Crossbow feels absolutely horrible to level with. It has exactly no redeeming qualities.

The reload mechanic feels awful.

Half of the skills have intensely low damage, and require you to be at point blank range to fix that.

The other half of the skills have pathetic damage in comparison to other weapons, and largely require some gimmicky interaction with some other reload-locked skill.

Crossbows themselves have ridiculously low base damage alongside their reload hindrance, further hampered by an absence of quivers to boost stats.

Every skill slows you, and then slows you more to reload.

So, here you are with your 20% attack damage per hit shot, where you can get 1-5 of them off before a 1 second reload that slows your already slow movement by another huge chunk. Since the damage is so low, it takes forever to actually proc anything worth proccing on some of the other attacks, like Frag rounds or High Velocity.

Meanwhile, Quarterstaff and Bow are just tapping buttons and walking through enemies with no problem. Mobility, damage, all great. Mace too, might be low mobility but every skill has huge damage. Spells? No question.

Crossbow? Slow, awkward, clunky, low damage, useless complexity, blah blah blah.

Awful.

I made it to level 33 and even double herald couldn't make this feel good. I can clear fine, but bosses take 6 minutes with the highest DPS Crossbow available on trade. I've had to buy the highest DPS crossbow available on trade every other level. My Quarterstaff build took world bosses out in mere seconds in Act 1 gear. I'm dumping exalts into gear upgrades for Crossbow to take a hundred times longer.

I'm putting Crossbow away and not going anywhere near this pile of garbage until things get fixed or I'm at a point in a build where I have stacked enough attack speed that it feels like a regular weapon in act1.

They are fine if you go into gas granades early ish, as soon as you can

Try build by FearlessDumb0
https://mobalytics.gg/poe-2/builds/frostferno-witch-hunter-fearless-dumbo?weaponSet=set1&widgets-state=eyJmN2Q4MjEwMi03ZTc3LTRhNDQtYWQyNC0zM2I2N2U4YWU3YmYiOnsiZmlsdGVycyI6eyJhY3RpdmVWYXJpYW50SWQiOiJlOWQ3MWY2ZC03MzI0LTRhYjgtOWRmYS00ZDA2NzNhMGFjZDgifSwidHlwZW5hbWUiOiJOZ2ZEb2N1bWVudENtV2lkZ2V0Q29udGVudFZhcmlhbnRzVjEifX0

Theres also a vid by him on youtube, from late act2/early act 3 you become a god.

Easy to play, if you get yourself a Radiant Grief unique, it becomes single button build that 1 shots everything. As soon as you get high velocity rounds and Galvanic shards this build is really easy to level with, only act 1 is kind of slow if youre going fresh

I leveled my gemling with it up until around mid yellow maps, felt great.

Crossbow can feel ok, but other stuff will just be better for the same investment.

I also just now had to learn that getting +1 projectile from Deadeye is just a complete bait with crossbow skills like Rapid Fire or Armour Piercing Rounds. For whatever stupid fucking reason you will simply shoot double the shots in double the time WITHOUT it at least actually increasing clip size. I literally lose ~35% of my dps when taking +1 projectile because it works against Fresh Clip.

I'm done with Crossbow due to that. Complete joke that you giga nerf yourself with something big like +projectiles.

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coolmodi#5438 wrote:

Crossbow can feel ok, but other stuff will just be better for the same investment.

I also just now had to learn that getting +1 projectile from Deadeye is just a complete bait with crossbow skills like Rapid Fire or Armour Piercing Rounds. For whatever stupid fucking reason you will simply shoot double the shots in double the time WITHOUT it at least actually increasing clip size. I literally lose ~35% of my dps when taking +1 projectile because it works against Fresh Clip.

I'm done with Crossbow due to that. Complete joke that you giga nerf yourself with something big like +projectiles.

We havent had a single balance patch just yet, other weapons and classes have equally sily interactions like that all over the board, no reason to get bent out of shape because of it, the gemling HoWA build feels great, im sure they have all sort of stats on lower used skills etc.

Only redeeming skill for crossbows are shockburst rounds. Everything else is just a worse version of something else

Crossbow is just far too clunky to be any good. "Jamming" bug needs to be fixed, animation delay after using a grenade needs to be reduced/removed, double tapping ammo skills to switch and reload needs to go. And Cluster Grenades needs to be a meta skill so we can toss out a quick Oil + Gas + Explosive combo and follow up with an Explosive Shot, or drop them all while at maximum heat.

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coolmodi#5438 wrote:

Crossbow can feel ok, but other stuff will just be better for the same investment.

I also just now had to learn that getting +1 projectile from Deadeye is just a complete bait with crossbow skills like Rapid Fire or Armour Piercing Rounds. For whatever stupid fucking reason you will simply shoot double the shots in double the time WITHOUT it at least actually increasing clip size. I literally lose ~35% of my dps when taking +1 projectile because it works against Fresh Clip.

I'm done with Crossbow due to that. Complete joke that you giga nerf yourself with something big like +projectiles.

Interesting, going to have to test this.

"

coolmodi#5438 wrote:

I also just now had to learn that getting +1 projectile from Deadeye is just a complete bait with crossbow skills like Rapid Fire or Armour Piercing Rounds. For whatever stupid fucking reason you will simply shoot double the shots in double the time WITHOUT it at least actually increasing clip size. I literally lose ~35% of my dps when taking +1 projectile because it works against Fresh Clip.

Wait are you serious? Because i was playing rapid shot deadeye and stopped at act1 cruel being absolutely unhappy with my dps. I had no idea it works like this, wtf?

LOL i tested it with a stopwatch, and it EXACTLY how it works. I go through my 67 rounds in 5 seconds without the additional projectile and 10 seconds with it. Just WOW! I though this skill can never be viable lmao.

"

LaiTash#6276 wrote:

"

coolmodi#5438 wrote:

I also just now had to learn that getting +1 projectile from Deadeye is just a complete bait with crossbow skills like Rapid Fire or Armour Piercing Rounds. For whatever stupid fucking reason you will simply shoot double the shots in double the time WITHOUT it at least actually increasing clip size. I literally lose ~35% of my dps when taking +1 projectile because it works against Fresh Clip.

Wait are you serious? Because i was playing rapid shot deadeye and stopped at act1 cruel being absolutely unhappy with my dps. I had no idea it works like this, wtf?

LOL i tested it with a stopwatch, and it EXACTLY how it works. I go through my 67 rounds in 5 seconds without the additional projectile and 10 seconds with it. Just WOW! I though this skill can never be viable lmao.

There does seem to be inherit throttling by taking the projectile passive. Interested to know if that is a bug or not since my attacks per second do not change. So its acting as if I have a clip size of 36 rounds instead of 18 even though each shot shoots two projectiles.