Crossbowman. Viable?

[Desmodeus]

I've seen a lot of builds with bows(mainly Borrisane, Persistence and Stormcaller), I've seen some builds with guns, but never one focused on crossbows and arbalests. Are they even viable as a main weapon? I've seen some use of Twin Sting as a "trigger Plague and switch" weapon on ranger but thats exactly that - critat start of combat under dire blessing and switch. Or even just start with bow and not use it

I am thinking maybe Ranger with Swift Strikes + Gunner can make use of Hold-Wall/Aedrin's Wrecker + Twin Sting but how viable it will be and what to do with pierce immunity...

[Boeroer]

Aedrin's Wrecker's stun effect is quite cool although its redundant with all arbalests' prone on crit.
The speed enchantment on Hold-Wall is a bit wasted since it doesn' reduce the reloading time - but it still gives you a few frames of speedup so not so bad. Same with Wendgär. 

One-Eyed Molina's could be great if the reloading enchantment wasn't implemented backwards (and never got fixed).

Twin Sting is pretty awesome imo and I wouldn't switch after triggering Plague of insects. The double shot makes it a good weapon.

Pierce immunity is a problem for most ranged characters. That's why Stormcaller or th Massuk Hunting Bow can be so good to have - or maybe just carry an implemement like the Engwithan Scepter with you as a backup weapon.  

 

[Desmodeus]

Problem is, when you get stormcaller - I doubt you will want to main anything else xD I mean... Heart of Storm enhancable + Returning storm

Yeah, so pity about One-Eyed Molina. Also pity that there is no soulbound guns

[Boeroer]

The Returning Storm on Stormcaller only hits a single enemy once. It's not as impactful as Twin Sting's Plague of Insects which covers a big AoE.
 

[Desmodeus]

But stormcaller damage is so damn high and shoot fast enough so Returning storm end up being triggered almost nonstop

So... lets say character like this

• Island Aumaua: for three slots, so it will be possible to have arbalest+twin sting+ sub weapon
• Stats 20-8-10-18-18-3: to pull max from pron on crit of arbalest and swarm from twin sting. Long durations and a lot of crits. IIRC Dex isn't very useful on reloading characters as return is kinda minimal
• Rauatai: Mercenary - for sweet arbalets in the beginning
• Pet: maybe Boar? nothing I think looks too rauatai here...

Will work for crossbowman?

Edited January 20, 2021 by Desmodeus

[Boeroer]

Why is Stormcaller's damage damn high? It has 10-15 base damage like any other hunting bow and it lacks a lash. What's good about it is its -6 shock DR on hit and the fact that it itself causes shock damage - nice synergy. Also dual damage: cool. Returning Storm triggers on 10% of hits. So not really nonstop. But of course with Twinned Shots and Driving Flight it triggers every third shot (if there are enough enemies to receive the Driving Flight hits).

But yes: if you are asking whether you should go for Hunting Bows or Crossbows I would alsways say Hunting Bows. Persistence comes so early and has the potential best single target dps of all ranged weapons due to wounding, Stormcaller is awesome, too and comes earlier than Twing Sting.
But if you ask me if Twin Sting is good: it is very good. 18-26 base damage with twice the attack rate as a normal crossbow, chance to trigger a big raw damage spell, some raw dmg per hit, frighten on kill... It's really good. I wouldn't want to build around it thoug because it comes way too late to be a lot of fun. And the crossbows or arbalests before that are not too exiting. Not bad, but nothing I get excited about.
 

[Desmodeus]

50 minutes ago, Boeroer said:

Why is Stormcaller's damage damn high? It has 10-15 base damage like any other hunting bow and it lacks a lash. What's good about it is its -6 shock DR on hit and the fact that it itself causes shock damage - nice synergy. Also dual damage: cool

Mainly because of -6 DR. Thats not discountable number and while it does lacks in single strike punching power, stormcaller characters reliably stays as one who has "most  total damage done" on stat screen. Even persistance doesn't come close for some reason

[Boeroer]

Persistence's wounding is a DoT effect. DoT effects don't count towards "damage done" in the char sheet. Animal Companion's damage has the same problem by the way (I mean it doesn't count - not that it's a DoT).

Since the wounding is a big part of Persistence's damage advantage (the other one is unlocking Predator's Sense all the time which also doesn't count) it's no wonder the Ranger using it has less damage on his sheet. PoE is sloppy in that regard unfortunately. 


 

Edited January 20, 2021 by Boeroer

[Desmodeus]

Didn't know that. Interesting. That means that my preferable type of wizard(dots) is entirely excluded from this competition... wonder if its actually him who do most damage in my parties...

[Boeroer]

Wizards don't have that many DoTs. I suppose you mean pulsing spells like Chillfog and such?

We need to differentiate between two types of  "damage over time" effects:

One type that only does one attack roll max (might even be auto-hit like Deep Wounds) and then "ticks" away the damage (most often every 3 secs) without any further attack roll. That's stuff like Plague of Insects, Dragon Thrashed, Disintegrate etc. Those get referred as "DoT" in these forum mostly.
Those don't count towards the "damage done" stat.

Spells like Chillfog, Wicked Briars, walls and beams on the other hand do an attack roll with every "pulse" while they are active. So it can be a miss/graze/hit/crit with every new pulse. We often call them "pulsing spells" here to set them apart from DoTs. Of course: this is also damage over time strictly speaking - but because they work quite differently it's best not to confuse both types and avoid to use the same terminology. Those pulsing effects do count towards the "damage done" stat.

 

[Desmodeus]

Ok, didn't knew about this mechanical difference. Interesting

[baldurs_gate_2]

Molina with swift aim and gunner is pretty fast. There is a bug fix on nexusmods for the crossbow, then it works as intented.