Larian Studios Forums Divinity: Original Sin 2 Divinity - Original Sin 2 - General Are crossbows and stalves not worth it?

So lets start with Bows vs Crossbows.
Basically, crossbows cost 3ap to attack with vs 2ap. This difference also applies to Ricochet and Marksmans Fang, thus making the abilities also more costly as a whole. The fact that crossbows don't do enough damage to compensate for the extra ap cost means you'd always go with a bow given the choice, this also is a negative, due to the limited amount of ap you have per turn, and assuming you get 4ap per turn (assuming you don't use Haste or any other buffs ahead of time), you literally only have 1 attack per turn vs 2 with a bow. This means you only have half as many opportunities to crit, thus affecting the damage output even further. It also doesn't help that crossbows don't have any extra range like they did in the first game.

Now to compare Stalves vs Wands. The same issues that were in the first game are still here (lack of damage vs dual wands, only 1 ranged attack per turn, less bonus stats vs dual wands,etc) In particular, it is worth noting that even though there is a damage penalty for dual weilding this is negated fairly easily with a few points in intelligence since attribute bonuses are additive vs multiplicative (+25% vs * 125%, its better for fixing deficits but worse for staking bonuses). More importantly, because the vast majority of mages rely on surfaces, being in melee range will alot of times mean your affected by the same surface you opponent is. It also means your less flexible with you options as you can only have 1 element with stalves and you dont have the option of using a shield.

Basically, I believe crossbows and stalves need a change to make them more viable.

I would concur more or less. I'm not sure what the worth of crossbows and staffs should be.

One tiny advantage of staffs is that you can deal magical and physical damage. But why should you?

For crossbows I cannot even find anything of worth. The damage difference is too small compared to bows. Even if it were double the damage, the crossbow were worse because of the danger of missing and the inability to affect two enemies a turn.

That changes however if you dare to take Glass Cannon as talent. I did it in my current playthrough and now the crossbow and the snipe skill have their use. Bows may still be better, you can for example cast "Impalement" and shoot two arrows, but the higher damage of crossbows helps a bit.

3-ap skills and weapons are more or less bad in a system based on 4 starting ap. It reminds me to the 3 ap incarnate of the Summoner which I currently test again although it is clear that any other class would be better.

Staffs are a good melee weapon if you want a hybrid that deals mainly magical damage.

I meantioned on FB a while back that I wished Staffs could toggle on melee or range(wand casting). Hope that will be a thing but I doubt it. Maybe a mod down the line. Would like to have a Wizard with magic staffs with default range attack rather than one little abilitiy. No fan of wands by the looks of it.

Staff give you Eye of Magnus that allow you to use a bolt ability each turn it's reasonable good.
Thought that was obvious consider you can use this ability on the environment.

the crossbow on the other hand i did not used that a lot I like bows more so that's that.

I'm aware of that ability. But would prefer if staffs had their own thing like wands. Fire staff, Water Staff, Poison Staff and so on.

I've found that there are many more magic xbows than longbows which nerfs the ranger somewhat.

Crossbows seem to do slightly less than 1.5 times the damage of a normal bow at the same level, for 1.5 times the ap cost.

Even if it was a full 1.5 times damage, a crossbow would still be at a disadvantage compared to a longbow due to the fact that the 4 ap system is super granular. I definitely agree with you that a 3ap cost in a 4 ap system just can't really work. Being only able to attack once the first turn, then twice the second compared to twice each turn is much less reliable. Its hard to quantify exactly how much of a handicap that is, but it seems significant to me, at the very least.

I would guess the devs reduced crossbows damage proportionally because they thought it would be too powerful with some abilities. Like, a high finesse archer with a crossbow using marksman's fang might just outright kill some enemies without touching armor, or a stealthed archer with a crossbow might start a fight out with Sniper and get a kill right away. The crit chance on Hothead makes these things even more likely. I can't say for sure if that's their reasoning, but that's the only thing I can think of.

I think the biggest issue staves have is that there are no convenient gap closers in a magic skill class. Like, I don't want to have to take Warfare and get bonus damage to physical armor if I have a high intelligence, because the only way I could make use of that is Necromancy. And Necromancy is definitely not the class I build intelligence for. Its not bad, but I'd much rather be able to get environmental effects or crowd control on my Inquisitor. Anyway, you rarely get a staff that has anything but pure magic damage, so the armor bonus damage will be wasted on that at least.

Staves actually do a good bit more damage than a dual wand-wielding build, not even counting the damage penalty for dual-wielding; and the bonus to crit multiplier on the Two-handed skill is obviously more offensively oriented than the 1% bonus to dodge when leveling dual-wielding. If you could just get to the damn enemies while holding a stave without having to waste a point in a class that doesn't help you like Warfare, or having to take Bullhorns, which has terrible damage for a 2 ap cost, then a staff would be about as viable as a two handed sword, I think.

I actually use crossbows for melee classes in case they need some range.
Switch weapon, shoot once, next turn they go in melee. (I only use if I have height advantage and don't want to move forward but still prefer crossbows over bows in that scenario).

Otherwise it's mainly for burst damage with specific skill that have a high damage multiplier (Snipe) especially if you go for a crit build but crit build are usually only good mid to late game, which is really not what we can see in the early access build.

Also the huntman skill increase height damages so maybe at higher level the difference is here. With the damage damage increase from the crossbow *2.20 with a snipe crit.
If you one shot a target with a crossbow but only bring one person to 10% health with a bow. Your second shot doesn't feel too useful right ?

OR, let's get crazy and do stupid build!
Ok, we make a summoner with max summoning ability. Your summons only care about you summon skill not any other stat. So you can put the stat points in Finesse and Wits (crit and better turn order).
Now the first turn you cart first you create your summon. Great!
Next turn you can apply a buff to your summon and shoot once, next turn another buff another shot...

You could actually make it a support character with heal, Magic shield, nether swap and teleport. All those cost only one point and don't scale any stat! So you can support and shoot your crossbow :p

Not to mention the summon at level 10 in Summoning looks super badass

I had a Summoner/Ranger hybrid in one playthrough (Lhose). The crossbow does not fit in this build for me. Because of the totems which can under some circumstances be advantageous (long fights, much place to position, Radeka for example).

First turn make incarnate and melee buff. Second turn make totem and shoot. Or make totem, range buff and a 1-ap skill, heal, Encourage, Tactical Retreat or so. Then totem and shoot, and so on.

Or, better, skip the Summoner part and take a really effective skillset instead.

I can throw in my confirmation about the concerns in this thread; at 3AP per shot, Crossbows aren't quite viable enough to be different-but-equal to Bows, even with their superior damage.

I strongly recommend that Crossbows be tuned to include their damage bonus with a few other perks to make them appealing; for instance, if Crossbows cost 3AP to shoot, had the same modest damage-boost that they do now, and also had +10% accuracy and +7% Crit Chance (or something around this zone) I would consider them equal to Bows for different reasons.

One thing I always liked was that crossbows generally had lower stat req to use...but with that gone....



+accuracy & + crit & + damage would indeed make up for the lack of an additional attack

For staves,

Since spells don't crit generally anyway....I'd honestly just significantly boost their damage and focus on giving them better passives than a combination of any two wands.

Wands = utility + diversification in passives
Staves = high attack + high passives

This is why I use a crossbow

Agitator : epic level 9 crossbow
Damage: 39-42 physical; 12-13 earth
Critical: 200%
Special: +2 int, +8% accuracy

with a very cool look on top of that!

(sorry couldn't copy/past screenshot)

I guess the equivalent bow must exist, but I havn't found it

Yeah I think this is simply from loots.
You use it if it's better.
I have: Willowed Death's Touch
39 - 42 Physical; 12-13 Fire
Critical 200%
+ 2 Int
+18 hp
+5 Accuracy

Yup, I have a similar loot, good for my Glass Cannon ranger. I found a lot more good crossbows than bows. But I will not use Glass Cannon in my release group and so, byebye crossbows.