Feedback on Mercenary Bolt Skills : Too many payoff skills and lack of diversity in clear skills

So, as the title suggests, i believe too many of the crossbow skills have baked in interactions that in the end game kills their long term playability. Below is a small summary of napkin math that has 75% chance to contain errors. Numbers were done assuming best case scenario at gem lvl 14, i.e., rapid shot at max heat stacks or high velocity firing at fully broken armor etc.

-High Velocity Shot: roughly 9x multiplier to basic bolt, narrow projectile, cant pierce or chain for clear reliably due to inherent high pierce count

-Plasma Blast: Ignoring the clunk, almost 32x multipler with terrain explosion

-Shockburst: about 7x multipler, requires shock, tough to use for clear but trivalizes rares and uniques when used with shockcaller arrow from wep set 2!

-Frag rounds: 15x multiplier if shotgunning a frozen target, loads only 1 bolt and getting reliable back to back freezes on end game mapping is a very tough ask, doesnt work as a reliable clear ability

-armour piercing rounds: about 2x multipler to basic bolt, if chain or fork is added, quite literally does the same damage as unsupported default attack, on paper has deceny synergy with armour break mechanics, explosion support etc,

-rapid fire: 3.5x multipler at max heat stacks, decent synergy with bombs, one of the viable skills imo

-ice shards: if shards live for 1s, this ends up being about a 6-7x multiplier in dps, quite decent, might be achievable with less effect duration

-galvanic shards: about 3x multipler per target including the beam if firing at a pack, works straight out the box, does not require any additional mechanics. Furthermore, adding chain or fork, if there are enough targets, adds additional chaining beams, so what damage is lost due to the support gem is gained back by the additional beams, making this one imo the best non-grenade clear skill. And that is a problem.


A decent number of skills, in fact all besides Galvanic Shards require some sort of interaction to reach their full potential. In early acts where there arent that many packs around, the payoff of all these builder-spender combos feels fun. In end-game it just feels clunky. The fact that a lot of skills only load one single bolt adds insult to the injury.

As potential solutions, besides numbers tuning;
-A lof of these skills that reload only 1 bolt should at the very least get buffed to load 2-3 rounds.
-For rapid shot either wind up time needs to be removed or heat retention should increase
-For armour-piercing, the mechanic from the armour explosion support could be made baseline behaviour of this skill as a secondary effect, may be in the form of a physical aoe that bleeds as if doing xyz% more damage, to prevent some weird abuse with poison/ignite
-For skills like fragmentation rounds or stormblast bolts, we need the attack equivalent of cast on X, to be able automate some of these payoff effects.
-Plasma blast at the very least requires the slowed movement speed during charge up removed. Despite the big numbers, due to the fixed attack time, viability of this in mapping is very low and is currently limited to being a gimmick opener on boss fights, which arent that many somehow.
-Not really about the payoff mechanics, but majority of crossbow skills having inherent elemental conversion is also problematic, due to leech working only off of phys damage. I suggest at the very least, for cluster grenades to do majority phys damage.

TL DR: Too many bolt skills requires frequent reloads and relies on frequent ammo switching for reaching their full potential. As such are not viable for end game map clearing: Need either bigger clips, more damage up front without the payoff effects or a way to automate as in "attack on x meta gem". Plus more phys based skills are needed to take advantage of leech mechanics.