What good is grapeshot?
 

We beat a kingfisher flag ship down and grappled it. Then we proceeded to
shoot at the crew with grapeshot. After two hits, the crew "disappeared."
We kept shooting but it was having no effect since we had no target.

Then, we boarded. The crew was still there but it was impossible to tell his status
because the ship status bar was still up. I healed my friend while he fought the guy.
I watched my friends health go lower and lower.

Then it was down to me.. I drew my sword. The guy was a level 16 and was virtually undamaged. I watched as he jumped to another ship and continued to peg me while I could do nothing to hit him. Needless to say I died.

So much for realism.

:h-skull:

Previously I've had good luck with the grapeshot reducing or killing the enemies on board; today however has been a different story. Whatever they've changed, I can't seem to see all or even sometimes one enemy onboard, so I shoot for a while and finally board; it works out ok on the lower ships even if there's a few left, but if I get bad luck and get a large crew I'm done for.

I realize they respawn after a while if you don't board, but that doesn't seem to be the issue today; it's just that I can't see anyone to hit, no lvl's going down etc.

The last patch updated it so that instead of having the enemy crew on the ship the whole time, they only spawn when you actually board the ship. Personally, I liked it better when you could just kill the enemy crew with cannon fire before boarding. Now you need to have at least four crewmembers to board a high level enemy ship, because you need at least two healers and two tanks in order to defeat the high level enemy crew. And you all know that once you board an enemy ship, the lag goes to heck and its hard to battle by your lonesome, let alone as a group of four people.

Not sure if that's really the case. I know right after the patch when I boarded the ship, I wouldn't the the enemy crew after grappling, but would see them spawn when I boarded. But from what I'm hearing today, people on the crew I was sailing with today said they could see the enemy crew before we boarded, but I didn't give them time to hit the crew. I was still going based on what I had thought the patch updated, and boarded right away. So I don't know really what to do with getting rid of the enemy crew.

But I've never really used grapeshot for getting the enemy crew, I've always had good luck with my cannon.

Well, obviously there has to be enemy crew on board, because someone has to sail the ship. So usually there's one enemy crewman who's sailing the ship when you fire on it and grapple it, but once you kill him, the enemy crew doesn't spawn UNTIL you actually board the ship. So, like I was saying, it's more difficult to board now because you have to contend with the whole enemy crew, rather than pummeling them from the start with cannon fire.

Hmm, well maybe that's what she saw when she said she could see the crew ( the guy sailing the ship). :)

There are lots of issues with flag ships right now. We did many raids over the weekend and had quite a few go very wrong. Not only is the final guy invisible often, but over half the time we came across people that could only be injured with a sword sweep. No other kind of attack had any effect on them. It takes forever to sweep and wait for the sweep to recharge again to take out 15+ level people and the clock really does come into play. As to the invisible people, those left behind on your ship can actually see them while those fighting it cannot.

We also had raids where only 2 or 3 of our crew went across with the captain instead of the whole crew.

The thing that sucks is having the flag ship take off and move while you are on it fighting. If you grapple it while your boat is very close the enemy flag ship takes off after boarding it and can travel quite a distance. Makes the swing back to the boat a real trip.

They have a lot of issues to work out with the whole flag ship part of the game.

And to answer the OP, our team reports that the grapeshot isn't working as it was before last update. It used to do quite a bit of damage to people and most are saying it does nothing right now.