[Trexmaster]

Arbalest is in dire need of a touch up given how long it's been since anything on it has been adjusted while so many other things in the game have changed drastically around it.

Outside of Buster Cannon (since Oil Chain got the nerf it deserved with the cinder changes) Arbalest has very little going for it compared to its alternative for a Bow user--Ranger. Yet Buster Cannon alone makes Arbalest worth using due to how insanely potent it is.

A class should likely have a greater identity than one skill. Everything else in Arbalest is some unseen power modifiers and buffs you're rarely going to waste the momentum putting up anymore due to how painfully inefficient they are unless you really need that extra 4-5% hit you'll get from Deadly Aim raising your almost definitely soft-capped SKI.

Rather than ramble aimlessly about Arbalest I'll judge the entire class as a whole to drive the point home that Arbalest in the current meta is Buster Cannon with some extra power for bows.

----------------

Straight (into the trash) Cannon -

• Arguably the worst cannon skill you could use. Its competition being either stripping your targets Phys Def entirely or potentially (or guaranteeing) a stun and forcing the target away from you (and potentially through damaging tiles for minor extra damage).
  

• As for what it actually does--for taking a Hit penalty as low as 50% of your Special Armament's weight, you deal up to 100% of its weight as bonus damage and apply any On Hit (Not on Crit) effects it has if the attack connects. If my SA's weapon has an On Hit that makes this worth it, I'm hitting my enemy with that, not my bow. Only extreme outliers like Rampaging Salamander Swords and Narcus will ever be seen used with this
  

• Best case scenario you're firing off a Gigantys to maximize the damage you deal and making sure you've spirited the skill--you'd be looking at roughly +60~ damage, which seems OK at a glance, but it has the opportunity cost of losing out on the other cannons unless you waste momentum reloading prematurely. Against targets with more than 40% DR (on the assumption you're dealing around 160 damage on your basic attacks) Buster Cannon will immediately provide this much damage without requiring a hyper-specialized Special Armament to do it.
  

Verdict: Made obsolete by the existence of other cannons in its current state, rarely if ever worth using.


Blowback Cannon -

• Everyone's favorite cannon before Buster came along, and Stun got gutted.
  
• Blowback Cannon is fairly straightforward. Carrying no hit penalty, it can have up to a 60 + SA Weight% chance to stun if the attack connects, knocking the target back up to 7 tiles. Short simple and effective. While Stun nowadays can often be a detriment to your team it has its uses for temporarily removing a problem from the fight, both consuming a turn and forcibly relocating it (optimally).
  
• Its only real downside is the sacrifice of your cannon skill use for utility rather than the sheer offense of Buster. Or in some cases where stun gets prematurely removed due to a Resist! proc, all you get left with that's 100% reliable is the knock back.
  

Verdict: Contender for the sake of utility in some scenarios where a stun is preferred over a potential opportunity for massive damage. Definitely viable.

Buster Cannon (AKA Arbalest) -

• Most people's entire reason for even slotting Arbalest in the first place.
  
• Again, carrying no hit penality, if the attack connects the target's Phys Def is reduced by up to 150% for 3 rounds. Note this is redundant for players and most people are going to leave this unspirited, but the 150% is effective for further cutting Boss monster's defenses
  
• If the status is left unanswered odds are the target is going to be mulched in the time the status takes to expire, bar liberal Guard spamming or other equally effective defensive measures like Metalaegis. Especially if used in a team battle where multiple teammates can utilize the stripped Phys Def, this skill alone marks someone for being removed from the game if not properly answered.
  
• Is this skill broken? Yes and no. While (almost) entirely removing someone's defense investment is a bit ridiculous, one has to consider the same thing is available far more freely against Evade (Frozen, Plisfa's Masochism, Soulshot), so it's only fair that simply bulking up on Phys Def isn't entirely impassable.
  

Verdict: When most people think 'Arbalest' they think 'Buster Cannon'. If you aren't making liberal use of this reconsider your class choices. Mandatory.

Oil Chain -

• A supplemental damage bonus that applies when using a Cannon skill.
  
• When used, you gain a buff that causes your next Cannon skill to create fire tiles (unique in appearance from cinder tiles) along the path of your cannon attack, as well as dealing up to 130% Fire ATK to all enemies between you and the target, said fire tiles will deal half that damage.
  
• In the past, the tile damage would not be split if you pulled or pushed something through them, making for insane amounts of damage that'd kill most players in one round. Nowadays, the damage gets split by the number of tiles being crossed, so a 60 damage tile effect is only going to deal 60 damage, split evenly as possible into each tile crossed.
  
• This makes it questionably worth to actively build for but it's something for when you have nothing to do but prep while waiting for the enemy to engage. Its usefulness is largely seen in PvE where mobs are prone to walking straight through your tiles for undivided damage and subsequently taking pre-nerf levels of fire damage as a result. Best used with Blowback Cannon (as the game tips helpfully state) to maximize the odds of a monster walking right back through the fire, but definitely worth still using Buster Cannon if the target's DR warrants it.
  

Verdict: It's alright. Nothing to write home about. In the current meta that means 'you'll likely never see it'. Viable for PvE, situational for PvP.

Chained Boomerang -

• Simply put, you attack with your SA at 5 range. Spirited, you take no hit penalty, unspirited, it's a -10 to hit.
  
• If you have an SA with an On-Hit worth using, you're going to be using this and not Straight Cannon outside the fringe scenario of needing that one last push for lethal and your target has barely any DR worth Bustering. This can be potentially useful for enabling melee-weapon attacks at a range, but odds are you'd be better off just using your bow with a damage amplifying or status inflicting attack than whacking someone with your off-hand weapon with no extra modifiers (and a potential malus to hit without spiriting the skill).
  

Verdict: Situational, but has potential to be useful with specific weapon combinations. Enabling Narcus to whack people at 5 range is likely the highlight of this one. It's OK.

Heavy Tackle -

• Once the best skill in the game, has since aged poorly.
  
• Capped at a potential 168 damage (assuming you have 144 BW and spirit the skill), Heavy Tackle deals damage based on your BW 1:1 up to the aforementioned cap with a bonus of up to +24. Additionally, it knocks the target back 1 tile for every 15 BW, and if at least 3 tiles (45 BW) are passed, knocks the target down. The knock back of Heavy Tackle ignores immunity as well, making it very effective for keeping targets out of the 1-range-hit-penality zone of an Arbalest's bow.
  
• The downside is simply the minuscule damage the attack deals (most people are only going to see around 100 tops if that, before any defenses), countered by the comparatively simple means to knock down a target, matched only by Domino Resonate (which has a 3 round cooldown).
  

Verdict: Good for what it does. If you need an easy way to knock someone down, here you go (downside is most means of abusing a knocked down target will require a 0-1m movement to follow up on, or only be useful to allies who can do similar/require a calculated shove in their direction). Situational but hey, easy knock down is an easy knock down.

Mighty Wall -

• +10 DEF/RES and knockback immunity for 3 rounds. (not accounting for a spirit, which can make this up to +12/12)
  

• Straight forward and questionably worth for its short duration. If you're for some reason not capping your Phys/Mag Def this acts as an extra 10% mitigation for at least 4 instances of damage, assuming you went second and are fighting one person who's hitting you twice a round.
  

• Since cinders and tile-based damage in general got toned down, knockback immunity isn't mandatory anymore, and with Ymir existing, this can potentially be a liability if used improperly. The most thought typically required with this skill is if it's really worth the 3m to lower your incoming damage. In team fights this is usually yes, in 1v1s odds are that's a no. Even then, the opportunity cost of buffing your defenses is losing out on prepping a Buster Cannon sooner or dealing more damage to actually win the fight.
  

A quick bout of math assuming your DEF/RES is 30/30 and you have 1,000 HP, and your opponent is sitting on similar stats.

Both you and your opponent deal roughly 200 damage unmitigated, resulting in roughly 140 damage after your respective defenses per attack. In a vacuum where you're both just wailing on each other with your full 7m each round, this means lethal comes in 8 attacks assuming nothing changes the damage.

In the optimal scenario for Mighty Wall where you're faster, this is what it'd look like

R1
140 Damage vs 240 Damage (760/1000 vs 860/1000)

R2

280 Damage vs 240 Damage ( 520/1000 vs 580/1000)

R3

280 Damage vs 240 Damage (280/1000 vs 300/1000)

R4 - Mighty Wall expires. The damage, without any modifiers, isn't going to be lethal at the rate this is going, while the now unmitigated damage from the enemy would be lethal, but since you're going first, you can reapply Mighty Wall and attack while barely staying above lethal.)

140 Damage vs 240 Damage (40/1000 vs 160/1000)

R5 - At this point you have lethal, and win on your second attack of the round with barely any HP left, having in total mitigated 160 damage across 8 attacks for 6m.

What would happen if you just attacked your opponent as normal with first-turn advantage?

R1 -

280 VS 280....etc

...R4 - You have lethal just before your opponent would anyways, since you went first. So in a scenario where your damage is equal, there's no reason to use it, just whack them until you win if they aren't trying anything funny.

I don't really need to math out what happens if you're slower. You lose an entire duration of effectiveness on the skill against anyone who goes before you, and for a skill with only 3 rounds of duration this makes it borderline useless if you don't have the initiative advantage on your opponent(s).

Verdict: Use if you for some reason don't soft-cap your defenses and/or are facing multiple enemies that want to damage you. Beyond soft-capped defenses this skill's usefulness drastically decreases due to stat scaling. Situational, odds are you'll never want to use it over putting pressure on the enemy via Cannons or simply attacking at a range.

Deadly Aim:

• +10 SKI for up to 5 rounds (12 with a spirit).
  

• Aged poorly with the advent of the Great Reckoning introducing scaled stats. Any sane Arbalest is going to have enough SKI to hit people, and odds are that's going to be slightly above soft-cap--meaning that +10 SKI is going to be around +4% hit in most scenarios.
  

Verdict: Borderline worthless in the current meta. Spend 3m to get 10% of the hit that your opponent does evade (looking at you disengage). Use if you want dummy statuses to soak a null I guess (but why thou).

Reload Accel -

• 5m to instantly recover the use of your Cannon skill and SA, costing 10 FP or 0 if you spirit it.
  

• Almost never worth using, even in the scenario given by the tips that suggest critting once without Fluer THEN reloading to make use of the 5m you're left with. You're likely better off making another attack than using this unless you desperately need to spam your Cannon skill.
  

Verdict: Situational. Do you have multiple targets that need to be buster cannoned RIGHT NOW? Slot this. No? Never use this. The opportunity cost of another attack is simply not worth it in most scenarios.

--------------

From here we get into the passive and innate skills of Arbalest that, odds are, most people have by default because they're either mandatory or there's no reason not to grab it.

Violent Reaction - 1 point passive, Further increases Oil Chain's base damage by your Scaled STR, effectively making its damage 200% Scaled STR + Fire ATK modifiers. Mandatory if you use Oil Chain. Takes a skill slot.

Special Armament - 2 point innate that reduces the battle weight of your subweapon. Borderline mandatory if you want to use a sword/axe/spear for an SA. At 2 points reduces the reload time from 4 rounds to 3--essentially making this a must pick if you ever want to use cannon skills.

Accelerant - 3 point innate that increases the duration of Oil Chain tiles by 1 round per point, up to +3 rounds. Mandatory if you actually use Oil Chain.

Control Inertia - 3 point innate that increases the range of Cannon skills by 1 tile per point, up to +3 range. Borderline mandatory if you want to use a cannon skill, as it's minimal investment for a lot of power in being able to hit with cannons further away.

Punching Shot - 5 point innate, allows Bow weapons to ignore Rank*2 armor. Borderline mandatory. You can live without the +10 damage but odds are very little in Arbalest will be worth losing the points in this.

Honed Shot - Obligatory +5(6) stat innate. Boosts SKI by Rank*1, gaining an additional SKI at Rank 5 for +6 SKI total. Borderline mandatory to supplement stat budgeting for Arbalests.

Heavy Bow Mastery - 5 point innate. Boosts the damage of bows with a Weight of at least 20 by Rank*2, and decreases their Battle Weight by Rank*1. Borderline mandatory. A straight damage increase for minimal investment.

-----------------------------------

All in all, Arbalest has a grand total of 66 skill points to invest to max out everything possible. Taking away the questionably worth skills (Straight Cannon, Chained Boomerang, Deadly Aim, Mighty Wall, Reload Accel) this leaves 43 skill points to max out what's left, meaning non-destiny is forced to take away 8 points from this for their final build.

Odds are, these 8 points are going to get docked from Oil Chain and Accelerant, leaving Violent Reaction to be useless--thus freeing the point to be spent on a 1 dump wonder on something like Reload Accel for its situational use.

This leaves the only active skills most Arbalests have from Arbalest as Heavy Tackle, Blowback Cannon, and Buster Cannon with a potential Reload Accel tossed in. The rest is just various bonuses that all always apply given you're using a 20 weight bow.

Without another class supplementing it, all the Arbalest is going to do is spam its Archer skills or basic you to death.

TL;DR: The problem with Arbalest is that it's fundamentally boring given how Buster Cannon is the only reason it's even viable.
-------------------------------------------------
As to how to fix the issues with Arbalest?

At the very least, modernizing its skills to suit GR would be a good start. Such as converting Mighty Wall to be something like 5% Phys/Mag DEF at max rank and changing Deadly Aim to be a Hit bonus rather than raw SKI.

The only problem is working around Buster Cannon. It's so overloaded yet integral to the class as it stands. A possible solution I can think of to retain its identity while bringing it down a notch is to convert its debuff to act like a pseudo-Burn and negate DEF buffs and additionally apply a flat negative to Phys DR rather than a total removal of it.

All I know for sure is that if anything in Arbalest is going to be changed for the better, Buster Cannon would have to be changed in some way lest the class be horribly over tuned.