Crossbow - kinda bad....

[DELAMAIN]

First i must say
I LOVE CROSSBOW
It feels new , feels like shooter and cool.
Animations and esp SOUNS are dope
I even like reload and feel of it.

BUT...

Problems i want to adress are skills and builds.

Only 2 builds viable - Grenade and Lightning.

I tried them all....
totem...
frost+ring+herald.....
Physical pure....physical and Bleed...
Crit...no crit...
Fire....

They all come to one problem - skills.

So many COOL nodes and Synergys in passive tree for WITCHHUNTER....
but they all look cool on paper and give no result....
You CAN make Good Screen Clear...
But THEY ALL SUCK ON BOSSES

For example my last try was physical based boosted for damage on low life luckyy hits+ damage phys boost and crits...
Which has a lot of nodes in Crossbow side...and it feels good on paper for witch hunter... yiu cancel 30% hp abd reach low life faster etc....explosions faster etc...

THERE ARE 2 SKILLS FOR BOSSING
which use crossbow...Shocking Rounds and Plasma Blast....thats it...all the rest just bad....

For CLEARING - just Galvanic....
I did screens with Armour pierce+ armour explosion or frost with ring+herald....

They all feel bad compared to Galvanic.

JUST BAD SKILL DESIGN....
i shoot once from Fragmnt Rounds and reload dealing much less damage then spamable Galvanic....

High velocity rounds DONT WORK with armour break gem on them...

Damn i even did Fragm Rounds to Freeze enemy and apply bleed from 1300% skill attack on frozen - still bad

CONCLUSION:

on my opinion Merc Crossbow has a lot of cool ways in passive tree but skills needs to be reworked to make other types except lightning - viable.
Esp low life boosted crit abd bleed builds as they are - iconic ment to be main crossbow thing.
Bleed nodes are absolutely bad....

[Retsubty]

Fragmentation rounds are very strong if you get fast attack speed and reload speed and buff it's damage a lot.

[Wyrtt]

Originally posted by Tygo:

Fragmentation rounds are very strong if you get fast attack speed and reload speed and buff it's damage a lot.

yep. My main source of dmg. Just shotgun bosses to oblivion

[wulfster42]

Xbow has some good skills like plasma + emergency reload. That combo with high more boosts on plasma decimates bosses (esecially with decimating strike on your gloves or from your ascension).

Outside of those two skills, bow attacks are generally better both for ice and lightning attacks (and physical basic attacks with stun build up).

That means you can totally ignore trying to get over to the reload nodes etc, and instead head towards the warrior attack/physical/two handed damage nodes (Waaay more damage over there).

Witch hunter is pretty freaking strong, especially using a bow. Titan though is another option for the same build, you can hit all the same nodes and even go further north for the int nodes and tons of eshield nodes, and hulking form makes all small nodes into mini keystone nodes (50% increase). That gives you a TON of eshield, but since most of those are 12% armor and 12% eshield (boosted to 18%...so bigger than pure shield nodes for other classes), you ALSO get alot of armor, but more importantly a TON of eshield regen (one of the nodes gives 40% of your armor % as eshield regen % (gets over 100% increased eshield regen from that).

Anyway I did play with a primary xbow early on into end game and you can certainly make it work. You have strong lightning attacks, grenade attacks (you can still use grenades btw with a primary bow user, just with xbow in your other weapon slot), plasma for bosses and basic attack for stun etc.

Bow is just better. Ice shot works great end game at packs, freezing and exploding everything. It's not "quite" as good as ice strike with a q-staff, but it's still great. Ice Salvo does a freakton of damage if you set it up right, and takes bosses down fast, especially in combo with a strong snipe.

Focus on bow for ranged, it's pretty much always better and that holds true for any ranged build (there are ranged builds for every class. It's quite strong to use a bow for a blood mage for instance, amazing for a titan, great for a witch hunter, obviously good for a deadeye, and it's one of the better options for a chronomancer (although chronomancer probably is the best choice (other than titan I guess) for a mace user.

Bow is a good backup for ANY primary attack type, spell/mace/qstaff/minions etc. Xbow is a good backup as well but not used as much. Good for grenades and plasma primarily (and can be ok for basic ranged attack but bow is better).

[DarkFaceGlow]

For bosses I use piercing rounds with corrosion and something else(I forget), followed by high velocity rounds, and it gets the job done.