Eaglehorn change.... sadly meh?

PC General Discussion
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I was really excited when they mentioned on the dev livestream that Eaglehorn might be getting a buff. I really want to see some strong pen-shot Rogue builds.

But then after looking at patch notes, Eaglehorn seems like wasn’t just straight buffed, but maybe more of a lateral change? The previous pen-shot bounce chance was up to 80%, but now it’s going to be every 4th shot. I’m not a math genius but isn’t that like only every 25% of shots? So when you look at that aspect of it you’re dropping from chances of over 3 out of 4 shots bouncing for the original Eaglehorn, down to a fixed 25% bounce chance now (on the 4th shot). This is kinda meh to me, and I’m hoping some devs might see this and consider a tweak to every 2nd shot. At least this would then put it at a solid fixed 50% bounce rate, which would be more respectable compared to the original chances.

The Vulnerable guaranteed proc, and the additional damage on the bouncing shot seems like it will be decent, but really the whole unique point of the build/unique is for that ability to bounce. Why give it such a lackluster bounce rate of 25%? This is lower than the 30% chance as the minimum chance on the original version.

IMO, this was a chance for them to push the envelope a bit on making a ranged build viable, but instead it’s just a meh change and I don’t see Rogue meta really shifting much.

3 Likes
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Windforce didnt get much love either.

Starting to believe blizzard hates ranged characters

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Why should this surprise you? Buzzard has a long history of borking up fun!:man_facepalming:

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Lol I guess you’re right, I mean they did convert OW1 into OW2, so same vibes really.

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Yes, this change is a complete disappointment.

Eaglehorn was my favorite item in the game because of the bouncing effect. It did perfectly what the developers argued unique items should do: Change how you use your abilities (use your surroundings to deal damage). It definitely was pure fun to play and to look at!

I question what they intended to do with this change, because it takes away the bows unique selling point. No longer can you reliable position yourself to mess with enemies in closed areas because 25% bounce rotation is difficult to track. Penetration Shot also benefited a lot from the bounces because of this: “Penetration Shot deals x10% more dmg for each enemy it hits”. Meaning a buffed arrow can hit multiple times. Damage wise this change sounds like a big nerf, only making other bows more interesting to use.

To the developers: Please consider making the bounce chance 100% and balance additional effects or buffs around it.

3 Likes
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I mean, max of 40% on WF isn’t terrible and a lot better than 30 but I still wish they would just separate the two effects and guarantee the knockback when firing it.

That’s the whole point of using WF. The double damage is nice & all, and I can’t speak for everyone but I primarily want WF for the ability to keep enemies at a distance which at least when mobbing is vastly more valuable than the bonus damage.

I also wish they would make Rapid Fire and Barrage more distinct - or better yet just give us back Multishot already.

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I‍ personally would have changed Eagle Horn to something like this and then monitored the season to see if I need to buff or nerf it in the future:

Penetrating Shot makes enemies Vulnerable for 3 seconds and does 5-8% more damage. Penetrating Shot also has a 30–50% chance to fire an arrow that bounces off walls and scenery.

But yeah…as it stands Eagle Horn and Windforce arn’t great. At this point in time there is little to no reason to use Eaglehorn over Skyhunter unless they secretly made the bouncing for Eaglehorn crazy.

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When server performance is a KPI, you have to figure that is an indirect second order affect. I think there is actually a comment made a one point buried in the Q&A that reflects this. Basically the buff where BS could keep on shooting and then the server still has to keep making calculations of increasing damage, I’m sure when it finally got reviewed they realized wow, that’s draining server performance, we’ve got to cut that down. (Same as multiball ball lightnings stressing the server for animation and tick damage calculation)

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Gotchya, so for sake of performance all builds must be boring.

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When you make an always online game ran by hampster wheels then unfortunately yes.

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I try to ressurect this thread because the issue with Eaglehorn is not getting better. Here is a reversed timeline for the bows changes, starting with Season 4. I highlighted the noticable parts.

1.5.0
Damage bonus increased from 50-70% to 50-150%.

1.4.0
Damage bonus increased from 40-60% to 50-70%.

1.3.3
Damage bonus increased from 20-40% to 40-60%.

1.3.0
Penetrating Shot makes enemies Vulnerable for 3 seconds. Penetrating Shot has a 30-80% chance to fire an arrow that bounces off walls and scenery. Every 4th cast bounces off walls and scenery and deals 20%–40% bonus damage.

1.2.0
Penetrating Shot has a 30-80% chance to fire an arrow that bounces off walls and scenery. Damaging 5 enemies with Penetrating Shot will cause your next cast to make enemies hit Vulnerable for 3 seconds.

1.1.0a
Penetrating Shot has a 30-80% chance to fire an arrow that bounces off walls and scenery. Hitting enemies from behind with Penetrating Shot will make them Vulnerable for 3 seconds.

Source: https://www.purediablo.com/diablo4/Eaglehorn

You can see this is the third iteration for the bow to be adjusted in order to compensate the hard cut on the bouncing chance, which was reasoned to be part of several buffs to all bows because nobody used them.

To everyone reading this without knowledge of how “every forth arrow” actually feels like: a fixed 25% chance is hard to notice and even harder to track independently of your attack speed. The bow effectively got nerfed with the first change (1.3.0) since Penetration Shot benefits a lot from multiple hits and therefore the bounces (damage increases for each enemy punctured and can hit an enemy again). That is one reason why the damage multiplier was introduced.

Eaglehorns disadvantage before this change was the dependency on walls to have arrows bouncing which made it complicated for most boss arenas. But imo this gave the bow its special charme and made it very unique. Narrow corridors were a death trap to enemies and fun to play around.

Dear Developers:

For Liliths sake, please change this bows unique power completely instead of buffing what fails to work into infinity. It will not feel any different to use if you continue to buff this value.
Personally I would love if you bring back the (near) 100% chance to ping-pong arrows around the scene. This was extremely pleasing to play. The idea was fitting for Penetration Shot.
Flat damage and vulnerable are everywhere and as it stands I seriously doubt the current power is characteristic enough for the skill in order to be considered a unique upgrade.

This bow could be much more interesting for Penetration Shot builds. Please do something about it.

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The only saving grace is uniques are getting looked at in S5 :rofl:

Generally good changes but Loot Reborn forgot about many Unique items.

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Uniques definitely need some love.

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Just had a 4 GA Eaglehorn drop. Even has a 66x roll. I am pretty excited about trying to work this into a build somehow. Masterworked it to level 12 just to see:

  • 22.0 Crit Chance
  • 85.8 Vulnerable damage
    68.3 Physical Damage
  • 103.4 Damage to Elites

Seems very interesting to me, as it will cause vulnerable. I know it will not be S Tier but this is my first quad GA and I will be excited until the disappointment settles in lol.

1 Like