Thrown Weapons feat discussion

[Kreador Freeaxe]

With 1.04 I wanted to test the thrown weapons feat again. Overwhelming Volley sounds like it could be very cool, hitting a whole group of opponents with one throw. So, I leveled up a new character and got him to 10 Thrown Weapons and went in search of a group of Outlanders to round up and overwhelm with my volley.

Not so overwhelming. Every toss takes two thrown weapons from my inventory, and occasionally hits a second Outlander near my main target. Do I have to level it up higher to throw more? Every other weapon's feat is full powered at Level 10, with the only change in the feat after that being how quickly you get it back. If this isn't true of the Thrown Weapons category, then I think that needs to be fixed. If I'm supposed to be able to throw up to 8 as soon as I get the feat, why am I not? I've pulled half-a-dozen Outlanders into a tight grouping, and never thrown anything other than two weapons at them.

[Randomizer]

The only place that I was able to hit more than 2 or 3 at a time was grouping the black molds up on Mistfell's north coast near that chest. I was underwhelmed by the volley feat since even with 40 in strength and dexterity, plus thrown weapons over 10 I couldn't get enough damage per shot to kill even them.

BW says the feat is really effective with demon oil III flasks. I can see how the overlapping area effects and extra damage would make that a great choice. But empty flasks are still a problem.

[IJBall]

Kreador, I know Farwalker has had a couple of posts on Overwhelming Volley, so I'd try to track him down to see what he has to say on the subject...

[KillingMoon]

Probably nothing has been done to Thrown Weapons in 1.04. I don't see any mention of it in the list of changes.
I never came across a bunch of demon oil III flasks in any game, only a few later on.

Another weapon feat that is a bit iffy is the Great Cleave. Most of the time I'm not hitting any adjacent targets, but those adjacent targets are hitting me back. If that is happening then I'm giving myself a disadvantage by having them line up.
Both the Overwhelming Volley and the Great Cleave can work against you if you're trying to use them, as you become more vulnerable with more then one enemy near you, while the multiple hits are by no means guaranteed. And in case of the Overwhelming Volley you just stand the risk of losing multiple projectiles that you have little chance of replenishing.

[sirdilznik]

I fully agree that Great Cleave and Overwhelming Volley are definitely the two most underpowered/least useful feats in the game. There is only really 1 spot in the entirety of Book II where Great Cleave was somewhat helpful, the Dragonel room in Talushorn, and as mentioned Overwhelming Volley is only useful against groups of Molds and maybe also in the Dragonel room also. I think I only hit 3 targets with Great Cleave maybe 2 or 3 times during the entire game. Same thing with Overwhelming Volley, I can't think of hitting more than 2 targets more than maybe once (granted I gave up on that character long before finishing the game). I can see the potential of causing mass damage with Demon Oil III, but even with that it's only going to be truly useful extremely rarely and that's fairly expensive ammunition you're wasting too.

[IJBall]

I fully agree that Great Cleave and Overwhelming Volley are definitely the two most underpowered/least useful feats in the game. There is only really 1 spot in the entirety of Book II where Great Cleave was somewhat helpful, the Dragonel room in Talushorn, and as mentioned Overwhelming Volley is only useful against groups of Molds and maybe also in the Dragonel room also. I think I only hit 3 targets with Great Cleave maybe 2 or 3 times during the entire game. Same thing with Overwhelming Volley, I can't think of hitting more than 2 targets more than maybe once (granted I gave up on that character long before finishing the game).

This is when some of Farwalker's Feats suggestions start to look good.

I don't have any ideas on Thrown, but Cleaving should probably get some additional Feat, or Feat aspect - something like "Bleed" (longer-term 'bonus' damage spread out over several turns) - to make it more comparable to the other Feats...