Fatshark hasnt been balancing below cata for ages now, so much so that it seems like a moot point to even discuss it.
As for it becoming superior to longbow if my suggestions were applied, honestly i do not think so. With reduced AoE clear + energy + reduced sniping it would still be strong but not “oneshot any targets and instakill clustered enemies”
The most important part of it would be finding the balancing spot where it has low enough clear + energy regen to make it important to choose what one does…any honestly the time and effort spent on that is better than just making it a “discount longbow for people with no aim that also needs serious power investments to work” like right now.
Infinite ammo? In my eyes the present moonbow is terrible compared to longbow, let alone the javelins…or well i suppose one can use the Moonbow as a statbooster if playing handmaiden or SoT but that´s also a tragic role in on itself.
Really it stands stating again…below cata all ranged weapons are pretty much hilariously overpowered at this time. You can easily build to bodyshot-kill a stormvermin with a single javelin or longbow shot.
2 headshots for the swiftbow, or one head+bodyshot if running WS with bleed.
Even bloody hagbane actually oneshots on a headshot now after the changes, with no investments at that.
You said one shot everything with headshots. That’s what longbow does. Moonbow would do the same + aoe + infinite ammo + hunte, etc. I don’t know how you’d call that balanced.
…Well not quite what i wrote although i shall admit i was on that line.
So idea was that semi charged shots would kill stormvermin and specials like gunrats in a headshot, this is indeed directly competing with longbow ´s providence.
However the key difference would be that ultimately you´d still only have a limited amount of shots at a given time, and with a much lower damage per AoE shot and lower energy you´d not have enough for everything always.
That would make room for differences in playstyle and skill expression, meanwhile longbow ultimately just headshots everything. But the advantage is that it´d still just does that on demand with no downtime ever. Nothing about “shoot 4 elites in a row and you’re outa gas”.
…This i think would have been a better than the old deal of “semi charged bodyshots kill anything” or the present edition that is so thankless to use. Although i wouldnt be surprised if many just say “happy its gone” and cease to mind it entirely. Even if that does lay down a precedent for future changes that may well screw many other weapons over entirely.
People keep thinking about Moonbow as just another version of Longbow/Hagbane, while it actually should be something entirely different. With a litte creative thinking, Fatshark could make it a cool and unique utility weapon that is not just another better or worse version of an existing ranged weapon that is different only in a gimmicky “unlimited” ammo (dealing like 12 crap-damage shots per minute).
You can keep the damage low but make it apply some sort of debuff to the target.
Personally I would have liked to see them ditch the third charged shot type entirely, so its firing is similar to hagbane - it’s either a quick shot or a charged shot with no in between. Keep the dumb charged shot breakpoints it had before but increase changed shot cost so you can get like 2 of them off before you’re recharging. Then slow down the recharge more so you REALLY have to think about what you want to spend your shots on.
Quick shots you get like 4 before running out of energy, strong enough to one shot a gutter runner but that’s it, no AoE, while charged shots retain some AoE.
With the very small energy pool and slow recharge basically I could see it kinda being like an Elf handgun. Hits like a truck but on a relatively long cooldown. Trades the fact it doesn’t need to be actively reloaded and having AoE for a much longer down time between shots.
Ok, now explain how “Elf handgun, but infinite ammo” doesn’t instantly outclass longbow on handmaiden, shade, and thorn in the majority of team comps. Especially when, as you’ve outlined, the actual limiting nature of the weapon only matters on fire rats, gunners, maybe packmasters, and random elites.
I know you’re only spitballing ideas here, but that’s kind of the point. The weapon was fundamentally broken in so many ways it was not funny and trying to retain aspects of it into future iterations is going to be incredibly problematic.
With 2 shots before running out of ammo, and a longer recharge time than currently (I was thinking like 30 seconds for the full bar)? Is it actually not self evident how that wouldn’t be strictly superior to longbow? Am I high? Are we even playing the same game at this point?
@alsozara it doesn’t sound broken on paper, but reality often differs, only way to know is to actually test it.
i personally think moonbow could be like a detonating crossbow, shoot an arrow at a target it does next to nothing on impact but after a while 3-5s explodes, has decently sized aoe (not as much as torpedo) that is good for lowtier enemys with a lingering slowing aura, but only does noticable dmg to elites when hit directly,
introduce arrow drop and make it extreme (not as much as torpedo)
remove unlimted ammo, give it like 10-14 arrows
and voila we have an entirely new weapon that has its own nieche
does not steal hyperstagger/dps from hagbane
does not steal sniping from longbow
You can still oneshot headshot all specials, except wargor and hookrat. Or 2 shot bodyshot them. So its exactly what you guys wanted, a bow where you actually have to aim and no no-brainer bow which oneshot bodyshot all enemies. And i play moonbow by myself, i have a very good headshot rate and i am fine with it. The infinite ammo is also very wellcome so i can one-shotheadshot all stormvermins as well :D. But yeah, as i said fatshark only did what you guys have cried for
What was wanted, was a bow that is versatile with tradeoffs or at least sufficiently different from existing bows, instead we got a dumbed down longbow. That still needs to headshot but also power investments to work well.
As if a headshotting longbow already didnt have infinite ammo, or if Javelins also did not exist.
For instance, I can instantly break the letter of the proposition by pointing out that even if the player only has 1 energy they can still use any attack on the bow. The only penalty is the 5 second lockout on shooting after hitting 0 energy. Even if the charged attack took literally all of the energy and it took a full minute to recharge from empty the player would still be able to fire another full powered shot as soon as the 5 second lockout expired.
Even discounting that technically the numbers put forth would change the recharge for the charged shot to about ~16s while also dramatically increasing the weapons ability to kill armor, berserkers, and damage monsters. How is that not a good deal for careers that don’t specialize in sniping? I certainly don’t feel like I’m often killing more than 4 specials a minute as merc/FK/IB on normal Cata unless the team has a terrible comp or the sniper is asleep. A normal ~22 min cata run seems to produce about 40-60 specials total on average in my experience.
Handgun and then a bigger shot for more damage on Bosses/CW, but that completely uses up the bar.
If people are landing headshots, Longbow will always be faster and more sustained damage for killing Specials and Elites.
This is also true.
The trade off for unlimited ammo is having to take stats. I don’t know what people expected. Being able to 1 hit armoured Specials and SV is actually pretty good.
Sniper weapons like Crossbow, Longbow and Manbow are actually pretty strong when compared to most others. This is just another Ranged Weapon that isn’t a sniper.
You have a unique bow for every Career now.
HM- Moonbow/Jav (for Hunter with 40% Crit)
Shade- Volley Crossbow/Javelin (to get Exquisite Huntress Stacks up) Moonbow with 20% Crit for Hunter too
WS- anything, with Moonbow actually being weakest, and debatably was before the changes
SoTT- Deepwood/Jav/Repel Longbow or Moonbow (you take Opportunist, 2 Chaos, 1 Skaven and then Ranged Weapon stats with Enhanced Power for Repel Staggers on SV/Mauler/Bestigor overheads and ranged breakpoints)
I’m kind of on the fence as to whether Moonbow needs any changes. My preferences would take it to being even more headshot dependent.
Na interesting idea. I myself was thinking about something like this: After holding a fully charged shot for 2.5s the arrow becomes overcharged consuming the full energy bar and putting the energy recharge on cooldown for ~6s.
This overcharged arrow whould be a high-penetration shot with bonus damage against armour, dealing 100% damage to the first target (of X damage), and then 25% less damage for each consecutive shot (So it would damage 4 targets in total). However, all targets hit by the overcharged arrow penetration would be staggered, receiving a debuff for 3s that would slow down their movement speed.
Yes well I certainly should have clarified that the lockout would need to be adjusted accordingly. Would need to be at least 15 seconds, or if you wanted to be a bit more punishing for running out it could be 20 or more.
It would indeed be a good deal if special sniping is already mostly covered by someone else. I don’t see an issue with it being a good deal in specific comps. On the other hand in your standard quickplay environment where you can’t always rely on others to do a good job at dealing with specials it would present a significant risk over longbow, which would be far superior for consecutive special sniping. Especially since some Cata events like to throw a special at you more like 1 every 5 seconds averaging out when it throws multiple at you at once. The lack of shots before running out would also seriously restrict its use to proc Hunter or barrage. I strongly doubt it would be oppressive in this form, but it hardly matters since I’d say it’s pretty unlikely FS will do any further work on it
Alas my genius is destined to go unrecognised as we are apparently abandoning what was previously considered common sense in recent updates
Honestly I’m kinda surprised by how mostly ok all the changes ended up considering. I just hope FS fully intends to do some follow up on some of these changes. Moonbow is probably least of their worries there.
i really don’t get these …-“if team is bad, then…” arguments, i mean if your team is bad you souldn’t be in a position to win anyway, its totally fine for a weapon to not be a Solo carry weapon its a team game and if the team can’t handle a situation why should a single person
