Talk to the Team: Crossbowman
What is it?
A confused school with little purpose. A ranged attack school but with few abilities of its own and no focus.
What should it be?
A ranged school with the capability to alter its attacks to be a nuker, crowd control or debuffer.
How would it accomplish this?
By changing the types of bolts it uses and by customizing the components of its crossbow, when combined with a set of natural abilities. Bolts are a consumable that are produced in bulk and consumed when the crossbowman uses attacks or abilities. Bolts are produced by a crafting school, though the particulars of that have not yet been defined. Bolts will have minimal if any bulk to encourage players to hold different types in inventory.
Types of bolts:
- Standard
- Poisoned
- Burning
- Freezing
- Electrified
- Barbed (Bleed)
- Life Drain
- Strengthened - Armor piercing
- Chained (Root)
- Exploding (AoE)
How would bolts be used?
Crossbow attacks and abilities will be updated to consume a bolt with every attack. An ability will allow you to override the type of bolt that the crossbow consumes to the specific type (listed above). Switching between bolt types will have a delay.
How are some of these bolts different from abilities such as Flame Attack or Elemental Archer’s arrows?
Attacks will still do piercing damage (or other damage types if you have overridden it with a buff), but these bolts will have additional damage or capabilities. Chained, for example, will have a chance to root. Exploding will do AoE damage. Burning will have a chance to cause a short flame DoT.
Crossbow mechanics:
Crossbowman will alter the functionality of their crossbow using Mechanisms. These will be purchased from trainers or crafted by tinkerers and then socketed into the Mechanism Socket. Mechanisms would be crafted by Tinkerers or other schools. Some combinations of mechanisms can produce additional bonuses or results (like item sets).
Mechanism Sockets will work just like other sockets for Crystals and will take up a tech slot. That means you could have up to 3 Mechanism Sockets on a Tier 5 crossbow.
Types of mechanisms:
- Standard Cartridge: By upgrading the cartridge for the standard crossbow, the wielder can greatly improve the reload rate of bolts. Improves the recycle rate of attacks and abilities.
- Improved Cartridge: By upgrading the cartridge for the standard crossbow, the wielder can greatly improve the reload rate of bolts. Improves the recycle rate of attacks and abilities, but also lowers the delay when switching bolt types.
- Enlarged Chamber: By upgrading the chamber for the standard crossbow with a larger chamber, the wielder can enhance the firing capabilities of the crossbow. Reduces the accuracy of the crossbowman's attacks, but adds a number of bonus attacks.
- Improved String: By upgrading the string for the standard crossbow with a, the wielder can improve the power of the crossbow. Bonus DPS to every attack.
- Hardened Bow: By upgrading the bow of the standard crossbow with one made from treated wood, the wielder can improve the accuracy and range of the crossbow. Increases accuracy and range of every attack.
- Sight: By upgrading the sight of the standard crossbow with one made of better materials, the wielder is able to target specific locations on the target and to extend the firing range of the crossbow. Increases range, but also grants some specific abilities such as Target Head (mez), Target Feet (root) and Target Vitals (bleed).
- Grip: By upgrading the grip of the standard crossbow with one made of better materials, the wielder is less likely to lose hold of the crossbow when in close combat. Allows the wielder to block some attacks with their crossbow and a counterattack, Retaliatory Smash, which would be usable after a successful block.
Abilities
There would be a few tweaks to the existing unique Crossbowman abilities, but for the most part they would remain the same. The bulk of the changes would be to the functionality surrounding the crossbow itself. Lowering the recycle rates across the board would be the big change.
Re: Talk to the Team: Crossbowman
That sounds like a good start. I have never used my crossbow because it has a shorter range than I would like.
What abilities would transfer to it from other schools?
Re: Talk to the Team: Crossbowman
One of my group members is a crossbowman and he's going to be very excited for these changes. You hit the nail on the head Amon, the crossbowman wasn't a very specialized class, with almost no abilities of it's own that made it stand out. Does it do it's job as is? Yeah, but it could be better and I think your proposed changes would go a long way towards accomplishing that goal.
I personally love the idea of different types of ammo and customizing the various mechanisms that make up the crossbow, frankly that change alone would fix most of the issues surrounding the class.
Is this something that is being worked on? Or is this just theory crafting right now?
Re: Talk to the Team: Crossbowman
While the crossbowman does need some changes to make it viable, I am not sure that using the cartridge system. The epic crossbow cannot have slots, therefore the best crossbow that players can use will be of no use to the crossbowman. The system needs to be one that is usable no matter what crossbow you have and no matter what techs are on it. While some may say this will lead to an overpowered class, as long as it is done properly, the crossbowman should do damage comparable to the other missile classes.
As it is right now, the other missile classes out damage the crossbowman by a fair amount and the ability to wear plate armor doesn't really make up for it.
A ranger using a crossbow with the correct abilities can get the delay of the crossbow down to 18 or lower. Why doesn't crossbowman who has one missile type, crossbow, have the same kind of abilities to lower the delay of the crossbow?
Re: Talk to the Team: Crossbowman
Thanks for your replies!
@Grogo You're making an assumption that the epic wouldn't be altered to accept cartridges. Why wouldn't we update it so that it would fit the pattern as well?
@Quiiliitiila Thanks! This is something that is in the early idea/brainstorming phase. What you see here, minus some more in-depth numbers and notes about balance, is what we have so far.
@Ming At the moment no abilities have been added or removed from the school in our plan, just some recycle and effect tweaks. I can't promise things won't change, but currently the plan is to give the school more flexibility from the weapon side rather than ability side of things.
Re: Talk to the Team: Crossbowman
Bit of an idea to add some bonus to the Fletching school in making the bolts.
T1 - Standard and Strengthened (armour pierce)
T2 - Poisoned and Barbed (bleed)
T3 - Freezing and Chained (root)
T4 - Burning and Exploding (AoE)
T5 - Electrified and Life Drain (leech)
3 parts required to make Bolts - Head, Shaft and Fletching.
-Cedar and bronze for T1
-Elm and Iron for T2
-Oak and Steel for T3
-Maple and Cobalt for T4
-Yew and Mithril for T5
Can add Bolt Head Patterns (like key patterns) in 2 options of 10 and 100, purchasable from Fletcher (bit of a coin sink)
The Fletching i'm not sure about as we only have Chickens in Istaria for the Feathers?
I suppose you could do Chicken feather plus another mob comp to make different fletching.
Or maybe use Tiered Tree sap plus mob comps to make "oil" to temper the bolts and add the "special ability".
just something whirling around in my head because you know we love crafting in Istaria :D
Re: Talk to the Team: Crossbowman
Dunno if Crossbowman has been shelved or not but i'd like to just remind you if it's still being planned.
Crossbowman is a Strength close quarters school and not a Dexterity long-range
Don't want to end up with just another "bow" school ;)
Re: Talk to the Team: Crossbowman
close quarters? mid range, not close quarters and not long-range!
Also, 10% of your Dexterity gets added to your Crossbow skill, so it's already 100% dexterity at this point.