Anyone else outraged @ the removal of bow CAs?

Geez people, can we stop with the bickering over what a 'swashbuckler' might have once been? This is a fantasy game, the characters are make believe, all of them, not just swachy's. For those who don't want to use a bow, because Erol Flynn never used a bow, then please....be my guest! But just because your view of what a swashbuckler should be differs in a small way from how they are implemented in game is no reason to force a change on everyone. I created a swash because I liked the range of skills I'd eventually have, which included bows. It's a little late to change that now.....I doubt I'll be given the opportunity to rewind 33 levels and start over from scratch. And even if 'they' decide to allow us all to un-attune our bows, who are we going to sell them too? The markets will be quickly flooded with nice bows, all selling for a few silver. Thanks, but no thanks. This exceeds a 'tweak', and is a drastic revision of what a Swachy is, and the changes are too great for anyone to overcome with a simple 'respec'.

~Chimmi, Oasis, lvl 33 swach

This is a picture of MIDIEVIL pirates who have not realized gunpowder yet, takeing over another ship.... and look at that BOW they are useing!!!!!!!!! Also they are useing many other objects.... Anything they can use to defeat their enemy is what they will use.... Now with that pic u cannot tell me pirates didnt use bows in the midievil days of no gunpowder!!!


Apparently they used arrows with boxing gloves on the end of them as well. Use anything, indeed :smileyvery-happy:

Probably supposed to be a flaming arrow or something...otherwise, Green Arrow off the Justice League would've gotten along great back then.

From what I can tell it is some type of clay pot, probably containing oil. There is one in the sling the guy behind him is holding too.

/sign
I want to keep my bow for CA's, picking my teeth and everthing in between.
That or I want my 1 plat back.
Cheers

["...
As long as bandoliers are re-itemised to be viable alternatives to bows, I'm all for it. Coz currently, the bandoliers I've seen bite.

And I also agree, if this was done for mostly RP reasons, why do rangers still have poison...? ..."]


Just 're-itemising' may not be enough.
One key aspect of bows seems to have been forgotten by everyone; archers can swap arrow type on the fly for different mob resists.
Are rogues going to be forced to acquire a legendary version of a sheathe, a bandolier and a satchel each just to be able to adjust and adapt to mob resist? (dagger, hammer, axe respectively)

What is needed is to reorganise, readjust and rename all sheathes, pouches etc etc to be called bandoliers, and have them be able to 'fire' all types of throwing weapons.

Even then however, I still cannot think of a single practical reason or situation why anyone who can use a bow would want to switch to throwers, and that speaks a lot regarding equality and viability among ranged weapon options.

In addition of being longest range and most variety of quality drops/rewards, bows have --
- cheapest ammo; tin arrow can be found on the basic merchant in every start village, but lowest tier i can find is iron for throwers.
- most readily available ammo; appropriate levled arrows are stocked in most general merchants in every zone, but i don't see anyone outside the city selling throw ammo.
- specialty arrow types

Oh sweet merciful Marr, you mean there are different types of ammo for bows that give slashing and blunt???

That is possibly the stupidest thing I've heard in a long time. An arrow punches a hole in a target by applying a great deal of force to a small area. It really doesnt matter if the head is flat, angled or pointy, it pierces. It does not apply a huge amount of force over a large area (blunt) nor over a linear area with a sawing effect (ie slash).

These effects should be entirely reserved for thrown weapons to give even rangers a reason to have bandoliers too.

So..... Dumb.....

I dont see a real problem here.

We can use bow anyway. But i dont see any reason why swashbuckler should be specialized in bow and have special attacks with it. Thats rangers job imo.

You can flame me as much as you want but it dpnt bother me at all if we dont have this CA with bow. Others abilities look neat and i like them (xept friggin razor edge). So im looking forward revamp and you can whine as long as you want about, it wont change a bit, you should know SOE already and realise that yourself.

yes i want my bow, i need bow i do 750-800 damage everytime i range this really helps out

What makes me sad, is that they dont allow to reattune bows. I have yew and cedar bow.

If doing a lot of damage with ranged CAs was so important to you, it seems odd that you didn't pick Ranger. It isn't like it was even remotely hidden that Rogues and Swashbucklers are melee oriented.
I mean look at Swashbuckler CA's virtually every single one is not effected one way or the other if you even have a ranged weapon. I'll have to check when I'm a higher level, but when I compare my current ranged CA with my other skills, for the amount of delay it has, even a good hit, while better than many other skills just for a single hit it pretty good, is not overly good. The delay is so long you could easily do a number of melee skills and easily outdamage that one ranged CA, you can get 2 maybe 3 melee CAs out in just the casting time of the ranged CA. Really it isn't any good except for the first hit before they get in range of melee, which granted is nice, but hardly enough that it has a major influence over how the subclass is played. Even when I had a good bow with level appropriate arrows, the damage while good for just a single CA just really wasn't that spectacular in comparison to the amount I can do in melee in the same amount of time. Now I'm using a sheath just because the stat bonuses were significantly better than any bow that is reasonably priced at the moment.
It isn't even like Swashbuckler is borderline between melee and ranged where this might be an issue, Swashbuckler's CA's are very clearly designed for a character to be almost exclusively melee.

I use my bow to pull with. I need the big hit it gives since I'm sacrificing my stealth attack to get a mob out of the pack. I need long range to be able to stand somewhere reasonably safe from constant adds. I need the stats to help keep me alive. There are no sheathes in the game that I'm aware of that can come even close to what I need and currently have.
There is no real reason given by SOE for this bow CA nerf and I hope they dump it as the bad idea it is. If SOE intends to go ahead with this then at the very least they need to put in game sheathes that are comparable in all ways to the plethora of great bows now available.

As a Tailor it would be nice to see a desire for bandoliers, sheaths, satchels and pouches, as nobody wants these now to to bows being so much better. I would be happy if they took the 4 types and combined them into 1 single bandoleir that can hold any of the throwing weapons, and allow tailors to imbue them. Currently you can get an imbued bow, but cannot get any other imbued ranged weapon. The damage and stats on this all in one bandolier would need to be comperable to that of the similar lvl bows.
As a Rogue/Swashie, for RP purposes I would rather have throwing knives, but as a gamer, I would not want to lose out on too much DPS in order to do so.

Yeah I'm beginning to get over it.
I just read Matheau's post and well, this CA is a lot more than just a tool for pulling or a medium quality damage ability.
If you use this ability as intended (or at least intended by an efficient user) it is our move with the best damage/cost ratio.
and none of our abilities can do more damage chained together in the same time.

Let's compare it with our most damaging chain: Brazen Thrust - Disheartening Guile - Cat's Paw.
Thats about 450 + 600 + 450 = 1500 damage (guessing average results).
With swift sneak this combo takes 1+1.5+1.5+1 = 5 seconds to do, with normal sneak its 3+1.5+1.5+1 = 7 seconds
The power cost for this chain is about 270 power. Power ratio is 5.5dmg/point of power.
The dps with Swift Sneak is 300dps, the dps without is 215.

Summary: 1500dmg, 5 seconds, 270 power, 300dps, 5.5 dpp

Frigid Blast - Autoattack
Thats about 250 + 300 + 200 + plus 58% chance to proc poison on every hit for about 350 damage on Torrent of the Ages plus a 11% chance for each Gleaming Strike proc for about 200 dmg on every hit.
Summing up to 750 minimum damage, about 1k average damage(low estimation) and close to 1.5k on a good hit.
The time to do this is 3 seconds since the autoattack will hit instantly after the Frigid Blast. If you wish to be accurate you can add half a second for dashing in and out; there is no area inbetween melee and ranged combat though, so a single step is enough if you were at max melee range.
The power cost for this is about 100 power. The average power ratio is 10dmg/point of power.
The dps on an average hit is 330dps.

Summary: 1000dmg, 3 seconds, 100power, 330dps, 10dpp

This is pure math, not taking into account all the other factors such as raid usability, range etc.

So if I ever have a right to whine about something, this is the time to whine. But as I said, I'm over it...*cough*
People saying "Get over it, whining wont change a thing." are right. Perople saying "That move isn't that super anyway." are as wrong as could be.

Outraged? Absolutely.


I've yet to here a reasonable arguement on why this needs to be changed.

If this is changed, I expect to get a bandolier/sheath thing with the same dammage rating, stats, and tier I currently have. I expect to have all my crafted arrows replaced with the same tier components. Ie the 20 stacks of feysteel arrows, and dozen stack of ebon arrows better be replaced with the equivilent, etc.

Regardless, there are so many other aspects that need 'fixing' why break this? What is the justification?

To be honest with everyone, a flat out ban of this combat revamp isn't out of the question. I mean, tweaking is one thing... Saying, Oops, its 10 months later and well, we didn't really figure it out right the first time. So... We're going to re-write the entire mechanics and we'll get it right this time. Just ignore everything we said before, and forget everything you learned about playing the game and your class, cause well, it ended up not turning out the way we planned....

Save that crap for EQ3 guys... Seriously...

First off this isn't a pirate game or a "midevil" game (as some of you apparently like to spell it) this is a FANTASY game.

Secondly I can't believe they would actually bring this to live after the response on the forums. I was going to make a rogue alt but wanted a bow class that wasn't a ranger. If they take bow CAs away from Rogues I guess I have to find a new class.

... just because of its useful and its a ranged attack doesn't mean you have to be an [expletive ninja'd by Faarbot].... big deal the swashy's like their bow ability it gives them a way to solo i don't know what i would do without that ability if i tried to solo

This is how I feel.

Unless a developer cares to comment on the reason behind this change (I pray this isn't a silly cop-out for the roleplayers, or jealously from the Predators), then there's no alternative but to take this as a senseless nerf to the Swashbuckler class.

There's a lot of combat changes I don't agree with as far as Swashbucklers are concerned, but I can understand and deal with them for the sake of balance. However, this change has nothing to do with balance. There's no reason for it, other than to make a lot of established players very angry.

How are the rogue classes coping with the new changes on test?

Any advantages or disadvantages to the change of this skill?

I think if they upped the stats to the sheaths, added the standard proc and increased the range of the knives i would be ok with the change. After all a piece of cedar for a bow, is cheap in comparison to the cost of arrows and knives. Speaking of the cost for arrows and knives.......?
For all those with fabled bows, what can i say? I haven't been lucky enough to get one. You guys are getting screwed on this count. Perhaps if they offered the ability to re-attune, you could atleast sell it.
Scratch increasing the range! Better yet, double the damage from thrown items and increase the proc percentage to 8% in close quarters! Say if you are within 3 meters of the mob when throwing the knife.
What do you think?
Message Edited by Hammarus on 08-18-2005 03:38 PM
Message Edited by Hammarus on 08-18-2005 03:40 PM