[skill line idea] Crossbow

ArRashid

Crossbows
- single-target (mostly), stamina oriented weapon
- longer range than bow (on weapon attacks and actual "shooting" skills)
- incapable of light attacks
- instant heavy attack, followed by period of reloading (length equal to heavy attack charging of other weapons, movement speed slowed by 40% for the duration)
- cannot use Crossbow skills while reloading. Also using Crossbow skills that shoot projectiles (Heavy Bolt, Elemental Bolt) triggers reloading and therefore cannot be followed by weapon attack
- playstyle is inversed to other weapons - where you charged attack and then used class skills - with Xbow you'll want to do it in reverse order
- crossbows can only be enchanted with damage dealing enchants, also heavily relies on enchant type and strength. Crossbows without enchants (or with depleted enchant) are SEVERELY gimped.

---

1. Heavy Bolt
- 35m range, instant, 35 stamina
- Deals 14 (+ weapon damage as physical) Physical Damage to the enemy. Target takes an additional 4 Bleed damage over 2 seconds.

Morph1:
- Shrapnel
- Bleed damage strength is doubled. Interrupts casting. Successful interrupts stun the target and put it off-balance for 3 seconds.

Morph2:
- Penetrating Bolt
- Initial damage increased by 20%, target no longer bleeds. If the target is blocking, Penetrating Bolt stuns the target for 1 second, puts it off-balance and decreases their armor by 15% for 6 seconds.

---

2. Elemental Bolt
- 35m range, instant, 56 stamina
- Deals 14 damage (element based on crossbow enchant) (+ weapon damage as physical) to primary targets and 50% reduced damage to targets within 2m radius of main target.
- Additional elemental effects (does not work when enchant is depleted):
Fire - Stuns for 2 seconds
Frost - Roots for 4 seconds
Shock - Disorients and puts off-balance for 3 seconds
Unresistable - Deals double damage to Daedra, Undead (including vampires) and Werewolves
Absorb Magicka - Regenerates 2% max magicka per target hit
Absorb Stamina - Regenerates 2% max stamina per target hit
Absorb Health - Regenerates 2% max health per target hit.

Morph1:
- Heavy Elemental Bolt
- Increases damage secondary targets take to 75%.

Morph2:
- Light Elemental Bolt
- Decreases stamina cost by 15%.

---

3. Enchanted Bolts
- toggle (no cost, having it active depletes weapon enchant faster)
- weapon hits always apply enchant effect.

Morph1:
- Sharpened Bolts
- weapon hits also ignore 20% armor.

Morph2:
- Unstable Bolts
- enchant damage is applied in 2m radius of main target

---

4. Stock Bash
- instant, 70 stamina, 7m range
- Deals 10 physical damage to the enemy, stuns and puts them off-balance for 3 seconds.

Morph1:
- Evasive Bash
- also performs roll dodge to the back after hitting the enemy.

Morph2:
- Stock Swing
- No longer puts off-balance, but stuns all nearby enemies for 3 seconds.

---

5. Payload
- buff, 40 stamina, self
- next weapon attack deals 100% more damage.

Morph1:
- Lethal Armaments
- passively increases weapon damage by 10%.

Morph2:
- Heavy Payload
- next weapon attack also knocks target down and puts it off-balance for 4 seconds.

---

Passives:
1. Fleet Footed
- Decreases the movement speed penalty of reloading to 20/0%.

2. Expert Crossbowman
- Converts Attack Speed into Reloading Speed. Also, reloading takes 5/10% shorter.

3. Machinery
- Crossbow feats cost 10/20% less stamina

4. Point Blank
- close targets take up to 7/15% more damage.

5. Soul Harvest
- kills by Crossbow abilities have 5/10% chance to refill Crossbow enchantment by 25%.


[ADDITIONAL NOTES]
[costs and damage adjusted as WOULD be seen on lvl 1, but rank IV of ability]
[2nd and 4th ability would be probably better off swapped, aka CC is needed sooner than AoE.. but since good half of possible Elemental effects will cause CC anyway, it doesn't matter]

The_Emproer

interesting ideas, the synergy between enchantments and the crossbow you propose seem kind of inconsistent with the rest of the game though. it seems a little odd to have a weapon so centered around enchants. personally, i like it, but from a gameplay i don't think the reliance on enchants would fit very well.

ArRashid

Well, that was kinda the point.
Currently all weapons work absolutely the same, except maybe bow because it doesn't fire heavys as soon as they charge to full. That's nice and all, but it gets a little boring, so I wrote this down to be the polar opposite.

Also, enchants in this finally works as "customization" option, except just pretty visual on weapon
These elemental enchant effects could also severely adjust your crossbow play:
- your class is missing hard CC - use fire or storm.
- you have class CC, but your regens seem way too low for you? - use one of the suckers
- going to Coldharbour? - use Unresistable in synergy with Fighter's guild abilities to feel godly
- missing your bowman's Bombard? - Frost is virtually the same

Heavy marksman gameplay - wanna play Wall-mounted Ballistae? Climb fort's wall and buff your heavy attacks with stamina to deal double damage.

Those pesky casters always burning your tail? Tear their insides with your Shrapnel. High spell resistances? Why not use the shield-shattering Penetrating Bolt on those annoying heavy blocking tanks..

Endless possibilities.

ArRashid

Bah, from the attention these forums get, I should have rather continued leveling my characters instead of trying to write something down for you guys

Crescent

I'd rather they fix what weapons currently exist rather than add more stuff they won't balance well.

One of the constant mistakes developers make is they keep adding more crap to a game before fixing/balancing what currently exists.

ArRashid

Yes, but their first priority seems to be fixing exploits, not bugged abilities and passives.

And even fixing exploits seems to be done in a lousy way which hurts normal players more than exploiters or bots. Aka:
- can't kill solo dung boss till blue drops. Have to wait stupidly long time for another try
- vampirism severely gimped thanks to PvP exploiters. Wall of nerfs was not needed - the only thing they needed to fix was stacking bats on yourself. All other nerfs were a giant overkill.
- no farming - mobs now seem to sometimes grant negative XP when you kill them multiple times.. which kinda fcks you up when you're trying to farm enough leather to make a set. And since it bugs out, random mobs subtract your XP when you're in the zone for the first time..... oh well.


But this topic is just an idea, so why not comment the idea instead of talking about the same thing 1000000 other topics do?

SirPuppingtonVonHat

When I first looked at this thread, I was expecting a steaming pile of crossbow fan ***. Instead I found a reasonably well thought out skill line with some unique mechanics and an identity all its own, which is pleasantly surprising. Its not perfect by any means, but I would give this line a try. Kudos.

ArRashid

Thanks.
I made the skills to deal a bit more damage and CC reliably because unlike other weapons, you can't just spam light attacks (and deal more dps than heavys at the same time) or even weapon abilities (because of reloading), so all you can do is, at best, use some instant class spells in between.

Though I'm not exactly sure I shouldn't buff the damage even more (by some 50-100%) and let character do NOTHING for the duration of reloading... just because, hell, you need both hands to reload your crossbow, how would you cast anything? Making gestures with your tongue?

Having a Crossbow would mean that you use your class skills, THEN fire a crossbow (heavy or ability), get the hell away a bit, turn around and repeat. The damage you deal with the crossbow needs to be high enough to justify that empty window in which you can only move (at reduced speeds even, at least till you take passive).

Also attack speed wouldn't be a wasted stat anymore (like on bow - bow's heavy attack charge time is fixed and not even 50% haste will make him finish even 0.001s sooner. Attack speed (after passive) => reloading speed => less idle time => more dps AND much more versatile (aka you can actually use some class skills to protect you more often)

AlexDougherty

ArRashid wrote: »

Crossbows
- single-target (mostly), stamina oriented weapon
- longer range than bow (on weapon attacks and actual "shooting" skills)

Would have to be single target only, unless you are suggesting the bolt passes through the target.
The range would probably work better if it was slightly shorter than the bow but gave a bit more impact.

1. Heavy Bolt
- 35m range, instant, 35 stamina
- Deals 14 (+ weapon damage as physical) Physical Damage to the enemy. Target takes an additional 4 Bleed damage over 2 seconds.

Morph1:
- Shrapnel
- Bleed damage strength is doubled. Interrupts casting. Successful interrupts stun the target and put it off-balance for 3 seconds.

Morph2:
- Penetrating Bolt
- Initial damage increased by 20%, target no longer bleeds. If the target is blocking, Penetrating Bolt stuns the target for 1 second, puts it off-balance and decreases their armor by 15% for 6 seconds.

I suggest removing the bleed from the base ability, and limiting it to the first morph (at the double strength), also change the name of the first morph to Razor Bolt. (just my opinion, as Shrapnel requires some sort of explosion)

Nice well thought out idea.

ArRashid

15th century comparison

max range
Xbow: ~450m
longbow: ~343m

effectiveness at ranges
Xbow has lighter bolt, but way larger force (almost 11x larger than with bow by this time), meaning that it's way stronger in close ranges, but it's force decreases with distance
longbow's arrows are heavier and released with smaller force. Arrow however is heavy enough not to lose much force over distance


so I'm pretty much tempted to change the range of crossbow to 45m..
Also, the only "AoE" is enchanted bolt ability - and that's not the actual bolt that's doing AoE, but it's elemental explosion (AoE is centered from primary target, it's not an arc from caster). Not to mention that if you run out of enchantement charges, your only AoE is gone

dsalter

ArRashid wrote: »

Crossbows
- single-target (mostly), stamina oriented weapon
- longer range than bow (on weapon attacks and actual "shooting" skills)

sorry man but you lost me at longer range, crossbows were never about range but power, also the abilities are WAAAY to focused on enchants, thats bad right there, but love the effort

ArRashid

yay, everything that's a little bit different than everything else is bad!

I did this specifically so that your choice of enchant would MATTER, instead of being just a visual effect. To be an itty bit different than the rest of those weapons.

Also, what do you have against range? It's not like you can chain your skills over that distance:
- class skills have about 28m range at best (dunno really)
- RELOADING