Crossbow is kind of useless because to long Reload Speed

Hi Guys,

ive tested now more then 500 Hours Bow vs Crossbow.

The result: Crossbow is in a very bad shape. The Reload Speed is way to high. If you want to farm Rifts, there comes the big issue with Crossbow. You die, cause your DPS drops to hard down during the Reloads. Reload Skills and Gems doesnt work good enough to solve this problem.

In generaly i would say, Crossbow needs a big rework. There is no real advantage, if you compare the bow to the crossbow.

Why using a weapon with such reload times, if you just can use a weapon without any?

Doesnt make any sense in my opinion.

The other big issue of Crossbow is, that stun effects and other effects is disturbing your reload. So, you can be get in that situation, where your weapon dont reload anymore and you die cause of that.

So we talk here about big big disadvantages.

Bow is just the better Crossbow.

I'm up to around 250 hours of almost purely Crossbow and it's hard to disagree. I wonder if it's less about the weapon's mechanical concerns and more about its comparatively weak Passives, however. Too many Crossbow-oriented trees/abilities are hyper-specific, like they're suggesting the optimal way to play is to use a crossbow and grenades. Well, I don't like grenades. I'm not going to use them. But these points are still among the strongest options I have, waste stats or not.

I waited too long to finally refund my Crossbow Reload Speed Passives, for example. I've all but concluded that those 3% Attack Speed nodes are so much better that they might be critically important. "Crossbow Reload Speed" seems so much less efficient that the points feel wasted. There are other passives/trees that don't add much damage or synergize with Crossbows, particularly, that offer significantly more value. I'm only becoming more confident about these suspicions, but I've never gone so far as to actually parse any data, and never will. Just sharing some thoughts and anecdotes.

I think what I'm trying to say is I don't think there's a gigantic disparity between Crossbows and Bows, inherently. It's the Passives where it completely falls apart. Crossbow is all over the place, trying to sell itself as Versatile or General Purpose. The Bow passives, however, seem like they've been through another round or two of optimization entirely. They're focused and logical, making it the obviously superior choice for DPS. What's ironic is that its Passives and abilities are so well done that it also manages to be the more versatile weapon, as a result.