So after the recent patch i cant help but feel that Moonfire actually got hit a little bit too hard, nerfs were overdue… but to this extent? To illustrate my reasoning, i went and took a few shots on the dummies.
My semi charged shots did 21.25 + ( 7.5 x 4) = 51.25 damage.
My full charged shots did 21.25 + ( 7.5 x 6) = 66.5 damage.
…
Now why would i take issue with the fully charged doing a little more damage you might ask? Well its simply because fully charged also drain more energy. So going from full charge you get one shot less from them. Thus damage from full charge goes like this :
Semi x 5 = 256. 25
Full x 4 = 266
Conclusion? Since the fully charged shots no longer oneshots,it seems they serve no real purpose given that most targets just survive unless you shoot again. But if you do that then you could just have used semi shots instead since the target woulda died anyway and faster at that.
And you´d have more energy left for additional targets.
…
So yeah, i think the charged shots seem to have kinda lost the point for existing at the present given it seems that they do not provide any significant help. So scrap the last of this 3 level charge system entirely and give it energy enough for one or even two more shots.
…
Oh and some of you might have realized that i did not headshot during my testing, why you might ask? Because if i was gona make the effort to headshot nonstop then longbow is just better anyway. Regardless of semi or full charge.
That and unless i am mistaken, only 2 specials are actually affected by the difference in damage between body and headshots which are gun&firerats.
It looks like Royale updated his guide with the new Cataclysm breakpoints for the moonfire bow. These are for the Sister, but I think it’s the same situation on largely every elf career:
Breakpoints: 20% armour 20% skaven
One shot-bodyshot Assasin/Gunrat/Firerat with full charged arrow with full DoT tick affected by bow property
One shot-headshot Leech/Blight with full charged arrow
Two shot-bodyshot Leech/Blight/Hook with full charged arrows
All in all pretty bad given the special spam on Cataclysm. Obviously there’s no real point to shooting elites/monsters with it and with the complete removal of the AoE it doesn’t work against hordes either. There really is no point to the weapon anymore at that level, when longbow/javelins/hagbane exist and the deepwood staff (on Sister) allows you to disable a virtually unlimited number of specials anyway.
To be honest here, out of those the only breakpoint i find relevant are the first 3 skaven ones given that any headshot comparision will remind me of longbow just being better at it. But…how relevant are they actually?
It takes 10% skaven vs to semi charge headshot a fire/gunrat and…a whooping 30% vs assassins to semi bodyshot them.
But then, is investing 20% power vs so that you can at least fully charge KO assassins? Seems fine given one can also invest a lot into the longbow but…fully charged shots have no synergy with barrage while hunter needs crit investments and is kinda unreliable. And even if you actually run either of them its damn likely you can only blow all energy then walk into melee with a little extra power for a short time given you wont have energy left afterwards.
I think the core issue with Moonbow is that Fatshark doesn’t really know what place in game it should have.
Right now after the nerfs, it’s just a flat out worse version of longbow with slow ticking dot (long time to kill) and limited amount of shots yout can loose before having to recharge. Sure it technically does have unlimited ammo, but with how easily you can obtain ammo throughout zones and with Conservative Shooter being a thing, running out of ammo is really not a big issue.
On the other hand, I think the Moonbow’s energy limitations has always been kind of a penalization, as you only have a limited amount of shots so you really have to make them count.
In my opinion, Moonbow should be highly specialized ranged weapon. Maybe give it a high-damage armour piercing charged shot that consumes a lot of energy. And then some moderate-damage quickshots that consume less, but still enough to make you think wice when to shoot and at what. Plus slow the overall energy recharge rate.
Or maybe they could make the Moonbow a utility weapon. Let it have low damage, but add some debuff effect to the target that is affected by the DoT. Maybe increased damage taken, slower movement speed, % armour debuff…
Oh this does sound like a good idea, although i am dubious about anti armor specialization given the main payoff would just be chaos warriors that the javs already excel against.
Instead, perhaps something like Sienna´s boltstaff with fully charged/special attack charged (high energy drain) projectiles being capable of piercing through a pile of enemies, setting them on fire? This does lean on the previous AOE trick but goes more in the direction of the javelins. One could even let it go through both armor&shields just to drive home the difference.
I think this would let it be different enough from the longbow and javs, both which do not pierce hard targets and can get away with fairly careless ammo usage even during higher pressure.
I actually changed the build in my guide to a more quick charge favoured bp. Currently it is:
crit skaven hutner bow, chaos skaven charm
One shot-bodyshot Assasin with full charged arrow
Two shot-headshot all specials except wargor with quick fire arrows
Two shot-bodyshot all specials except wargor with quick charged arrows
Compare to old build, you get higher hunter uptime for boss(and maybe horde) + two shot leech/blight with quick charge. Trade off is you can no longer 1SHS gunrat with full charge.
In real game the full charge moonfire takes a bit too long consider gunrat can aim punch you, and gunrat bp need to hold bow in the hand the whole DoT tick duration, a bit too clunky to use.
Still I think moonfire is better on hm/shade/sott than longbow for most ppl because of ammo. Moonfire energy is more than enough to deal with specials unless you got 3 melee teammates.
Perhaps, but honestly anything utility-wise wold be enough. We don’t need another single target bow (Longbow already exists), we don’t need another Cloud-AoE bow (Hagbane is a thing) and we definitely do not neet a bow that does both (like prenerf Moonbow). So I think the obvious answer is, as I said, the ulitity-route. Or if FS does not want to make unique weapons, just give us an illusion for Longbow…
Is there much of a point building the moonbow to be so headshot based for damage? O_o
Admittedly i rebuilt mine for hunter uptime + assassin bodyshots. Decided to not mind headshots BP´s all that much given it feels wrong to play moonfire for them since it can only be a worse longbow if going there.
I suppose everyone would have different experiences but for me WP+GK and AOE wizards are really common teammates to play with so i cant help but value special clearing a whole lot. Been overrun by them a few too many times due to no one shooting them, or not being able to shoot them in the first place.
I dunno, utility feels like it could easily become too OP or too niche too. If i cant have anything else i´d want more energy for semi charged shots T_T
But really, i do think it really should be a good idea to give it a special attack of some kind that drains like 50%+ energy. Or has a cooldown of 1-2+ minutes or such.