» Sat Dec 01, 2012 6:24 am Several months ago, curiosity led me to do http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1361775-archery-damage-tests/ with the Archery game mechanics. Over the past couple evenings, I've done the same with crossbows, and it's been (to me at least) interesting.
The test involves the use of the PC console to create a dummy, spawn the gear, and player.advskill to get all skills at 100. In this case, the dummy is Nazeem; I'd use Heimskr, but Nords resist ice.
1. The tooltip is still wrong but not as bad.
The weapon menu is still failing to report that, like with bow and arrow, crossbow bolts scale with your multipliers. For example, with 5/5 Overdraw and 100 skill (x3 multiplier,) the weapon menu will show 67 damage for Crossbow and Steel Bolts (19x3+10). The actual damage is 87 ((19+10)x3). Likewise, a perked sneak attack will not do (19x9)+10=181 damage, but ((19+10)x9)=261.
The elemental damage from Exploding bolts, like enchants, is not multiplied for your archery, nor displayed on the weapon menu.
2. Unusual perk interactions and tips:
-Archery:
---Eagle Eye and Ranger: By holding the attack button, you will go into an aiming pose and delay firing; during this, Eagle Eye and Ranger can be used. Ranger has no effect on your movement speed while reloading.
---Power Shot: This perk tracks separately from the inherent stagger that crossbows enjoy. The inherent stagger is 50% chance of 0.75 stagger, and the perk is a different 50% chance of 0.25 stagger.
---Quick Shot: Useless for crossbows.
-Destruction:
---Augmented Flames/Frost/Shock applies to the damage for Exploding Bolts.
-Two Handed:
---Deep Wounds rank 2 has a bug that causes it to multiply any other critical hit damage by 1.25. Thus, instead of .5/.625/.75 of inherent weapon damage, the critical shot perk will give .625/.78125/.9375 of inherent weapon damage. See critical hits, following.
2. Critical hits still aren't great, but crossbows give a reason to use them.
With rank 3 of the critical shot perk, and rank 2 of Deep Wounds (see above,) you will get +20.625 damage with a Dwarven Crossbow. This is not great; however, when using Exploding bolts, the splash/AoE damage has a chance to do this critical damage to each target hit by the explosion.
3. Exploding bolt notes:
-I've observed that sometimes, when Sneak Attacking with crossbows and exploding bolts (yes, a contradiction of ideas, I know,) that near misses will confirm a sneak hit, but deal no damage from the explosion. The explosion can still trigger a critical hit, which deals the usual critical damage.
-The explosion does NOT proc inherent stagger, Power Shot, Bullseye, weapon enchants, or poisons.
-The explosion is affected by Augmented perks under Destruction, as well as Potion of Destruction.
4. The pistol whip:
Bashing with your crossbow is clumsy, has very short range, and deals only minimal damage: 1/4 of inherent weapon damage. This is 4.75 for the regular crossbow, and 5.5 for the Dwarven crossbow. However, a bash done within about half a second of finishing a reload will deal damage (and procs) as though you fired the shot. If using Exploding bolts, you will not create an explosion this way.
(continued in next post)
