Why Are Bows So Weak Now? (Phys build)

I won't limit it to bows. At the point it is now elemental damage > physical damage. Simply because it is so easy to stack flat elemental damage via mods and auras that you can easily skyrocket your elemental damage with some weapon-mods even more so with catalyze.

The simple reason why bows are so incredibly expensive is that they are overused. Everyone needs a bow.



That's the bow for my Crit-Shadow, with Ice-Shot I get about 2,2k DPS with 4 frenzy-charges (although it technically is less, because I can't afford the mana to permanently use Ice-Shot only every other shot is an Ice-Shot^^), but Crits one-shot most whites and rares. but well I'm just lvl57, so might get even better.



Thats the Supports for Ice-Shot and yes it is a white item, but I have no reason to transmute it, and actually no alchs. The problem is, although I have tons of dps, a build like that suffers in DPS, while a pure Ele RT-Build has about the same DPS (a bit lower normally), while having about 6k HP..., due to playing softcore I can't bother to invest in def yet, since it isn't required before entering maps.

But well... frenzy alone only does about 1,5k DPS which is really bad compared to ice-shot considering it also costs a lot of mana (exspecially due to the high atk-speed. I could get even more dps with Lightning-Arrow due to shock, but honestly I don't need it. If I really want to I could totally smash enemies with Burning-Arrow, but the slow is quite nice.

I basically see two problems:

1. Physical damage skills are actually too expensive (exspecially frenzy) and quite weak compared to elemental ones

2. Static Blows is way too strong. A 20% Chance to Shock is impressive, add elemental pro to it and you are done.

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Patsboem a écrit :

Elemental damage is way stronger then anything else.

This is the crux of the problem. Physical damage is simply underpowered compared to elemental. At least for ranged attacks, not sure about melee.

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Baron01 a écrit :

One of the issues I see is that getting even half-decent elemental rolls is rather easy but getting decent physical damage bow is crazy--you need to get high % damage increase, flat damage increase, attack speed and crit chance/multiplier to make the bow decent. Second thing is that elemental damage users still benefit from physical damage on bows because skills convert that damage into elemental but it does not work the other way around. The benefit of elemental damage for bow user is absolutely miniscule.

So yes, I would appreciate if physical damage mods are better scaled or more easily achievable. Additionally, physical damage nodes should be made more potent--think about Catalyse cluster for physical damage--so players can focus bit more on survival.

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There is one super important thing that must change for physical builds to be viable: interaction of critical hits and physical damage reflect.

Physical damage builds will never reach acceptable DPS levels unless player takes critical nodes--critical strike chance and multiplier alike. The critical damage scaling makes critical hit multiplier the best mod to increase one's DPS.

High critical multiplier means that physical damage rangers are in grave danger of dieing to physical damage reflect monsters. Due to the way armor works against hits--small hits are mitigated well but big hits are reduced very little, physical damage reflect on crits is dis-proportionately high compared to elemental reflect. Elemental damage reflected is mitigated by resistances no matter how small or big a hit is, resistances are reducing incoming damage evenly.

I, as physical damage ranger, had to resort to using bear trap to kill physical damage reflect monsters because I have already 1-shot myself from 100% to 0%. This issue is escalating as players push for better gear.

Reflected damage should be working the same way leech life is working--damage intake can not surpass 20% max hp per second.

What if I dont want to crit at all? Flat phys build.. that's the point, there is a limited number of viable bow builds. They need to address this issue.

Physical ranged skills need better supports thats the main problem.Culling strike,faster projectiles or attack, added fire dmg,lmp and frenzy this combination weak as hell when we compared with Wep ele dmg, faster att,chain,lmp,LA. Wep ele gives %80 more dmg which is more than culling strike+faster prjectiles.

Also for physical ranged builds we need heavy draw or shot skill which works like heavy strike 150% physical dmg multiplier and for support increased physical ranged dmg would be good.

The main thing is elemental skills shouldnt benefit from bows physical damage there is no need the convertion most of the ele builds go for pure ele bows anyway lets give an opportunity to physical builds, they suffer enough from reflect and dmg reduction mechanics and plus 2x slower kill time when we compared to the ele builds.

yea but as someone already said, no need to nerf anything (LA benefiting from phys attributes), and rather buff phys builds. I want to deal as much damage as the next LA faceroller.

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Patsboem a écrit :

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ganjarak a écrit :

LA seriously needs a nerf to 2X max dmg increase during shock or split the bows into elemental and physical.

Why always going for the nerf route?

I think lightning is fine as it is. It is a strong and fun skill when you can link it to support gems.

The real problem is that other builds and skills need a buff! I like it when we have way more good and strong skills which can be scaled nicely and rock @ higher levels. I dont like the idea nerfing all good skills, which are already way to few.

Bolded.
This isn't Riot where we nerf everything that works until you're picking the least shitty of all your options. We're actually, as I see it, striving for balance. IMO, physical builds would be awesome if there weren't so many goddamn elemental rolls. In order to get something useful for a physical build you need 2 specific prefixes in high mod values. In order to get something good for elemental, you just need any decent elemental roll and maybe some attack speed. That's it.

If the roll rate for phys dmg mods were increased, I think it'd be a good starting point. Especially on weapons that work for multiple builds.

Its possible that flat phys mods on jewelry will be affected by all modifiers in the future (currently very few things multiply them).

Also, Melee Physical Damage needs to be changed to "Physical Attack Damage" and apply to bow attacks, because not having a multiplicative dmg gem compared to WED for ele is just horrible.

I agree, there aren't many "physical" mods on gear. Or, at least they are on items you won't end up using:



That's why bows need a phys buff, at least make the phys rolls less Impossibly rare.