Xbows are about as useful as daggers and every exception or elite weapon that maxes out at 2 sockets… 
I agree for Xbows.
But what about two-handed Axes for example? Same story. There are so many great looking BIG warrior two-handed Axes in this game and I have NEVER seen anyone use one…
Sad.
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WYM the burrito was gg in 1.09.
1.10 is still an awful patch that ruined the game.
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Chargers use glorious axe or decapitator edeath. Even more damage than ebotd
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I’d love to see them do something with crossbows. Allow them to have additional modifiers like + skills, attack rating bonuses, resistances, and % pierce. Same could be said for 2H Axes.
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Completely agree 100%, would love to see something done to improve crossbows and 2H axes.
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Crossbows should have a base damage increase (varying amounts depending on base) as well as special properties specific to them that bows don’t have. Imagine crossbows doing more crushing blow damage than bows for example.
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I agree with almost everything you said but that is complete BS. You can have a 1000 lb crossbow, but there’s no freaking way to pull more than a 200 lb bow; even 75 lb is very hard for most people, and most shoot from 25 lb to 55 lb (Olympic archers shoot 45 to 50 lb and they tend to very very innacurate after 60 lb). In the meantime, the average Crossbow is 80 - 100 lbs and can go up to a 1500 lb, the only limit is the draw mechanism, not human strength.
So, yes, everything you said regarding skill and training in crossbow vs bow is true, but bows cannot reach crossbow pundage…
I wouldn’t actually mind the fantasy of a hard-hitting but slow weapon.
Seeing how abysmal the IAS breakpoints for crossbows are, however, it’s a no-brainer not to use them. With a buriza you need like 215 IAS to reach the horrible max breakpoint of 11 fpa… and it deals, what, maybe 15% more damage than a windforce, if at all that?
Considering the tiny difference in avg or even max damage, it’s NEVER going to outperform a weaker bow hitting at 7 FPA.
I’m not sure about the best course of action here, but I think all crossbows could just get an extra 30-50% base damage across the board, and then MAYBE there would be niche edge-cases, where an appropriately geared xbowazon could outperform a faith multishooter gmbzon.
Would it be broken if crossbows did the same crushing blow % as melee weapons (I think its 1/4 vs 1/8 for ranged if I remember correctly)?
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It doesn’t have to be the same as melee damage, it could be:
- vs monsters → 1/6
- vs uniques/champs/bosses → 1/12
And the only thing that’s “broken” is smite doing full crushing blow damage while ranged weapons do half that damage.
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Be cool to have xbows function differently. Like firing a ballista massive arrow or having a default of 3 shots at once. Or they all have 100% pierce as a base.
Agreed. I think if Crossbows across the board had an innate ability for 100% pierce would go along way to make them more viable.
I would rather see an “ignores target’s physical resistance” sort of thing so that enemies with higher physical resistance wouldn’t be as big of a problem for a crossbow. In this sense, it could even potentially bypass physical immunities, or at least be able to damage them a little bit.
Maybe 50% like Decrepify would work, but it can’t lower a monster’s physical resistance below 0, so it essentially would work similarly to how crossbows would work in real life; better than bows against heavily armored foes (awesome rhyme).
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Xbows are banned in the country that I live in lol, but it’s sorta commonsensical to guess that in the real world xbows are able to output far more than 150% of regular bows. They ought to adjust the ingame numbers to reflect that lol. On ingame balance: there’s plenty of disadvantages of taking 1.5x the amount of time to fire a shot even if it also dealt 1.5x the amount of dmg. Maybe if they took 1.5x the amount of time to fire off but dealt 2.0x the dmg I would consider using them, but otherwise they are just completely useless and there is no practical use for them. Also when setting the dmg numbers on xbows in D2C (before LOD) they did not factor in that many players would be using an inventory full of max damage charms, or WTs etc, so those would skew things even further in the favour of the fast weapons. So in practice xbows deal more like 1.3x but take about 1.5x the time to reload.
Just thought I’d share an educational video about medieval bows versus cross bows 
(70) The Longbow Vs The Crossbow Speed Test - Video 17 - YouTube
I like the idea that Crossbows would have an innate ability to ignore target’s defense and/or physical resistance.
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yes, but also arrows are larger than bolts. So it sort of compensates. Gnerally speaking, you want a crossbow that is 200% higher poundage than a bow to do the same dmg.
Overall, IRL, Bows are the “better” weapon, but they require actual skill and strength to use properly.
So, maybe that’s how they could work in-game too. Have the Crossbows have very low desterity and strength requirements for high dmg / low rate of fire. While bows have higher requirements for medium dmg / high rate of fire.
Also, IRL, anything faster than 1 arrow every 10 seconds is considered fast shooting for an archer; and the very fast ones using specific quick-shooting tecniques shoot 1 arrow every 1-2 seconds but can’t shoot very high power draw-weights. In-game we shoot about 2 arrows / sec, that Amazon is VERY fast. And even magically fast with Strafe.
I personally don’t know if making archery more realistic would make more compelling gameplay… but I definitely wish we had more selection of viable weapons.
Bows and xbows suffered a lot from 1.10 changes. It’s telling that the WF is the only pre 1.10 unique weapon still in end game use. Physical resistance on mobs was bumped up a lot and bows/x-bows got very little to compensate whereas melee weapons got a slew of good runewords, many of which can be made in eth items for even more damage. Bowazons also benefit the least of all physical damage classes from Enigma and Fort because of the high ias requirements on ranged weapons.
All that to say, I agree. X-bows should have their ias requirements reduced and/or have their damage buffed a lot. Buriza was good in 1.09, but lags behind big time now.
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Xbows should deal way more dmg than bows, whit higher AR, keep them slow for compensation, but make that hit count!
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