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A proposed Bow Skill Line Rework that addresses some issues... mainly Snipe.
MindOfTheSwarm
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Much of the problems with bow are detailed in explanations in bold below. I want the communities thoughts on the points I am raising that pushed me to offer alternatives.
Ultimate: No Changes
* No changes here to either morph although arguably I feel Ballista is somewhat out of place. Don’t get me wrong it’s a great morph, just not sure an archer would be running around with what is essentially siege equipment.
Snipe: Removed and Replaced
Quick Nock (New Skill): Quickly loose 4 arrows into your target over 0.8 seconds. Each arrow deals 185 Physical Damage. You can move at full speed while channeling.
Focused Aim: Increases the range and reduces the cost. Enemies are afflicted with Minor Breach.
Lethal Arrows: Deals Poison Damage and applies the Poisoned status effect. Enemies are afflicted with Minor Defile.
*I think it’s high time we bury the hatchet on Snipe and all admit that it is a buggy ability even after the attempts to fix it. My proposed change actually brings it more in line with standard DPS spammables. Even though my change is a channel, it only lasts slightly less than a single second which means that you can still Light Attack weave the same due to it matching the universal cooldown. I also feel that the animation should have the bow be flipped horizontally as it looks cool. The morphs are basically identical upgrades to their old Snipe counterparts.
Volley and Morphs: 12% buff to damage.
* Explained below in passives.
Scatter Shot: No Changes
Arrow Spray and Morphs: No Changes
Poison Arrow and Poison Injection: No Changes
Venom Arrow: No longer interrupts. Instead the damage over time deals 1% more damage for every 2% current health the target has and its duration is increased by 5 seconds.
* Venom Arrow is a very underused morph since the range on Scatter Shot got buffed. This essentially made the morph redundant outside of Off Balance which is not really enough to compete with Poison Injection in both PVE and PVP. My proposal is to actually make it a ‘reverse’ Poison Injection, dealing more damage to targets with higher health while the damage would slowly weaken as the target’s health got lower. Acting in a similar way to Sorcerer’s Amplitude Passive. This would help it compete with Poison Injection and make it more appealing. You could even keep the Off Balance if the change alone isn’t enough.
Passives:
Long Shots: Removed and Replaced.
Close Range (New Passive): Gives you a damage bonus of up to 12% against enemies at closer ranges. This does not affect damage over time effects.
* I thought hard on whether to go forward with suggesting this change, but remaining silent does not get feedback so here it is. In a nutshell it is simple physics… arrows would deal more damage at closer ranges as you would be getting full impact of the draw weight and arrow weight before factors such as gravity and wind resistance kicked in. I removed it affecting damage over time effects for the same reason. Volleys and Poison effects aren’t going to magically do more damage depending on your distance to a target. Hence why Volley was buffed to offset the loss.
Accuracy: Removed and Replaced.
Sniper (New Passive): Increases your Critical Chance rating by 1314. Your fully charged Heavy Attacks deal 20% more damage.
* Basically although Snipe as a skill has been bugged forever, I felt that losing the ability to do slow full draw and high damage attacks completely would be a shame. As such, I brought a little more bang to Heavy Attacks meaning players could still essentially ‘Snipe’, yet it would not be abusing a buggy skill. Yes I know it would be scary on a DK running Molten Armaments, but Heavy Attack builds have always been a thing. Also, due to Long Shots being removed, this would take some power out of long range ganks.
Ranger: No longer reduces Bow Skill costs. Increases your Stamina Recovery by 15%. Also reduces the cost of roll dodge by 20% and increases its range by 2 meters.
* Given that the whole bow play style is about movement and evasion it made sense to give a little reduction to dodge roll cost. With the dodge roll debuff, it equates to about one extra dodge roll. The range thing was me doubling down on the evasive style and more of an afterthought. The Stamina Recovery change was so it could actually provide a more general benefit to your character rather than specific to Bow skills, encouraging rapid movement and a high octane style of play. However, I put this suggestion in bold and italics as I am not 100% certain about it.
Hawk Eye: No Changes
Hasty Retreat: No Changes
So there it is. There hasn't been a real Bow Skill Line discussion for some time outside of the occasional whine about Snipe exclusively. So I spent a lot of time thinking about the skill line in general and came up with an alternative to Snipe that both feels unique and captures the flavor of an expert archer.
Edited by MindOfTheSwarm on May 7, 2021 6:17PM Ultimate: No Changes
* No changes here to either morph although arguably I feel Ballista is somewhat out of place. Don’t get me wrong it’s a great morph, just not sure an archer would be running around with what is essentially siege equipment.
Snipe: Removed and Replaced
Quick Nock (New Skill): Quickly loose 4 arrows into your target over 0.8 seconds. Each arrow deals 185 Physical Damage. You can move at full speed while channeling.
Focused Aim: Increases the range and reduces the cost. Enemies are afflicted with Minor Breach.
Lethal Arrows: Deals Poison Damage and applies the Poisoned status effect. Enemies are afflicted with Minor Defile.
*I think it’s high time we bury the hatchet on Snipe and all admit that it is a buggy ability even after the attempts to fix it. My proposed change actually brings it more in line with standard DPS spammables. Even though my change is a channel, it only lasts slightly less than a single second which means that you can still Light Attack weave the same due to it matching the universal cooldown. I also feel that the animation should have the bow be flipped horizontally as it looks cool. The morphs are basically identical upgrades to their old Snipe counterparts.
Volley and Morphs: 12% buff to damage.
* Explained below in passives.
Scatter Shot: No Changes
Arrow Spray and Morphs: No Changes
Poison Arrow and Poison Injection: No Changes
Venom Arrow: No longer interrupts. Instead the damage over time deals 1% more damage for every 2% current health the target has and its duration is increased by 5 seconds.
* Venom Arrow is a very underused morph since the range on Scatter Shot got buffed. This essentially made the morph redundant outside of Off Balance which is not really enough to compete with Poison Injection in both PVE and PVP. My proposal is to actually make it a ‘reverse’ Poison Injection, dealing more damage to targets with higher health while the damage would slowly weaken as the target’s health got lower. Acting in a similar way to Sorcerer’s Amplitude Passive. This would help it compete with Poison Injection and make it more appealing. You could even keep the Off Balance if the change alone isn’t enough.
Passives:
Long Shots: Removed and Replaced.
Close Range (New Passive): Gives you a damage bonus of up to 12% against enemies at closer ranges. This does not affect damage over time effects.
* I thought hard on whether to go forward with suggesting this change, but remaining silent does not get feedback so here it is. In a nutshell it is simple physics… arrows would deal more damage at closer ranges as you would be getting full impact of the draw weight and arrow weight before factors such as gravity and wind resistance kicked in. I removed it affecting damage over time effects for the same reason. Volleys and Poison effects aren’t going to magically do more damage depending on your distance to a target. Hence why Volley was buffed to offset the loss.
Accuracy: Removed and Replaced.
Sniper (New Passive): Increases your Critical Chance rating by 1314. Your fully charged Heavy Attacks deal 20% more damage.
* Basically although Snipe as a skill has been bugged forever, I felt that losing the ability to do slow full draw and high damage attacks completely would be a shame. As such, I brought a little more bang to Heavy Attacks meaning players could still essentially ‘Snipe’, yet it would not be abusing a buggy skill. Yes I know it would be scary on a DK running Molten Armaments, but Heavy Attack builds have always been a thing. Also, due to Long Shots being removed, this would take some power out of long range ganks.
Ranger: No longer reduces Bow Skill costs. Increases your Stamina Recovery by 15%. Also reduces the cost of roll dodge by 20% and increases its range by 2 meters.
* Given that the whole bow play style is about movement and evasion it made sense to give a little reduction to dodge roll cost. With the dodge roll debuff, it equates to about one extra dodge roll. The range thing was me doubling down on the evasive style and more of an afterthought. The Stamina Recovery change was so it could actually provide a more general benefit to your character rather than specific to Bow skills, encouraging rapid movement and a high octane style of play. However, I put this suggestion in bold and italics as I am not 100% certain about it.
Hawk Eye: No Changes
Hasty Retreat: No Changes
So there it is. There hasn't been a real Bow Skill Line discussion for some time outside of the occasional whine about Snipe exclusively. So I spent a lot of time thinking about the skill line in general and came up with an alternative to Snipe that both feels unique and captures the flavor of an expert archer.
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MudcrabAttack✭✭✭✭Long Shots:
It seems like a lot of people on the forum would prefer to deal more damage from a longer distance, but I'm not one of them. On the one hand the old argument was risk vs. reward, melee would seem more dangerous than ranged fighting. But you really miss out on a lot when fighting from range since healers have a harder time with buffs and heals. I enjoy Nightblade on a bow build, and it already has so much reward for fighting in melee vs. fighting from a distance, and 9 times out of 10, I'm standing close enough to a target to use melee skills. It's the remaining 1/10 that makes the build stand out since I'm never not hitting things with damage, especially when there's a mechanic forcing people away from the target, or it's moving slightly out of melee range.
Volley
The damage could be buffed if this skill didn't have one of the longest cast times in the game, there's a trick you can do, I think it's light attack from the front bar, then swap back to cast the skill and bypass the long wait, but it's just dumb. They should make volley act like every other skill when using light attack weaving, but instead they added 4/10ths of a second when you weave light attacks around this skill, which can be like 4% of your DPS.
Snipe
I used to hate it, it took a really long time to cast this ability, then damage got buffed and nerfed, buffed and nerfed, sped up, so much back and forth. After so many years I'm just used to it I guess, and feel indifferent about changing it. Vateshran Bow seems like garbage lately since snipe damage took such a hit in the last patch.
Ballista
The bow ultimate seems comparatively weak, and I haven't used it since the last update since meteor from the mages guild seems to scale and work so much better.
Light attacks
My gripe has always been light attacks with a bow are harder to weave. Or maybe harder isn't the right word, laggier maybe? I tend to miss way more than I would with dual wield for instance, and make up for it by slowing down the rotation. Bow builds seem to be most effected by lag compared to the other options.
Heavy attacks
with a bow take way too long, and archers are punished with mechanics that require heavy attacks, like waiting a long time to hit the blood orb in Moongrave Fane while a Stone Atronach is wrecking face with unblocked damage.1 -
Jackey✭✭✭✭✭
Sounds like a fun spammable. Kinda like a ranged flurry or puncturing strikes.MindOfTheSwarm wrote: »Quickly loose 4 arrows into your target over 0.8 seconds. Each arrow deals 185 Physical Damage. You can move at full speed while channeling.
Not gonna do the math on the damage, but that can always be adjusted if it's too low or too high.
I like the idea of snipe, but it has been bugged and complained about since.. who even knows anymore. I haven't seen it used effectively in pvp since the last patch though.MindOfTheSwarm wrote: »I think it’s high time we bury the hatchet on Snipe and all admit that it is a buggy ability even after the attempts to fix it...
But I agree with you here.
Maybe something similar to snipe can come back if ZOS ever adds crossbows. (Shipped with flawless performance of course)
I don't like this idea. Bow is the only stamina weapon that is ranged. If I should stay close to my target to get the most damage, I might aswell just use close range weapons.MindOfTheSwarm wrote: »Long Shots: Removed and Replaced.
Close Range (New Passive): Gives you a damage bonus of up to 12% against enemies at closer ranges. This does not affect damage over time effects.
Sorry but this is too much. "Roller-blades" already exists in pvp. This would be a massive buff.MindOfTheSwarm wrote: »Ranger: No longer reduces Bow Skill costs. Increases your Stamina Recovery by 15%. Also reduces the cost of roll dodge by 20% and increases its range by 2 meters.
Even magicka users would equip bow for this passive.
Just one random players thoughts on a few of your ideas.
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Gilvoth✭✭✭✭✭
✭✭✭✭✭i hope those changes never happen.
i dont like what is being suggested for the changes, and i dont see any reason to make any changes at all to bow skill line, it is Good as it is.
snipe was fixed, and it no longer does the glitches and problems it did previously.
the only thing that needs changed with the bow skill line is to increase the Damage it does by an additional 40%
Edited by Gilvoth on May 7, 2021 10:56PM0 -
CP5✭✭✭✭✭
✭✭Bow heavy attacks suck. It is the number 1 reason why I farmed normal Vateshran rather than vet for my resto staff, becuase waiting 2s, then for travel time, to break the orbs on the fire boss is a headache at best, a 20% buff on them would buff gankers in pvp and would result in backlash and for pve I avoid doing them like the plague. I also like snipes slow but heavy impactful attacks but that is mostly preference, though I am thankful it doesn't have a 3s cast time anymore.0 -
MindOfTheSwarm✭✭✭✭✭
Increase Bow Skill line damage by 40%? Snipe was fixed? I can’t tell if you’re trolling or being serious. You can still exploit Snipe by doing the in and out of range spam technique to let off a bunch of snipes in one cast.i hope those changes never happen.
i dont like what is being suggested for the changes, and i dont see any reason to make any changes at all to bow skill line, it is Good as it is.
snipe was fixed, and it no longer does the glitches and problems it did previously.
the only thing that needs changed with the bow skill line is to increase the Damage it does by an additional 40%
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MindOfTheSwarm✭✭✭✭✭
Sounds like a fun spammable. Kinda like a ranged flurry or puncturing strikes.MindOfTheSwarm wrote: »Quickly loose 4 arrows into your target over 0.8 seconds. Each arrow deals 185 Physical Damage. You can move at full speed while channeling.
Not gonna do the math on the damage, but that can always be adjusted if it's too low or too high.
This what I was going for. I did the math it equates to other spammables. 740 divided by 4.0 -
MindOfTheSwarm✭✭✭✭✭
Sounds like a fun spammable. Kinda like a ranged flurry or puncturing strikes.MindOfTheSwarm wrote: »Quickly loose 4 arrows into your target over 0.8 seconds. Each arrow deals 185 Physical Damage. You can move at full speed while channeling.
Not gonna do the math on the damage, but that can always be adjusted if it's too low or too high.
I like the idea of snipe, but it has been bugged and complained about since.. who even knows anymore. I haven't seen it used effectively in pvp since the last patch though.MindOfTheSwarm wrote: »I think it’s high time we bury the hatchet on Snipe and all admit that it is a buggy ability even after the attempts to fix it...
But I agree with you here.
Maybe something similar to snipe can come back if ZOS ever adds crossbows. (Shipped with flawless performance of course)
I don't like this idea. Bow is the only stamina weapon that is ranged. If I should stay close to my target to get the most damage, I might aswell just use close range weapons.MindOfTheSwarm wrote: »Long Shots: Removed and Replaced.
Close Range (New Passive): Gives you a damage bonus of up to 12% against enemies at closer ranges. This does not affect damage over time effects.
Sorry but this is too much. "Roller-blades" already exists in pvp. This would be a massive buff.MindOfTheSwarm wrote: »Ranger: No longer reduces Bow Skill costs. Increases your Stamina Recovery by 15%. Also reduces the cost of roll dodge by 20% and increases its range by 2 meters.
Even magicka users would equip bow for this passive.
Just one random players thoughts on a few of your ideas.
I appreciate your constructive feedback. I was thinking the Ranger stuff was a bit much and wasn’t really 100% certain. Your feedback gave much needed clarity.0