The Bow Dilemma...A glaring imbalance and fix.

[Exiledkhallisi]

There is an objectively obvious balance problem with Bows im going to paint a scenario to best explain the problem.

In the current state of the game I can play on my main account character..a max str meta oghmir. 123 str. An incredible 131 constitution and 85 dex. He hits like a freight train with any melee weapon. With his health and armor clades he can wear the strongest armor in the game and has the highest health possible. With that said... he can also pull out a 123str Longbow and outbow any sub str Bow user. He can kill your armored horse with 4 arrows, then out melee you on foot.

I feel this is problematic... compared to my MA alvarin, who has almost half the health of my oghmir.. significantly less str, even with the 2 alvarin arm clades he connot weild a 123str bow and he definately (removing player skill) cannot toe to toe with my Oghmir. So here we have a Meta melee build, that can also out bow a meta bow build.

My suggestion is that DEX bows become a thing. This will not only balance out the glaring problem but also create entirely new build concepts and class setups.

It could work and make sense with Crossbows. In real life, crossbows changed warefare forever..they used leverage to pull the arrows and anyone could load, fire and use one. A skilled user however, would have the dexterity to aim and load the weapon quickly. And the agility to not fumble with the mechanics.

The other balance problem with bows is the cost of melee.... if i die on my MA hybrid... the total net loss of my weapon is about 3g... if the same happens on my melee oghmir... steel/messing/Tindremic weapon is 10-50g for just a weapon.

Suggestion;
Either increasing the material cost of bows or lowering the material cost of melee weapons.

This also, is EXCLUDING the cost of armor... which is an entirely separate balance issue... where a full reptile/pansar/steel set cost is on average 20g,50-80g, and 200g

VS my Alvarin dying for instance my entire set of gear costs less than 5g. A stack of 10k horned scales and just 5k guard fur can make my weight class second best in slot 20 full sets of gear.

Thanks for reading, what are your thoughts fam?

 

[Albanjo Dravae]

There is an objectively obvious balance problem with Bows im going to paint a scenario to best explain the problem.

In the current state of the game I can play on my main account character..a max str meta oghmir. 123 str. An incredible 131 constitution and 85 dex. He hits like a freight train with any melee weapon. With hia health and armor clades he can wear the strongest armor in the game and has the highest health poasible. With that said... he can also pull out a 123str Longbow and outbow any sub str Bow user. He can kill your armored horse with 4 arrows, then out melee you on foot.

I feel this is problematic... compared to my MA alvarin, who has almost half the health of my oghmir.. significantly less str, even with the 2 alvarin arm clades he connot weild a 123str bow and he definately (removing player skill) cannot toe to toe with my Oghmir. So here we have a Meta melee build, that can also out bow a meta bow build.

My suggestion is that DEX bows become a thing. This will not only balance out the glaring problem but also create entirely new build concepts and class setups.

It could work and make sense with Crossbows. In real life, crossbows changed warefare forever..they used leverage to pull the arrows and anyone could load, fire and use one. A skilled user however, would have the dexterity to aim and load the weapon quickly. And the agility to not fumble with the mechanics.

The other balance problem with bows is the cost ca melee.... if i die on my MA hybrid... the total net loss of my weapon is about 3g... if the same happens on my melee oghmir... steel/messing/Tindremic weapon is 10-50g for juat a weapon.

Suggestion;
Either increasing the material cost of bows or lowering the material cost of melee weapons.

This also, is EXCLUDING the cost of armor... which is an entirely separate balance issue... where a full reptile/pansar/steel set cost is on average 20g,50-80g, and 200g

VS my Alvarin dying for instance my entire set of gear costs less than 5g. A stack of 10k horned scales and just 5k guard fur can make my weight class second best in slot 20 full sets of gear.

Thanks for reading, what are your thoughts fam?

I'd say to balance mounted archery there has to be a buff for piercing in horse armors, and maaaybe a slight increase of hp for horses, something around 10-20% with adding dismount-dmg features to non-bow/magic builds.

Oghmir is the meta archer yes, side by side with thur kallard on overall damage, bunch of clade buffs and survival tools. It is a little bit overpowered? Well yeah, it is.

Alvarins even tho they are ment to be some kind of light archers can't really compete with oghmirs, obviously in a bow vs bow fight when STR is bow dmg multiplier.
For balancing i'd say shortbows and asymetrical bows need tweaking and marksmanship needs some buff for shortbows. Weakspot chance is supposed to be influenced by the DEX and one would think an alvarin with the WS chance glade could output some decent damage with weak spots but they are quite rare on mounted fights.

It is understandable melee weapons cost more because they are often made of materials that require some time and effort to get, you are right that bows are completly disposable cheap shit and should be re-balanced. The drop rate of the meta materials for bows is high and the cost for crafting is low turning bows by default one of the most damaging and cheapest weapons in the game.
Even tho, wood and bone materials are easier to get than steel (and should be) its important the cost of creating bows is addressed, its part of its meta superiority towards other classes.

The armor weight bonus for oghmirs is ment as a mechanic to let oghmirs use shittier more heavier materials that are not as effective as others, trading efficiency for weight. Resulting in cheaper armor for better results.
Which is an interesting approach yet armor-mat sliders need tweaks, and on a side note the armor weight b4 penalizing mana regen needs to be increased, it was a dogshit change to buff humans but it really nerfed hybrids and mages.

Also with the oghmir armor clades you can bypass having heavy armor training, resulting in something like 100 skill points available for other use, which in a MA its greatly beneficial. Theres no other race in the game that with 2 clades can generate that many skill points, thats a massive feature which needs nerf.

 

[Exiledkhallisi]

Also with the oghmir armor clades you can bypass having heavy armor training, resulting in something like 100 skill points available for other use, which in a MA its greatly beneficial. Theres no other race in the game that with 2 clades can generate that many skill points, thats a massive feature which needs nerf.

Oghmirs will be the only class in the game that can wear the heaviest armor AND weild the biggest tower shield.

Alvarins even tho they are ment to be some kind of light archers can't really compete with oghmirs, obviously in a bow vs bow fight when STR is bow dmg multiplier.
For balancing i'd say shortbows and asymetrical bows need tweaking and marksmanship needs some buff for shortbows. Weakspot chance is supposed to be influenced by the DEX and one would think an alvarin with the WS chance glade could output some decent damage with weak spots but they are quite rare on mounted fights.

The main issue im pointing out here... is a meta melee build can also be the best bow user the issue is that STR is the stat dependent on bows.

Adding a Dexterity bow like...crossbows i gave for example having dex be the main stat, would balance this out AND create a more dynamic range of builds.

 

[Albanjo Dravae]

Oghmirs will be the only class in the game that can wear the heaviest armor AND weild the biggest tower shield.



The main issue im pointing out here... is a meta melee build can also be the best bow user the issue is that STR is the stat dependent on bows.

Adding a Dexterity bow like...crossbows i gave for example having dex be the main stat, would balance this out AND create a more dynamic range of builds.

yes, i consider DEX should impact on arrow load speed aswell besides weakspot chance. So theres a little more balance and fat ass low dex oghmirs are not as OP archers.

 

[TheOxMan]

I'd say to balance mounted archery there has to be a buff for piercing in horse armors, and maaaybe a slight increase of hp for horses, something around 10-20% with adding dismount-dmg features to non-bow/magic builds.

Oghmir is the meta archer yes, side by side with thur kallard on overall damage, bunch of clade buffs and survival tools. It is a little bit overpowered? Well yeah, it is.

Alvarins even tho they are ment to be some kind of light archers can't really compete with oghmirs, obviously in a bow vs bow fight when STR is bow dmg multiplier.
For balancing i'd say shortbows and asymetrical bows need tweaking and marksmanship needs some buff for shortbows. Weakspot chance is supposed to be influenced by the DEX and one would think an alvarin with the WS chance glade could output some decent damage with weak spots but they are quite rare on mounted fights.

It is understandable melee weapons cost more because they are often made of materials that require some time and effort to get, you are right that bows are completly disposable cheap shit and should be re-balanced. The drop rate of the meta materials for bows is high and the cost for crafting is low turning bows by default one of the most damaging and cheapest weapons in the game.
Even tho, wood and bone materials are easier to get than steel (and should be) its important the cost of creating bows is addressed, its part of its meta superiority towards other classes.

The armor weight bonus for oghmirs is ment as a mechanic to let oghmirs use shittier more heavier materials that are not as effective as others, trading efficiency for weight. Resulting in cheaper armor for better results.
Which is an interesting approach yet armor-mat sliders need tweaks, and on a side note the armor weight b4 penalizing mana regen needs to be increased, it was a dogshit change to buff humans but it really nerfed hybrids and mages.

Also with the oghmir armor clades you can bypass having heavy armor training, resulting in something like 100 skill points available for other use, which in a MA its greatly beneficial. Theres no other race in the game that with 2 clades can generate that many skill points, thats a massive feature which needs nerf.

Give the horse buff for stabling a horse for a few minutes

 

[Jatix]

Fully agree that bow cost is a huge issue. You can even make bows out of compete ass material, like emalj, and it still claps. Only a couple damage less than good materials.

VS an emalj melee weapon, is complete ass vs any good material, as it should be.

And while an MA still wants good armor, for zerging you can get by with a sub 1g emalj bow and some bone armor and do excellent damage to people with significantly more risk. So the risk v reward of bows just doesnt work right now.

 

[Xronim]

bow damage feels tripled from mo1 as well as oghmir having normalized speed from the dex buff + dex curve.

they should bring back the ability to down block to actually parry arrows with any shield.

 

[TheOxMan]

Realistically the damage value should come more from the arrow I would think.

the bow itself should also add or subtract values if the arrows don’t match. I know this isn’t the most realistic approach but I think it could help solve the problem

perhaps the bow is designed with a notch that is meant to fit the arrow and other arrows in that bow are less accurate or something

 

[Hodo]

There is an objectively obvious balance problem with Bows im going to paint a scenario to best explain the problem.

In the current state of the game I can play on my main account character..a max str meta oghmir. 123 str. An incredible 131 constitution and 85 dex. He hits like a freight train with any melee weapon. With his health and armor clades he can wear the strongest armor in the game and has the highest health possible. With that said... he can also pull out a 123str Longbow and outbow any sub str Bow user. He can kill your armored horse with 4 arrows, then out melee you on foot.

I feel this is problematic... compared to my MA alvarin, who has almost half the health of my oghmir.. significantly less str, even with the 2 alvarin arm clades he connot weild a 123str bow and he definately (removing player skill) cannot toe to toe with my Oghmir. So here we have a Meta melee build, that can also out bow a meta bow build.

My suggestion is that DEX bows become a thing. This will not only balance out the glaring problem but also create entirely new build concepts and class setups.

It could work and make sense with Crossbows. In real life, crossbows changed warefare forever..they used leverage to pull the arrows and anyone could load, fire and use one. A skilled user however, would have the dexterity to aim and load the weapon quickly. And the agility to not fumble with the mechanics.

The other balance problem with bows is the cost of melee.... if i die on my MA hybrid... the total net loss of my weapon is about 3g... if the same happens on my melee oghmir... steel/messing/Tindremic weapon is 10-50g for just a weapon.

Suggestion;
Either increasing the material cost of bows or lowering the material cost of melee weapons.

This also, is EXCLUDING the cost of armor... which is an entirely separate balance issue... where a full reptile/pansar/steel set cost is on average 20g,50-80g, and 200g

VS my Alvarin dying for instance my entire set of gear costs less than 5g. A stack of 10k horned scales and just 5k guard fur can make my weight class second best in slot 20 full sets of gear.

Thanks for reading, what are your thoughts fam?

First who said Alvarins are the meta bow build? Alvarins have never EVER been the meta archer race. Just because they are "elves" doesnt mean they have to be good with bows. If you look at most Alvarin clades they lean more towards a hybrid build magic +kite attacks, which generally means short bows not longbows. Yes Oghmir are a bit OP with the fact they hit the hardest with bows, and they have the highest hit points and the highest potential INT for magic. But they also suffer from having not enough attribute points to take full advantage of everything.

Dont be mistaken there are some balance issues but I feel it is more in the weapon and armor mechanics than the races themselves.

 

[Exiledkhallisi]

First who said Alvarins are the meta bow build? Alvarins have never EVER been the meta archer race. Just because they are "elves" doesnt mean they have to be good with bows. If you look at most Alvarin clades they lean more towards a hybrid build magic +kite attacks, which generally means short bows not longbows. Yes Oghmir are a bit OP with the fact they hit the hardest with bows, and they have the highest hit points and the highest potential INT for magic. But they also suffer from having not enough attribute points to take full advantage of everything.

Dont be mistaken there are some balance issues but I feel it is more in the weapon and armor mechanics than the races themselves.

Ye missed the point entirely man.

AN* Alvarin meta build not THE Alvarin Meta build... A meta bow build....not the meta... theres dozens of meta builds.

The point is the fact that A meta footfighter build can also expertly use the best bow in the game. It's a design failure where certain builds can have the best of both worlds. It reduces build diversity and also normalizes combat into the mundane.

 

[Tashka]

Strength is overpowered in general. Gives you armor weight, gives you iventory weight, gives you good bows, gives you damage bonus, gives you the ability to use heavier weapons, increases your stamina pool, apparently it also decreases damage taken on parry, i'm almost sure that the only reason it doesn't increase your mana pool and magic damage is due to some bug that will be fixed soon.

Compare it with dexterity that gives you laughable increase in movespeed (don't mention alvarins please, they get flat buffs from gifts otherwise they wouldn't be worth picking with their 93 str and 116 dex), a little stamina, and the ridiculously low buff to weakspot chance that nobody really cares about.

 

[Hodo]

Strength is overpowered in general. Gives you armor weight, gives you iventory weight, gives you good bows, gives you damage bonus, gives you the ability to use heavier weapons, increases your stamina pool, apparently it also decreases damage taken on parry, i'm almost sure that the only reason it doesn't increase your mana pool and magic damage is due to some bug that will be fixed soon.

Compare it with dexterity that gives you laughable increase in movespeed (don't mention alvarins please, they get flat buffs from gifts otherwise they wouldn't be worth picking with their 93 str and 116 dex), a little stamina, and the ridiculously low buff to weakspot chance that nobody really cares about.

Without clades correct no one would choose Alvarins, it would Thursar-Khurite or Thur-Kallards Online again. But with clades you are looking at some real balance factors. Sure strength is a big deal, but so is constitution. Without it you arent getting much in the way of armor carry weight or any cargo weight.. or hit points or stamina. I mean INT and PSY greatly effect your mana pool and INT effects your magic damage or heals, it also frees up a lot of skill points in professions, so is INT OP too?

I mean it all has strengths and weaknesses.

 

[Exiledkhallisi]

Without clades correct no one would choose Alvarins, it would Thursar-Khurite or Thur-Kallards Online again. But with clades you are looking at some real balance factors. Sure strength is a big deal, but so is constitution. Without it you arent getting much in the way of armor carry weight or any cargo weight.. or hit points or stamina. I mean INT and PSY greatly effect your mana pool and INT effects your magic damage or heals, it also frees up a lot of skill points in professions, so is INT OP too?

I mean it all has strengths and weaknesses.

So i think we can agree here that Dexterity sucks right now. It really is stupid that melee builds can also use bow so effectively

 

[Tzone]

So i think we can agree here that Dexterity sucks right now. It really is stupid that melee builds can also use bow so effectively

I dont think there is a consensus on that. I think henrik has the balancing idea right with str for bow damage. other wise you get super high dexbuilds that are uncatchable doing massive damage.

Fixing archery will take several changes like fetching, mounted rework, and increasing arrow speed maybe with some trade off for that.

Mounted are obliterated by bows but thats the only real counter. Arrows are too slow to reasonably hit aware targets outside mounted, bows very easy to make, very stong against lighter armors, but fall off and are un viable against stell and above armors.

It would take lots of time to fix all these issue in one shot but if they dont balance will be horrible untill its fixed.

 

[Wyndorn]

It seems to me the real issue here is that there is not a high enough skill investment requirement for bows to be good.

I think that bows should be much worse without more skills invested, and aim wobble should be much higher without high dex, or something.

 

[Youmustbeloggedintodothat]

if SV actually wants dedicated archer builds to be a thing they should just be lazy and give it the mage treatment, drawspeed penalty and higher stam drain while holding the bow above a certain armor weight. it's fairly realistic too so it would fit in the theme of "immersive MMO" (well, it would actually be the arm pieces getting in the way in real life, but for the purpose of balance and simplicity we can just say armor weight). if they want alvarin to be the "archer hybrid" people just add a paladin-like clade gift buff for bow stamina usage on top of the already existing archery clades (i don't think they need more buffs to their clades but just throwing it out there since the thought came across my head)

on the topic suggesting buffs scaling directly from dex: most oghmir pure footfighters are using max dex anyway, so any dex-related buffs shouldn't start scaling effectively until 91+ dex, that way meta age 31 oghmir don't benefit at all, unless they go lean, be younger, and/or pick +2 max dex clade. obviously the other races would benefit more with higher dex cap as they should, but letting oghmir benefit a little if they want to lose stout will promote build diversity in theory

 

[ArcaneConsular]

SV cant even balance one damage stat you really want them to juggle two?

 

[Daragorn]

archery is so damn OP it is not even funny anymore...and the best bows are made of dirty cheap materials too, to boot....i've never seen such a bad balance in a game ever, really

 

[Hodo]

archery is so damn OP it is not even funny anymore...and the best bows are made of dirty cheap materials too, to boot....i've never seen such a bad balance in a game ever, really

This is true for longbows and asym bows.

 

[Daragorn]

even for short bows if you're an alvarin with the clade and 100 marksman since you'll basically weakspot at least 50% of the times (a few guildmates went from asym to short when they discovered that)