Bows

[Conder]

What's better, more dps or more max damage? I'm kinda new to a hunter and from what I've seen is that higher max damage works out better then a high dps bow.

Some advice/discuss is most welcome :)

[MéLAnoR]

What's better, more dps or more max damage? I'm kinda new to a hunter and from what I've seen is that higher max damage works out better then a high dps bow.

Some advice/discuss is most welcome :)Depends on your stats , ranged crit and lvl too.Though it's mostly true that end-damage ( max damage) is the goal here.
Xbows used to have +105 highend damage with +2,8 speed and mst hunters choosed them for that reason.So considering lore aspects they nerfed it :P
Imo they should bring crossbow's old high end damage back and adapt the bow/xbow speed on skill inductions so you don't exploit the end damage without affecting the ranged skill induction.
Nonethelees it's obvious that Devs don't want to mess with ranged skill induction codes it'll cost them extra time to change the system.

[Bell of Eternity]

Maximum damage is important for criticals as its damage is based on maximum. With DPS, do you mean the value listed on weapon or the rate of damage you are observing during arrow spam? Listed DPS has little actual bearing to hunters. It is the speed of auto-attacks. Normally, you would be spamming your skills - until you run out of power at least - so your rate of attacks is governed by induction speed (the blue bar filling up), attack animation length and skill's global cooldown (forced downtime after skill use before next one is allowed to start). Weapon DPS, bow or otherwise, has no effect on any of the three. Some higher level bows do offer shortened induction times however.

[Scappydog]

Personally I'd go for a bow with higher max damage for solo play. It's the max damage figure that is used to calculate crit damage. The DPS figure applies to autoattack shots not skill shots.

I have a bow ( Tongannels Joy ) that has 26.9 dps, it will invariably out-crit all my other bows which are all 30+ dps.

But it is also situational, mob resistances will also have an effect on your damage. In some circumstances you might be better off with a lower max damage bow that does a different type of damage, but that is usually not so relevant in early game where mostly only common damage bows are available anyway. Remember agro control too, if you are in a fellowship, maxing damage output early in a fight won't make the tank very happy. Even at early levels I always carried at least 2 bows to give myself a choice of damage output.

[erkyn]

also make sure the bow looks good.......

[Conder]

also make sure the bow looks good.......

Noticed that most end game bows looks really cool with higher graphic settings :)

Thanks for all the advices, any bows that are a must to have?
I've seen the new pvp reward bow, and I think that's gonna be one I really want :p Specially for the rift.

[Amwrath]

Thanks for all the advices, any bows that are a must to have?
I've seen the new pvp reward bow, and I think that's gonna be one I really want :p Specially for the rift.
Well of course you have to keep in mind that everyone has their ideas and personal preferences but I'd say that most agree that Bane of Forvengwath (Barad Gularan) is 1 of the must and of course either Ornate Xbow or Bow (craft), for me it's Xbow.

Then of course you have Celegdur (Helegrod) which deals nice amount of dmg but is a bit slow on the other hand and also Gilnor (Helegrod) which is a bit like BoF, lower low dmg..

I use BoF as main and swap it with Ornate Xbow when needed. Also have Celegdur and few other bows but those 2 fit me the best. Not to mention that BoF looks good also ;)

[Conder]

Hmm, in all my helegrod runs (on other chars) I haven't seen Gilnor pass by. Looks like a hard to get bow.

[erkyn]

BoF is a nice bow but tbh somehow I dont want it seeing its in every hunters possesion, thats why I love my Cuthoron. ;)

Ive seen Gilnor drop once from the drake but it's a really really rare bow.

And really I have problem noticing the speeds of bows u know just rock with the one u like the most because there difference might be there but it hardly noticeable me thinks

[zimoo]

I use a fortified as my main bow, swapping only very rarely to ornate bow and bow of the hunt. Ornate for the later stages of the rift (where fire damage doesn't seem to cut it, despite the overall higher damage on that bow) and bow of the hunt for Bree rep farming (not something I do much now I've got my virtuous man trait :p).

Had my eyes on Celegdur for a long time. There's also a very nice westernesse (bleh) damage bow from a book 12 quest. Funny isn't it, we as a class are masters of the bow, yet the westernesse bow unique to our class is incredibly inferior to one obtainable by everyone (afaik) by completing a quest...

I'm not going to put any effort into improving my bows now. I'll go for the new bow from book 12 but that's it, as more of my alts near 50 I realise how boring the hunter is. Only use in the past week or so: farming pristine hides for my tailor...

Captains for ever! :p