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

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Stan3k#1369 wrote:

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.

You can probably somehow play one of the placeholder NYI weapon uniques with HoWA and it will be strong and feel good :D

But yeah, I'm looking forward as to what the next big patch will bring, but atm Crossbow is dead to me. Or rather this brick of a character took all my motivation to play along with it for now.

Seems the only viable xbow builds are HOWA, grenadier, and explosive shot spam.
Wanted to love AP rounds and high velocity rounds with bleed, but it’s just not quick enough for higher level mapping. Ended up with explosive shot spam with the blue flame unique gloves to shoot liquid nitrogen rockets.

If you build for lightning in your tree, Galvanic shards does a lot of work w/ thunder/ash heralds. If you need a bit more, shockburst once they are shocked will shred health and if you have time to set up, try plasma shot w/ scattershot support. Sure, it drops your damage and reload by 20%, but you fire 3 shots in quick succession; hit with at least 2 and it more than pays for itself.

Highly recommend the 'non-critical lightning hits count as lucky'

Otherwise yeah, xbow is an absolute dumpster fire.

Try leveling with the default Xbow attack next time + some leveling gear you might find it too easy and fall asleep during boss fights .