Crossbows: fumbling with ammo mechanics for inferior damage

Thesis: The Crossbow, as a weapon, is poorly designed and needs a rework/tweaks.

About me: Have a lvl 71 gemling merc w/ a lvl 17 ranger I made when my merc was in the 50s. I completed the campaign in 75 hours and was lvl 65 when I finally did. The TLDR for why it took me so long was crap loot drops/loot slamming, but this is not what I am posting about.

The Setup: I decided to roll a Ranger (currently 17) after getting frustrated enough w/ my merc to drop the game for a few days. I eventually went back to my merc but I kept coming up w/ questions as to why ranger felt so good while merc felt so bad. I did some thinking and comparisons and would like to present my findings.

Back to Basics: I was fortunate enough to get a bow and xbow base at the same level/ilvl for comparison, so I immediately busted out my spreadsheet and got to work. This is what I found:

Adv. Composite Bow: 36 - 61 physical damage, ilvl 51, req 117 Dex
Adv. Varnished Xbow: 19 - 78 physical damage, ilvl 51, req 65 str/65 dex

When I looked at the stats side by side, something seemed off, so I dug a little deeper and this is what I found:
For the BOW, the minimum damage value is 59% of the maximum damage value.
For the XBOW, the minimum damage value is 24.36% of the maximum damage value.
While the XBOW has a higher maximum damage, it is only 21.79% higher than the BOW
The XBOW is a 2H weapon, while the BOW is 1H. This allows the BOW user to equip a quiver for even more stats.
The BOW requires LESS stat points than the XBOW (117 vs 130, or 2/3 stat nodes)

Given the information above, the only thing the XBOW has going for it is the skills it comes with. A wider damage range introduces more uncertainty into combat so even if the max damage is higher, you're less likely to hit it consistently and skill damage is based off of your hit damage anyway.

Playing Around: I've played merc for at least 50 hours and if I was to sum up the class in one word it would be "clunky". The Xbow ammo skills are clunky and fiddly to use (grenades are fairly straight forward; this may explain the popularity of grenade builds). Ranger flows much better because when you push the hotkey, the skill goes off. This is not always the case for merc.
To use an ammo skill:
Hit hotkey to switch ammo
(reload/switch) animation occurs
IF ammo is at zero, hit hotkey again
IF ammo is NOT zero, left click to fire

now lets compare to ranger:
Hit hotkey to do skill

This doesn't even take into account the clip not being full so you go to do the skill and have to reload while getting your face gnawed on, or if you're holding down the left mouse button it reloads but doesn't fire so you wonder why you're not firing, or even the worst case scenario of dodge rolling while trying to reload; good luck with that one!

One last point I noticed is that the Crossbow is the ONLY weapon that has a reload timer. In this case we can get double screwed by reload AND skill speed.

Conclusion: The very mechanics surrounding the xbow are what is holding it back; it does not have enough advantages to offset its disadvantages. One of these needs to change - it either needs to become a more powerful but janky weapon w/ better skill scaling, or it and its skills stay as is while the mechanics get smoothed out. Some options here include but are not limited to (nor do I suggest doing all of these as that may go too far)
Bringing the minimum damage up (definitely to at least 45% of max!)
Increasing the maximum damage (maybe, but not too much; 5 to 10 percent or so)
Increasing the number of 'effects' on 2h weapons (6 for 1h, 8 for 2h; this could be a very interesting change across the board)
Buffing the damage% on xbow skills (an idea, but no recommendations or examples)

If you've made it to the end of this post, I thank you for taking the time to read it even if you don't agree with my conclusion.

TLDR: Crossbows are poorly designed from both a stats and game mechanic perspective. It needs to be fixed.

I agree with some points.


I would also like to see some improvements done to crossbow.
The ammo is not much of a problem, but I would suggest the following things:

1. Let us reload while dodging, or play the animation through.

2: If you reload to a "clip" type of ammunition (more shots than one) from another skill, as example reloading to galvanic shards from fragmentation rounds it should also reload the whole "clip" so you dont have to reload the skill itself, AFTER you selected it.


The whole mechanic should be more fluid, which would make sense, since the crossbow skills have the most interaction of weapons we have currently available.