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Beginner's Help and Guides / Re: What am I doing wrong with the bow?
« on: February 10, 2011, 04:03:42 pm »Its a matter of your power draw, which not only increases damage by 8% per level, but also penetration power with all armor so that your final damage after armor is increased even more then that 8%. Try doing a build for khergit bow with 6 preferably 7 powerdraw and 6 weaponmaster all in archery. If you need to retire before this is possible then heirloom your bow as well. Also, be aware that with the shoot speed nerf from the latest patch update you will notice long range shots lose a lot of damage. As the arrow travels farther to its target it loses damage from speed and the weaker your bow's shoot speed and the lower your power draw the faster this happens (another reason to boost power draw to increase damage by increasing shoot speed).
Before that most recent patch the khergit bow was the ideal bow for balance betwen draw speed, damage, and shoot speed. Post the shoot speed nerf, strong bow is the best way to go (half the archers use it now,off topic - wish there were real advantages and disadvantages to each bow so the variety would return again, maybe make hunting bow 100 speed again or something). The warbow now has the exact same shoot speed as the strong bow adn only +3 cut damage which doesnt compensate for the slower draw speed. The longbow has its uses but in archer duels you will be dominated almost every time by the dramatically lower draw speed of every other bow, hella dedicated xbowman can probably reload faster then you can draw.
Heirloom your strong bow, retire and go for more power draw and you will find yourself doing some serious damage. A clanmate recently did 13 powerdraw with a longbow and was 1 shot killing a lot of people but his draw speed was almost twice as long as mine with an heirloomed strong bow. But the reduced accuracy of the reticules was compensated by the straight as an arrow (pardon the pun) shots with all the shoot speed from longbow and 14 powerdraw. The thing to do is play around with it and find what works for you in balancing accuracy, speed, and damage. I am looking forward to trying 8 powerdraw with 6 weaponamster all in archery with an heirloomed strong bow but only 3 athletics as 14 converted points, should be good damage. Also, if you retire multiple times, your 2nd heirloom of your bodkin arrows adds +2 pierce damage, whicha s being pierce can be significant, but your bow is better to heirloom first 3 times.(+1 shoot speed, +1 damage -1st heirloom, +1 shoot speed, +1 draw speed, +1 damage, +1 accuracy -2nd, 3rd heirlooms each).
However, if you want something easy, formless is right, go with throwing until chadz finally gets around to rebalancing throwing with everything else (same thing with polearm stun, but thats a whole nother thread).
Hope this helps.
Thank you, that was good read.