The use of short bows

Minyiky

New member
Dec 10, 2020
27
16
3
Having gone through the stress test bows have seemed very strong and this is partly due to being able to use long bows on a horse, providing mobility and strength.

However, even by removing the ability to use long bows on a horse things may not be very balanced.

While dense crepite is not currently available, crepite is, and it appears to be a very close second as a bow making material. Based on this the current best bows are approximately:

Long bow - 123str, 102 range
Asymmetrical bow - 123str, 93 range
Short Bow - 77str - 71.5 range

This means that for a max strength Oghmir, with current materials, the highest damage bow for a mounted archer will be an asymmetrical bow with over 20 range more than the short bow.


Looking at another extreme of a 92% lean Veela Veela with the bow clades gives a usable strength of 100, just about the lowest possible strength for an archer. At this value the best current bows are approximately:

Long bow - 100str, 84 range
Asymmetrical bow - 100str, 77.5 range
Short Bow - 77str - 71.5 range

This clearly shows a much closer gap between asymmetrical bows and short bows, although the asymmetrical bow is still superior for a mounted archer.


Looking at the same Veela Veela archer but adding in dense crepite, assuming the values stay the same as MO1 as they have for others, gives approximately:

Asymmetrical bow - 99str, 78 range
Short Bow - 81str - 76 range

This makes the gap even smaller but again the asymmetrical bow is better.


This indicates that something should be changed. The short bow has a far superior strength to range ratio than the asymmetrical bow, although a far lower maximum strength. Therefore one option would be to boost the output of short bows slightly and increase strength accordingly to mean that short bows were better for low strength Veela archers, while asymmetrical bows are better for stronger mounted archers. Another option would be to give a benefit to either using a bow well below your strength such as less wobble once that is in, now admittedly that isn't in yet so that may indeed be a route they are going. Another option would be to have short bows have a quicker draw to allow higher DPS at low strengths. As a final option, more could be done with weak spot chances, maybe make them better on short/long bows with high dex, but bad on asymmetric bows, this would alow differention both between mounted archer bows and dex vs strength archers.

I would love to hear anyone else's thoughts, I just want as much as possible to be viable.

There is also some more great thoughts here: https://mortalonline2.com/forums/threads/suggestion-on-bow-balancing.1036/
 
Last edited:

Breannor

New member
May 28, 2020
26
19
3
I think your write .. Veela should be more powerfull in archery ...
IMO: short bow should have higher DPS at short range , longbow specialized at long range with high damage but very low wobble and asy should be used on horse with short range, medium damage, medium wobble.
 

Kaemik

Well-known member
Nov 28, 2020
1,755
1,217
113
One potential bonus I was thinking of for shortbows that could be fun is a damage modifier based on their range from the target with damage increasing the closer you are. This would have HUGE implications on how you play them making shortbow archers ideally go in as close as possible to their targets without provoking melee attacks to pepper them at close range.

And yeah I'd fix the curve. Strength has little to no value to a shortbow archer after a certain point. Though this could actually be a good thing if you made the shorbow bonus dex based as it would open up some seriously fun options for shortbow builds like this:

719d1047798f2445fcca89bef5113d68.png


And this:

8b377d422c0bff77bb73534155a17968.png


The redundancy of strength beyond a certain point certainly opens up the potential for some pretty fun arcane archer builds that can optimize around dex instead of strength. So mounted archer builds that forgo melee to be able to heal their themselves and their mount.

This would be even stronger if healing queued off psyche and instead of int as I've suggested it should before.

The Sarduucan one is especially appealing to me as the Middle East has a strong tradition of mounted archery and the lore says they are great mages. Sarducaan arcane mounted archers in the meta could be VERY fun.