What Goes With Bow?

Jeddahwe · May 2014

Looking to build a stamina based main weapon Bow character that can do solo dungeons latter on after 50. Bow itself is fairly straight forward with poison arrow and magnum shot then 3 class/guild skills of your choice.

My question is how would you go about building Bar2? If it is for AE I imagine scorch earth+bombard+volcanic rune? Or DW Steel Tornado?

I should point out that I already have a NB caster and wanted to try out either sorcerer or Templar but was really worried how I was going to keep my self healed? Sorcerer its all about surge and crit but Templar?

Mortelus · May 2014

Arrows...

Sorry I couldn't resist. I have no idea, I only play a NB Bowmen, and I have one bar for single target and my 2nd bar will be for AoE.

PBpsy · May 2014

I really doubt that you can have any type of character solo VR dungeons since they are designed for good effective groups of 4 people.
I use Bow as secondary weapon and it unfortunately seems to get almost completely useless after VR 3. Damage is extremely low for both strong and simple attacks,
-Magnum shot which once was one of my favorite skills doesn't do much against any boss except just knocking you back since they are immune to knock-back and disorient. The knock-back also becomes more dangerous since everything seems to agro more easily.
- Volley and morphs is almost useless when playing solo since mobs didn't learn that they should stay in the fire circle, even combined with Volcanic rune it doesn't work even half as good as pre VR.
- Arrow spray doesn't do much with its snares.Snipe and morphs can be rarely used more then once a battle with pathetic results compared to anything the class skills can do.
- Poison Arrow seem to be the only thing that does something anymore but who cares when we have much better interrupts. P.

The bow skill line suffers from really strong case of Balanced for PVP.If you are in a group though these skills are all somewhat useful but for solo they are kind of a pain. I will probably change to either a S&B or a Resto staff as a secondary to stealth/DW soon.

You can of course be a Siphoning/Impale and fighter/mage guild skill spamming NB wearing a bow for the looks and be somewhat effective solo .But that an effective bowman assassin does not make.

Jeddahwe · May 2014

Seems more and more players are giving up on Bow after VR! As for solo VR dungeons magicka based builds seems to excel....

LIQUID741 · May 2014

Bow blows in VR...dropped bow/DW, and went S/S with Resto. Completely easier! On a ridiculous lvl...did I want to play my toon that way? Umm..no. But didn't want to suffer through the pain of hardmode just for a bit of RP.

Gedalya · May 2014

I'll just leave this...

ZiRM · May 2014

Tie?

Jeddahwe · May 2014

So I can not play like I want? I want to play an archer and seems after 50 its crap PvE wise WoW!!!

Napkins · May 2014

Jeddahwe wrote: »

So I can not play like I want? I want to play an archer and seems after 50 its crap PvE wise WoW!!!

I wouldn't give up on the bow just because a couple ppl on the forum dislike it. Remember this game is still early and i'm sure EVERY weapon will go through some type of balancing changes in the future (for better or for worst).
Can't think of a mmo i've played where this hasn't been the case.

Zakua · May 2014

I aimed at S/S with Bow on second bar...ended up not using Bow as much as I'd of liked and now in Veteran ranks I'm going to run S/S with Resto on the secondary.

Really wanted my bow but it aint happening.

mips_winnt · May 2014

Jeddahwe wrote: »

So I can not play like I want? I want to play an archer and seems after 50 its crap PvE wise WoW!!!

I would have to disagree on that one, I play a Nightblade that's primary dual wield melee and secondary Bow and Bow works fine (at least up to VR2) for PvE.

PBpsy · May 2014

Jeddahwe wrote: »

Seems more and more players are giving up on Bow after VR! As for solo VR dungeons magicka based builds seems to excel....

Everything sucks hard and should suck hard for solo VR dungeons. Nobody should be able to do any solo VR dungeon runs. If there is someone out there that does it they are probably exploiting some amazingly broken skill combo or are not really human since dungeons are for groups of four and for VR they must be good groups of four.

If you are talking about delves you could probably solo them with a bow but most end bosses would be hard and probably boring (They are kind of boring to solo for any build). The larger public group dungeons are also probably soloable with bow but probably not the group challenges since they are group challenges.

Jeddahwe wrote: »

So I can not play like I want? I want to play an archer and seems after 50 its crap PvE wise WoW!!!

You could probably solo most of the non-group content with only a bow. As a NB player that used bow a lot and still has it in the second tab I think that doing that would be slow and not particularly fun. You could certainly not be able to play as you want as in ''solo VR dungeons'' because nobody should be able to do that.

Also I don't quite get why people think that play as you want means you can chose any 5 skills and use them to beat the game. The ''way I want to play'
is more of a concept that I manage to achieve by using a multitude of changing and evolving skill combinations.The way I want to play is a mostly stealth solo assassin not a guy that uses three specific skills in the assassination and two from siphoning. I can play something very close with what I want but I use about 16 skills for different situations.

Fennec · May 2014

I've been using bow only as nb from 1 to V8. It's stronger then people believe. The only 2 good bow skills though are poison arrow and magnum shot. Snipe is also okay, but the fact that it needs 3 seconds to fire is the reason I don't use it.

You can't solo group dungeons though with a bow, but you can easily kill 3/4 npc's with the right skills in your bar.