Should elemental bows be nerfed?

[Ceinwein]

Well, for my 2cp, I'd hate to see Elemental bows get nerfed for a few reasons.

- I own one. Yes, I am not elemental-capable. Yes, I bought *GASP* this weapon. Just like 90% of players bought a droppable item they could not achieve themselves. If you want to try to come up with some sort of moral arguement against this, you'll have to do better than any of the posts I've seen here.

- It destroys the viability of 250 Fletching. You managed to make it that far, despite SoE nerfing the skillups. You've spent a ton of pp and a lot of time to do so. Congratulations! You can now make 3k pp selling Nightmarewoods. Or are we suggesting they should be nerfed so only people who have been to PoN can use them? Or better yet, they should be No Drop?

- Ranger archery is NOT all that and a bag of chips. With all the inherent problems with archery, these bows do not have any sort of unbalancing effect on the game at all. Assuming that SoE did "fix" archery (and this is one reason some Rangers are calling for the nerf) I still do not see them as overpowering. Assuming a Ranger has spent their 52 AAs (EQ - AM3 - Combat Fury3 - FotA3) to become an "Archer" and that they are using Trueshot and they & the mob are standing still, yes Elemental Bows will kick ass. But so will melees with 52 AAs, disciplines, the right conditions and uber droppable weapons. All these bows do is make archery an option for Rangers.

- It's a nerf. Without an overwhelming arguement in favor (and I have not seen any), I will always oppose taking something away from the players.

The call to nerf Elemental Bows is coming from two sources. One is classes other than Rangers who envy Rangers having some fun with archery and (god forbid) maybe outDPSing them in certain ideal situations. The other is from high-level Rangers who hope that by offering up Elemental Bows on the sacrificial altar, SoE will either fix archery (LoS, Walling, Autoattack, etc) or up the melee DPS of Rangers to compensate. Neither of these two arguements, in my opinion, outweigh the reasons not to nerf as I and others have presented.

So get yer greasy mitts off my Stonewood!

[Pesco]

Originally posted by Dvinn
There is no 40/37 bow in LDoN.

There is the shadow agent death bow, 37/36 from Butcherblock for 1150 points.

Yes there is... It can be augmented with a 3 dmg aug to make it 40/36. ( Sorry, I was off by 1 delay )

The idea of special coding content to max out at level 60 is insane. I dont know what happens on other servers, but for the most part, things that arent PoP Teir 3 Flag Mobs, PoP Teir 4+, LDoN Raids, or VT Key Required are pretty much left alone by the ele guilds where I am from unless one of the guild takes on a massive backflagging effort.

There is plenty of content for people non-elemental. The issue is people are so worried about the "evil ubers" or they want so bad to be one that mid-level guilds just dissolve. And also.. there was never much content for the 50-55 crowd... most of it was geared for 55-60 at its origins ( Old World Encounters excluded ofcourse ). Sure there is "crawl raid" content, but not many single mobs were ever designed for 50-55. There is that content now BECAUSE of mudflation. Even when the level cap was still 60, content was twisting its acceptable level due to mudflation and it continues to do so with the level cap at 65 through the power of the Bazaar and LDoN gear.

The issue with Elemental Bows is they create this warping of balance from Teir 1 to Time for the Ranger Class. There are no Bazaar weapons on the caliber of elemental weapons... so why are there bows? There are LDoN Weapons are close to ele weapons, but you have to put forth some effort for those.

People are just freakin because when they hear "nerf" they think the item will become useless. Far from it. They can nerf the ele bows to still be viable in Teir 3- til you are capable of making the turn in for the ele bow in its current form. Heck, you can even put the upgrade quest mob in Sol Ro's Tower if you'd like. There is a good bit of effort in getting that, almost as much as eles.

But all of this is basically pointless, the bows will remain as they are forever. Why? Not because of game balance or anything like that. But because too many people would be upset with the change at this point regardless of what it fixed.

[Daikoku Ashikaga]

The elemental bow is not matched buy other bows avalible to the pre-elemental crowd, but for warriors the best weapon pre time is, while heavily contested, is still not a time mob.

knights and monks have the GSotFW, GSWH and what ever the pally's zek hammer is called. with the exception of the of the zek, these are far above all previous weapons with the exception of Goldenrod, and can be be done in small numbers, Chaoswind, with 1 group of pre elemntal people of the right classes.

Coming up with the money to buy a bow is more dificult for the average ranger then what effoft it takes the average knight to get one of these, so I have yet to see why these are out of balance compaired with what is availlbe to other classes. add for monks the rebb, which does take flagging, but is like another 4 group encounter.

Dai

[Loviotor]

As a level 65, EQ/AM3 and a whole lot of other AA's ranger, I would have to say that anyone thinking that a bow is overpowered or unbalancing, needs to play a ranger to the level and AA count that is required for that type of damage output. Even then, it is purely situational.

Half the raid mobs that you will go against either end up walled (which requires proper positioning on the part of the ranger to get a shot off) or cornered (which means that we cannot even use our bow, in most cases, and have to simply go full melee).

The trivial level of the bows is very high, making failure always possible. Although I have a very high combine rate on elementals (mainly stonewoods), I still failed on my first combine for myself, after successfully combining them 12 times for other people.

As for any one set or series of items making anything trivial in lower zones or other expansion zones, that is to be expected. As the game progresses, otherwise they would have to change everything in the previous expansions to meet the level of difficulty of the newest expansion. With this, it's a double edged sword, and no matter what they do, there will always be people who are not going to be happy about something.

All the rangers that I have talked to, and other classes, as well, have similar complaints. Line of sight when raiding major mobs is a pain. You can graphically see the mob, yet are unable to hit it due to game geometry, causing the game engine to "think" that the mob is in a position that they cannot be seen/hit from.

What's with the "your target is too high/low" when firing a bow... As an experienced bow hunter, in the real world, that statement is ridiculous. If I am sitting in a tree 30 feet DIRECTLY above my target (deer/elk/whatever) I would have a MUCH better chance of hitting it, than if I were doing a straight on shot across a field.

I can see by the varying opinions here, that this is an arguement that won't likely die anytime soon, however, I hope to at least have given some good points for discussion.

[Cerpicio]

Speaking of dropable, crafted, elemental gear, what about the Ceramic items you can make with pottery? Spell Haste IV, Mana Pres. IV, Extended Range IV, Improved Healing IV, etc, etc. Should those be nerfed too? I think they have even lower level requirements than the bows. And more classes can use them, too. And you don't have to be EP flagged to get them.

I'm not saying bows or the ceramic items should be nerfed, I'm just pointing these out as an example.


-- C.

[Qaladar Bragollach]

The obvious difference being that they are useable by all classes... while bows are only effectively used by rangers.

But you knew that right?

The arguement is NOT that they are unbalancing in the absolute... only in the relative. In that they are unbalance as primary weapons for one class when other classes do not have equivalent tradeable primary weapons.

They won't change it though... its too late now to do anything about it. And as I said before, they partially fixed the class imbalance by providing some very nice LDoN weapons for other classes.

The 16/19 piercer from LDoN is the about best you can get until Fennin Ro for example.

[Daikoku Ashikaga]

Most Ssra weapons beat LDoN 2hdrs for knights.


Dai

PS Unbalancing how?, if anything, they bring the play field a little more in balace with the availibilty of weapons for other classes off of mobs which are far from uber, are just farm mobs.

is it just the limiting factor is plat as opposed to having an enc friend and a cleric/druid one, with a few fillers?

[Iannyen]

One thing that I see as a viable solution is to have 2 versions of an elemental bow. The first kind is the crafted, existing droppable kind. The second, would be taking the droppable bow to an NPC in the elemental plane from whece it came, and doing a quest/turnin (say 500pp to buy an Earthen fletching kit from the NPC, put the bow, an earthen temper, and 2 celestial essence [everything else uses it, why not this] and hit combine to recieve an Earthcrafted Stonewood Compound bow, with improved dam/delay, and maybe better range or a nasty proc, and the NODROP tag. Much like an augmentation, but one that can only be recieved by someone zoning into PoEarth and making it to the NPC alive...

Of course thats all theory. But I like the idea.

[Dvinn]

Excellent idea...

[faendrill]

It's my bow. I made it. I was a GM fletcher long before it became fashionable, and I did it the hard way by . I've over 300 days playtime, and I don't deserve it, eh ? I'll give up my Stonewood at approximately the same time that Elemental farmers leave the Kunark dragons alone.

[Daikoku Ashikaga]

No need to give it up, just whinning raiders that complain about anyone else getting anything. (Yes, I am a raider, still does not change how a signifigent minority of highly active posters complain about stuff) the true "Raider" would not waste time complaining as they never meet anyone else besides guildmates in XP groups, or if they do, it is someone from another raiding guild at near the same level.)

Dai

[KletianTellah]

A rogue got into an argument on the whole Rogue vs. Ranger thing on my guild's board. The argument is irrelavant but this was my final answer:

15/25 (Rogue Epic) -> 20/19 Dagger from Time
42/37 (Droppable Bow) -> 43/36 Bow from Time

Yes, Elemental bows need nerfed.

[Lilosh]

I'm my humble little halfling opinions, Elemental Fletching should be nerfed the same time Elemental Smithing, Tailoring, and Pottery are.


Which is never.

If someone wants to go deep into the elemental plane of tofu, and scoop out some Primal Nacho Cheese of Spice, and bring it to the best baker they know, I don't see why the best baker in the world should make a gimped version simply because he didn't slay the God of Sausage himself.


-Lilosh

[eniamn]

tae ew dagger 14/24 give me a bit to find a droppable ele daggers.



don't take away one of the few shinning examples of a good player made weapon.

edit ug no advanced search on lucy for me anymore. can anyone else search for a rouge dagger from pop that is droppable?

[Arrica]

Originally posted by Lilosh
I'm my humble little halfling opinions, Elemental Fletching should be nerfed the same time Elemental Smithing, Tailoring, and Pottery are.


Which is never.

If someone wants to go deep into the elemental plane of tofu, and scoop out some Primal Nacho Cheese of Spice, and bring it to the best baker they know, I don't see why the best baker in the world should make a gimped version simply because he didn't slay the God of Sausage himself.


-Lilosh

Tunare bless you Lilosh! What an excellent way to put it. I take back everything I've ever said about Halflings. Except Halfling rangers, won't ever take back what I've said about them.

Great example, especially with the pottery. Just to pull a random comparrion: Ceramic Incense Burner of Ro vs. Stonewood Compound Bow. Anyone else see what I see? Burner: required level of 46 (don't even need PoP expansion to use) and no recommended level. Compared to required of 61, recommended of 63 on all the elemental bows.

Speaking as a ranger who has bought an elemental bow, why shouldn't I be able to have one? I saved the money to afford it (you know how hard it is to say to yourself "OK, I've got 50k in the bank, I'm halfway there... but, oooh, how far 50k could skill me up.", and then not follow through with the temptation?).

To reinforce a comment made earlier, other than the elementals being sellable, what is there for a high end fletcher? Cultural bows? Riiight.

Another point: they only become "overpowered" with a pretty hefty AA investment. 45 AA's isn't hefty to you or other uber-guild rangers? Well it is to me, and many others, who for any number of reasons don't have the time/resources/access to the "uber-AA farming zones".