Bows and Heroes

Or simply make better bows for heroes. With the exception of the OP lightening bow, (+2 lightning damage per lvl) they all suck. 

Venomous shortbow isn't bad.  Tarth heroes have double strike, which really helps bows.

Fine, so thats two bows that don't completely suck.

And the Ignys longbow is pretty good too, let's not forget that one.  In my cult of 100 Eyes Resoln game, I gave it to my created leader.I find archers quite effective as they can shoot from a distance and cause a good deal of damage. 

So now we're up to 3 bows being good. Any more?

THat's one of the big flaws in the game, having to try and balance a group of guys using the same bow as 1 hero.  Troop gear and hero gear should have been completely different or they should have made troops function as an individual instead of multiplying things.  They've done an excellent job balancing it, a lot better than I thought possible, but it will always be flawed.

heroes already use special versions of items (with relatively large gold cost) i cant see any reason why this special versions can't have different stats.

I don't know that i would say that heroes using bows suck late game, but they aren't as effective as non-bow heroes that's for sure. I think having the ranger style tree would be a great addition. but stardock wont add it, your only hope for that is to mod it yourself or that one of the major modders will create the new tree.

The Perfect Yew Longbow is really nice for a hero bow, using it on Lith Serrata in my current game and she was all kinds of nasty with it through the mid game.  Late game, I have armies stacked with high initiative units and I rarely get more than one action from my champions anyway.

I like the idea of making hero weapons better than the non-hero versions.  I generally avoid bows on my champions because of the huge initiative penalties, which slows down spell-casting. The Perfect Yew Longbow, with 22 attack and only a -2 initiative penalty is really the only bow that I consider good enough, and I've only ever seen it once.

Brutal Yew Longbow is 33 attack. Give that to a high level assassin, and no one will complain about underpowered bows.

The problem is, I have only ever seen it once. Too rare. 

so, maybe it's not a matter of 'they're not good'....maybe it's more of 'there are not enough'

I've never seen either of the two special Yew bows, and according to Steam I have 285 hours in on LH.

Maybe some of the higher bows should be moved from ultra rare to uncommon-ish?

This sounds like the way to go.

I did play as an archer Assassin (yes was with Tarth, but believe it or not most of your damage in a battle comes from normal shots). What can I say, at start is a pain until you get a better bow (if you're lucky to get the Ignyss quest, is fine, otherwise not so great). But then it starts to catch up as you hit shadowstrike and get better bows.

The initiative is also becoming a non factor past early game (all higher rank bows have lower penalty on ini and you can use mounts that increase it, as well as accessories).

What I wish is for another skill for the archery heroes. Just shoot and Rain of Arrows doesn't really compete with other weapons who have innate skills. Maybe add a skill that dazes the target? Or roots it in place for 3 turns.

If you focus on max initiative for an assassin archer, do you really need extra abilities? Get the init above 35 and rain of arrows sounds pretty good. 

It has a cooldown of 5 turns. Just because you act more often during same turn, this does not affect the abilities cooldown. A game combat turn passes when every single unit played an action. I tested this with a level 10 air / water mage (with my air power I was getting 10 initiative boost from haste) going solo against an enemy scout. I slowed him and hasted myself, then cast wraith touch. It didn't come back off cooldown before scout took 5 moves.

Not to mention archery is easiest to defend against with aeromancy and air disciple (not to mention any innate dodge a unit / hero may have). There is nothing you can do about it unless you cast growth on the unit (which really isn't optimal lol).

Wow. That's kind of crummy, especially since it's hard to keep track of when each unit has completed a turn. If it's that important, it should have a divider and/or notice when it changes to another round. A simple counter in the corner would seem to suffice.

Well, this actually helps to keep the balance

Haste allows you to act more often during a turn, not to get more turns, same as slow delay your actions until end of turn, not prevents you from acting for X turns.

Think of it as an army with 2 movement and one with 4. Both move once during their turn, but one travels further

I don't have a problem that this exists, but the crummy part is not being able to track/tell how the mechanic works.

I've never seen a magic bow that did more than 9 points of damage.

I am pretty sure I have seen wilding shamans cast coal stones after five of their turns, not five of my army's...

I think that hero equipment needs a buff from what normal foot soliders are equipped with.  It's supposed to be hero gear, so you'd think that they'd get masterwork version of things.  Or simply have those available as well. 

Breaking out the different stuff into tabs in the shop sure would help, too.

Heroes do have special equipment, but most of it is found from treasures / deafeating tough enemies / bosses / quests. Adding a RNG factor regarding those items (most likely you won't find same things in successive games) adds to diversity. If you knew you had to research or build X to get that super mega Bow which will completely break your hero and make it a semi-god, would you still try a different play?