Bow Ranger nerfed for racing?

So I just read the development manifesto about the upcoming changes to the game and I have to say I'm a little worried now

Bow ranger (as it stands) isn't viable in racing outside of Vanilla Descent. Even in D:C going Cleave seems to be a superior option to RoA or any other bow skill for that matter.

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The new progression of quivers has been successful. Our current plan is to introduce them to the core game when these leagues end and stop the old quivers from dropping at that point.

What I want to do now is compare the old quivers with the new quivers at lower levels
http://pathofexile.gamepedia.com/Quiver

We can clearly see that with the old quivers we have 4 different base types(lvl 5 or lower) that offer a flat damage increase.

When we look at the new quivers we see that number has been reduced to 1.

In other words, unless that 1 new quiver has a 4x higher drop chance than all of the old quivers, you will be 4x less likely to find a quiver that straight up boosts your damage (and this is assuming that it doesn't share the same drop slot with Two-Point Arrow, Sharktooth Arrow and Blunt Arrow Quivers from lvl 4 onwards).

Most of the other new quivers are absolutely useless for racing (stun duration, accuracy, LOH), so if anything this to me seems like a straight up nerf to the potential damage of bow characters in races.

I really, really hope that GGG take a look into this and don't make bow ranger even worse than it already is.

Two solutions to this:

Keep all the old quivers that boost your elemental damage (Rugged, Cured, Conductive) in the game (this would actually be a nice buff to bow ranger, so why not?) or alternatively make the new Phys Damage quiver drop 4 times more frequently.

I'd like to see this addressed somehow.

I don't feel bow rangers are in as bad of a spot currently as you make it seem, but I can't deny the importance of quivers early game for racing. Quivers enable bowbuilds to compete atleast on some level and removal of early damage would hurt badly.

Racing with bow-ranger feels refreshing to me because gearing it differs from melee- and spellbased builds that are more common.

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Pabu wrote:

Racing with bow-ranger feels refreshing to me because gearing it differs from melee- and spellbased builds that are more common.

Racing with a bow is also the equivalent to punching yourself in the d. If you want to be competitive then using a bow goes out the window, there are a couple exceptions but far and few.

Itemizing low level bows is an issue itself as well compared to other melee weapons. Quivers now are just joining the same boat it looks like.

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Pabu wrote:

I'd like to see this addressed somehow.

I don't feel bow rangers are in as bad of a spot currently as you make it seem, but I can't deny the importance of quivers early game for racing. Quivers enable bowbuilds to compete atleast on some level and removal of early damage would hurt badly.

Racing with bow-ranger feels refreshing to me because gearing it differs from melee- and spellbased builds that are more common.

The problem is this, bows already have sub-par damage output at low levels and GGG are now basically replacing flat damage quivers (lit, fire and cold) with defensive quivers (stun duration, LOH) and a quiver that has next to no impact at low levels (accuracy).

I mean if anything bows at low levels were in for a buff and not the complete opposite... a nerf.

I mean if GGG really don't want people to race with bows (for whatever reason) they could just come out and say it. Why go through the trouble of changing quiver/bow progression when it makes leveling with bows even worse than it previously was?

That simply defies logic.

If I had a say in this quiver progression would look something like this:

Level 1:

Heave Quiver (1-4 Phys)
Conductive Quiver (1-5 Lit)
Cured Quiver (2-4 Fire)
Rugged Quiver (2-4 Cold) (note: I never understood why Rugged quiver with 2-3 cold were just worse versions of cured quivers, made no sense)

Level 12:
Fire Arrow Quiver (4-8 Fire Damage)
Cold Arrow Quiver (4-8 Cold Damage)
Lightning Arrow quiver (1-12 Lightning Damage)
Serrated Arrow Quiver (3-8 Physical Damage)

Level 25:
Broadhead Arrow Quiver (6-12 Physical Damage)
Sharktooth Arrow Quiver (Life on Hit)
Blunt Arrow Quiver (Stun)


Level 40:

Crit and Accuracy Quiver

It just doesn't make sense to give bow users defensive quivers early on, when what they are actually lacking is damage.

This very much seems to be a case of GGG being out of touch with their game, racing with Bows is totally fine on the defensive side (unless you run into high spike ele damage, due to the lack of passive resists), but it's sub-par on the offensive side. So that's what GGG should be focusing on. They should be boosting the damage of bows early on, but with the proposed changes they are pretty much doing the complete opposite.

On top of crappy damage, bow skills are also overall lackluster for racing except for RoA and maybe LMP LA if the race goes long enough. Increasing RoA's damage effectiveness or increasing its starting AoE would probably help a decent amount. At this point it's pretty ridiculous to me that RoA only has 75% damage effectiveness AND needs to level to increase its AoE, while spectral throw has no penalty and built in pierce.

In the bigger picture, bows have been weak ever since the introduction of spectral throw really, in both racing and endgame (with the exception of voltaxic/windripper maybe). Most endgame bow damage builds tend to abuse auras for a bulk of their damage, which the elemental buzzsaw build basically does with even less weapon dependence because one handed weapons can have much higher attack speeds (bows are capped at 16% iirc).

Bows need to be re-looked at again since at this point there's almost no advantage to them over spectral throw:
-Worse damage than melee weapons
-Quivers are necessary for racing, but have no good vendor recipe to get good stats like a wand/weapon
-Almost no good nodes to increase specifically bow damage. They're either weak or far out of the way. Projectile damage nodes are great, but there aren't very many in the tree.
-Built in 100% pierce of ST (lol)

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SlixSC wrote:

I never understood why Rugged quiver with 2-3 cold were just worse versions of cured quivers, made no sense

Probably because chill is the only elemental effect that doesnt require a crit to function, and tiny amounts of cold damage are actually somewhat effective early on. Doesnt end up having any real effect during races (blamt/lactif etc aside), but then again neither does that 1 lost point of damage.

And afaik from my time in invasion, the new level 0 phys quiver seems to be about as common as the level 4 utility quivers once theyre all capable of dropping.

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Kheffin wrote:

At this point it's pretty ridiculous to me that RoA only has 75% damage effectiveness AND needs to level to increase its AoE, while spectral throw has no penalty and built in pierce.

Well ST is technically at 50-60% effectiveness if youre not sweet spotting or getting return hits (which is more common than it should be thanks to desync), and ROA essentially has 100% pierce too as its not stopped or negatively affected by multiple monsters.

I think ROA is a fine and competitive skill as far as function goes, it just needs its mana cost moderately reduced. The main issue with archer builds is the terrible damage and progression of bows.

The only real fix to that is not making it drop 4x more frequently, but to just give it to you along with the bow at level 1.

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lPeeps wrote:

The only real fix to that is not making it drop 4x more frequently, but to just give it to you along with the bow at level 1.

Agree 100%.

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lPeeps wrote:

The only real fix to that is not making it drop 4x more frequently, but to just give it to you along with the bow at level 1.

Right, but people have been asking for that for basically years now and it never happened, so that's just a lost cause.

And it wouldn't fix the problem of the new quivers being primarily defensive which would in turn almost force you to roll defensive quivers as opposed to offensive quivers later on. (especially relevant at lvl 12/13)

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KoTao wrote:

Well ST is technically at 50-60% effectiveness if youre not sweet spotting or getting return hits (which is more common than it should be thanks to desync)

How does desync make it more common? Genuinely curious.