Moonfire Bow Nerfs

in wich case you really shouldnt be able to deal with all specials…

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Precisely, and in that case Moonbow isn’t gonna have the energy to solo snipe all specials either.

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A big part of that is due to the proliferation of infinite ammo weapons and melee only careers. It’s not at all unusual for only one player on a team to even be able to use ammo. That is another perk of the moonfire bow and javs that is consistently overlooked.

Tbf, there was so many things wrong with it, people called out just about anything.

I couldn’t even be bothered to form a detailed opinion on what was wrong with it, it was so strong and clearly broken.

I’d assume they just tried to fix it from all of the feedback, and all of the feedback ended up gutting it.

It’s a new type of Ranged Weapon though, so I’m sure it’s difficult to get right.

  • No Overcharge
  • Unlimited ammo
  • Has to compete with Elf Ranged Weapons
  • Has to stand out from Hag and Longbow, while doing the job of both
  • Aesthetically it looks like a Longbow, therefore has to play like one

I originally suggested a bow like this a long time ago, but my suggestion would have been more like Trollhammer Torpedo-lite or Handgun.

I honestly don’t even know what I want from this Bow. I use it to proc Hunter on Handmaiden, and avoid having to rely on ammo pickups.

Adding Crit% is one possibility, but it’s a 25% Power buff to every Career. It would make it unique, but Elgi would be insane in melee on every Career. It already feels a bit strong on HM.

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One shotting everything in the body and doing a ton of aoe damage with infinite ammo is not an identity.

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Sure but ammo boxes also often aren’t that far apart. Also a lot of specials can be dealt with pretty well with melee, so I wouldn’t consider that a major factor personally :person_shrugging:

I dunno I’m not hugely invested in this argument but I would have liked to see Moonbow pushed into a different niche then “noob longbow”. I just don’t think it’s terribly interesting or enjoyable to use now (albeit still better than when it was horribly overtuned).

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Also Repeater Pistol in still in the game. lol

Other than one BH build it’s pretty meh.

Bardin’s Throwing Axe too, which is actually really satisfying with a Hunter build on Bounty Hunter (AnyWeapon Mod). Even in it’s current state, it lets you deal with Elites in close range, without making the Crit + Power too overbearing. Steel Crescendo works with it.

They could slap a skin on it and it would be fine.

I didn’t try it with Scrounger though. Might get a bit crazy, it is single-target though. :woman_shrugging:

Yeah.

One thing I will mention is that they haven’t really added any unique effects to Ranged Weapons such as damage increases.

The same with Melee Weapons, except for WPoS.

Special Attacks that are just some sort of charge up to give a unique effect, etc.

It does kinda feel like the Special Attack button is a Saltzpyre button.

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Had to actually take double take on BH with throwing axes but ye mods lol. I actually tried to make it viable for a long time with ranger vet when using last resort but it really needs a little help somewhere to feel better.

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Getting very off topic, but I saw someone mention it now counts as 1h for the purpose of Slayer’s thousand cuts. Considering all its animations from throwing to reloading are boosted by attack speed it might be kinda passable for Slayer now.

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It’s not the sort of thing I’d have done (I’d have saved the “It’s like a longbow but…” category for javelins). But unlike many things Fatshark does I can understand the reasoning.

Making it a slightly different longbow at least makes it so the weapon isn’t a major issue now. If they had done something weird and wild with it instead they could have just made something else that is stupidly OP. A known quality instead of being surprised by bollocks. You know, like what happened with coru staff.

Maybe they’ll make both javelins and moonfire bow basically longbow and then restrict them to different careers. Javs for WS & SotT. Moonfire for shade & handmaiden. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Or it’ll just be another case of crowbill syndrome.

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Yeah … now that you say it, I can actually see that. Other year of different moonfire that’s potentially busted. Meh guess I just stay happy its nerfed and accept that I won’t get something new or interesting.

I’m smelling more juicy topic if true.

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Which is really not impressive given it takes 2 outa 4 available shots to do it. And it does so even if you headshot in some cases. That means you kill 2 or maybe 3 specials every 18 seconds and that´s all it does.

Is this really a good identity of a weapon? Can moonbow even compete with javelins at this point? Is this a change we waited a year for…?

I doubt the majority will ever support it not being nerfed, i do agree that it should have been, but nerfing into being a “kill 2 or possibly 3 specials every 18 seconds with serious power investments” was overkill.

How strange, i have this clearly defined memory of Shade also running longbow, but taking anything but bloodfletcher and still getting around just fine. Even before CoM was added.

Nah, the reason one ran quiver on her was because honestly the other 2 options didnt really do much for her either so it was really just take whatever.

This argument is silly.

So assuming you got an absolute headshot hitrate of 50%, that means that in the time you lose 10 arrows you will have fired 20 arrows in reality. And you got another 20 to go before you run out leaving the total up in 40 shots.

You telling me you find it hard to last between ammo boxes with 40 sniper shots? Well alright, you do you.

But in my opinion, when using longbow the vast majority of specials have easily tapped headshot hitboxes, even under pressure, so maintaining 70% hitrate is easy, i can even tap most of the elites in sight as well.

So 20 shots is actually 66~ shots…honestly i find it very easy to last between ammo boxes.

Except running EP on the vast majority of setups on the elf is kinda terrible given how much she loses comparatively for it.

“Yay i chunked my melee power to hit that one enemy breakpoint on the bow that fires 4 shots every 18 seconds”

Glaive is just about the weapon that comes to mind as not being terribly good with assassin and thus a viable pick for EP, but…glaive is among her worst melee weapons at this point. It does damage but is so slow and vulnerable against mixed hordes/monsters.

Its also really weird how someone can promote the use of a bow that has such seriously gimped output in a mode where specials are supposedly so abundant.

Like, you people got the time to stand there and aim down 2 shots in the middle of a horde with so many specials around? Is killing 2 or even 3 specials every 18 actually enough if you got so many?

I do agree, but i also find that a weapon that at this point does so little ot be really lackluster too. Is this really fine for an identity? Especially with Javelins basically capable of doing the same thing but better?

To myself it doesnt feel like a balance change that was carefully mulled over as much as a knee-jerk nerfslam that was thrown in after a couple of weeks or something.

“Guys we gotta nerf moonbow, what do we do?”
“Eh lets think about it”
One year later
“oh ****, time is up now what!?”
" Lets just smash it, most people will be happy"
“You’re a genius!”

I am almost scared to imagine the controversy that would arise if another weapon got this treatment…the javelins might not cause it but anything else and it´d be a riot.

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Yeah but the pressure also means more quick/missed shots. Obviously longbow allows you to relive special pressure better as long as you have that ammo but you are now actually risking running out. So in those difficulties the tradeoff comes that you might be killing more specials early on and making the run smoother but moonfire allows you to always deal with those few specials that might be run enders without any ammo left.
This is obviously how I just see it after some onslaught runs but funnily enough i think the ammo trade off is better in those difficulties. You also generally have 2-3 other people who can always be gods of special killing as well so its just different game at that point.

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I don’t know what’s going on but if you find my words somehow offensive then I promise you that wasn’t my intention, and I’d hope our future interaction to be less stressful. I merely stated my points without any particular replies in my mind other than OP.

That’s all I’m going to say and I’m dropping this topic.

…I apologize for the poor tone, it´s just that it bugs me something fierce that i cant help but see double standards in how many people view this case. Something i tried to contain but evidently failed.

But to explain, as i see it, had any other weapon gotten nerfed to the point where it´s basically just a worse option at its main job than not just one but two other weapons that also have other perks…then it would cause an outcry from many calling it unjustified. But now we got a case where its called alright since it was just so over the top before this.

I find that this case is not alright at all, this is not satisfactory for a change that was deliberated for a about a year, a year where we sat through watching it be a terribly overpowered nasty mess with no response in sight. Only to then have it abruptly removed from that peak of power and thrown straight to the gutter with no middle ground or whatnot at all.

Not cool.

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I don’t think it’s “really” lackluster. I think it’s competitive with longbow, tbh. Considering that you can roll hunter on it with high crit builds and use it for free hunter procs without running out of ammo while also keeping most special BP’s on Cata. It’s hard not to compare it to old moonbow, but that’s a ridiculous comparison.

Having said that, I think the current design directly competes with longbow in a weird way. They should have kept the aoe portion and severely nerfed the single target damage so it can’t snipe specials effectively. Theoretically, that would compete with hag, but in practice it’d only compete on WS due to ammo.

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High crit builds…i mean, isnt the max you can stack on it via gear like 15% and that is with the hidden 5%? It makes it hella unreliable, heck, I ran that for a few maps and i could consistently manage to fire 4 shots and just not trigger it even once.

High crit build is like painbuild HM or maybe the nerfed doomsight SoT but i dont think it´s anywhere near competitive with her bleed, even if it was nerfed down to flense levels.

I´d honestly rather just have the hybrid style then, but nerf the damage so a blast or two only clears low tier infantry while damaging the rest. Then make armored bodyshots do low damage and reduce energy regen a bit.

Additionally, drop basedamage so it didnt kill raiders in one bodyshot, then with all this you still have a hybrid weapon but one that is far less overbearing. Potentially also nerf monster damage.

As for your suggestion, honestly i do not think it´d work well since non-ranged careers usually need ranged weapons with special sniping no matter what. Even if they pick something like repeater on Kruber they can still get that job done when needed.

A weapon that only packs a few low-moderate damage shots at a time and doesnt outright kill? That´d probably not see much use. Like for instance, only waystalker can use hagbane because she can spam it with impunity to kill everything in the area she happens to fire towards without worrying much about ammo. Even if half a patrol is shielding that packrat she will still kill it with absolute certainty.

Handmaiden could never do that so she never ran hagbane well, Shade could, but was nerfed for it and stopped doing it.

I’m with Sleezy here: Moonbow’s identity was that it covered most, if not all, the existing niches/identities of other elf bows.

Currently, it appears to be overnerfed - when in reality, it is not. From a design logic, I’d argue it can’t be made ‘better’ or ‘stronger’ than it is now considering its unique core feature: recharging energy as ammunition, and the elf’s other bows. A brief rundown:

  • quick shots, low precision, anti-trash: Swift Bow niche; if you make moonbow only slightly similar, in terms of numbers and fire rate, it will be better than Swift Bow because of… infinite ammo.
  • high precision, single target: Longbow niche; if you give moonbow good finesse that holds up well on long distances, it will replace Longbow because of… infinite ammo.
  • mid/long range, low precision, anti-everything: Hagbane niche; if you give moonbow an AoE for horde clear and/or crowd control, it will replace Hagbane because of… infinite ammo (regardless of its lower burst potential, overall sustain > burst imo because this allows for more team/talent compositions).
  • mid/long range, high cleave, precision: Javelins niche; obviously, you don’t want to recreate anything similar because then you’d have the same weapon.
  • short/mid range, burst: Volley Crossbow niche; even though it is limited to Shade.

TLDR, it was probably not as easy as you’d think to find a new niche for moonbow that isn’t already covered by one of the existing elf bows. Any overlap would have made it the superior pick as long as the numbers stayed in the same league (and keep in mind that there is only a limited range of how ‘low’ you can go with damage values to not create an actual garbage weapon). So, the only solution was: keep moonbow’s jack of all trades-identity (minus anti-horde AoE) but make sure that it doesn’t outperform the bows that it still shares gameplay niches with.

I would have liked to see a complete rework that offered a new niche but can’t think of one myself that would fit the game. So I’m completely fine with where moonbow is now.

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Moonbow´s identity was a hybrid between longbow and hagbane, overpowered but that is what it was, and fully possible to tweak it with numbers it should have been.

Drop AoE damage to only clear lowest tier infantry, potentially needing two blasts for it even, drop armored bodyshot damage to little to force a need for headshots and also drop normal damage to make it stop killing raiders/helm+axe guys in one shot.

Then finally lower the energy regen a bit and also the monster damage if needed, this all should suffice to let it work as a hybrid pick without making it too overbearing. Any other bow would still have a better uptime and be better at their niche but moonbow would be the most versatile.

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I disagree with this for the reasons Kuli stated. As someone who has actually tried to tweak it with numbers (and seen many other people try) it’s just not really feasible. Especially not across multiple difficulties. It might be possible for a singular difficulty, but FS can’t afford to balance around a singular difficulty. You can’t have an infinite ammo weapon that performs every niche (or “identity”) and balance it against weapons that have limited ammo and a singular niche.

For example, the weapon you described is still superior to longbow in almost every conceivable scenario while also having aoe that clears infantry. That certainly isn’t balanced.

Another quick point, you talk about tweaking around BP’s. For what difficulty though? And if those BP’s are given, what is the effect on other difficulties? How does that compare to longbow, etc in those difficulties.

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