Feedback on Crossbow skills

So for starters I played a ton of PoE 1, Grim Dawn, all the Diablos, etc etc so this is by no means my first foray into the genre. I also get that this game is not PoE 1 and is intended to be slower - that being said I have a bit of feedback that will hopefully improve crossbow builds as the game evolves.

1. (most) crossbows skills have no real distinction which makes it them seem lackluster overall

Right now the biggest issue I see with the crossbow is that there seems to only be a small handful distinct ammo types (e.g. shotgun, machine gun, sniper, grenade) and then a dozen "reflavored" elemental versions of those skills that are only slightly different from the rest. A lot of the sameness here is due to the abilities sharing extremely similar characteristics while none of their designs really make them stand out in fun or unique ways.

For example, all of the machine gun like skills are essentially ~450% attack speed and low damage plus some ailment rider that changes how you gear but doesn't result in any meaningful change in gameplay. The shotgun skills similarly all have 1-2 bolt capacities and an identical cone spread, and all of the elemental variants behave as expected. All of this combined results in a lot of forgettable abilities that I ended up trying once and then tossing in my stash as they weren't really any different than the ones I was already using.

It might be that some of the lackluster abilities stand out more due to the stark contrast with abilities that DO feel unique (e.g. Glacial Shot), but overall I think this issue needs the most attention.

# SUGGESTIONS

While I think a lot of the abilities need another design pass, some of the issues can be fixed by tweaking the numbers to make them pack a different kind of punch. Different flight patterns between similar abilities would help drastically here. Here's a few ideas that I think would make some of these abilities a lot more fun to use:

- give Rapid Shot a minor "heat-seeking" effect (e.g. towards ignited enemies)

- (alternatively) make Rapid Shot change as it gains heat (e.g. attack faster / in an AoE)

- add a burst effect to Armor Piercing Rounds and make it more a flak cannon


2. many abilities require something else to make them good

On top of not being distinct from each other, a lot of the abilities seem really awful to use at first or just don't play well together at all. I haven't played a ton with the other classes so I'm not sure if this is a common issue across the board or specific to crossbows. Not every ammunition skill is completely bad, but the ones that are seem to only be good when paired with something else. Permafrost seems kind of terrible without Fragmentation, as does Glacial shot unless you're fighting something large (e.g. a boss). While I understand having SOME abilities require setup to use, there seems to be way too much reliance on it across the board right now. As a result, this makes the basic attack Crossbow Shot seem like the best option compared to a vast majority of the current skills.

I think the biggest issue with so much coupling is that almost none of it is done in parallel. If there IS setup for an ability it needs to have a REALLY good payoff or some way to make it easily usable without it given how much interruption there is in the game already. For example, having to switch from Permafrost to Fragmentation EVERY TIME I want to blow up something frozen results in a LOT of waiting for that ammo swap time. Given that a lot of time frozen enemies are going to be close to death it's almost certainly a waste of time to even do so, but it feels really bad to still be plinking enemies with it when they're frozen.

While some setup can be fun, at current I think there's far too many abilities that NEED something else to be effective. It also couples players to certain abilities that they might not care to use causing them to just ignore the ability altogether. I think if an ability is going to require setup it also needs to have a way to be viable by itself (which very well could just mean item / passive skill investment).

# SUGGESTIONS

I think this one is also solved by making another design pass, reducing the amount of coupling between abilities seems like a good first step. If there ARE abilities that require setup (e.g. detonators) then I think it would be good to have a free skill get added similar to the basic attack or at least have some way of triggering things without an extra skill. Here's a few suggestions as well for skill additions / changes:

- add a basic / default Detonator ability that's a simple button push instead of a projectile / skill shot

- add a Detonator Ballista (maybe also with high defense or a utility aura)

- change Stormblast Bolts to detonate on reload as well so it can be used by itself and maybe have different effects based on the skill used to detonate it (maybe even make it a baseline physical skill and inherit attributes from the detonator)


3. usability is clunky and often seems buggy

While some level of bugs is to be expected in early access, it's often difficult to tell if things are working as intended or a bug. This also piggybacks onto the previous point, but most of the abilities often feel cumbersome to use in conjunction with each other. Using more ammunition skills is often a major cause of that, and a lot of the grenade abilities also end up feeling weird due to long fuse times and random physics oddities causing them to bounce away from enemies.

In terms of gearing, ammunition is at a severe disadvantage due to the fact that you have *3* speeds impacting your ability to do damage: attack, reload, and ammo swap. I'm fairly certain there is nothing that speeds up ammo swap speed (unless weapon swap or reload speeds do and I somehow missed it), but still needing to gear for reload AND attack speed for a lot of ammo skills makes it feel like a weird overall mechanic to build into. I'm not sure if it's just because I haven't gotten fully geared out yet or what but if this is how things stand in endgame I think there's a lot to clean up here in terms of usability.

One other thing to point out regarding reload + ammo swap delays is that they SEVERELY impact the ability to capitalize on things with a duration. Forced downtime for players translates 1:1 to time wasted trying to exploit Ailments or the like, which means crossbow players have to spend more passive / gear stat slots just to get the same opportunities that players without a crossbow do.

For example, consider the usage of Permafrost Bolts + Fragmentation Rounds - every time a player wants to use FR to consume freeze / Ice Crystals they have to wait for the forced ammo swap and potentially reload speed times. As a result, as a player it becomes a calculation of (as mentioned in the section above) "do I want to waste the time to do this" which from a game design standpoint is not something you want players to be thinking about. If players are constantly thinking about how much some mechanic is a burden / waste of time you're almost certainly going to lose that player soon. I'd advocate for the removal of the ammo swap delay entirely, but I see the purpose it serves and think there's a fun way around it which I'll add to my suggestions below.

Some of the clunkiness is also a result of a lack of clarity around how abilities are supposed to act and what abilities actually get used when things happen (e.g. consumers). For example, when blowing up Ice Crystals from Glacial Shot with Fragmentation Shot do both skills trigger or just one? Which abilities affect the explosion size / damage there? It's hard to know what skills need to be supported to affect the interactions between things like that. Ideally BOTH skills would impact that explosion, but at current I have no idea and it's hard to really figure it out.

Given that some abilities often times seem to have no effect, it's also worth pointing out that it's hard to tell as a player when things are buggy vs just not hitting. The explosions of Glacial Shot don't always seem to do anything, and same goes for Ice Shards. Do these abilities need to roll accuracy to hit, or is something else going on there that makes them seem ineffective a lot of the times? This issue also directly relates to my first point as abilities don't seem impactful a lot of times as a result. It's hard to know if there is some issue with an ability when you don't see the ability really doing anything when you use it - veteran players might keep digging here but a lot of new players are almost certainly just going to think the ability sucks and trash it (or worse, the game).

# SUGGESTIONS

Seriously rethink the reload + ammo swap delays / mechanics, and make a pass to ensure ability usage is consistent. I think hands down the simplest change to improve crossbow builds would be to add an ammo pouch which would negate the swap time for X of the most recent ammo types. This could either act as an offhand equivalent to the quiver or a replacement for another slot like the belt. Additionally, I'm not as familiar with grenade builds but I'm sure those could use a "grenade pouch" type item that similarly boosts grenades (maybe ammo is an offhand and grenade is a belt?). As with previous sections, here's a short list of possible solutions:

- add an "ammo pouch" item (offhand or maybe belt slot) that "loads" X different ammunition (i.e. negates swap delay)

- add a "grenade pouch" item (belt?) that gives unique grenade perks

- allow Weapon Swap Speed to affect swapping ammo (still a 3rd stat to gear for though)


Summary

I realize this is a lot but hopefully this resonates with people and makes sense. I am overall still enjoying my crossbow merc but I think there's a lot that can be done to improve the player experience here. Definitely could use another design pass to make abilities feel fun, engaging, and unique as well as to improve the usability across the board. Seems like there are some easy wins here by adding a new item or two but long term there are some much bigger hurdles to tackle.

I specced into reload speed on the tree. Some clarity if skill speed affects it would be appreciated. Local attack speed on weapons does affect reload speed, at least according to weapon tooltip.

For clear herald of ice, permafrost, and fragmentation. This geeks most everything, Very smooth but i'm still in acts.

For bosses I freeze them fragmentation, armor piercing then i'm still learning how to pull this off effectively i plasma beam, supported by shock duration and eat armor broken. This is a long lasting guaranteed to shock. I then shockburst rounds until the shock wears off. I think with some shock magnitude and duration This would play better. Usually during the shockburst burn i get a stun, might support with some stun buildup gem. can usually finish them off with basic attacks if they have enough health left I build up another freeze.

There is some clunkiness. I joke that my crossbow is jammed. I just stop moving and he does a little SPORTS drill and it starts working again.

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dofkin40#3130 wrote:

I specced into reload speed on the tree. Some clarity if skill speed affects it would be appreciated. Local attack speed on weapons does affect reload speed, at least according to weapon tooltip.

For clear herald of ice, permafrost, and fragmentation. This geeks most everything, Very smooth but i'm still in acts.

For bosses I freeze them fragmentation, armor piercing then i'm still learning how to pull this off effectively i plasma beam, supported by shock duration and eat armor broken. This is a long lasting guaranteed to shock. I then shockburst rounds until the shock wears off. I think with some shock magnitude and duration This would play better. Usually during the shockburst burn i get a stun, might support with some stun buildup gem. can usually finish them off with basic attacks if they have enough health left I build up another freeze.

Wow that is a LOT of skills to use haha - I don't know about you but I pretty much have the ratcheting sound of the ammo swap playing in perpetuity.

For clearing I use Permafrost and swap to Fragmentation when enough things are frozen, but a lot of times that's just too slow (and enemies don't have enough HP) to be worth it. I sometimes use Hailstorm Rounds when there's a lot of mobs and Emergency Reload to really lay down the freeze AoE. I've been running Overwhelming Presence but now that I'm doing mostly cold I'll have to TAL at Herald of Ice.

For bosses I basically just use Glacial Shot w/ Scattershot and they die. I don't even use Fragmentation Shot on bosses because it is a DPS + safety loss - consuming the Freeze does LESS damage than continuing GS spam, plus it frees up the boss to start hitting me again.