[Rendar]

Bows are, in general, pretty awful right now. Their SWA is generally low, barring the Handshot,Filcherbird, and Kraken's Sigh.

They're barely cresting 100~110 SWA, and most of that is due to the fact that bows just.. aren't able to pack much of a punch because they're pure STR weapons, that also require GUI (long range penalty), and also require SKI to hit, and most bows will require a secondary stat that is going to usually have 40 scaled.

I've got a few ideas, mostly adjusting the base range Farshot Penalty, dropping it lower for Bows in general so that they can hit distant targets without dropping 60+ invested gui.

The other thing I'm wanting to see, and was curious about, was 'how does lowering each bow's STR scaling down by 30%, and adding 40% SKI do?' With exceptions not to be applied to the Crossbow and the Howling Handshot. Got the numbers for that down below. Most bows saw a 10~13 SWA increase, which put them onto an actual viable level. The stats assumed here are 54 scaled STR, 60 scaled ski/cel, and 40 in every other stat (for the purposes of a 'secondary' damage stat). No weapon parts/upgrade levels/qualities/enchantments were involved. 

Does this really solve the issue of 'God damnit Handshot.' ? No not really, as it still puts the Handshot at 119 SWA when 2-handing, but it at least brings other bows up to a somewhat competent level that they aren't struggling to breach 110 SWA with everything available to them.

[Poruku]

Yeah that sounds amazing, I wish other weapons got a similar kind of balance pass tbh. I know the thread isn't about this but any weapon that isn't being used for spellcasting feels terrible when hovering around 100 swa. You only get something that feels decent when piercing 110-115. It's especially bad when using something like a fist, which has horrible crit damage

[Raigen.Convict]

But what if that's the main drawback of bows? Lower raw power in exxhange for being 10 tiles back to attack from? Legendary class outliers exist yes but thats true for all types.

[TheGhostlyKnight]

But what if that's the main drawback of bows? Lower raw power in exxhange for being 10 tiles back to attack from? Legendary class outliers exist yes but thats true for all types.

Tomes do the whole attacking from afar far better. If this was the intention (big if) then thats real unfortunate and not overly well done considering other bows are currently not very usable.

[Rendar]

Bows have a baseline range of 2-4. With a 50% hit penalty in melee unless you use a shortbow or a weapon part that reduces it's range even further. Furthermore, bows eat shit in the long range penalty because they lose 12ish hit on average per tile past base range. Meaning they can't hit the broad side of a barn if they're firing with every range modifier at their disposal.

So they CAN attack at 10 tiles away, but they are infinitely punished for daring to, because the weapons themselves require so much gui to be able to ping a dodgy at ranges that caster rangers can just. Not care about anyways.

[Lolzytripd]

Bows have a baseline range of 2-4. With a 50% hit penalty in melee unless you use a shortbow or a weapon part that reduces it's range even further.  Furthermore, bows eat shit in the long range penalty because they lose 12ish hit on average per tile past base range.  Meaning they can't hit the broad side of a barn if they're firing with every range modifier at their disposal.

So they CAN attack at 10 tiles away,  but they are infinitely punished for daring to, because the weapons themselves require so much gui to be able to ping a dodgy at ranges that caster rangers can just.  Not care about anyways.

 I think that fall off should honestly be put some where in the 50 hit vs evade buff cap zone

Maybe fall off hit reduction should be capped at -50 and be subtracted from your total hit, not after your hit has been adjusted. That way a bow user could invest in more buffer hit above the 50 cap to pay their fall off taxes

[Veacari]

I agree with the core sentiment of the topic, but I'm not sure if I agree with this exact solution.
I do agree that bows are very stat intensive; and their main crit part also has range reduction, so any long range setup has limitations and drawbacks to it. The issues I got with the proposed solution is twofold:

1) Howling Handshot, and crossbows in general, do not play nice with being dualwielded. The other side of that statement is that normal bows can be dualwielded (at the cost of your hand slot) to possibly reach 9 momentum turns, which is a major breakpoint for action economy.

2) Some of the weapons listed have "hidden" power in their special abilities and UL bonuses. Kraken's Sigh & Razing Salamander has a 40% chance to activate a +30 power AoE basic attack, and Hell Sniper not only has empowered Marked Target, but will also in many cases increases the frequency of its application.

There's also the base range to account for, with Razing & Kraken being outliers with 5 base range, as opposed to the more common 3-4, or 2 of crossbow weapons.

So while I agree with a buff to non-handshot bows, and would love to see this come in the form of a shift away from STR scaling towards SKI, I can not support a specific suggestion that would lead to 120% scaling on the likes of Kraken's Sigh.
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There's also the matter of overall game balance to consider, is Handshots current state acceptable, and something we should balance bows around, or does that weapon need further tuning? And if we got more efficient ways to spend 1-2 momentum, the value of dualwielding conventional bows would go down.

TL;DR -  Making bows more SKI based than STR seems fitting with their stat demand, especially post STR buff. Good idea to close the gap between Handshot and other bows, but don't forget about the kind of indirect power the normal bows may have that handshot doesn't have. Exact values need to be tuned individually.

[Rendar]

I agree with the core sentiment of the topic, but I'm not sure if I agree with this exact solution.
I do agree that bows are very stat intensive; and their main crit part also has range reduction, so any long range setup has limitations and drawbacks to it. The issues I got with the proposed solution is twofold:

1) Howling Handshot, and crossbows in general, do not play nice with being dualwielded. The other side of that statement is that normal bows can be dualwielded (at the cost of your hand slot) to possibly reach 9 momentum turns, which is a major breakpoint for action economy.

2) Some of the weapons listed have "hidden" power in their special abilities and UL bonuses. Kraken's Sigh & Razing Salamander has a 40% chance to activate a +30 power AoE basic attack, and Hell Sniper not only has empowered Marked Target, but will also in many cases increases the frequency of its application.

There's also the base range to account for, with Razing & Kraken being outliers with 5 base range, as opposed to the more common 3-4, or 2 of crossbow weapons.

So while I agree with a buff to non-handshot bows, and would love to see this come in the form of a shift away from STR scaling towards SKI, I can not support a specific suggestion that would lead to 120% scaling on the likes of Kraken's Sigh.
---
There's also the matter of overall game balance to consider, is Handshots current state acceptable, and something we should balance bows around, or does that weapon need further tuning? And if we got more efficient ways to spend 1-2 momentum, the value of dualwielding conventional bows would go down.

TL;DR -  Making bows more SKI based than STR seems fitting with their stat demand, especially post STR buff. Good idea to close the gap between Handshot and other bows, but don't forget about the kind of indirect power the normal bows may have that handshot doesn't have. Exact values need to be tuned individually.

Completely reasonable to not wanting to have a 120% scaling bow with majority ski. That bow can, frankly, probably be ignored as it already has the suggested change as is.

[Poruku]

Bows can still hit dodgies from 12 tiles, they just need to use skills instead of basics, in the same way tome users use spells. But rangers have way more range than spellcasters unless you count talis.

I do think bows get this special advantage of range over all other weapon types. That's why I think something like fist is a little more disadvantaged, being fully carried by boxer or verg. You say that bows suffer from having to build guile but let's not forget guile gives crit damage, it's not a dead stat. You can also forego guile if you're a ranger using skills only.

I do agree with giving bows a default skill scaling but I propose we also give guns the same treatment.

Of course handshot and crossbow and bows that already have ice scaling would be unaffected.

[Autumn]

I think the most straight forward way to make it so that all the other bows equate to Howling Handshot is just to make them benefit from Two-Hand, that'd infinitely expand the pool of bows, while still letting Handshot retain it's niche since its a Sword/Bow with the precision tag.

I don't mind building STR for bows, I do mind that the best Bow is the best bow because its primarily SKI scaling WITH Full Swing available to it and a +7 Hit bonus because its also a sword.

You could argue Handshot still has too much going for it, but I will argue that bows have too little going for them, and that Handshot is relatively healthy for the game in it's current state.

Though if you really just want my opinion, bows aren't doing enough damage for basic attackers primarily, their spellcasting is fine. There's probably ways to address these things separately.