Bow vs Two Handed

Billium813

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/comment/7908834/#Comment_7908834

• Weapon
  • Bow
    • Long Shots:
      • This passive now increases your damage done by 2/5% against enemies within 15 meters of you and increases your Critical Chance by 657/1314 against enemies that are further than 15 meters from you, rather than increasing your damage done with Bow attacks by 6/12% based on how far away you are.
      Developer Comment:
      
      In order to help Bows feel more like additional tools for your character rather than their own isolated play style, we're expanding out this bonus two-fold to help it become a more viable option for different builds. Since this passive previously only enhanced other Bow attacks, it created situations where the weapon heavily dissuaded you to use other skills, making it feel restrictive rather than additive. By opening the bonus to work with any attack, we hope to help it feel more like other weapons as a way to synergize and play off your other actions.
  • Two Handed
    • Follow Up:
      • This passive now increases your damage done with all two handed attacks by 5/10% for 4 seconds after completing a fully charged Heavy Attack, rather than increasing the damage of your next direct damage by 10% after completing a fully charged Heavy Attack.
      Developer Comment:
      
      We're changing the context of this passive to help make the interaction and reward of completing a Heavy Attack with the weapon feel better by moving away from a one-time burst bonus to a window of opportunity. This should help make up for damage losses when recuperating your resources, while retaining some of the additional burst windows that the passive enables and making the weapon overall feel more engaging when used as your primary weapon.

Is it just me, or are these two changes hypocritical of each other? You make the Bow passive less restrictive to buffing only Bow Skills and, correctly, acknowledge how that design made players rely more heavily on that weapon skills, dissuading them from using other skills and narrowing the build opportunities. Fair. But then you restrict 2H in the same exact way that Bow was restricted? And you don't think that will dissuade players from using other skills and narrow potential builds?

As a Templar that enjoys using Follow Up into Crescent Sweep... I don't like this change personally. But I also don't like this change because it doesn't make sense to me why it's being changed in the first place. The reason for the Bow change seems reasonable and valid. The reason for the 2H change is nebulous and vague.

Billium813

• Ability Altering Weapons
  • Merciless Charge:
    • This set now increases your damage done with all Two Handed attacks for 18 seconds after activating Critical Charge, rather than causing enemies to bleed over 10 seconds when they are damaged by Critical Charge. The bonus damage to your Two Handed attacks is increased by 11.16% of the higher of your Weapon or Spell Damage.
    Developer Comment:
    
    This set has seen many iterations over the years in efforts to try and find it a home where it can serve a potent purpose without tipping the scales too far in one aspect of gameplay. Its original bleed functionality has been quite difficult to balance between PvE and PvP, as well as ensuring the set feels good for both morphs of the ability, so we've decided to move the function to something that evokes the merciless intent it means to provide. Now the set rewards both passive use of the skill with the Stampede morph as a back bar option, as well as more active use and scaling to provide powerful pressure for full on Two Handed builds that use every attack from the skill line.

So... reading through the developer comments on many skill and weapon changes, it seems like ZOS is trying to curb Bow/Bow builds from feeling too restrictive. They are trying to open up the build opportunities. But it feels like some of these changes are just creating highly restrictive 2H/2H builds, right?

I liked Merciless Charge causing Bleed Damage. It felt like a good design direction for a potential Bleed build given that Carve, from the 2H line, is a good Bleed damage source as well. It was a cool build around with sets like Blooddrinker and Dro'Zakar's Claw. Making it a generic 2H damage buff is kind of lame and restrictive for no good reason.

I'd rather see something interesting, like "Dealing damage with Critical Charge extends all Physical Damage Over Time effects on the Target by 4 seconds. This effect can occur once every 20 seconds per target."