Really worried about upcoming bow changes per the title update patch notes

[deathmage390]

– Bow: Dragon Piercer damage has been decreased.
– Bow: Power Volley elemental values have been increased.
– Bow: Thousand Dragons damage has been increased. This includes when using Close-range Coating and Power Coating.
– Bow: Power Shot and Power Volley are now affected by the skill Charge Master.

Currently dragon piercer is one of the very few things bow can do decent damage with AND its the only way for us to cut things like tails/tentacles. If the damage is going to be reduced that is going to be a huge hit particularly because it also affects the focus strike follow-up.

The element hitzones for wilds are 1/2 or 1/3 of what they were in world/rise in addition to the reduced elemental values and hitzone values on monsters this time, bringing power volley from the .3 i it was up to .5 [assumed] won't really do much considering its the 2nd power strike not the first.

on top of that thousand dragons is a really really long delay and lag time skill similar to dragon piercer but is only really useful at point blank or with the tracer arrow further pulling the bow away from dragon dancer and towards a "special attacks only" style . . .

i do like they are fixing the bug with the power strikes not getting charge master buff but charge master is a 15% dmg boost overall with rank 3, it affects only raw, and is competing with other skills for the 3 deco slots on the artian rank 8 weapons (we know those are still going to be the end game for awhile from what they have said).

Coatings are also still in a really bad place since only 2 non-element bows get more than 1 status coating (most don't get any), pierce is a net damage loss currently (1/3 to 1/5 MV and down to .2 element, not to mention issues lading hits in good locations), and power/close range coatings have had their raw boosts reduced compared to previous games.


bow was already in a bad place and only is as highly used still because it doesn't have the ammo issues bowguns do while being one of the 3 ranged weapons. i get the devs don't like the bow (they have stated repeatedly they wanted to nerf the bow in wilds) but it seems this is still going quite far overboard.

Bow when last checked is in 9th place near dual blades in speedruns with only bowguns, hunting horn, sw-axe, and hammer doing worse. (HH is also really under-represented in speedruns)

Add in if you want to run ele bow you have 3 MANDATORY skills: Constitution and Stamina surge (like normal, though stamina costs for bow have also been increased making them more important), but now Burst is also effectively mandatory and is a size 3 deco!!! even with the artian weapon theoretically maxed to hit 380 element with 5 ele rolls, 120 element is locked behind the skill which is 1/3 the overall damage potential!

[Khergit Horse Archer]

meh idc cuz bow is so ez to use and i aint a spidrunna

[deathmage390]

apologies i misread the values of charge master for bow.
its not 15 % is 2%
Bow 1.005 1.015 1.020

[casdarius]

sounds like they are essentially canning dragonpiercer meme builds.

[deathmage390]

sad thing is drgon piercer builds were there for 2 reasons, A: cut tails/tentacles (important for some fights); B: its one of the few playstyles that can do decent damage right now (hitting for 1-4 element damage TOTAL on several monsters like arkveld/gore)

[deltasapphire]

I want to ask for thoughts on thousand dragons. If they are buffing attacks like power volley, there will be less of a reason to use thousand dragons in TU1. Right now, there is basically no situation in which you use thousand dragons when you can use DP. I don't really know what peoples thoughts on it were back in world, but would it be beneficial to bring back the slinger buff to thousand dragon? yknow, where the more slinger you have, the more damage it would do.

[deathmage390]

ok, so one thing to note is they are only fixing the bug with power shot/volley so it works with charge master, aside from that power Volley (2nd power attack in a row) is getting a minor buff to element damage motion values. i doubt they will put it back up to the 1.0 it used to be in world/rise from the .65 it is currently (still only doing about 1.5 element dmg to gore magala)

Thousand dragons is awkward to use overall: Long start time (turn away, load fan of arrows, turn back to monster, fire), a long lag time [that can be canceled with dodge but that costs a lot of stamina], and finally its the closest range attack bow has for critical distance basically require-ing you fire it with the weapon in the monsters htibox unless you have a tracer arrow up (and it consumes the tracer arrow on hit) .

i could see a neat bit with slinger buff coming back to thousand dragons but i doubt it will mak a return if for no other reason than the "heavy" pods messing it up. either not firing or doing too much damage. thousand arrows was also in a bad place in worlds damage wise without the slinger ammo (its damage is decent in wilds) but its main use was firing a bunch of slinger ammo at the same time to cycle out of that ammo type and get the extra effects (like a knockdown) faster than shooting repeatedly.

[SandrocK]

kinda not worried, maybe a little bit exuberant.
sure, the DP is a great way to deal damage and to cut tail, but most player I see in MP doesn't know how to actually use their bows. I may have been on the unlucky side, but most bow users(DP spam) I see just gets hit a lot or in worst case scenarios just die spamming the blasted thing. I just hope now that it'll get nerfed they'll learn how to use the "dodge" button on their bows.

[Weitsicht]

all ranged weapons are in a bad place dmg wise, compared to other weapons, to compensate for the ... range
they enable you to kill any monster without getting hits if played perfect

if you think bow is bad try lbg or hbg they are even worse

[Ext3h]

Originally posted by SandrocK:

I just hope now that it'll get nerfed they'll learn how to use the "dodge" button on their bows.

Neither DP nor Thousand Dragons allow the animation to be cancled by a dodge. The dodge button just stops working during those animations, and at least for DP, the animation is even longer than the telegraph on some (but not all) of the monster body slam attacks. So sometimes you just end up unlucky, and the monster switches targets and performs a slam both within the animation lock.

Funnily, Arkveld is really tame in that regards, as even his body slam has a long telegraph animation...

But for real - let's just wait and see by how much DP is really nerfed. If it's "just" 10-15%, that's still fine.

Meanwhile Thousand Dragons doesn't really so much need a damage boost, but simply a bugfix for the fact that it's busting the Tracer with just 1 out of 6 arrows even hitting the Tracer, and also a fix for the bug that Pierce Ammo reduces Thousand Dragons damage much further than it should (damage reduction is applied to all 12 hits - rather than only to the 6 hits added by Pierce).

[deathmage390]

@Sandrock i mean yeah you will always get people who don't know how to use their weapons properly yet. thats every weapon.

but the thing i when DP is the best damage option you use it. but its no different than greatsword and its true charge slash, you have to figure out the timing on it. And you can't dodge during DP or TA only after to cancel some of he lag time.

MV Mnt Ele Stat Part
Dragon Piercer 23 0 0.3 0.3 1.2 Damage progressively decays after 8 hits
Fast Dragon Piercer 16 0 0.3 0.3 1.2 Damage progressively decays after 8 hits
Thousand Dragons 18 0 0.3 0.3 1.3 Shoots 6 arrows


compared to the best "bow dancing" attacks
Power Volley Lv3 14 0 0.65 0.65 1 5 arrows
Charged Shot Lv3 11 0 0.5 0.5 1 3 arrows

lets say you have 500 element with a max artian weapon + burst
500/10= 50 * .65 = 32.5 * .05 (arkveld hitzones non-chain) = 1.6

1.6 thats ALL, which means if you go to .1 hitzones (average for most monsters you reach 3.2.
.15 (2* hitzone) 4.8 dmg
.25 (BEST 3* hitzones) 8.0 dmg
so wait the BEST case scenario (of which NO MONSTER IS 3* element weak per the wiki) would be to do 8 element damage on an average of 25-30 total vs something like yian kut-ku if its element hitzones were increased


@Weit have you seen the range on bows? the critical distance (not counting ballistics, which good luck puting that on with only 3 deco slots) for it is just a bit beyond lances and several attacks like thousand dragons require you to be in its face. i am almost always in melee/ extended melee when fighting. not to mention in order to bow dance correctly you HAVE to perfect dodge to regen stamina. dragon piercer is the exception that gives you extra reach.

[AH-1 Cobra]

Originally posted by Weitsicht:

all ranged weapons are in a bad place dmg wise, compared to other weapons, to compensate for the ... range
they enable you to kill any monster without getting hits if played perfect

if you think bow is bad try lbg or hbg they are even worse

Bowguns are really strong though.

[skald]

I'm like 95% sure that I did cut a tail off Anjanath using regular arrows, maybe with a tracer

[deathmage390]

wait yian kut-ku is 3* weak on its neck to ice dmg. so yeah 8 dmg at best case on its 25-30 dmg total hit.

[deathmage390]

Skald: Tracer shouldn't? it does ammo damage. did you maybe jump of seikret and hit the tail with the only melee we have now? (i miss jump stab and dodgebolt : X )

another option i suppose would be slicing pods from slinger.

[deathmage390]

i literally have videos i've recorded doing testing with the mods i have for testing using "Enhanced damage numbers" mod from nexus. it does show that hitting arkveld i deal on my BEST hits about 31 physical damage and 1.9 element on non-wound hits.

in comparison to worlds/rise where the numbers were much closer to even split because motion values were double, element values 50-100% higher, AND more 3* hitzones on monsters.