You cant actually interrupt the WS longbow arrow draw from what i can tell, the firing rate for aimed shots is fixed.
And while Xbow is the slowest by default, bounty hunter happens to have multiple talents boosting reload speed which creates a synergy.
Thus given that Xbow basically has the same stats as a longbow+aimed crit bonus at the expense of a slower aiming speed…bounty hunter ends up being the superior sniper since he doesnt have the reload issue.’
The only real issue bounty has comparatively is that he doesnt have the range extension but most of the time that´s not an issue, if he cant reach and kill it then almost nothing except WS F or pyromancer F can.
This is why i wrote that waystalker and her longbow are a bit bland, they have no real synergies or talents to actually boost her ranged combat in the same manner.
And i wrote that there is essentially no difference between WS and huntsman in mobility when firing didnt i? The problem lies with the loss of accuracy that WS has when trying to move and shoot so she basically has to stand stil anyway.
But given that huntsman has higher power and headshot bonuses he wins a damage competition then.
And i mean…bounty hunter has that crit passive to let him oneshot a chaos mauler on a body shot, i dont think anyone can actually match him in a single basic shot competition while sniping just because he is so consistent.
When it comes to melee just picking a dual weapon (for the crit chance) and the crit power booster is by far the most powerful.
Headshots? You most likely wont hit many of these while mashing away at hordes with light attacks, crits on the other hand are abundant if you build for it.
The only time the headshot perk is useful is when using either spear or 2hand sword or possibly the 1hand sword +shortbow.
For longbow my largest issue with the headshot talent is the fact that the only difference it makes is that it lets you kill berskers in a aimed headshot, maulers and chaos warriors or bosses still stand firmly.
And you´ll end up needing at least 4 shots for them anyway, 1 which will be a crit if your got the critchance, at which point the headshot bonus is just wasted as all you need to kill a CW is 1 crit headshot and…was it 2 aimed headshots?
It basically does nothing except when dealing with bosses that you can hit the head on, but your damage will still be inferior to huntsman or bounty hunter on them.
All 3 of you will be standing still and shooting, but the other 2 just do more damage because reasons.
Thus i wanted to let the elf move about while shooting, at least there would be a reason for less damage then
Longbow
Fastest but needs headshots for elites and high hp specials (not the assassin) in addition the ranged career can have unlimited ammo.
Hunter’s Longbow
Elite remover, slow(er) and immobile kills almost everything on a bodyshot. Career exclusive (you can’t be HM you can’t be Shade you can’t be Zealot).
Crossbow:
Elite remover, slow(er) can be built to kill almost everything on a bodyshot.
I think these are quite balanced to each other. Even if the elf looses the unlimited ammo.
Melee weapon discussion:
Yes there are very huge differences here that I have commented on extensively.
I got a mod recommended to me called “weapon compendium” that actually states that crossbow and longbow have the same reload time for charged shots but crossbow has more damage+aimed crit chance bonus.
I wonder if the person making the mod was testing on bounty hunter? But i think it makes my case still since my argument was that her sniping weapon on the WS career felt a bit weak and mostly bland.
And since WS longbow does a fair bit less damage than huntsman longbow it ends up being…well not as good for damage overall, even with a higher attackspeed it doesnt match.
And everyone who uses a sniping weapon+headshot ammo refund has unlimited ammo, i seriously wonder why people like quoting elf having unlimited so much
They all have to stand still and shoot for max damage, they all have a similar accuracy but crossbow has crit chance bonsuses and higher damage while huntsman is a little bit slower but as higher power and more headshot perks.
Meanwhile WS ,doesnt actually have anything impactful at all, it´s just bland, which is why i wanted to give it a mobility buff since that would make having lower damage reasonable : (
Because she does. She regens ammo every 10 seconds. Also, using the headshots give 1 ammo trait, when you have your bow out, use the ULT. You’ll get back up to 9 ammo.
I’m a big brain elf main here, around 600 hours probably just on WS and HM. I can assure you the longbow is just fine and doesn’t need any tweaks. It can be built to 1 shot everything besides a CW. It can go through multiple unarmoured mobs to kill that hook rat in the back of the horde. It does exactly what you want it too. The elf just takes a bit more skill as you need to always get headshots.
Just a quick sidenote on that first: i would love for people to look the numbers up if they want to convey their points. It’s not even a minute of time to load the google sheets and make yourself a copy to edit them. I have a link stored in chrome for that occassion. To get to my point, it’s 14,2%. So you need only 20%, not ‘everything’. On Handmaiden you really only need Eldrazor’s Precision and nothing more for that breakpoint, same goes for Hekarti’s Bounty on Shade (although not from the get-go of the mission). So, if you already invest time in writing an arcticle, invest just that little bit more for fact-checking. If that sounds somewhat salty, maybe it is. If you build an argument on half-knowledge and hearsay, you may disproof it even if there are valuable points in what you try to convey (generally speaking, not regarding to this post).
Also D&D, and S&D for headstabing SV, for which you need - here comes the kicker - 14,2% dmg vs. to get it in one stab. so that combines with melee and ranged, neat.
To get back to the Longbow: I can really only say the same thing as all the others; also, it already has the movement advantage you want (at least in comparison to the others).
I’m sorry but you got that wrong, there is more to it. You have to combine the ‘attack speed’, the 0,55 s with the reload time, which is 1 whole second on the Xbow (in the left bottom corner. This goes only if you reload, ofc). Longbow (elf) has no reload speed, so it’s only the 0,55 seconds, alomst triple the speed. Same goes for Empire Longbow, if we go by the compendium it’s 0,85 s for the charged attack ( for which you need an additional 22,2% dmg vs. to bodyshot SV, so practically 30%) and an additional 0,65 s for reloading.
Further: the Longbow has 3 dodges compared to the xbow with 1, so already more movement there. Empire Longbow has 3 too, yes, but try to play it without ‘On Target’, the 25% reduced spread. If you move, you may call it Blunderbuss for it’s ranged accuracy. Even with it, you need to wait those 0,85 s to get that oh so short window before the zoom to get the real accurate shot, and if you reload… you know the numbers by now.
The elf Longbow is accurate, the whole time, with no need of a talent. When you have the zoom on, there is no change in accuracy while firing, you just stay in focus. You get at least double the shots out compared to the other weapons, and not relying on passives or talents or ults to do so. Don’t get me started on why it’s better to have quicker shots to defend agains berserkers (quick shot on both longbows are exactly the same, only for elf longbow to have 0,65 s atk speed, Empire longbow has 0,6 s, but again, reload speed doubles that, 0,65 s).
Elf Longbow is mighty fine.
No, man, your math is wrong. Crit boost only provides a small increase - to quote someone else: “Crit power is an increase to a value that is used to calculate the multiplier and gives much worse results. So 20% crit power increase can change the multiplier from 1.75 to 2 or it can change it from 1.25 to 1.3 depending on the weapon.” This is a tiny boost. Stacking crit chance itself is another story.
Headshots are much stronger, and once you get practiced, rather easy and reliable to make. Spear, it’s vital because it has a great headshot multiplier, vital on Sword for two-shotting SV, vital on SnD and DD, vital on axe, still important on Dual Swords and 2H Sword . . . If you’re not swinging for the head, you should start practicing.
Isnt bounty hunter crossbow or huntsman longbow just flat out better though?
As far as unlimited ammo goes, all 3 go for headshots so none of them should really suffer any issue from it, but those two deal more damage than she does
Bounty hunter also effectively invalidates the penalty of crossbow, the slower reload speed, thus making it a simply better longbow between its higher damage and crit chance bonus as i see it.
Kruber´s longbow is fair enough though, hits harder but it is indeed slow enough to compensate for it, the reason i called him out as a example is just how his talents are so good for encouraging headshots&good ranged skills.
He has talents that make crits make enemies take bonus damage, reload speed, bonus reload speed on headshot or extra 25 crit chance on the next attack following a headshot etc.
Kerillian? The only really ranged talent she has is the headshot bonus damage which…generally doesnt actually do much.
It lets you kill berserkers in 1 headshot but CW´s still take the same amount of shots if you score a crit in 4-5 hits, you might as well take the crit damage boost to help your dual weapons do more damage.
So…bounty and kruber have higher damage, similar or slightly slower attackspeed&similar accuracy but their talents and weapon perks make them do more damage, they are also more range centered.
Which is why i´d say that Waystalkers talents and longbow comes out as a bit bland, it´s like the baseline of which those two were created and her talents are kinda centered around crit chance rather than headshots.
Heck i dont even use ammo regen on her, i do not need it, am using the team regen instead as i find it easier to help save some healing supplies over a goofball run.
And the problem with the longbow is that adding a little headshot damage (7 or so on armored targets and 12 on unarmored) doesnt actually make any difference aside from being able to kill a berseker in a charged headshot.
Chaos warriors and bosses? CW´s still need like 4-5 shots which is basically almost certain to contain 1 crit, but the thing is that a CW dies in 1 crit headshot +2 normal ones.
And most of Kerillians melee weapons are better at bosses than her ranged ones aside from hagbane for which you might even want to save ammo(rarely but it does happen).
Correct me if i am wrong but you can have it on your melee weapon, your ranged one and on your charm, and only the weapon you are using applies.
Found a post mentioning it from back in april too.
So if you have 10 bonus power vs on both weapons then you only actually have 10% bonus active at any time, at least that´s what i was told in the beta.
Thus, am i incorrect to say that 20% is all you can get? Given that only 1 weapon+charm can apply it.
However you can kind of bypass this by say getting 10% against armor and 10% against skaven on your weapon and 10% against armor or skaven on your charm then you have your 30%.
But do people actually do this? Last i heard full crit or critchance+power vs skaven/chaos was more common.
Handmaiden is irrelevant given the discussion of ranged carrers, so is shade, otherwise i´d bring up zealot and his 30% power bonus on everything to make things silly.
Dual daggers and SnD kills things pretty much equally fast with or without headshot bonuses, and when spamming light attacks you usually dont hit the heads.
Pumping in all the power vs you can get just get a better against armor which ditching everything else is awful.
And no longbow does not have any movement advantage, you dont dodge around on this thing, you stand still and aim down for headshots, but the other two gain more damage while doing it, hence the post.
But i will admit i was incorrect on the base reload speed of the crossbow, however given that i was comparing ranged careers its still safe given that bounty saltz with his reload speed very close to WS longbow.
Difference in total reload speed shouldnt be more than 0,4-0,5 seconds if i got my math right due to his possibility of 35%bonus reload speed.
Kruber is slower though, notably so, but he has the damage to compensate for it, and he has talents to make headshots so rewarding.
Bonus damage, bonus reload, crit chance or more reload speed etc.
Huntsman and bounty hunter feel like truly ranged careers, they have the perks and talents for it and their weapons are have synergy with those.
Waystalker? Her headshot talent while using longbow basically gives nothing except letting you kill berserkers in 1 charged headshot, CW´s still take the same time and for bosses you are better off using melee most of the time.
Well i do admit my ignorance on the specific stats need to make huntsman 1shot stormvermin on a bodyshot, i figured he needed like <20% in total against skaven/armor which is a fairly normal buildup, not a full blown 20%+.
But looking at the mod i did notice that compared to kerillian and saltzpyre the huntsman lonbow has a significantly higher against armor damage on his charged shot, 31 vs WS longbow´s 17, ontop the normal damage being higher.
His talents are still more rewarding for a ranged character though, and he does more damage due to all his bonuses while getting headshots.
As for dodging, no this is not proper mobility for a ranged weapon, i was talking about actually not having your sights bob or move while walking, even if slowly, while aiming similar to shortbow.
Pretty sure i wrote this too? And huntsman longbow aimed shot has great accuracy, at least fully aimed down when the zoom applies, it´s perhaps a millimeters difference compared to not using the spread talent.
Given that the spread one is useless on his longbow i have no idea why anyone would use it above the reload speed, go have a look if you dont believe me.
And so, Bounty hunter fires basically equally fast, does more damage and has more critchance and anti armor on his crossbow, also equally accurate while having less range extension.
Huntsman has more damage against everything, period, while firing slower, but really does significantly more damage, his talents are also fitting for a ranged specialist.
So to me WS& longbow feels like the starting point that all sniping weapons was based off, but as a starting point she and it has no unique traits hence i call it bland.
Her talents are more focused on base stats like crit chance/attackspeed/crit power etc that …kinda end up more effective for melee rather than the longbow.
What sorta ranged career rewards melee more with its talents? I mean aside from the possibility of having nigh infinite ammo even while missing every headshot.
But for a guy good at headshotting there is no real incentive to use the infinte ammo stuff, thus it just ends up being weird.
You can have +race, and +armor type damage to be able to get more than 20% bonus, plus many heroes have skills or talents that let them go even higher in some circumstances.
Crit chance is good, crit power adds a tiny percent of bonus damage to those crits. It exists, but it’s an inconsequential DPS increase over time.
Using SnD, against an unarmored target, you get these numbers:
SnD
Light: 5.75
Crit light: 11.25
20% Crit Bonus Crit Light: 12.5
40% Crit Bonus Crit Light: 13.5
Two properties, and you still can’t one-shot a Clan Rat. Incidentally, running 10%+ Infantry or Skaven nets you also 12.5 damage (and 20% 13.5), so those stats are literally twice as strong, and not reliant on luck; literally just using +Skaven and +Chaos would net you as much bonus as running +20% bonus crit, on every single enemy in the game, about x4 as often as the best possible scenario with Crit Power bonus.
If you don’t believe me, you can run the numbers here if you want. There are only a few niche scenarios where you want +Crit Power, usually for Shade backstabs if you’re going for some build to one-shot bosses.
It’s unfortunate, but this stat just isn’t that useful.
Keri longbow definitely shoots faster then unbuffed xbow. When you draw an arrow, there’s a brief moment where you can’t fire, then a moment where you can fire for full damage (I call this a snap shot), then the zoom-in process starts. On WS, you can speed this up by using the class ability to zoom in instantly (same key as Rapier’s pistol shot) instead of waiting, making long-range high accuracy snap shots possible where they simply aren’t on any other career/weapon combo. It takes practice to do, and more practice to aim (because unlike Xbow, you require headshots), but it’s very effective. Also, it has much better dodge then Huntsman’s longbow, you can be more mobile while using it. When lines of sight are favorable, I can do a Dodge-Snapshot-Dodge-Snapshot cycle that lets me headshot elites out of a horde, even while the horde is swinging at me. (PS, I’d love it Swiftbow snap shots were buffed so that this dodge/snap routine became it’s special niche, it’s dodges are already great but it’s snapshots are no faster then LB).
Hunty’s snapshots are roughly twice as fast, easily putting out 2 arrows for every 1 the Keri can, but he can’t dodge while he does because he only gets 1 and the range is short, so he gets smacked by the horde every time I try it. Huntsman LB doesn’t have that early “can’t fire” period, so he can spam snap shots very fast. The cost is accuracy since there’s no zoom at that point, and no class zoom to bypass it, but at medium range the DPS is incredible. Spamming snap shots at a boss’s head is almost Shade level of DPS, but at range.
Overall I’d say Keri and Hunty LB are really well balanced vs each other, with clear tradeoffs between each other.
Xbow fire rate is completely fixed. There are no tweaks or techniques to making snap shots, but there’s no need to either, because it does 100% damage even from uncharged left clicks. This makes it a very different playstyle to any of the other bows, it’s much closer to a black powder weapon.
That’s why it’s so strong vs elites, just point and click. That’s also why I think the SV Bodyshot breakpoint is OP on Salty but not on RV, because RV doesn’t get the level of bonus to reload and such that BH does.
How in the blazes can running 10% or even 20% against say skaven buff a SnD light into doing 12,5?
10% bonus multiplier = 1.1.
If i am not mistaken it should then look like this = 5,75 x 1,1 = 6,325.
With 20% you´d get 5,75 x 1,2 = 6,9
Meanwhile with crit…yeah its not consistent as in you dont get it on every hit, but it does activate swift slaying which boosts your attackspeed = more attacks and more crits.
To me the “power VS” is a absolute garbage stat in all but a few cases, and i shouldnt be entirely wrong about it either, because i was told a huntsman need ~22,2%power vs skaven&armor to kill a stormvermin in a bodyshot.
And the formula i wrote out acknowledges that.
If 10% was all it took to effectively double your damage per hit then it would be absurdly broken, you gotta realize it cant work like that?
I was unclear; my point was that power vs give a bonus all the time. 10% power vs is a 10% boost all the time, against half the enemies in the game, and during crits is just as strong as crit bonus - but with crit bonus, you ONLY get that bonus when you crit, which is not all the time - only really around a quarter of the time max.
In other words, 10% power vs something comes out to as much power as 20% crit bonus, but against all targets of that class. It’s a straight improvement that’s actually born out by in-game testing and by the actual formula given in the game (and the calculator).
I’m not saying crit is bad - just that crit bonus is. Power Vs, however, can be pretty dang important - and stacking 22% is pretty easy. Again . . . you can stack Power vs Skaven AND vs Armor to hit it. It’s worth giving up a little crit chance on Kruber’s Longbow for it. And running XSword without any bonus is a travesty! Only 10% allows you to one-shot Marauders with a heavy anywhere, and one-shot headshot Stormvermin with a heavy.
Also, to add, getting 10% damage vs Infantry or Chaos would be significant if you can’t get headshots, because it would take the number of hits to kill a Fanatic from 4 to 3, and if one was a crit, from 3 to 2 (because, yes, with 10% bonus power all the time, your non-crit light will do 6.25 damage, and the crit will do 12.5).
Except on ranged. there you can get 40% against a specific enemy, for 1-bodyshot SV with Xbow.
To quote myself:
You must have misunderstood me here, i meant that the same number goes for melee and ranged in the sense of you only need that number once, on the charm only would be enough to get effect out of it for both.
Fair enough, point taken.
The point about breakpoints is to get the kill faster than before, and that reliably. I’m getting the feeling you never tried it, as you are all about critpower, but i don’t need to get into in that, @BizarreSalp has that covered.
Seriously, try it out. Getting that 1-shot and moving on to either help clear the way earlier, free your teammates or don’t get surrounded is very helpful.
To make the SnD an example: having ‘Arkane Bodkins’ lets you kill SV with 1st heavy bodyshot and 2nd heavy headshot, without you would need an additional attack, 1st heavy again or the 4th light/pushstab.
With further 14,2% against SV you’d only need the 2nd heavy headshot.
Except every skaven (only half excluding SV) , who are in this leaned forward, hunchbacked position. Oh, and here’s another one: with ‘Arcane Bodkins’ you can 1 headshot clanrats with SnD. 1 headshot fanatics with DnD, same goes for 2h sword. You only need additional 10% against SV with the heavy stab to get a 1 headshot on them. I could go on.
It’s not the horde on it’s own that kills you (we would not have this dedicated discussion if it would), it’s the mix. Filter out that mix, it’s not hard anymore. Focusing on breakpoints is the whole deal in specialising.
An example: with 10% on skaven, chaos and infantry on handguns you can 1-shot every special with a bodyshot. The culprit here are the gasrat and the sorcerers, both infantry.
Since i found that out, i never changed back. Only wasting 1 shot if you not hit the head (and lets be real, gas is not easy, as are the sorceres), even not the need to aim for it, quicker and guarenteed kill, is worth it. FK, IB, i always play with handgun and i almost always get the clean kill, most special kills (not bragging, just facts), and therefore saving the team from a lot of stress.
How can you believe your math to be credible if you do it like that? Reload speed only goes for reload time. With atk speed i’m not sure, i think it goes for both animations (the reload and the aiming). I can only give you a callback to my first statement in this thread, that one about fact-checking.
1 s reload -35% reload speed is 0,65 s. And you have to add the attack speed of the weapon. So crossbow, with the addition of the 0,42 s is at 1,07 s. which is, guess what, still close to double the amount of time for shooting 1 bolt with xbow to 2 arrows with elf longbow (only the 0,65 s). If you need the huntsman math: 0,65 s -40% (only after a headshot, mind you, only your second and further shots) is 0,39 s, + 0,85 s = 1,24 s for the heavy charged shot. Those two weapons do have higher base dmg, no one will deny that.
Possible dps though is on another level, as you can almost double that. Double the missiles, double the (again, possible) elf longbow dps in comparison. Also, if you miss, that comes into hand, too. Missed that heavy charged longbow shot? Buggers, next one takes 1,24 s (1,37 s if you are unlucky with hadshots). Elf longbow misshot? Ah, doesn’t matter, next one is already drawing. Oh, and ammo is no problem on her, too. How fortunate. Talking about that right here:
That’s far from what i experienced. Not counting dodge as movement (unregarding which sense) is just… I can’t count how often i dodged as i heard an attack from behind for getting that one arrow loose thats stoping the gasrat from exploding between my teammates, to then deal with the threat behind me in melee.
I do ‘go have a look’, frequently. Giving me 0,13 s (0,26 s) to have 1,24 s instead of 1,5 s reload speed? Or making the shot that takes 1,5 s hiting my target more safely (imo)? I’ll go with the second one.
Also, you do have the passive ‘Asrai’s Vigil’ (double effective range), which will let you use the passive ‘Waywatchers Bow’ ( zoom) more effectively, only Huntsman has the double effective range.
You said it, ‘sorta’. A Waystalker does lorewise not shy away from melee, even more than a decent fighter in that.
I only try to equalize here, mind. I’m not saying it’s a better weapon (on WS). But it surely does not lag behind.
After looking through the comments coming in since i started writing this, @BizarreSalp made the right call on the dmg vs stuff. Again.
To summarize the critpower or dmg vs debacle on hitting a CW with an elf longbow charged headshot, in effective range:
While you do more dmg through a crit with the 20% critpower, your crit chance can only have a maximum of 20% with WS (on her own, other factors would be to unreliable, like close proximity to Huntsman or WHC ult). So only every 5th (remember, true rng, this is Fatshark) shot will actually result in that dmg. You could say for math reasons you would have to reduce the additional 7 dmg to 20% of it’s value. Sure, 10% vs Chaos is only half of the enemies, and more situational, but every horde is most likely not 1 race only. And you can count on it to work when you need it.
