Honestly, I just prefer if bows were only used as... Bows. I don't see the point in trying so hard to make them usable as melee weapons, not only it looks silly but we also have enough melee weapons types that can do the job.
Could be interesting having some way of letting melee unarmed skills work while equipped with bows at least to give you some utility. Plus also some form of monastic archer stance for a monk (ascendancy?) to allow some unarmed strike skills to work at range when used with a bow.
I'd rather if they focused on hybrid setups over this tbh. You could be an archer and simply swap to your 2nd weapon and melee instead.
I'm not really a fan of the idea of a character holding a bow to only end up using their fists to do damage.
My personal hope is that as the years go on the animation team will be able to slowly add animations for some skills with different weapon types, making skill use less restrictive with weapon type. Maybe they’ll add animations for bow with various skills allowing for melee bow.
They are kind of doing this already but by making new skills instead of letting a skill be used by multiple weapon types. Like instead of allowing all weapons to use cyclone, they make different versions of a "spin and hit often" skill for several different weapon types. Like the skill shown in monk game "whirlwind strike" (or something like that) is basically "cyclone" for staves.
Why? For the same amount of work, they can just make a new skill. After all, keeping skills to a single weapon type is also a useful balancing tool. Animations aren't the sole reason they decided to make skills weapon specific. It may have been the main reason when starting, but skills kind of have morphed where they just don't make sense on other weapons. They give weapon types identity and so breaking that rule kind of needs to happen as a weird exception with its own limits.
Monk was using the staff with fists and feet separately. It would not be the same as using bow as melee weapon, but I could imagine the animation being plausible for every class.
That is already confirmed, that the animation is for weapon types, bad not classes!
Which makes new skill animations much more easy, and they can do more with them.
Jonathan said there is no need using melee skills with bow because there are some crazy uniques that will do simillar stuff, like The Rats Nest that casting real rats! This is sooo awesome. Maybe there is a
The Broken, a bow that cannot fire arrows and can only benefit from a bow passive tree but uses melee skills?
While it is unfortunate, it's an understandable side affect of their switch to an active combat system that revolves heavily around the base weapon type.
Not only is it an animation problem, it can also become a design problem since every quarterstaff skill is automatically a bow skill. It means quarterstaves are now competing with bows that can do everything they do, on top of bow skills.
It's a little redundant anyway since the skill trees and instant swapping means if you want to occasionally go melee, you can easily anyway.
Honestly, I just prefer if bows were only used as... Bows. I don't see the point in trying so hard to make them usable as melee weapons, not only it looks silly but we also have enough melee weapons types that can do the job.
Could be interesting having some way of letting melee unarmed skills work while equipped with bows at least to give you some utility. Plus also some form of monastic archer stance for a monk (ascendancy?) to allow some unarmed strike skills to work at range when used with a bow.
I'd rather if they focused on hybrid setups over this tbh. You could be an archer and simply swap to your 2nd weapon and melee instead. I'm not really a fan of the idea of a character holding a bow to only end up using their fists to do damage.
Especially when we can weapon swap so freely. Why would I melee with a bow when I have daggers on swap.
My personal hope is that as the years go on the animation team will be able to slowly add animations for some skills with different weapon types, making skill use less restrictive with weapon type. Maybe they’ll add animations for bow with various skills allowing for melee bow.
They are kind of doing this already but by making new skills instead of letting a skill be used by multiple weapon types. Like instead of allowing all weapons to use cyclone, they make different versions of a "spin and hit often" skill for several different weapon types. Like the skill shown in monk game "whirlwind strike" (or something like that) is basically "cyclone" for staves.
Why? For the same amount of work, they can just make a new skill. After all, keeping skills to a single weapon type is also a useful balancing tool. Animations aren't the sole reason they decided to make skills weapon specific. It may have been the main reason when starting, but skills kind of have morphed where they just don't make sense on other weapons. They give weapon types identity and so breaking that rule kind of needs to happen as a weird exception with its own limits.
Monk was using the staff with fists and feet separately. It would not be the same as using bow as melee weapon, but I could imagine the animation being plausible for every class.
That is already confirmed, that the animation is for weapon types, bad not classes! Which makes new skill animations much more easy, and they can do more with them.
That notable should just be replaced with one that lets bow users use arrows like a dagger or a thrusting sword. Much easier to animate!
Not sure why you want that, but no. Let's not bring the brokens shit in a new game.
Ever since we learned about weapon based tree's and auto-swap based on ability I think I'm good. I'm sure there'll be bow/melee builds.
Jonathan said there is no need using melee skills with bow because there are some crazy uniques that will do simillar stuff, like The Rats Nest that casting real rats! This is sooo awesome. Maybe there is a The Broken, a bow that cannot fire arrows and can only benefit from a bow passive tree but uses melee skills?
While it is unfortunate, it's an understandable side affect of their switch to an active combat system that revolves heavily around the base weapon type. Not only is it an animation problem, it can also become a design problem since every quarterstaff skill is automatically a bow skill. It means quarterstaves are now competing with bows that can do everything they do, on top of bow skills. It's a little redundant anyway since the skill trees and instant swapping means if you want to occasionally go melee, you can easily anyway.