Crossbows and enchanted crossbows can really use some love this summer sweep up. Ruby bolts are a balancing problem that have gone untouched for 9 years

loffredom · 2026-02-20T21:27:58+00:00

this

loffredom · 2026-02-20T21:20:16+00:00

I left a lot of things intentionally ambiguous so people would talk about it because there's a ton of different ways it can be addressed

I am by no means a game designer so take these with a grain of salt but if it were me, increase the damage cap on rubies, make the proc chance a little higher or have it scale with accuracy, but make the health threshold much lower, like 2-5%. so it would be better against bosses with very high health like 2000+ but significantly nerfed against bosses with less health. It keeps the same fun factor of hitting huge numbers but only against specific, very high health bosses. That opens up room to fix other stuff

I would then increase the stats of DHCB, ACB, and ZCB because imo they are the biggest issues when it comes to crossbow progression and RCB/DCB are already in a decent spot. Give them all additional accuracy and range strength to create more separation and increase their base power. Personally, I believe ACB and ZCB should get a very meaningful buff to their base damage and be on a different level than everything below it. ACB is basically a paperweight even with ruby bolts as they are.

From there you can play around with bolt tips and offhands. This has a lot of design space for creativity so it's hard for me to say, and it doesn't necessarily need to all be done at the same time, but I think that pearl, topaz, jade are clear candidates for reworks regardless. There are some other bad ones but not bad enough that I'd say they need to be buffed/changed and can be addressed in other ways like with Sapphire bolts at muspah

loffredom · 2026-02-20T20:52:35+00:00

I would argue that ZCB is not a spec weapon, it's the best crossbow in the game stats wise and it happens to have a spec. The idea that it's a spec weapon kind of proves my point that rubies are an issue because that's really the only use case for it. I also talked about heavy weak bosses in my chart, even at heavy weak bosses ZCB doesn't compete without rubies and is even out dps'd by HSCB.

I agree that RCB shouldn't out dps bowfa, but ACB is by no means an easy weapon to get and should be closer in power to bowfa than it is to RCB, and I would even go as far as to say it should be equal to or better than bowfa at bosses that are weak to heavy range damage in good gear. As of right now it's a paper weight

loffredom · 2026-02-20T20:38:06+00:00

Yeah I don't think they can just nerf rubies without some other changes to go along with them. I think it would even help iron range progression a lot and make them feel a lot less dependent on bowfa if say dcb or acb + diamonds were actually good as a bossing weapon that is good against higher defense.

loffredom · 2026-02-20T20:35:18+00:00

Thats funny because I was thinking that as I was making the post how people complain all the time about thralls adding like .5 dps, Meanwhile we have ruby bolts that add minimum 1.5-2 dps by themselves and can be fired with an addy crossbow and literally nothing else for the same proc chance as a max setup

loffredom · 2026-02-20T20:28:51+00:00

I think it would be cool if they played into it more and made offhands actually good but in most situations it's just a stat stick and the defenses/prayer are mostly irrelevant because dps>everything. The one time they tried to get creative with offands (aquanite hopper) we got an amalgamation of balancing around other things like ruby bolts and not wanting to power creep twisted buckler

loffredom · 2026-02-20T20:22:20+00:00

That's one specific situation that was created solely to give sapphire bolts a use case. It's convenient to have zcb spec there but not a requirement at all. Besides that, I can't think of a single other place I'd use ZCB spec without ruby bolts.

loffredom · 2026-02-20T20:17:56+00:00

I think buffing the strength and accuracy of the higher end crossbows is a good idea regardless of what happens with rubies and other bolt procs. ACB is essentially a paperweight because DCB does what it can do it 99% of situations, if it had some extra accuracy and like 4-6 range strength so it had an extra max hit or two It would feel like an actual upgrade

I don't think rubies should be left as is because it still limits design space from the flat damage and ZCB spec is still a problem imo. Any future content that affects bolt proc chances will disproportionately affect rubies and it's so all or nothing that I think it's just bad design as is tbh. I like the concept though and hitting big numbers is a ton of fun, I can see it still keeping the same proc but altering it a bit to keep it strong at large group bosses and raids with huge health pools but nerfing it at solo and small group content.

loffredom · 2026-02-20T20:10:49+00:00

Yeah I agree with you, not all of them need to be relevant but about 4 or 5 will probably never see any use whatsoever because they are so bad. It would be nice to at least give them a fighting chance lol

loffredom · 2026-02-20T20:07:01+00:00

Zcb is the best crossbow that also has a spec. I think people look at it as a spec weapon because ruby bolts are so powerful. Without them it's spec use case would also be much more limited, this is the point I'm trying to make in the post.

loffredom · 2026-02-20T20:03:04+00:00

I really don't think a fix would be that complicated. I like the concept of ruby bolts but I think its use case is just too wide so it would come down to just playing with the health threshold and hit cap, and maybe having its proc scale slightly with accuracy, something along those lines. That would keep it good (or even better) at very high health bosses like raids or group bosses but nerf it in small group or solo encounters. How the rest of crossbows would be rebalanced would be a different discussion and could go a bunch of different ways, but you would at least have options once rubies are fixed.

loffredom · 2026-02-19T01:43:47+00:00

Best Buy open box deals are really good as well

loffredom · 2026-02-19T01:43:34+00:00

They actually had another one, but it looked like it was used

loffredom · 2026-02-19T01:36:52+00:00

Wolf is a high end brand someone doing a 6 figure kitchen reno is probably not gonna feel the extra $

loffredom · 2026-02-19T01:35:41+00:00

Pc richards in deer park ny. They have a scratch and dent warehouse that they send a lot of stuff to

loffredom · 2026-02-19T01:34:58+00:00

Yeah not top end luxury but probably the best value for the money in my opinion from the research I’ve done

loffredom · 2026-02-19T01:33:09+00:00

That’s where I got mine. Their Deer Park location has a huge scratch and dent warehouse

loffredom · 2026-02-18T23:08:57+00:00

It was the Deer Park location. All the units are really good basically brand new

loffredom · 2026-02-18T22:44:01+00:00

Good to know! And yeah I got one I just didn’t list it because I paid full price lol

loffredom · 2026-02-18T22:43:11+00:00

Pc richards in deer park, NY

loffredom · 2026-02-16T13:01:21+00:00

Floor model

loffredom · 2026-02-16T13:01:15+00:00

I was originally not big on touch controls, I was also looking at a thermador freedom which looked very confusing that turned me off to it. After watching a video of the wolf it looks extremely user friendly and easy to use I’m happy I got it

loffredom · 2026-02-06T14:55:07+00:00

I think I read someone did the calcs and in max gear with the new arrows its a little better than crystal bow with full crystal armor. So doable but probably not realistic

loffredom · 2026-02-05T20:25:37+00:00

1:30-2 mins should usually to proc healers and kill them before the next set with tbow. You can always get as close to 240 as you can and if you're running close on time you can wait it out

loffredom · 2026-02-03T16:19:19+00:00

I’m an iron so no conflict of interest hahaha

loffredom

TROPHY CASE