Bow is terrible in PvP and need some more love (or a bug)

[vanghern]

Yo,

I did some testing on Valhalla, to check how the bow behaves and came into this weird discovery I want to discuss.

For my testing, I took a character (dummy character) with 10k Con, 600 agi, 150 mm as a practice target. I've fully dressed this character with q200 plate armor.

My tester was a character equipped with q200 bows with q200 arrows. At this point, there was some, obvious, conclusions:

1. There is a difference in damage between Hunters bow and Rangers bow
2. Arrows are like this: Metal>Bone>Stone

Nothing new, everyone kinda expected that, so I started to play with statistics. With my initial quality settings, I set my MM to 600, took Rangers Bow with Stone Arrow (both q200)
34 shp dmg, 279 blocked by armor.

and with 1200 MM
34 shp dmg, 280 blocked by armor.

Now that's weird, I expected more significant difference, since the LP cost of raising MM from 600 to 1200 is pretty huge, so I did following:
600 MM, Bow q400
69 shp dmg, 355 blocked by armor.

1200MM, Bow q400
70 shp dmg, 355 blocked by armor.

9999MM, Bow q400
70 shp dmg, 355 blocked by armor.

At this point I decided to first, do some more testing and digging, and second, post this topic on the forum. Clearly something doesn't work here, since 10k MM is an insane, probably unachievable amount, that gives you absolutely nothing, versus heavy armor.

RoB formula is here:
https://ringofbrodgar.com/wiki/Ranger%27s_Bow

You can translate it to Dmg = SomeConstant + Sqrt(Sqrt(Marksmanship * Bow Quality )/10) + SomeConstant

Which means, both BowQ and MM affects the damage outcome equally.

So my assumption was, that RoB is not wrong, I'm just missing something, so I removed Plate Armor from my dummy character and did tests with 100, 600 and 1200MM and there is actually a visible difference in the damage.
Since all above is true, It should also be true, that armor hardcaps the damage from MM stat, but also doesn't hardcap the damage from Bow Quality, which is absolutely weird thing for my taste.
To explain this simplier - To become completely invulnerable to high marksmanship character, it's seemingly enough to just put a full set of steel armor (which is available after a month of the world start). And then it doesn't matter if the archer has 100, 1000 or 10000 MM, still is not going to do anything versus your steel gear.

To check analogic mechanics for melee combat I took B12 and did following:
600 str, 100 blue open cleave
300 hhp dmg + 926 shp dmg

9999 str, 100 blue open cleave
952 hhp dmg + 2300 shp dmg

And after seeing that final thing I want to say that:
If the bow and archery in general was ever ment to be viable for PvP, it is currently broken, both with the weird MM vs armor mechanics and even with working MM scaling dmg is just silly, compared to what can melee do.
inb4 - I'm not saying shooting should be as powerful as melee combat, but come on, you can easly deal more damage with bare hand punch, than from end game Ranger's Bow with good quality arrows.

[DonVelD]

yeah make bows wound people

[noindyfikator]

copium thread

[Gensokyo]

Rangers Bow with Stone Arrow

But why Stone Arrows?
I understand that the Rangers Bow innate PEN removal might have been slightly overkill that just made the weapon a complete sidegrade of "I would like to aim twice as long for twice the damage", but I'm not quite sure why you'd run these tests with the weakest penetrating arrow type in the game.
Makes the whole post and the damage values listed in it seem heavily biased.

You can translate it to Dmg = SomeConstant + Sqrt(Sqrt(Marksmanship * Bow Quality )/10) + SomeConstant

This is an inaccurate and an outdated formula, specifically the "Archery" section on the ringofbrodgar wiki has the correct information about bows and their damage scaling (or lack thereof, in this case):

Bow damage is based on:

Quality of the bow (and equal amount of Marksmanship to gain full benefit)
Quality and type of arrow you are using (Bone Arrow < Stone Arrow < Metal Arrow) <- This one should be Stone < Bone < Metal
When hitting a target, a comparison is also made between the target's Agility * Marksmanship, and your Perception * Marksmanship, which can further reduce your damage.

As it stands, the only way to gain damage is Credos and better Q bows + arrows.

Discussion of archery vs melee is not a reasonable point almost ever simply because archery is a fire and forget sort of ordeal that does not have to worry or fuss about openings at a distance of extreme safety.
Sure, a 600 str, 100 blue open cleave might deal a lot of damage compared to archery, but a fair comparison is that a 0 blue opening 0 red opening does ZERO damage, while a first hit from a bow deals reasonable damage.

[vanghern]

Rangers Bow with Stone Arrow

But why Stone Arrows?
I understand that the Rangers Bow innate PEN removal might have been slightly overkill that just made the weapon a complete sidegrade of "I would like to aim twice as long for twice the damage", but I'm not quite sure why you'd run these tests with the weakest penetrating arrow type in the game.
Makes the whole post and the damage values listed in it seem heavily biased.

Irrelevant, you can run those tests with any arrows, numbers are still silly. Initially I did the tests with all types of arrows, for MM 600, BowQ 200 dmg was like that:

shp/armor
Stone 34/279
Bone 54/281
Metal 74/283

You can translate it to Dmg = SomeConstant + Sqrt(Sqrt(Marksmanship * Bow Quality )/10) + SomeConstant

This is an inaccurate and an outdated formula, specifically the "Archery" section on the ringofbrodgar wiki has the correct information about bows and their damage scaling (or lack thereof, in this case):

Yet, it's the only viable source of info, so I needed any data, to perform tests. I can agree that it doesn't really fit to what I discovered.

Discussion of archery vs melee is not a reasonable point almost ever simply because archery is a fire and forget sort of ordeal that does not have to worry or fuss about openings at a distance of extreme safety.
Sure, a 600 str, 100 blue open cleave might deal a lot of damage compared to archery, but a fair comparison is that a 0 blue opening 0 red opening does ZERO damage, while a first hit from a bow deals reasonable damage.

This is why I said

If the bow and archery in general was ever ment to be viable for PvP

Maybe it just wasn't, and the PvP is about running around the continent for 40 mins, catching rabbits and speed buffs, occasionaly falling asleep due to boredom.

And hey, about this:

while a first hit from a bow deals reasonable damage.

Idk man, I feel like, it's quite easy to get full q200 steel gear, while q200 rangers bow is a bit more difficult, and even then, with 600 MM, you deal 70 dmg (if you actually hit the target). Not sure if it's reasonable.


Edit:
Also, on top of all that, bow is in a really weird spot, where it's not even good for any game content. PvE is faster and easier with melee and PvP is close to impossible with bow. The only good usage of the bow, I can think of is bird hunting. Go mountains and shoot those damn ptarmigans.

[Gensokyo]

you deal 70 dmg (if you actually hit the target). Not sure if it's reasonable.

This is the damage you would do with a 40 blue 30 red opening cleave with a Q200 B12 at 600 STR against a target with a full Q200 steel set.
A minimum of multiple flexes and 8 IP (6 for cleave, 2 for KITO), without the victim doing any defenses.
or
Press H and hope it lands.

This is also completely ignoring that this 70 DMG would be higher with Hunter and Strider and that you do not need 600 MM to match 600 AGI + 150 MM, but rather 300 PER + 300 MM.

[Vert]

you can get additional 15% damage with credo.
right now you canT increase damage with perc or mm. damage depends on arrow and bow. since metal > wood. armor will always be better then bow, so you only will do penetration damage.

Or you can fight someone without armor.

bow should have additional mechanics maybe 5-10% random opening on target, or something other

[Sevenless]

So my assumption was, that RoB is not wrong

Always assume your testing is right if it conflicts with the wiki. This game has fundamentally changed the basic mechanics so many times over the years, and the wiki is historically understaffed, that misinformation exists in the weirdest places.

To my knowledge, MM simply acts as a softcap for the quality of bow/arrows. If you're below their quality you lose damage.

Also I heavily suspect the old perception vs agility thing that's often talked about was taken out at some point (if it ever existed in hafen).

[Reiber]

Yo,

If the bow and archery in general was ever ment to be viable for PvP,

thats the flaw. it isnt.
every time archery was in any way viable, or even niche usable. people complained, especially the people that spend thousands of hours intoo the game and have jorbtard in their dms.

jorbtard do struggle with ballancing 2 weapons against each other, but they realized, that any more will just make the problem worse, and 2 different systems even more so, thats why hyrdmans and frydmans swords are only ever crafted for creedos, or 12 months intoo an 16 month world where 2/3th of the playerbase has quit.

and thats why archery isnt allowed to be used,

hell, bows where already only usable in naval combat, so they dissallowed you to shoot from crewseats,

if you go out, and make a video shooting somebody from a oxcart you might actually result in wagons getting the same treatment.


i guess it isnt even jorbtard, being against ranged in pvp. they just dont want to deal with the entire pvp community spampinging them, and rather dont have to bother, so if your findings would have resulted in you finding a niche for bows it would have been nerfed.

currently, the only place bows have, is for getting through hunter/strider, wich nobody would pick up, lest required, cause 4/5 benefits from both creedos are purely for ranged combat.

[vanghern]

Yo,

If the bow and archery in general was ever ment to be viable for PvP,

thats the flaw. it isnt.
every time archery was in any way viable, or even niche usable. people complained, especially the people that spend thousands of hours intoo the game and have jorbtard in their dms.

jorbtard do struggle with ballancing 2 weapons against each other, but they realized, that any more will just make the problem worse, and 2 different systems even more so, thats why hyrdmans and frydmans swords are only ever crafted for creedos, or 12 months intoo an 16 month world where 2/3th of the playerbase has quit.

and thats why archery isnt allowed to be used,

hell, bows where already only usable in naval combat, so they dissallowed you to shoot from crewseats,

if you go out, and make a video shooting somebody from a oxcart you might actually result in wagons getting the same treatment.


i guess it isnt even jorbtard, being against ranged in pvp. they just dont want to deal with the entire pvp community spampinging them, and rather dont have to bother, so if your findings would have resulted in you finding a niche for bows it would have been nerfed.

currently, the only place bows have, is for getting through hunter/strider, wich nobody would pick up, lest required, cause 4/5 benefits from both creedos are purely for ranged combat.

Thanks for your answer, it kinda explains the fact that bows are sort of cosmetic items right now.

It also made me realized that this game has absolutely weird scope. World starts, ppl want to enjoy it, there is a huge influx of hermits and PvErs and small "pvp community" that spreads the terror and bullies ppl who don't want to pvp at all. Then, after a month or two, 75% of PvE players quit, coz they have enough of being randomly ganked/sieged by some small pp no lifers. And then, when the PvErs are gone, this "pvp community" realizes that there is no players on the server to play with (such a surprise!) and then they quit, leaving the servers almost empty.
And Jorbtar just watches all of this for years and doesn't seem to give a damn about the situation.

And PvP flagging, like in other pvpve games could solve most of those issues Not balancing of course, but the pvp issues.