Heavy Crossbow

I was just looking at the wiki for the Heavy CB, and someone noted that:

When ascended to lightning this crossbow will not deal the lightning
portion of the damage it specifies; making it essentially useless.

Can anyone confirm this? Is it some kind of bug or is this person just reacting to there being no lightning animation upon striking your opponent? Generally I ascend my CB's to lightning and then use lightning bolts, which is what I was about to do when I read this, but if it actually is bugged I'd be silly not to keep it standard.

The other CBs deal lightning damage, but it's not very high.

That's doesn't really answer my question. I just found another thread about it, and it seems like, at least at that time, everyone was just really confused about it and giving completely different answers. In my experience a CB or bow with an elemental path matched with the same element of their ammunition does better damage than most other combintions. IE - lightning CB with lightning bolts, fire bow with fire arrows, magic/enchanted bow with DM arrows, but if the heavy CB is actually bugged to not carry the lightning stat it says it does than there really is no point in upgrading that way. I'd test it myself but I only have one Heavy CB

I'll jump on in five and test it out. I've never had issues with the lightning path, but I've never used a heavy crossbow either.
I'll test +15 standard and +5 lightning with both heavy bolts and lightning bolts. Be back shortly with the results.

I just loaded one of my other toons that has a couple and I'm going to try it out also and we can compare notes. I think I'm going to try +11 vs Lightning +1. That'd probably be comparable right? I've never had an issue with the lightning path either, but I usually go with the Avelyn, and this note is solely claiming it with the Heavy CB. I checked the pages for the other CB's and there's no note on them. I have a feeling this is just the result of some confusion.

Yeah this person is completely wrong. I just tested a +11 standard Heavy CB with both Heavy and Lightning Bolts, and a +1 Lightning Heavy CB with the same, both on the same enemy at roughly the same distance, without aggroing it. With the +11 and Heavy I did 232, with Lightning I did 231, then with the Lightning Heavy CB and Heavy I did 223, and with the Lightning 272. I'd call that an active Lightning stat folks. As well as confirmation that pairing a CB of the same element as it's bolts increases the effect. I'm changing the wiki. If nothing else it proves the point that split damage has a very clear effect. By making my damage more uniform I did more of it with both crossbows.

Just for the sake of being thorough I'm going to upgrade both of them to just under where I'd need a slab and try and again. I'll post my results.

Yup. Generally the same kind of results. With the Heavy CB at +14 and Heavy Bolts I did 274, with Lightning Bolts I did 271, then with the +4 Lightning Heavy CB and Heavy Bolts I did 287, and with Lightning Bolts I did 330. That's enough for me.

This is what I've found: (all damage tested on hollows outside of undead parish.)
HC+15 with Heavy Bolts has an AR of 405, with lightning bolts the AR is still 405.
Damage for both bolt types on the hollow is 299. Out of ten shots of each only twice did it deviate and it wad with the lightning bolts. Once the damage was 300 and the second was 355.

HC lightning +5 AR is 471 with standard bolts and remains 471 with lightning bolts.
Damage with the heavy bolt out of ten shots averaged 320 with one shot doing 357. The lightning bolts averaged 367 in damage with two shots doing 397.

Clearly the lightning path on the HC does produce a stronger hit, but it seems that the difference in damage may be nullified by the split defenses that the +15 doesn't have to contend with. :/

Whether or not it produces a stronger hit is going to depend on a lot of things, including the particular enemies lightning defense. What I was concerned about was the claim that the Heavy CB doesn't actually deal the lightning damage that it's stats claim, which is clearly false information.
I think you can see it clearly in both of our results.

I'm glad somebody else tested this out at the same time. It makes me feel more justified in altering someone else's work on the wiki.

^Thanks for doing that with me BTW. +1

I got ya, .
I may try a Chester build with the HC now, .

I fought someone doing it with the Sniper CB the other day and they were actually really effective with it. It reloads faster than you'd think. I never really give it a chance over the Heavy or the Avelyn, but this guy made me think twice about it. Not sure what kind of bolts he was using. Probably heavy.

Actually I just tried it as a comparison to the Heavy reload speed wise, and he must have been using a Heavy CB. The Sniper really is slow as hell.

NOooooooo... all this time I've been mislead into believing that a +5 Lightning Crossbow was useless, which caused me to feed one that I had with an old character to ol snakehips in the Shrine out of sheer frustration and disgust! :affraid:

That'll teach me not to believe everything I read here!

That does suck.

Always good to remember that the wiki is all written by people like us. That's part of the beauty of the forum. We can ask each other.

I have also found, except the avelyn, that +15 with heavy bolts is almost always superior in terms of damage. I haven't tested enough to notice if the lightning damage was non existent. That would be odd.

PlasticandRage wrote:That's doesn't really answer my question. I just found another thread about it, and it seems like, at least at that time, everyone was just really confused about it and giving completely different answers. In my experience a CB or bow with an elemental path matched with the same element of their ammunition does better damage than most other combintions. IE - lightning CB with lightning bolts, fire bow with fire arrows, magic/enchanted bow with DM arrows, but if the heavy CB is actually bugged to not carry the lightning stat it says it does than there really is no point in upgrading that way. I'd test it myself but I only have one Heavy CB

I have used the heavy crossbow with lightning damage with normal bolts. I don't know what that guy was talking about, you're totally right.

Well in all fairness there has been a lot of confusion surrounding the whole thing, and the other thread about it wasn't extremely clear. I'm thinking he upgraded one and didn't see the animation and decided it wasn't there.

Yeah, there's always been confusion surrounding elemental bows and crossbows, and none of the threads I've ever read on the subject gave me a clear answer.

+1 for testing the crossbow, thanks.

PlasticandRage wrote:That's doesn't really answer my question. I just found another thread about it, and it seems like, at least at that time, everyone was just really confused about it and giving completely different answers. In my experience a CB or bow with an elemental path matched with the same element of their ammunition does better damage than most other combintions. IE - lightning CB with lightning bolts, fire bow with fire arrows, magic/enchanted bow with DM arrows, but if the heavy CB is actually bugged to not carry the lightning stat it says it does than there really is no point in upgrading that way. I'd test it myself but I only have one Heavy CB

Sorry if my answer was not very clear but yes, I was pretty sure that there was no reason why the HCB wouldn't deal lightning damage since all the CBs do it.

As for the wiki, I try to correct all the mistakes I see but this one eluded me.

I try really hard to only edit things I'm absolutely 100% positive about. It represents the hard work and time consumption of so many people I don't take it very lightly. This actually only represents my second contribution ever.