Bows: A Joke

[Monolake]

effective average dps about max moded (from http://dpsframe.com/)

 

Paris: 860 

Paris (charge)1736

Cernos 1157 

Cernos (charge)1965

Dread - the best bow 1962 

Dread (charge, rank 6 HC) 3511

 

 

Oh wait, Thunderbolt is not accounted there?  

So Dread would do 10534 +250 per shot if it procs (30% chance)... yeah +2.4% ( thats before all the resistances)

 

... lets compare

 

worst, starting guns:

 

Lato 3857 DPS

MK1-Braton 3719 DPS

 

Worst sniper rifle 

Vulkar (rank 6 HC) 4126 DPS

 

You can laugh now. 

 

And bows take ammo from sniper pool.   LMAO 

Edited December 31, 2013 by Monolake

[OptimumBow0]

What the hel-

 

What!? 

[Toaman1994]

I really did come into here expecting a joke.

 

Anywho, if this is the case, why do I find some bows working better than many guns in the game? Don't even get me started on Crit-Builds and how damn useful those are to me.

[Omega224]

say all you like the bows are not only my favorite primaries in the game and they aren't meant to hose down an entire room like a soma but they are meant to headshot heavy units across the room and kill it before the guy with the soma gets there snipers and bows are support weapons not front line spray and pray

[Sidathe]

Bows are spike damage weapons, not sustained.

[DAFIRE]

You didn't consider paris prime,my dear.

Mine does 16k dmg on lvl 60 grineer,I don't think mk1 braton can do that :P

[Luminide]

Yup this post is a joke, you do realise that crit build are needed right? I can get 23k against grineer with my paris prime.

[SharkWithALaserBeam]

You act surprised. a bow and quiver outmatched by a bullet? Better yet probably a .50 caliber?! What sorcery is this.

[MageMeat]

But bows are snipers.

Snipers don't fire automatically.

They're meant for dealing large amounts of damage in one shot, not over time.

 

The best measure of a sniper's usefulness is average damage per shot.

[ScorchedIce]

I forgot how dps is the only thing that matters

[Helljack84]

That's how the weapons are balanced. It's only fair that single shot weapons with low ammo and travel time are massively outdamaged by weapons that hit the whole screen and have nearly eight times as much ammo.

Bows are fun weapons you take to harass low lvl stuff with thunderbolt. No amount of mods/forma or reactors will take them to a viable level.

[Kalenath]

Oh my goodness...

 

A single shot high damage weapon out damaged by a fully automatic medium damage weapon... Oh... Woe is me...

 

Using Thunderbolt IS a joke atm, since it doesn't work right.

 

But bows are personal preference. I like them, other players like them and I have seen them used for high level defense and survival missions. One thing that I TRULY prefer about the bows is that without Thunderbolt, it is impossible to kill yourself when an idiot teammate steps in front of you just as you fire (ala Ogris, Torid, Penta, bow WITH Thunderbolt)

 

If you like the bow, you use it. If you don't, you won't. No one is FORCING you to use one, OP.

 

 

That's how the weapons are balanced. It's only fair that single shot weapons with low ammo and travel time are massively outdamaged by weapons that hit the whole screen and have nearly eight times as much ammo.

Bows are fun weapons you take to harass low lvl stuff with thunderbolt. No amount of mods/forma or reactors will take them to a viable level.

 

Your opinion. Others do not share it.

Edited December 31, 2013 by Kalenath

[LazyKnight]

I forgot how dps is the only thing that matters

It's not necessarily the DPS on a bow that is an issues, but rather the setup time between shots. There are so many swarms of NPC in Warframe that a bow's damage per hit is quickly forgotten. As soon as a bow take a 2nd shot/arrow to down a NPC it loses it only selling point. 

[XAN3MK]

Even though OT's mark is a bit off considering we are discussing the DPS potential of a single shoter weapon who's attacks need to be individually charged to even remotely be viable, the rest of the replys do even LESS to contribute in any way to this discussion.

 

Opinions are fine, but they have no place in a discussion which requires empirical and numerical data.

 

Also, what LazyKnight said, the moment the bow stops one-shotting enemies it becomes obsolete.

[Makya]

It's not necessarily the DPS on a bow that is an issues, but rather the setup time between shots. There are so many swarms of NPC in Warframe that a bow's damage per hit is quickly forgotten. As soon as a bow take a 2nd shot/arrow to down a NPC it loses it only selling point. 

Seeing as bows are for stealth.. Why are they being swarmed? Also, outside of bosses, what mission has mobs not able to be one from a unseen bow user?

Edited December 31, 2013 by Makya

[Kalenath]

WHAT? Haven't you heard? The ONLY part of this game anyone plays anymore is Survival past 30 minutes or Defense  past lvl 45 or so. Nothing else EXISTS!

 

Oh, wait... Rushing Events. So they are useless for that too, since they cannot guarantee that a rusher can clear a room with 1 shot, which is all they have before they run off and leave the rest for their team to clean up. 

 

 

It is kind of funny, in a sad way. I use a bow a lot because I stealth solo a lot of missions. My bad, that is not a good playstyle for ninja.

Edited December 31, 2013 by Kalenath

[LazyKnight]

WHAT? Haven't you heard? The ONLY part of this game anyone plays anymore is Survival past 30 minutes or Defense  past lvl 45 or so. Nothing else EXISTS!

 

Oh, wait... Rushing Events. So they are useless for that too, since they cannot guarantee that a rusher can clear a room with 1 shot, which is all they have before they run off and leave the rest for their team to clean up. 

 

 

It is kind of funny, in a sad way. I use a bow a lot because I stealth solo a lot of missions. My bad, that is not a good playstyle for ninja.

Enough sarcasm in this post that even the internet can't mask it. 

 

Use a bow or do not use a bow. 

 

I prefer a Sniper rifle with a silencer mod for stealth.

[NuLycan]

Bows are underrepresented because they are more-risk for less-reward. I could slowly go through a mission with the dread and kill my targets for less xp and materials, or I could rush through a mission with the soma and kill everything for more of everything. It's an issue.

[lautalocos]

i agree and disagree with both sides of this topic. now that im completely neutral and nobody will bite my head off my body. let me tell you why

 

 

 

when they released bows, i expected for them to be able to be versatile weapons. able to do fast, weaker shots (legolas style) or slow but powerfull attacks.

 

fast attacks ended up being useless with every bow, except for maybe the dread in a specific situation against infested, but you have little ammo, so no.

 

charged attacks, considering that you need a second to take the bow from the quiver, and another to charge the bow, do little damage.

the dread does 150 with a charge attack. that is very low, considering too that you need to take in account the travel time and arrow drop.

and lets not mention the paris and cernos, which only do 100 charged damage

 

the bows do have a lot of crit chance, but considering that you are dependant on chance to be able to kill a enemy in one shot or not, you are #*($%%@.

[Keltik0ne]

Lanka is still the best bow by far.

 

Well, if it acts like a bow, I'll call it a damn bow.

 

 

Hmm, maybe Ogris is the best bow then ...............................

[Makya]

Lanka is still the best bow by far.

 

Well, if it acts like a bow, I'll call it a damn bow.

 

 

Hmm, maybe Ogris is the best bow then ...............................

IIRC, it is silent, right?

[Keltik0ne]

IIRC, it is silent, right?

Ogris is, Lanka doesn't seem to be but I could just be unlucky.

[Kiteless]

The problem with bows is not that they don't do their job (being silent, powerful, long range weapons). They manage to do it very, very well.

 

It's just that there's no place for that niche in the game as it is.

[[DE]Momaw]

IIRC, it is silent, right?

Ogris is, Lanka doesn't seem to be but I could just be unlucky.

 

Lanka is a silent weapon.

 

 

I'm in a similar boat to others here.  I love the bow. I love the feel of it, I love the fact that I need to adjust for lead and drop, and there is something enormously satisfying about killing a chain of enemies with one arrow through the throat each.  But there is no conceivable way that a bow, or any other of what I call "finesse weapons" can keep up with the utterly obscene DPS coming out of the people with automatic rifles.  That's assuming you don't have an minmaxed AOE frame on your team that just one-shots everything in the room the instant the door opens.  Enemies are not particularly threatening at long range so there's no need for snipers, and enemies respawn in everything except Exterminate so stealth murder rampages are far too risky in all the wrong ways.  So you're forced into coming up with ways to let bows compete against automatic rifles in close quarters battle.

[Oleker]

Yeah... being ONE SHOT KILLED by stalker's Dread is a joke...