Crossbows vs. Bows ? Which is the better choice in what scenarios ?

[TAKE A D ♂ FOR MY HOMIES ♂]

I'm building a hybrid with right now and in my experiences both bow and crossbow combo well enough with Quickhand + Berserk. I find crossbows to be incredibly good in fighting Nobles because of the armour-piercing ability. I want to minmax this hybridbro and can't think of a scenario where bows would be better than crossbow https://imgur.com/a/nVxUsNI

[stratovarius30]

For hybrid i agree crossbow is the way to go ... allow a 2 +6 attack using cross bow, quickhand, long ranged weapon and with quickhand and berserker you can also use long range attack, kill, switch, reload crossbow.

Bows are better for snipers that wanna hit the backline, crossbow are quite deadly to hit 2 spaces away with certain builds.

[Tephros83]

Originally posted by Murp 低端人口:

I'm building a hybrid with right now and in my experiences both bow and crossbow combo well enough with Quickhand + Berserk. I find crossbows to be incredibly good in fighting Nobles because of the armour-piercing ability. I want to minmax this hybridbro and can't think of a scenario where bows would be better than crossbow https://imgur.com/a/nVxUsNI

Bows are better for targets that are easier to hit because they can fire 3 shots per turn with berserk. They also have longer range than the crossbow. They are better against brigand marksmen, orc young, orc berserkers, and whatever is easy to hit but not heavily armored. Bows are also better for overwhelm debuff and thus higher initiative.

Crossbows are better for hard to hit targets such as goblins other than wolfriders, master archers, maybe arbalasters. Much more likely to 1-shot a goblin, all things being equal (heavy crossbow vs warbow, e.g.), and at equal skill and range more likely to actually hit a master archer and do more damage than an aimed shot. Crossbows are also better for wounding targets that have medium armor, most notably billmen. With extra armor penetration, crossbows are the one weapon where I'd say I'd always rather hit the head, so headhunter and increased chance to hit the head are more useful than usual. Crossbows are also better for night fights than war bows, given that the range advantage of warbows is decreased/eliminated in that situation.

I don't like hybrids though. Too many stats to increase. Surviveability was always a problem for them but with the post-DLC nimble that may be less of a problem so it could be a good time to try them again... maybe. But for a hybrid crossbows are much better since a lower ranged skill is required to be useful. Crossbows are a better training weapon for new archers as well.

[TAKE A D ♂ FOR MY HOMIES ♂]

Originally posted by stratovarius30:

For hybrid i agree crossbow is the way to go ... allow a 2 +6 attack using cross bow, quickhand, long ranged weapon and with quickhand and berserker you can also use long range attack, kill, switch, reload crossbow.

Bows are better for snipers that wanna hit the backline, crossbow are quite deadly to hit 2 spaces away with certain builds.

What I usually do is move my hybrids up until I only have 3 AP left to take potshots at the enemy's backline. I know it sounds dangerous and reckless but all of my hybrids have Anticipation + Nimble + good rangeDEF. I can reliably hit the enemy backlines (Oneshotting goblins is so ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ fun) and still have crossbow/2-tiles weapon to deal with the enemy's frontline. I guess having bow is safer for sniping the enemy's backline ? But imo crossbow is still better

[CHOO CHOO]

The Goblin Overseer crossbow is equivalent ins tats to the heavy crossbow, and has one tile pushback on hit. IMO that's the best ranged weapon overall - there are of course situations where a good archer is more efficient, but I'd say the difference is now negligible enough that I'm better off just training as many crossbowmen as I have gobbo crossbows.

[oldboys]

Originally posted by CHOO CHOO:

The Goblin Overseer crossbow is equivalent ins tats to the heavy crossbow, and has one tile pushback on hit. IMO that's the best ranged weapon overall - there are of course situations where a good archer is more efficient, but I'd say the difference is now negligible enough that I'm better off just training as many crossbowmen as I have gobbo crossbows.

I disagree the random knockback can put enemies out of range of your archers or melee brothers making you lose the opportunity to deal more damage and being random you can't rely on it as an escape mechanism. In addition to this many enemies are immune to knockback and the goblin crossbow has a worse skill, only +10% aim while the t3 crossbow has +15% . The main advantage of the goblin crossbow is that it is way easier to obtain and the noble war is the only reliable source of lootable t3 crossbows

[suejak]

Crossbows are better for low-skill archers and bows are better for high-skill archers. The latter will get 2-3 attacls per turn and simply devastate almost any enemy in the game.

No crossbow can compare, with the exception of that one famed crossbow that can one-shot brigand leaders and whatnot.

[McGrits]

Bow wielding archers are awesome in the giant noble war battles since they can pick off all those polearm weilding enemies that have been injured by your allies. Bullseye is great and if it fails, you hit your ally and not your own bros.

[msunavygrad]

Originally posted by CHOO CHOO:

The Goblin Overseer crossbow is equivalent ins tats to the heavy crossbow, and has one tile pushback on hit. IMO that's the best ranged weapon overall - there are of course situations where a good archer is more efficient, but I'd say the difference is now negligible enough that I'm better off just training as many crossbowmen as I have gobbo crossbows.

Best ranged weapon in my mind, allows for all kinds of tactical maneuvering for maximum damage especially when combined with quick handed spear users

[Malarky Enthusiast]

Pffff "Hybrids". The builds for people that plan to fail.

[bouchard_670]

Originally posted by Giveth Me Thou Alms:

Pffff "Hybrids". The builds for people that plan to fail.

The hell are you talking about lol. Hybrid is and always was viable on bros with the right stat and star distribution. Nothing failing there. If you don't like them that's one thing but its definitily not a fail build.

[Malarky Enthusiast]

Originally posted by bouchard_670:

Originally posted by Giveth Me Thou Alms:

Pffff "Hybrids". The builds for people that plan to fail.

The hell are you talking about lol. Hybrid is and always was viable on bros with the right stat and star distribution. Nothing failing there. If you don't like them that's one thing but its definitily not a fail build.

"Whoops my 2 hander got caught ouf of place but its ok cos I can quickhands to shield to recover from my failure" , "Whoops I didnt swap out for pikes for the undead fight, oh nevermind my gimped archers use polearms as well".

[nightworg]

Originally posted by CHOO CHOO:

The Goblin Overseer crossbow is equivalent ins tats to the heavy crossbow, and has one tile pushback on hit. IMO that's the best ranged weapon overall - there are of course situations where a good archer is more efficient, but I'd say the difference is now negligible enough that I'm better off just training as many crossbowmen as I have gobbo crossbows.

They have less chance to hit though, so I prefer the heavy crossbow.

[nightworg]

To OP, why not have both. Bows are really impotant as well, in fights against target like Hexe, Necromancer, Shamans.

[TAKE A D ♂ FOR MY HOMIES ♂]

Originally posted by Giveth Me Thou Alms:

Pffff "Hybrids". The builds for people that plan to fail.

Hybrids are godly if your hybrid have 3 stars in mATK and 3 stars in rATK like mine. He has like 92 mATK and 85 rATK at level 8. His survivability is meh though.

[DalaranPhoenix]

When I began I love crossbows but now with several playthrough I almost only train archers, keeping only the ranged companion guy as the xbow.

Long term bows out-perform crossbows in every sense possible. Crossbow are good up until 200 days, after that it's meh.

Late game you will have good recruits that can easily reach 100 ranged skill so you will reliably hit everything even goblins. However you will also come up against a lot more enemies. I'm talking 35+ gobbos at days 400 or 20+ orcs.

In this context volume of fire and kill count is everything. Archers can shoot twice, meaning applies twice Overwhelm to help out your frontline, and can potentially kill up to 3 tangos, causing morale checks and mass routs.

The only situation where xbows is better is when you want to do crowd control by applying goblin poison. The added AP allows xbows to reliably poison even orc warriors and with good planning, orc warlord.

Hybrid builds in general are pretty underwhelming. With the new polearm mastery is just much better to move and attack twice with a pole arm than bother with a xbow shot with relatively low chance of hitting. Plus bags and belt got nerfed so that's even less fatigue.