Exbow: we all seem to agree but divert from topic (in General)

We all seem to agree that the Exbow (and I think also the Axbow) both are still broken or undesirably powerful.

Instead of making this a yes/no kind of topic, please instead think about this:



What if the power of the Exbow CURRENTLY is 100%, or 1.0, what do you think the power should be?

Find some Exbows and test their abilities and write them down here, and then discuss about how much that power should be toned down. Just in short simple words.

I like how it has to deal a certain amount of damage relative to max HP to be effective, I feel that mechanic could be explored and improved.

It allows for damage reduction and HP increase to be a viable exbow defense.

They best bet would be make it that it never takes all of the current stat on the minion.
Maybe make it that the percentage difference between the minions starting HP and its HP after it was hit by the xbow is the total maximum that can be drained.

i.e I have a 1mil HP minion, 2mil strength and 1.25mil dexterity.
Round 1: Minion gets hit by fireball for 150k damage then get hit by the exbow for 50k damage.
200k damage to the 1mil HP minion so far. thats 20% lost.
So the exbow drains 20% of the tanks str making it 1.6mil.

Round 2 He takes 200k damage from fireball and 50k from the exbow.
His current HP become 550k. thats 45% total lost so far.
So he losses another 25% of his original str (500k) putting him on 1.1mil str.
and it continues.

keep existing mechanics and simply increase the threshold by 200% (instead of 2.5% of HP, make it 10%)

I realize this just moves the bar higher, but I think that's what we need, rather than artificial caps.

I think that 200% would be a bit too much. But that that is the right idea. I think that 100% is probably around where it should be meaning 5% to get the regular effect.

This is also what I said when the change first came out.

Nayab, we simply don't need such a complicated system.
Want to stop negatives? Just get rid of the flat reduction and leave it as a percentage reduction the way it is.
We only need to move down around 5% and I still think the axbow should be exempt from the changes as base-to-hit means opponents are still very likely to get at least one hit per round.
So exbow needs a 5% reduction while axbow needs to stay the same.

Actually,

From what I read in the exbow threads, not everyone believes the item is still or was even broken.

But to your question:

If the power is 1.0, I believe it should be .5. With no ability to completely drain a tanks strength.

That is why I proposed an AMF type of drain. Something on a curve that lets a lot of strength in the beginning but not a lot at the end.

No need to increase the threshold where the exbow STARTS to work. Leave that where it is, just don't make the drain so large.

If you can damage 10% of a target's HP, that should probably take at least 80-90% of the target's STR.

If you are only damaging 2.5%, just take something like 25-30%.

And those numbers are ENTIRELY negotiable. But please, spread out the curve. Right now, it only takes a relatively small amount of STR and NW to hit hard enough for complete drain and to pump the PTH enough to get that hit even in early rounds (especially with leadership in play).

I am not sure what this 1.0 thing really means, but if that is a factor of how much drain the exbow should do at the 2.5% damage threshold, then I am more around 0.3, as I mention above. Taking a third of a target's STR with each hit isn't exactly chopped liver.

i see it as a very powerful foil to a very powerful strategy. much in the same vein as evasion was to usd boosted weapons.

it was necessary to add some limitations to its use. just like evasion though you need to look at the whole picture. if one side is adjusted, the other will need to be brought down as well.

i could get behind solutions that address both sides of the equation if i thought they were good. when solutions are proposed that just deal with weakening one side or making it harder to use, then i feel exactly the way i did with evasion...we are better off having a broken foil to something overpowered than just letting it run rampant.

Not to get off topic, but archers have foils.

1) GA especially vs RoS characters
2) JKF, right now LR's character can beat mine with much much less NW.
3) ToE, greatly reduces physical damage
4) AC, remember all AC works vs physical while only the + works vs magical
5) Decay, as archers almost always use DM

The exbow is just an abusive item with its potential to completely negate a tank. And currently it can do it in 1 hit, which is not that hard to get with all the pluses to hit one can obtain.

No other item in the game does this. Mages have no counterpart. Make it so the MgS can eliminate 100% of a mages damage and we can start chatting about equality.

There has to be a cap on the drain an exbow can do per hit. And it cannot be 100%.

Yeah, the JKF is a bit of a stinker for Hal teams. I would say a pretty much exact foil.

In my opinion, the exbow shouldn't be an end-all, be-all foil. It is just a piece of gear. It should enhance the degradation of an opponent but not completely debilitate it unless you REALLY commit to it (i.e. a huge NW and large minion wielding it.

It's like DM -- DM is meant to cut into DEs to help a DM user equalize the playing field. And when you have a LOT of DM, it can even completely negate a full DE-dependent team. But devoting that much to it lets the rock-scissors-paper kick in from other fronts.

When we are talking foils, why is it believed that the exbow should be a 100% one? Ranger just listed a bunch of other things that work well against Halidons.

I myself am not affected by Exbows at all, they mean nothing to me.
I believe that the top damage dealing Exbows are not really broken either.

My goal here is only to look for a way to make them a bit less powerful in the ST draining IF they would be made less powerful by Jonathan or NS in the future.

"In my opinion, the exbow shouldn't be an end-all, be-all foil. It is just a piece of gear. It should enhance the degradation of an opponent but not completely debilitate it unless you REALLY commit to it (i.e. a huge NW and large minion wielding it."

jon seems to hold a very different opinion from the statements that i quoted, and taken with his most recent change to the exbow. i wonder why he holds such a different opinion?

It may be that Jon wants us to rely on multiple forms of damage dealers to get away from tankblender...

Jonathan
Admin
Last login: Sep 13

... or it may just be that he isn't aware his tweak didn't fix it.

here is the quote, i guess i had posted it in another thread:

" AdminJonathan July 6 1:22 PM EDT
Re http://www.carnageblender.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg.tcl?msg_id=002oqu

Moving this to General instead of the thinly-veiled sarcastic Congrats.

I agree with novice:

> The exbow has worked the same way for years, and has forced teams with tank only damage to wear defensive equipment to protect against the power of the exbow. This isn't new, or broken per say. Any more than decay or the RoS is broken. They're exceptionally specialized and are designed as counters to a particular setup (often a very powerful setup in itself).

In particular I'm reluctant to change something that has worked, if not "great," then at least "pretty well" for years. Also, some players do have a tendency to cry for a nerf whenever someone beats them with a narrowly-targeted strategy, and that's part of CB. (And if you're wondering what the antecedent of "that" is, it's both. :)

But, I also agree with sutekh:

> Amazing or not, when it comes to being able to have massive rewards based on one, flawed item, that affects just about every aspect of the game. It skews the new user and new character bonuses, skews clan results, and skews the score ladder.

I'm open to suggestions for making the exbow/axbow still useful without being such a hard counter. (Soft counters are more interesting.) I don't think just tweaking the numbers involved is the answer, which is why it's a tough problem."

i could be reading too much into that statement of jon's, but it seems to me that what he's trying to do is make physical damage teams choose to focus on offense, defense or balance the two somehow.

if you choose to go more offensive as a physical damage team, the exbow will be the paper to your rock. if you do not want to be foiled by one item, then make the trade-offs to protect against it at the cost of losing some other opponent off of your list.

I think we do not know what Jon's point of the exbow is/was.

If we did, all this discussion and discourse in the forums could be eliminated.

However, I would highly disagree with the statement "The exbow has worked the same way for years, and has forced teams with tank only damage to wear defensive equipment to protect against the power of the exbow. This isn't new, or broken per say."

I have defensive equipment. I have 205DBs, a 3.5M dexterity, 11M hp, an AC of 165 (more if I did not have to use DBs) and still get hit by exbows even with less than 200 PTH. How much more defensive do we need to get? Using the ToE just to stop the exbow drain? That seems very stupid to be forced to use a tattoo to stop an abusive item.

What about those that do not have 205 DBs and cannot afford them?

Now, with the new change, all one has to do is equip it on a 1M strength minion, using all strength boosting items, with 1M dexterity using Leadership to boost the PTH. If the enemy does not use DBs, their tank is essentially gone in 2-3 rounds at most. Unless they use the ToE or use heavy AC armor which is very detrimental to playing a tank in the first place.

In the past users did not have 60M or more to spend on the exbow, and those that did (myself included) realized this item was highly abusive and certain nerf-bait. We did not want another VB fiasco.

But now, with characters approaching 5.2M MPR, the xp on even 4th minions on a character can be more than enough to have 1-2M strength and 1M dex with 1M hp. Enought to properly use a 60-80M NW exbow to leech 100+% of someone's strength.

And with the game moving on, with MPR's getting towards 6 or 7M, with money being made and sold by NUB's, how much longer are we going to go before all the characters have one of these items nerfing all tanks?

And how in the heck are melee tanks even going to be viable anymore?

And as to the rock/paper/scissors:

There are many other ways to defend vs missile damage characters, as stated above:

1) GA especially RoS characters
2) JKF, right now LR's character can beat mine with much much less NW.
3) ToE, greatly reduces physical damage
4) AC, remember all AC works vs physical while only the + works vs magical
5) Decay, as archers almost always use DM

Do we really need the exbow as well? I do not think so and wish it be gone.

1) GA especially RoS characters
[requires the use of AS and at least 3 minions to be mildly effective]
2) JKF, right now LR's character can beat mine with much much less NW.
[requires a tat slot and most of the xp from the minion it's Junctioned to]
3) ToE, greatly reduces physical damage
[tat slot and severe pain of massive PR that does nothing against RoBF and magical teams]
4) AC, remember all AC works vs physical while only the + works vs magical
[encumbrance makes AC that actually helps against the ELB hard to get]
5) Decay, as archers almost always use DM
[hahahahaha]

There are counters, they are all weak unless your team is entirely centered around them. At this point the formula for supremacy is too simple in my opinion, the exbow forces the archer to invest in defense for total domination and that's a good thing.

So lets return to the topic and discuss solutions rather than argue.

the "fix" has been stated numerous times. make it so its not a 1 hit 100% drain, cap the drain % somewhere so that it can still greatly reduce strength but not 100% in 1 single hit

I really don't like the idea of hard caps, the soft cap system implemented already should work given adjustment. A hard cap means that the exbow is not longer an effective defense for users with fewer minions, as the holder may be dead long before the ELB damage is much reduced. A 50% cap doesn't cut damage more than 25%, which isn't much when one of the big dogs can do 4-5m in a single round.

All that being said, I can't help but feel for the many elb users who aren't using oversized weapons. They suffer far more than folks who can actually apply the NW based counters to the exbow. Maybe it's time for an item that boosts HP to help counter the power of the exbow.

Nobody stated the counters to missile damage were easy.

But they are there.

And not of the 1 hit wonder the exbow is.

Give me a counter to DD damage that is easy? The MgS? I laugh so hard at that one.

AMF? Another laugh as most AMF is useless with NSC

AC? More laughter as only the + helps

GA? See the RoS statements above.

The MSB? HAHA, with PL/TSA/revive, it takes a lot of NW and concentration of xp to get an archer that high to make it work successfully.

Tanks vs mages have the same problems. Just no 1 step solution as the exbow. No tanks vs mages actually have to plan accordingly.

So your fix would be deleting it then Ranger?

I'm all for it, as soon as we cut ranged back down to 4 rounds, remove the ranged magic damage penalty and lower the base CTH of the ELB.

What about making the SoC extra effective vs the exbow? Then it would lower its damage, which in turn lowers the drain?

At least this may be a start.

The current SoC 1/2% per + is not really that much.

Most tanks use either the BoM or MgS, with some including UC using the SoC.

I would just guess at perhaps a 2-3x boost vs the exbow may help quite a lot. Or not at all.

Just throwing ideas against the wall.

I would prefer to see the exbow rightly fixed, instead of using one item against one broken item.

Again... how?

That was Shade's whole question...

If the soft cap of HP v damage isn't enough, what would be?

"So your fix would be deleting it then Ranger?"

If a real fix is not made, then yes. Remove the darn item. But if a good fix can be made, then keep it. However we get now high MPR characters with a few million levels of xp to spare who can slap on one of these and use it very effectively.

"I'm all for it, as soon as we cut ranged back down to 4 rounds, remove the ranged magic damage penalty and lower the base CTH of the ELB."

1 by 1:

Cut ranged back to 4 rounds. Sure, just then increase the damage back to the way it was before we went to 6 rounds. Remember the damage in missile was reduced to compensate for more missile rounds.
Also, once you get an archer to melee, they rarely hit if you have DBs on. And with ENC and costs, it is extremely hard to have a great missile and melee weapon.

Remove the ranged magic damage penalty. Sure, if we remove the penalty ranged users have in CTH/BTH in the early rounds.

Lower the BTH of the ELB. I cannot disagree with that, IF the other 2 parts were enacted also. But lower it to what? 10? 50? 80? I would be ok with 80. No lower.

"Again... how?"

Guys, please read my posts.

Make it like AMF. Something along the lines of a bell curve.

Use damage vs hp, or strength vs hp, or strength vs strength. But make it fairly simple to get some drain, most of the drain is in the middle areas (30-70%) and very hard to get over 70%.

In order to use the 3 factors that I believe should determine drain, I would use damage done vs strength left of the minion targetted. But I could be swayed if others come up with a better system.

Easy to ramp up, hard to get to the top.

And make the drain based upon % strength at the time.

IE:

Starting strength 10M.

First hit does 50% ---> 5M left.

Second hit does 50% ---> 2.5M left. Not 0 left.

Third hit does 50% ---> 1.25M left.

So in 3 hits you drain 87% of a tanks strength, which is a massive amount and will decrease damage by a large amount, but not eliminate it. No plus/minus.

basing it on strength would be going against what i read as jon's desire.

am i the only one that thinks he wants to discourage an all offensive build as being the end all physical damage strategy in the game?

i tend to think this is actually the reason he has kept it in the game and would love to see, during a free retrain perhaps, how heroes could do if he used a more balanced dex to str ratio or even more dex than strength.

"I tend to think this is actually the reason he has kept it in the game and would love to see, during a free retrain perhaps, how heroes could do if he used a more balanced dex to str ratio or even more dex than strength. "

Right now my Dex and Str are just about equal.

3.2M levels trained strength vs 3.05M levels in dex.

If I go more dexterity, my damage suffers greatly, just to try to avoid being hit from an exbow? With my DBs, leadership is giving the hits needed to suck my strength to nothing.

I would love, just love to use my EBs but of course I have to stop Exbow hits. Again, I really do not mind being hit with weapons, hence my high HP. But when I have to try to not be hit but 1 specific item once or twice, I have to use my DBs.

With my DBs I get 4.3M dexterity along with my 6.88M strength.

Seriously, what else can I do on Heroes to stop this drain.

"am i the only one that thinks he wants to discourage an all offensive build as being the end all physical damage strategy in the game? "

Well with the ToE nerf, and the AC nerf, it seems defensive setups are a thing of the past. Koy used to be a perfect defensive setup with a melee tank. But now, if I had Koy, I would be in the same situation unless I still used the ToE. And that will likely not happen as AMF is pathetic as a foil for DD, and the ToE does nothing vs DD.

Instead of having 1 item that skews things (DBs live, EBs lose), how about balancing the missile damage if that is the problem.

As novice stated, and I have stated, I really feel bad for those non-USD based tanks and the melee tanks. They have no chance vs the exbow.

which is why i see so many parallels to the evasion debate. one game mechanic that is meant to foil the top end of another game mechanic but totally wipes the lower end.

which is also why i think that when it is fixed it will likely not be a good day for those on either side of the debate. i honestly think we need a total overhaul of ranged mechanics, but i have thought that for a while now.

There is a huge difference in this debate compared to evasion.

With evasion, one gets hit, takes damage. And if you have enough hp or even GA you move on to the next round etc..

With the exbow, all it currently can take is 1 hit and that is the whole battle.

The reason evasion is different at lower levels WRT (with respect to) higher levels is BTH and dex.

At lower levels hits are almost 100% due to BTH and dex. Also, ENC makes it hard to have enough NW on DB to lower hits significantly. Xp at the lower levels is much less making high evasions impossible.

At higher levels this is less the fact and more or at least equally due to PTH/evasion/DB.

But how would you change the ranged mechanics?

i meant the old evasion. the binary nature of the old evasion compared to the binary nature of the exbow to be precise. ; )

the inability of anyone to explain to me exactly how all of the ranged modifiers are applied and thus the inability of anyone to ever know if it is functioning as intended tells me that it is just too complex as it is.

as for my personal opinion. why have ranged weapons and ranged rounds and then have all of these modifiers reducing the damage for parts of it? it would be simpler to do away with ranged rounds, do away with modifiers and just make the damage less or modify the rounds they fire in.

that does remove some of the choice though. : (

perhaps just simplify what we have, remove many of the modifiers and adjust damage accordingly?

I'm on my Q, so I don't want to read all of the above posts, but Ranger's old AMF like idea definitely made the most "CB sense."

Since we are doing damage vs hp, why not multiply the damage done by some factor, possibly 20 and then use the AMF formula.

IE, vs a 5M hp minion if you do 100k damage, you get a 2M vs 5M in the AMF type of formula.

Drain would then be: 26% drain on the first hit.

Or some higher or lower multiplier.

IE a 50 multiplier would give a 50% drain.

a 70 multiplier would give a 67% drain.

But this gives more of a bell curve and no "hard" caps.

Something that is more CB like than a +/- type of situation.

"I really don't like the idea of hard caps"

Decay is hard-capped at 50%, what's bad about decay ? :D
Let the EXbow work like decay does, but on ST instead of HP.
And just like how AMF "battles" with Decay/NCS to determine decay's effect, let the EXBow damage battle it out with enemy HP to determine the "ST decay".

And just like decay, the EXBow should never bring you below 1 ST.

Oh, Sickone. You and your damnable logic!

I like Ranger's bell curve idea better than capping at 50%. Something just doesn't feel right about it.

Also, for the record, I don't like the decay mechanic very much at all, but that's more because of the nature of DM making zero AMF impossible.