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Posted

Hail everyone. Especially those that already know me and whom I've manage to annoy! ;) I've played some other games in this period of absence, and now, I want to try again this title, with a new approach. I have now understood the real nature of this game, and I'm ready to play it as it should. I've recently discovered in P&P my passion for the crossbow. Is it a viable weapon? What class complements this weapon the best?

 

Thank you, hope you can help! 

  • Like 1

 - There are 10 types of people: those who understand binary code, and those who don't. - 

 

 

Posted (edited)

Crossbows have no reduced crit damage - so they're not bad for any class that wants to stay ranged and rolls a lot of crits - like rangers and rogues.

There's a nice soulbound crossbow named Twin Sting that shoots two times without reloading. It is bindable to ranger, cipher and rogue. Ranger's special enchantments with it are the best in my opinion. But there are two other nice unique crossbows, too (both in the Endless Paths by the way).

I personally would use crossbows with a ranger. With Swift Aim, Gunner and a lot of DEX it's not that slow anymore.

 

edit: oops, Ben No.3 was faster with the Twin Sting thing. ;)

Edited by Boeroer

Deadfire Community Patch: Nexus Mods

Posted (edited)

However, an arbalest is always overbearing - meaning is causes prone on crit. It's not too powerful because of the long reload phase of course. You can't chain-prone stuff like with an overbearig melee weapon. I think arbalests have the longest reload phase of all weapons by the way and crossbows the shortest...?

 

The first unique crossbow you can get is "Good Friend" and I think it's in the Endless Paths at lvl 8 (yeah, quite late I have to admit). It's not bad for rangers because it has +4 ACC and +25% damage when you and a team mate - preferably that should be your animal companion - attack the same target, which you should always do because of Stalker's Link and Stunning Shots.

 

It may also be that using Vicious Aim, despite the longer reload, is resulting in more dps because of the increased damage and lot more crits. You can counter the reload malus with Gunner and lots of DEX. Yeah, maybe that's even better than Swift Aim. One should make a chart... ;)

Edited by Boeroer

Deadfire Community Patch: Nexus Mods

Posted

Wendgar is a great option, though it can arrive late depending on your dragon slaying skills. But I had a ranger using it some time ago and it was great. Far quicker than an arbalest and more damage than a warbow and it looks cool. What's not to like! Obviously when I say more damage I mean more damage and not dps if that makes sense.... :)

"Those who look upon gods then say, without even knowing their names, 'He is Fire. She is Dance. He is Destruction. She is Love.' So, to reply to your statement, they do not call themselves gods. Everyone else does, though, everyone who beholds them."
"So they play that on their fascist banjos, eh?"
"You choose the wrong adjective."
"You've already used up all the others.”

 

Lord of Light

 

Posted

Wendgär is without doubt the best non-soulbound crossbow.

 

And you don't have to kill the dragon, you can also pick the easy road an help him escape. :) 

Deadfire Community Patch: Nexus Mods

Posted

Yeah I suppose you could; I just have this unfortunate moral dilemma about allowing monsters to possess unwilling hosts....

Though it does make things easier.

"Those who look upon gods then say, without even knowing their names, 'He is Fire. She is Dance. He is Destruction. She is Love.' So, to reply to your statement, they do not call themselves gods. Everyone else does, though, everyone who beholds them."
"So they play that on their fascist banjos, eh?"
"You choose the wrong adjective."
"You've already used up all the others.”

 

Lord of Light

 

Posted

Hey, thanks for your help! So, class-wise the choice narrows down to ranger or rogue? I'm not sure which one I would be able to use... does the ranger have good dialogue options? You know I don't min max so for me some builds are not even viable.. I'll have to choose my own stats and background... do rogue sneak attack even if ranged? Sorry, I don't know anything about those two classes....

 - There are 10 types of people: those who understand binary code, and those who don't. - 

 

 

Posted

You can also play a cipher with focus on ranged weapons. With Island Aumaua you can take Gunner, Quick Switch and the fourth weapon slot (forgot the name of the ability, sorry). This way you can make up to 4 (or 5, with Twin Sting) quick shots (done by firing and then switching the weapon without waiting for a reload, make sure you bind a hotkey for that) thus generating insane amount of focus and doing tons of damage (casters are always good targets because of poor deflection and low health). After that, you can keep on using your last weapon in a traditional manner (fire & reload), casting stuff and so on.

 

I've had a similar character in my recent playthrough but I used bows and arquebuses instead, and it is insane how powerful he was. I imagine a ranger would be even more devastating with this combination in terms of pure damage output (there was a thread on reddit somewhere about such ranger build succeeding a TCS run in 2.03). No idea about rogues but I think sneak attack works in short range (up to four meters). I wonder if anyone ever tried to do a build of rogue who does sneak attacks with ranged weapons using quick switch tactic or if it is viable at all.

Posted

I'm not sure I would go for a Quick Switching style with crossbows though. Their reload time is much shorter than others, off the top of my head I think about 3.3s (vs about 5 - 6.5s for the other reloadables). Especially if you go for Swift Aim, with that and Gunner you get down to about 1.8s of reloading time (at 10 DEX, obviously). Switching-induced additional recovery is about 0.75s with Quick Switch (unless you do the cheat-switching thing), so that's just a 1 second gain and only for the first couple of shots, but at the cost of two talents (if you take Arms Bearer as well) and a strong pressure to use an Aumaua. And with Twin Sting the gap gets much smaller still. So personally, I'd probably just do traditional fire and reload with a crossbow and use those Talent slots for something else (and maybe take Wood Elf for the additional ACC). 

  • Like 1
Posted

Thanks again for your strategies, but I really don't require to be a "machine gun". It's enough to be a good character who can hold his own in combat and be useful. Good dialogue options complete the PC. Ranger or rogue seem like good choices to me,... cypher is maybe too difficult to use for a newbie?

 - There are 10 types of people: those who understand binary code, and those who don't. - 

 

 

Posted

I'd go Ranger. It's a nice rounded class, would make good use of a crossbow (with Vicious Aim or Swift Aim, either one). And you have your animal for added variety as well as nice role playing flavour. I quite enjoying my current mage-wannabe implement ranger and her fluffy pet 'cat' (he grew a little bit on account of the magical mishap that sent her to Gilded Vale) for that in particular as well.

Posted

I think arbalests are even slower than arquebuses, despite the ingame description.

 

Vicious Aim causes 20% attack speed penalty as well as 20% reload penalty. Don't fully understand your question. Speed penalties always hurt - it's just not that noticeable since reload normally takes longer than attack+recovery. But you will be slower nonetheless.

 

As Loren Tyr said, with Swift Aim, Gunner and good DEX you can fire with crossbows at a good speed. Swift Aim not only speeds up the recovery, but also the reload phase a lot. The reload phase with a crossbow is very short then.

Deadfire Community Patch: Nexus Mods

Posted
  On 9/23/2016 at 4:51 PM, Ben No.3 said:

Be aware though that any non melee ranger will drop Res (and even some melee ones)! Not necessarily bad, just something to keep in mind when talking about mental stats. Generally speaking, all dedicated DD and spellcasters have... You can build around if with some classes though (shameless self promotion ;) )

Sorry Ben, don't fully understand your statement. Does it mean that I must drop res in order to get...say... per? or dex? I have still not decided the race and bg also... dunno for now... elf is kinda obvious...

 - There are 10 types of people: those who understand binary code, and those who don't. - 

 

 

Posted

I see... thanks Ben. Any ideas for a good race and background? 

 - There are 10 types of people: those who understand binary code, and those who don't. - 

 

 

Posted

I did some testing a while back, and got the following approximate reload times at 10 DEX (plus approximate time for a full attack cycle):

- Crossbow: 3.3s (7.5s)

- Pistol / Blunderbuss: 5.1s (9.3s)

- Arbalest: 5.6s (9.8s)

- Arquebus: 6.4s (10.6s)

 

There is a bit of give in those reload times however, that happens with longer animations more generally. But it's close enough for comparison, anyway.

 

Assuming no attack speed penalties/bonuses, the general breakdown of attack cycle duration is 0.2 (idle) + 1.5 (attack) + 2.5 (recovery) + R (reload). Other than the R, this is the same for all ranged weapons except hunting bow / wand / scepter. Which also means that of the reloading weapons, Crossbow actually suffers the most from attack speed penalties (but benefits the most from bonuses), because recovery takes up proportionally more of the total attack cycle. Eg. +20% attack speed means 0.75s recovery. For Crossbow that's a 6.7% increase, for Arquebus just a 4.7% increase.

 

Anyway, with Gunner and Swift Aim (again, assuming no other bonuses/penalties, including armour) recovery becomes 0.8 x 2.5 = 2s and reload becomes 0.56 x R, so for Crossbow that's 1.85s, for a total duration of 5.55s.

  • Like 1
Posted

Ok mates, I'll try to figure out something as a main Char idea. Orlans sound fun anyway.. i thought of them just not to be the typical elf. is a dwarf any good for a ranger?

 - There are 10 types of people: those who understand binary code, and those who don't. - 

 

 

Posted

That sounds GOOD. 'Cos I really love dwarves... even if in this game they're not properly drawn imho... too skinny..:)

Crossbow dwarven ranger.... like it...

 - There are 10 types of people: those who understand binary code, and those who don't. - 

 

 

Posted

The reason why I asked about Driving Flight earlier is I'm pretty sure a Ranger with an arbalest and Swift Aim could chain prone effects, they can certainly chain Blind as standard through Silver Flash through my testing (though it's a little useless given that you blind your pet too - and it only works with Swift Aim so no Powder Burns unfortunately if you want to chain blind) and the reload isn't much different though it is slightly longer. With Silver Flash I used Swift Aim, Int 26 (18 base + 1 Old Vailia + 3 resting bonus + 4 Gwyn's Band) and Dex 22 (18 base plus Viettro's Footware), Gunner and Gauntlets of Swift Action and found you can chain it on blind effect crits (with the idea that blind crits perpetuate more crits by hitting on the lowered reflex once you score the first).

 

With Aedrin's Wrecker you're looking at two possible nasty CC effects, and with Stunning Shots possibly a third separate roll. If this does work on Driving Flight that's two guys potentially out of action quite easily - which with the high base damage of arbalests would be pretty neat. Definitely something to think about, and it certainly avoids some of the problems with Silver Flash even though it doesn't hit such a large group (which you probably don't really need it to on a Ranger, considering Binding Roots).

Posted (edited)

Stunning Shots work with Driving Flight. I'm not so sure about on-crit effects of weapons.

After you get Stunning Shots all the on-crit effects on weapons like overbearing or stunning are obsolete though. Silver Flash is an exception because blind stacks with stunned.

 

Boreal Dwarves are good as DPS guys. +15 ACC against two creature groups is nice. As I said in another thread, you can combine that with the Bartender's Ring and Beast Slayer (and/or Cloak of the Frozen Hunt) plus a kith slaying enchantment on your weapon to improve your damage quite a bit against any kind of creature.

 

Edit: thanks Loren for the data. I now remember that arbalests were slower than pistols and blunderbusses, not arquebuses. Those are still the slowest. Sorry - I seldomly reload those things but use Quick Switch and/or the Coil so I seldomly experience reloading with guns. ;)

Edited by Boeroer

Deadfire Community Patch: Nexus Mods

Posted

Good to know dwarves ar good. I'm a huge fan of 'em. Now only to decide bg and starting stats...and I'm ready to go! 

 - There are 10 types of people: those who understand binary code, and those who don't. - 

 

 

Posted
  On 9/23/2016 at 11:34 PM, Boeroer said:

Stunning Shots work with Driving Flight. I'm not so sure about on-crit effects of weapons.

After you get Stunning Shots all the on-crit effects on weapons like overbearing or stunning are obsolete though. Silver Flash is an exception because blind stacks with stunned.

Wouldn't it permit you three separate rolls though - in which case it ups your chances of getting the maximum length stun/prone? I get that stun and prone don't stack - but adding two additional chances to score one of these debilitating effects on top of stunning shots seems worth it in terms of probability. I'd say the issue is long reload weapons aren't great for kiting - as the reload animation needs to be done while standing still (though it can be stopped and started, so if you get half way through the animation then you'll pick up where you left off when you're still again - which I have to say looks very weird). This means more kiting than normal, and probably doesn't work well in conjunction with stun/prone-locking enemies as all that running around is delaying the time between shots.

 

It also seems a little pointless to stack blind and stunned, as the only effects which are suppressed by stunned are -accuracy and -move speed, which won't have an effect while they're not moving from stunned in the first place.

  • Like 1
Posted (edited)

@ Jojobobo: Yes, you are right - there would be a slighty higher chance to get a stun-crit result when you score a weapon crit before (and only then) - but since you will cause stun anyway with any weapon on hit I would then focus on a weapon enchantment that has more to add. Like Wendgär's predatory enchantent for example or Good Friend's coordinating one. Coordinating is a very nice enchantment for a ranger because he wants to attack the same target as his pet anyway (because of stunning shots & stalker's link for example) and then can benefit from +4 ACC and +25% damage all the time. There are not too many things that can boost ranged weapon's damage, so that's nice. Or Twin Sting of course which I find to be very nice - especially the Plague of Insects part. ;)

 

Hehe - you are right with blind and stun - they do kind of stack but it's not very effective. :)

 

---

 

A bit of theorycrafting (Slacker83 shouldn't read this if he doesn't want to get too confused ;))

A Boreal Dwarf with Stunning Shots, Stalker's Link (+10 ACC), Bartender's Ring (+20% dmg to spirit and vessel), Stalker's Torc (+20% dmg), Beast Slayer talent (+25% dmg), Appr. Sneak Attack (+15%), Archer's Gloves(+10%) and Good Friend (+4 ACC / +25% dmg) with kith slaying (+4 ACC / +25% dmg) enchantment will have the following "passive" ACC/dmg bonuses when attacking the same foe as his pet (not including the math for more crits because of stunned, the ACC survival bonuses with 10 survival, Marked Prey or quality enchantments like fine, exeptional etc. - those would add on top of the following):

 

- Primordial: +29 ACC / +70% dmg 

- Wilder: +29 ACC / +70% dmg

- Spirit: +14 ACC / +90% dmg

- Vessel: +14 ACC / +90% dmg

- Beast: +14 ACC / +95% dmg

- Kith: +18 ACC / +95% dmg

 

Now add marked prey, +15 survival (except against kith) and the quality enchantments and do some math with crossbows' base damage and you can see that it's quite awesome. ;) You could also stack +40% bonus against flanked targets with boots and survival, buit it's a bit of a hassle - I like the +ACC from survial more.

 

I think for a ranger Good Friend is even better than Wendgär once it's enchanted to superb. With stunning shots and your sky high ACC you cause crits all the time - you don't even need Wendgär's 10% hit-to-crit conversion I guess. 

 

Twin Sting is also very nice because of it's raw damage, the auto-superb enchantment and the two shots without reloading (you shouldn't move between thoise two shots because then it doesn't work). The best thing is of course the Plague on Insects that has a much higher chance than 25% when you use Driving Flight: ~43% instead of 25%. So nearly every second shot will trigger this special version of Plague of Insects - great!

 

@Slacker: Boreal Dwarf as ranger + crossbow is a good combo. Both in terms of power as well as lore and roleplaying. I would take a wolf or stag (let's call it moose in this case :)) as animal companion. 

Edited by Boeroer
  • Like 2

Deadfire Community Patch: Nexus Mods

Posted

Lol... moose ;) Bear fits well with a dwarf.... mmm I'll think about it. 

Regarding the rest of the post Boeroer.... I'm not really into number crunching, especially since I'm not an expert. I'll just play and enjoy! ;)

 - There are 10 types of people: those who understand binary code, and those who don't. - 

 

 

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