Tell me why YOU don't use Archery or Throwing

The procs could do with somewhat more frequent activation. They don't really seem to activate very often (also, I think they may be activating less often than they're supposed to)

 

Those look good; might replace some of the Crushing in Throw with some Melee Power. I like the flavor of "throwing axes harder makes you hit harder when you keep the axe in your hand too...or if you shoot your [clockwork] hand at somebody."

The first stance gives some Burl, so make sure it has a cooldown to prevent stance-dancing for 2 life per turn between fights

 

The stance-dancing thing has already been addressed in 1.13 beta -- Burl/Cad buffs no longer give HP when activated, they just raise your cap.

 

k any buffs to Berserking to compensate?

 

Not to my knowledge, but I'll consider that for the ESCRII:EB.

 

Actually it was never addressed, it's always been like that afaik.

 

Really? Because there's like two other threads talking about how HP buffs and Burliness buffs are treated differently. Somewhere. Maybe I'm just misremembering how they're treated differently.

 

When you get a health buff, it gives you not only maximum limit increase but also actual health points.

Or something like that, I am too tired to look for that particular discussion now.

 

essence, i don't think the inclusion of stances for ranged skills is a good idea, i mean the concept of stances in itself is on how it can provide flexibility to weapon specialization-- with throwing and archery, you already have flexibility with the choice of ammo;

personally, i don't choose archery or thrown because of their blandness, also not a fan of debuff procs

maybe add something like, proc-ing two attacks with the use of a bolt or a thrown weapon or something. or brittle buffs. but no more stances plox

 

The "blandness" and flexibility issues about the archery and throwing skill trees (and their subserivence to the relevant crafting skills) could be tackled by handling the way ammo is crafted. If different levels of throwing and archery gave out recipies for various advanced arrows, or increesed the ammount you can get (instead of the crafting skills both allowing for and increesing ammount), they'd be much more valuable.

Taking this approach would also open up room for moving relevant procs to the deadshot tree (and have them be universal for both throwing and archery), and you could also use the archery tree to simulate the effect and have on throwing (or shore up defficencies archery has when compared to other approaches of dealing damage). If at all possible.

Volunteer for data entry if tedium and time consumption turn out to be detractors from trying out this approach.

 

Even if you say that, most ammo is nearly identical. The only difference is how much damage it deals and of what types. The stances sound fine to me.

 

Same could be said for any weapon and spell in the game, it's just more obvious with arrows

 

Maybe I'm dumb, but I wanted to do the stances thing specifically to address the blandness thing.

 

Let us just accept that your solution, while not ideal, is a noticeable improvement over what we had in the past.

 

At least as far as Throwing goes, the biggest issue is that almost any Warrior skill will help you do more damage with Throwing weapons than Throwing will plus gives you extra utility. Even other weapon skills. Making it a Warrior skill would probably make it worth choosing throwing instead of...any current Warrior skill at random, really...if your intention is to throw a lot of things.

What would make it really better is trick throws. Throws that do stuff. Being able to intentionally do the various things that are procced now with cooldowns, (especially Beaning) when I need them instead of randomly, would be good. Throws that bounce the thrown thing between everything around the target area. A throw that targets a trap to set it off at range (with a cooldown of course) using the thrown weapon selected at the time. A junk tosser ability that lets you throw any item in the game as if it was a softball (sort of like Tourist's eat anything). Probably hard to do that, but a on use ability that turns a stack of whatevers into a stack of softballs, or some special "junk" thrown that can't be used as a crafting material. You could do away with improved ammo recovery with that (or just altogether), forcing the better weapons to be bought or crafted, which would let you choose your other skills on a "softball" path focusing on stacking exotic damage on your cheap softballs, or take crafting (or cash generating) skills to focus on fancier weapons like bombs, flasks, sawblades and the like.

EDIT: After about 5 minutes of reflection on this, I'm doubly enamored with the "throw anything" idea. It would make a whole lot of sense to be able to throw, say, all these bottles of useless alcohol at things if I'm a warrior build, since they just take up space otherwise.

 

That would be kind of nice, yeah. Not a fan of turning the procs into cooldowns, if only because that nerfs the junk throwing, but tossing, somewhere on the tree (early on preferably) an ability that turns anything into junk is a good idea.

 

I don't think it's possible, sadly. but I might be able to make an ability that turns any object into a softball?

 

As long as it targets stacks like Gem Transmutation instead of individual items like Xenochemistry. And has no cool down.

 

Might make more sense to turn it into something functionally identical that isn't actually a softball. Improvise Ballistic Device would be a good name. Something without any chance of ammo recovery (that bottle I threw is WAY less likely to be usable after being thrown than a softball). Unless that's a modding nightmare, in which case, sure, just turn them into softballs.

Lack of cooldown is probably a good idea too. There's no way to get cash out of this unless softballs sell for way more than I think they do. You can sell things as fast as you want. This just lets you sell them for softballs instead of zorkmids at a punishing rate of exchange.

 

After thinking more about this, I'm canning it. The +75% recovery rate already makes Throw Anything mostly meaningless.

As to activated abilities, they"rr currently unavailable to thrown&crossbows insofar as there are no equivalents of "attack=1" that do ranged attacks. Procs are all that we can do, sadly.