Edit: Please adjust Toxic Barrage (bow ultimate)

Solariken

@ZOS_Wrobel and friends, [edit: this thread is now about Toxic Barrage]

Please consider extending the Hawk Eye proc duration to 6 seconds (up from 5). I like that the Hawk Eye passive is intended to reward sustained bow combat, but it has a glaring problem: using Toxic Barrage (bow ultimate morph) almost always causes the Hawk Eye stacks to drop to zero unless the ultimate is cancelled early. It's silly design that using the full channel of the bow ultimate would nerf overall damage output.

Please consider speeding up the activation of the Toxic Barrage bow ultimate morph (takes too long to start the channel!), reducing the channel time slightly, AND reducing its cost. Cost should in my opinion be 100 (same cost as Soul Assault, yet the bow ult is much riskier to use and leaves much more room for counterplay).

deepseamk20b14_ESO

Not a bad idea. 5 LA for the full damage stack for 5 seconds is still a good and dangerous combo even if they never increase it to 6 seconds. I’ll do 5 LA which gives me the full hawk eye bonus towards bow abilities and it also procs relentless focus spectral bow (not affected by hawk eye). cloak (shadowy disguise for 100% crit on lethal arrow), lethal arrow while at full hawk eye damage stack, immediately followed up by another LA that, timed correctly also procs my damage enchant and animation cancel the LA and launch my spectral bow and it does massive damage, and I follow that up with ambush, fear if needed, and IC, reverse slash if they somehow survive. With the major defile up from lethal arrow and the shear amount of damage being produced in roughly 1.5 to 2 seconds is extremely hard to come back from. If my poison (minor defile procs) on front bar during the end of that burst, that’s 63% healing debuf and even the tankiest builds out there go down with relative ease. 20k tool tip leather arrow, 22k spectral bow, and 24k IC (buffed even further by ambushes empower), and the 20% buff to reverse slash from IC, it’s quite nice.

SodanTok

No need to extend the duration (it would just help DW builds :P) but the ult needs some serious changes (at least the toxic morph). One is obv cheaper cost, but I would argue for even speeding it significantly (maybe with less damage) so it is more bursty. Would also help with your issue.

If soul assault is uncounterable by nearly anything, then this ult should be either same or go towards the more burst, but counterable, way. 3-4 sec just give everyone enough time to perform one of the million counters, rendering it useless.

deepseamk20b14_ESO

we certainly do not need another soul assault. If anything make soul assault interruptible, and make the bow ult a ranged burst with a DoT attached and maybe even give the person casting it a buff for a certain amount of time. Obviously the damage would not be what it is now, as a 46k burst would be unbalanced to say the least lol. Don’t just give people another version of soul assault. Though it doesn’t bother me much, being an NB, I know plenty of people who can’t stand the skill.

SodanTok

deepseamk20b14_ESO wrote: »

we certainly do not need another soul assault. If anything make soul assault interruptible, and make the bow ult a ranged burst with a DoT attached and maybe even give the person casting it a buff for a certain amount of time. Obviously the damage would not be what it is now, as a 46k burst would be unbalanced to say the least lol. Don’t just give people another version of soul assault. Though it doesn’t bother me much, being an NB, I know plenty of people who can’t stand the skill.

Soul assault has different problems. You could make bow ulti undodgeable and uninterruptable and it would still be far worse than soul assault (for good reasons), because the true problem of soul assault is the snare, the way it ticks (to waste every block cost) and target being CC immune.

But yes, the point is that this ulti will always be worse than soul assault because how much strong soul assault is and obv going the same way would create another cancer, so something more bursty would not be such problem (half the dmg, third the duration maybe)

Solariken

SodanTok wrote: »

No need to extend the duration (it would just help DW builds :P) but the ult needs some serious changes (at least the toxic morph). One is obv cheaper cost, but I would argue for even speeding it significantly (maybe with less damage) so it is more bursty. Would also help with your issue.

If soul assault is uncounterable by nearly anything, then this ult should be either same or go towards the more burst, but counterable, way. 3-4 sec just give everyone enough time to perform one of the million counters, rendering it useless.

Fair enough, I'm no expert on PvE DPS rotations so I don't know where the duration sweet spot is. The current duration is totally fine without using Toxic Barrage, so some tweaks to Barrage to make it fit the skill line might be the better option as you said.

Speeding it up too much could be a double-edged sword though - yes it would be a bit more bursty but it's already easily avoided by 2 dodge rolls. The current duration at least ensures that the DOT will stick.

Perhaps an instant activation with a 3.5 second channel could work (and a cost of 100 ultimate). It might need a slight damage nerf to compensate but nothing drastic.

Wing

just one more reason ballista is far and away the better morph

The_Protagonist

IMHO bow skills need a lot of love, not just hawk eye, if we compare destro staves, bow is quite underwhelming.

Solariken

Wing wrote: »

just one more reason ballista is far and away the better morph

Ballista is more reliable and usually more effective, yes. Ballista feels like it's pretty balanced although it could use a cost decrease as well.

Wing

I would love to see most bow skills get a large range extension, to the point that the base range on

LA, HA, snipe, poison arrow, etc. is the range of snipe now

bows do not feel like the apex of ranged combat they are supposed to be, and one of the big reasons for that is because if someone is within bow range, generally they are within gap closer range, and can just jump on you.

order of ranges should be

melee(close)>magic(medium)>bow(long)

at this point its damage can stay mediocre as it will still have a strength and niche over everything else

light attack, heavy attack, poison arrow, snipe, and arrow barrage should have a base range of 35m (snipe)

arrow spray should fire in a path like path of darkness or elemental blockade and have similar ranges

magnum shot should remain the short range distance creator / cc that it is now to create distance and anti gap close, I would bump its range up to 28m range so people cannot already be gap closing on you to the point were there is no point using it.

this would make bow great in a specific 28m - 35m range, while giving it some slight tools for lower ranges.

magic continues to own the long / medium ranges

and melee excels in melee.

firedrgn

Did u all notice the dungeon peep using a bow in the dungeon promo. Lol

ValkynSketha

Just make it like overload, but without a free bar.

AngelFires333

What would be great is if shadowy disguise 100% crit chance, was not used up buy DOT tick.
What an awesome useless ability.

elijafire

Solariken wrote: »

@ZOS_Wrobel and friends, [edit: this thread is now about Toxic Barrage]

Please consider extending the Hawk Eye proc duration to 6 seconds (up from 5). I like that the Hawk Eye passive is intended to reward sustained bow combat, but it has a glaring problem: using Toxic Barrage (bow ultimate morph) almost always causes the Hawk Eye stacks to drop to zero unless the ultimate is cancelled early. It's silly design that using the full channel of the bow ultimate would nerf overall damage output.

Please consider speeding up the activation of the Toxic Barrage bow ultimate morph (takes too long to start the channel!), reducing the channel time slightly, AND reducing its cost. Cost should in my opinion be 100 (same cost as Soul Assault, yet the bow ult is much riskier to use and leaves much more room for counterplay).

AngelFires333 wrote: »

What would be great is if shadowy disguise 100% crit chance, was not used up buy DOT tick.
What an awesome useless ability.

Amazing how some of this stuff makes it out of PTS... yet they nerf stuff constantly that often was under powered to begin with.

elijafire

Solariken wrote: »

@ZOS_Wrobel and friends, [edit: this thread is now about Toxic Barrage]

Please consider extending the Hawk Eye proc duration to 6 seconds (up from 5). I like that the Hawk Eye passive is intended to reward sustained bow combat, but it has a glaring problem: using Toxic Barrage (bow ultimate morph) almost always causes the Hawk Eye stacks to drop to zero unless the ultimate is cancelled early. It's silly design that using the full channel of the bow ultimate would nerf overall damage output.

Please consider speeding up the activation of the Toxic Barrage bow ultimate morph (takes too long to start the channel!), reducing the channel time slightly, AND reducing its cost. Cost should in my opinion be 100 (same cost as Soul Assault, yet the bow ult is much riskier to use and leaves much more room for counterplay).

AngelFires333 wrote: »

What would be great is if shadowy disguise 100% crit chance, was not used up buy DOT tick.
What an awesome useless ability.

Amazing how some of this stuff makes it out of PTS... yet they nerf stuff constantly that often was under powered to begin with.

Ragnarock41

Nice necromancy going on here.