maintains most of the same Cata special breakpoints as longbow outside of packmasters. That’s significantly better than many other weapons get. See: swift bow, both volley xbows, throwing axes, etc.
Oke to be clear and I even somewhat said it in my first post that I don’t think its a trash tier weapon but its now directly competing with longbow which is strictly put just a better weapon if you got even little bit of aim.
Why bother with aiming for those breakpoints on moonbow when I can just take longbow and get strictly superior ones?
This is really the crux of why I hate this nerf. If the weapon was instead turned say full aoe weapon or maybe had some new dot gimmick introduced then I would not care.
It was directly competing with longbow anyways, except that it also completely outclassed longbow and had a bunch of other benefits as well.
The way I see they had two options to get out of the hole they dug for themselves. They could either remove the extra crap and just make it a slightly special longbow. Or they could have completely gutted the special breakpoints and leaned into the AoE/dot or some other gimmick.
Either way people were going to be pissed to have their broke ass toy taken away.
Moonbow doesnt kill specials on bodyshots anymore, not without a ton of stats against that specific special and even then it might need fully charged shots of which you only got 4, 4 per 20 seconds.
On headshots? Longbow is just better by default on headshots as long as you got conservative on it with no other requirements. Doesnt take any stats or anything invested(beyond a trait) to make it work wonders.
Well if steam forums are any metric then it barely matters what changes, someone will get mad. I personally just want to see changes that at least have some thought put behind them. I definitely did not like the previous bow. I have said my piece about it multiple times but I will also not pat fatshark on the back on nerfs that really make no sense to me.
It is a low skill, low reward weapon which is completely fine. If the weapon where able to compete with the longbow in the headshot department, then people would still pick Moonfire Bow over Longbow. Because let’s be honest, no matter how often people try to hammer the point the recharge “for the case i have to solo 10 specials at once” has never been an issue in Cataclysm quickplay. Maybe in the Citadel of Eternity.
As long as a weapon has such a high bodyshot damage it’s headshot damage has to be lower by definition for it to be balanced. The weapon has its niche for the people who either can not or will not aim their headshots. That most people in higher difficulties don’t fit into that niche is not really an issue. As someone said, you can still pretty much double bodyshot most enemies on Cataclysm.
I agree that there have been more interesting suggestions for changing Moonfire Bow. But the weapon has its use and is balanced, certainly not overnerfed. Again, that people who can headshot do not fit into its niche is not an issue. There are enough players in the game who fit into that niche and will still gladly pick Moonfire Bow over the Longbow.
it just baffles me that the most obnoxious time in vermintide2 gets so many tears after its parting,
sure could they brewed up something more unqie with the moonbow, but im just glad i don’t have to block out elf classes so the experience for everyone else is “playable”.
In the current state MFB sits firmly as a crutch weapon. Powerful for those that don’t care for headshots or ammo management, but lacking for expert players. I prefer it over the previous delete anything at a glance, but it needs something extra now.
Yes why nerf overperforming weapon that is pretty much pay to win level of overpowered. Look at others infinite ammo weapons and suddenly outside of javelins they are quite low performing BECAUSE they are balanced for their infinite ammo. Moonbow is still too strong for what it gives
Without talent or career related bonuses, Longbow get 20 shots.
20 shots.
Some of you will remember the days when HM actually took Quiver of Plenty in desperate attempt to get that 8 additional arrows. Even then it was never enough, so you had to make every shots count. Only the best of the best elf mains could conserve their Longbow ammo on Cata Twitch even with QoP.
I don’t believe Longbow is an attractive option atm except for Waystalker because 20 shots are never enough on Cata, let alone Twitch, unless RV is in the team. I can’t agree with some people saying that practically every ranged weapons have infinite ammo, because realistically scoring headshots 100% isn’t persuasive, and there are moments when you unfortunately couldn’t find ammunition in time and run out of ammo. I’d have my doubts if one says that they’ve never been in the situation.
MB is competitive for being the most easy to use and conservative ranged option even after the nerf. It still kills all the specials on Cata with two short-charged shots, except for Gutter Runner which you can kill with a single short-charged shot with EP and 20% Scaven. Is really isn’t bad. The nerf surely hit hard but it couldn’t drag the MB down to Shiftbow level because it was just that overtuned pre-nerf. It is still viable and good at what it does.
1.6 days? They took it because the other 2 talents made absolutely no sense. Even currently birch really gives you nothing you don’t gain from passives already and you also have decent amount of health that 15% extra is really not needed most of the time. Quiver is the obvious choice that’s left and even still you don’t see everyone taking it.
I also hate how this turned into twitch/modded again. Those modes have pretty much double/triple the amount of potential specials so obviously you are going to be shooting more often than in a standard cata game.
Yeah sorry I really have to agree @hgjw here. For normal Cata games 20 shots on longbow is plenty unless literally nobody else in your team is doing any special killing. Ammo for sniping weapons just hasn’t been a real concern in this game for a very long time. Maybe it is in twitch, I have no experience there, but that’s kind of a niche case frankly. I literally can’t remember the last time I ran out of ammo even on melee classes in base Cata.
Infinite ammo just isn’t a genuine major upside in this game most of the time. I don’t really care that Moonbow is probably a bit undertuned post nerf, but it’s silly to argue it isn’t basically a worse longbow now. Not saying it’s useless, but I can’t imagine I’ll see it used in Cata by any competent players at this point.