Crossbow bolt skills feel bad

I have been playing witchhunter merc for awhile now and I decided to go all in on bolt skills.

I made it to endgame and the build performes fine. My issue is that the core mechanics of the bolt skills feel bad such as reloading and swapping bolts.

I have every reload node on the tree and tried to build more attack speed to make the reload quicker and it still feels clunky. Some of the bolts are designed to combo off of each other but one of the issues with that is swapping bolts
1. Has a slight delay.
2. Potentially not fire even if you are holding the attack button
3. Sometimes bolt skills just don't fire at all for several seconds

On top of these after you finish your combo you will want to swap back to your general clearing bolt which probably isn't reloaded so another reload. We have access to one skill that helps with reload it's on a massive 45 second CD brought down to 30 seconds with a gem. However this only reloads the currently equipped bolt. So it really doesn't help much with reload and is pretty much just a damage buff for 6 seconds.

Most of these are a non issue leveling and going through the campaign. The time it's most apparent is doing map mechanics such as breach or ritual. So many monsters can spawn very quickly where the reload and bolt swapping delay start becoming an issue.

I think bolt swapping g should be instant and there should be a passive keystone that auto reloads unequipped bolts passively..

I do think it's kinda dumb that the Auto Reload skill that takes up a whole ass active skill slot only reloads the one clip you're sitting on. Like, what? C'mon, GGG. Do better. That skill on its gigantic cooldown should be allowed to reload the whole thing.

I play with grenades rather than ammo skills for the most part, but when I was making more frequent use of ammunition/bolt skills earlier on I was getting shades of this problem, yeah. The Permafrost Bolts > Frag Rounds combo was particularly fiddly and didn't feel great to use. One of the reasons I ended up switching to basically just grenades, Explosive Bolt and my basic attack was that ammo switching could definitely get janky in the midst of heavy combat. Some of that is probably a training issue, as competitive shooters IRL would put it, but some of it does feel like it could use some adjusting.

I will say, even if you're not using grenades for Kabumen Combos, you might have some luck with using Oil Grenade in a set-up like this. Oil > Encumber > Maim > Scattershot (if you'e not using Scattershot elsewhere) can dose a huge amount of the screen with extremely potent stacked slows, and enemies that can barely move are enemies that can't pressure you enough to force fumbled reloads or switches. The slow lasts longer than Flash Grenade stuns against regular mobs, as well, though the flashers are better against bosses.

I would like to expand on this thread about the crossbow bolt feeling bad and say that I would like to see the basic bolt appear on the skills panel so that we can further upgrade the basic bolt itself. mainly because every single ammo type feels absolutely terrible to play with and ive focused on a "sniper" build using exclusively a single type of ammo: basic bolt.

however this ammo type cannot be upgraded in the skill tree. why??

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Chad90b#4858 wrote:

I would like to expand on this thread about the crossbow bolt feeling bad and say that I would like to see the basic bolt appear on the skills panel so that we can further upgrade the basic bolt itself. mainly because every single ammo type feels absolutely terrible to play with and ive focused on a "sniper" build using exclusively a single type of ammo: basic bolt.

however this ammo type cannot be upgraded in the skill tree. why??

Uhhhhhhhh........?

"Basic Bolt" absolutely shows up in the skills panel? I've had mine supported with Martial Tempo for ages now, though the second support tends to float. Scroll around in the Skills menu, I guarantee Basic Bolt is there.

Would also heartily recommend Ripwire Ballista for a bolt-focused crossbow character. Ripwire Ballista tends to draw enemy aggro pretty well, and if you support it for better pinning it can lock enemies down long enough to give you plenty of room to switch ammo types around. have experimented with both Ripwire and Artillery Ballistas, and frankly Artillery Ballista feels like a total waste of time if you're not giving it Scattershot or some other way of making its negligible single strikes actually matter. Ripwire puts in work, though. Ancestral Urgency > Lockdown > Chain for quick-deploying ballistas that easily paralyze targets near it and scatter Maim widely through packs. It'll be your bestest little battle buddy.

I've been trying to run a grenade build that uses Explosive Bolts for burst/trash clearing and Rapid Fire for more sustain vs. bosses and ... It's just kinda bad. Like IDK if it's my gear or my passives or if the skills are just not quite working but:

1. Heat builds too slowly and doesn't scale with attack speed
2. Heat falls off way too fast
3. Crossbow "jams" frequently with Rapid Fire - I'll hold down the button and realize after a couple seconds that it hasn't started the windup (which is, you guessed it, too long.)
4. Delay between animations + juggling multiple skills (Gas Grenade, Oil Grenade, Explosive Grenade, Voltaic Grenade, Explosive Shot/Rapid Fire) makes it tricky to line everything up vs. mobs that move around much.

It sucks because the playstyle really appeals to me but I can't send to make it work.

+1 to bolt builds feeling so clunky... especially any bolt types that only have a single round. IMO they should all have a minimum of at leat 3 rounds. The would give more use to the scattershot support. Emergency Reload could also be a bit more powerful

+1 to all this. Crossbow just feels bad; the dps might be higher if i combo but the time lost with xbow jank makes it not matter; I do more observable damage w/ galvanic shards and basic bolt.

been playing a glacial bolt/fragement round build and its so frustraiting when things dont bug out it feels godly but theres so many inconsistencies with firing. plus what at times feels like sticky auto aim where i get stuck looking at a mob and cant shoot in the oposite direction. all round someone needs to look into bolts it has a lot of potential but feels let down by the additional clunk of bugs.