Is there an overall best bow?

[(XBOX)Demon By Desire]

Apparently Dread is the best bow, and its crit and status chances certainly seem to reflect that. However, in my experience 98% of enemies have armor, and puncture seems to be more effective. Don't get me wrong, I'm not doing anything above level 40 yet, but my Lex Prime is vastly more effective than Dread at this point, with both spec'd for maximum damage and crit chance. Lex two shots even Corpus (which theoretically don't get owned by puncture), where I believe the Dread should excel. The Dread takes 4 fully charged shots to do something Lex can do with a quick trigger tap. 

PS when I say "maximum", I mean for where I'm at in the progression. I don't have every single mod you want for these guns, and they're not all maxed. But even more frustrating is that I've put significantly upgrades into the Dread mods than the Lex mods. 

 

 

tl;dr  Why isn't Paris Prime better than Dread given the puncture damage, which in my experience is vastly superior? Is the bleed proc affected by status chance? Could that be my problem? 

[NativeKiller]

IIRC, Rakta Cernos has far better DPS compared to Dread and also has Syndicate procs.

 

[thewhitepanda1205]

Many people consider the Dread better because it has both good status and crit chance. One thing that you seem not to know is that bleed procs are affected by crit damage if you crit and proc on the same shot causing massive damage. Slash damage also scales the best because a lot of endgame users use Corrosive Projection to completetly remove enemy armor and health is most vulnerable to slash. Lastly, bleed procs ignore both armor and shields. One other thing is that most people also put elements on their builds and don't worry too much about IPS damage besides Slash.

Edited January 8, 2017 by thewhitepanda1205

[(XBOX)Demon By Desire]

1 minute ago, thewhitepanda1205 said:

Many people consider the Dread better because it has both good status and crit chance. One thing that you seem not to know is that bleed procs are affected by crit damage if you crit and proc on the same shot causing massive damage. Slash damage also scales the best because a lot of endgame users use Corrosive Projection to completetly remove enemy armor and health is most vulnerable to slash. Lastly, bleed procs ignore both armor and shields.

So really I should be focusing on status chance as much as possible. 

[thewhitepanda1205]

No focus on both because the crit chance and crit damage vastly increase your damage output, but what I'm saying is that you should also put corrosive or viral on the Dread to increase it's effectiveness against armor. If you want to add status chance you should put in multishot mods and dual-stat elemental mods.

Corrosive/Radiation/Viral/Heat/Cold: Good against Grineer

Magnetic/Toxin/Viral/Electricity/Cold: Good against Corpus

Corrosive/Viral/Heat/Gas/Toxin/Blast: Good against Infested

http://warframe.wikia.com/wiki/Damage_2.0

http://warframe.wikia.com/wiki/Dread

A decent build would be:

1) Serration

2) Split Chamber

3) Point Strike

4) Vital Sense

5) Faction Elemental (90% or Dual-Stat 60%)

6) Faction Elemental (90% or Dual-Stat 60%)

7) Fire-Rate Mod (Of Your Choice, Personally would go with either Shred or Vile Accleration)

8) Your Choice (Personally would go with a Riven Mod when and if you get one for the Dread, you could also use another elemental be it the same as one of your earlier ones or not, another choice would be an ammo mutation so that you never run out of ammo, and finally you could put in another fire rate mod)

Edited January 8, 2017 by thewhitepanda1205

[Wyrmius_Prime]

Mutalist cernos with mag's magnetize is godlike, no joke.

But overall Dread is liked a lot because it's potential high slash procs that penetrate armor. However, if you're going to play with 4x CP squad or against infested or corpus, Rakta Cernos is the best bow out there for the highest DPS, in my opinion.

[TheGrimCorsair]

Dread, as mentioned above is fantastic for just making things dead more or less right now, through a combination of red-crit potential and those murderously powerful bleeds.

Rakta Cernos is extremely effective in the killing department as well. You don't get the massive bleeds, but you still get great RoF out of the box combined with a syndicate proc that both halves enemy HP and refills your energy.

Mutalist Cernos is pretty easily counted as one of the best status proc'ing weapon in the game, especially for melting armor, provide you have a way of keeping enemies in the cloud for a second or two.

Cernos Prime, with it checking for status chance for each arrow fired with full status chance can also be a solid status fishing weapon where, even though it's an IPS weapon, will still probably get you the proc you're looking for.

This is where the Daikyu falters as a status weapon, in fact, as you only generate only 1-2 projectiles, you still one get one proc per those projectiles. While its base damage is fairly high, and the high velocity projectiles do ease of the difficulty of aiming precisely, you don't hit significantly harder than most of the crit-oriented bows, and your low attack speed makes finishing for the proc you want a pretty big gamble. The innate punch through does help with this, mind, but you still end up with a weapon that is often inconsistent more than it's especially bad or good.

Paris Prime's 100% crit chance and Puncture Heavy damage helps to mitigate damage loss from hitting armor as enemy level scales up, but still drops off without a way of really getting around that armor. When you're not hitting armor, your average damage output (taking into account rate of fire, elements, and the like) still leaves you towards the lower end of the really great bows.

Mind, these aren't ranked based on which I think are specifically the best, so much as when they came to mind. For the record both Attica and Zhuge are classed as Bows and are quite good in their own right, though they definitely have their own feel to 'em.

[Inarticulate]

The reason why the Dread is good is because Slash damage is effective against unarmored enemies, which is going to be what you're fighting against if you're running in an optimized full squad with full Corrosive Projection.

Against armored enemies, the Paris Prime will deal more direct damage, but the occasional Slash proc from the Dread may even the numbers out a bit. Because the Slash proc damage is affected only by base damage mods and critical hits, you can sacrifice some of the direct damage to run 3 60% status-elemental mods (instead of the 90% elemental mods) to boost the Dread's status chance to a respectable 56% per arrow (with a 90% chance to fire two arrows) to help fish for more Slash procs (34.8% per arrow).

The Mutalist Cernos, however, completely destroys all other bows against very high-level armored enemies by virtue of how absurdly quickly it can remove enemies' armor, but it's noticeably less impressive at lower levels or against unarmored enemies. It also melts Nullifier bubbles (fire two uncharged arrows at the bubble and watch it disappear on its own), but that will be less relevant with the upcoming changes to Nullifiers.

[ashrah]

with team of 4xcp dread is best...for med lvl rakta cernos for solo paris prime

[(XBOX)ThermalStone]

Zhuge because it counts as a bow without playing like one.

For where you are, it's hard to judge how good something is without a final build.  I didn't like the Dread either when I had no forma on it.

[(PSN)CoolD2108]

17 hours ago, thewhitepanda1205 said:

Many people consider the Dread better because it has both good status and crit chance. One thing that you seem not to know is that bleed procs are affected by crit damage if you crit and proc on the same shot causing massive damage. Slash damage also scales the best because a lot of endgame users use Corrosive Projection to completetly remove enemy armor and health is most vulnerable to slash. Lastly, bleed procs ignore both armor and shields. One other thing is that most people also put elements on their builds and don't worry too much about IPS damage besides Slash.

True, not that the status would have time to tick tho, especially ever since Riven mods made theyr way into the game....

 

One Reason i see valid is that endgame, especially grineer or prior void runs, kinda require Corrosive projection for when scaling hits in, what makes slash the better status. Also better for infested and for the little hp corpus have.

 

But then again, how often do people actually carry CP? (I don't but i can dbuff or bypass armor with the frames i main, what makes it pointless for me)

Paris is indeed the damage stronger weapon...having similar, if not identical? stats on a damage type that hits the most troublesome enemys harder so it's technicly the better weapon? May come down to personal preference or people generally prefering slash tho

Edited January 9, 2017 by (PS4)CoolD2108

[kyori]

Dread... then rakta cernos which fires faster. Always build your gear to fight lvl100 n above, so you no need to waste time and build again 

[(XBOX)Demon By Desire]

On 1/8/2017 at 11:13 PM, kyori said:

Dread... then rakta cernos which fires faster. Always build your gear to fight lvl100 n above, so you no need to waste time and build again 

So even though Dread's weaker right now, against end game enemies it's more important to proc slash damage than deal damage up front? I'm surprised DoT is the superior choice here. Usually (in other games, I don't have enough experience to judge in Warframe) you want to deal as much damage in as little time as possible, so direct damage tends to be the way to go. But level 100 enemies have such large amounts of health that slash procs actually end up being faster? 

[kyori]

2 hours ago, (Xbox One)Demon By Desire said:

So even though Dread's weaker right now, against end game enemies it's more important to proc slash damage than deal damage up front? I'm surprised DoT is the superior choice here. Usually (in other games, I don't have enough experience to judge in Warframe) you want to deal as much damage in as little time as possible, so direct damage tends to be the way to go. But level 100 enemies have such large amounts of health that slash procs actually end up being faster? 

I think you have mixed up others reply to mine. I didn't mention any slash proc in my only reply.

[(PSN)joshw1400]

On 1/8/2017 at 6:57 PM, (Xbox One)ThermalStone said:

Zhuge because it counts as a bow without playing like one.

For where you are, it's hard to judge how good something is without a final build.  I didn't like the Dread either when I had no forma on it.

It counts as a crossbow, so no *finger wags*

[(XBOX)ThermalStone]

2 hours ago, (PS4)joshw1400 said:

It counts as a crossbow, so no *finger wags*

Zhuge can use bow only mods, fire rate mods double its fire rate like a bow, and it can be brought on bow only sorties.  Sounds like a bow to me.  

[(XBOX)Demon By Desire]

On 1/10/2017 at 3:10 PM, kyori said:

I think you have mixed up others reply to mine. I didn't mention any slash proc in my only reply.

I didn't mix anything up. Slash procs are not important? 

[kyori]

1 hour ago, (Xbox One)Demon By Desire said:

I didn't mix anything up. Slash procs are not important? 

Zzz... you are here to pick a fight obviously. zzz lol

[Ciaus]

On 1/10/2017 at 9:09 PM, (Xbox One)Demon By Desire said:

So even though Dread's weaker right now, against end game enemies it's more important to proc slash damage than deal damage up front?

Slash proc bypasses armour. 
I use frost armour-stripping build a lot, level 100 grineer with 0.4% of their armour die easily. Two good crit bleeds from dread can sometimes do it. But doing damage to the armour itself, even with insane numbers, is very difficult. 

[(PSN)Silverback73]

For those not getting how slash Procs work, take your frame into a beginning-level earth node and let a cute little lvl 1-3 Kubrow slash Proc your heavily armored frame and watch your health.

Having said that, my personal favorites on 95% of missions are the Rakta Cernos and Zhuge.

Fire rate combined with how quickly the Syndicate Viral Proc repeatedly rolls over on the entire map for 50% health reduction makes the Rakta the winner in my book unless you are pushing into the over level 100 range.

Keep in mind that missing with the Dread really cuts into DPS.

The Zhuge is a .50 cal machine gun that fires armor-piercing rounds disguised as a (cross)bow and is one of the nicest weapons released in a long time in terms of looks, fun-factor, and function.  You have to ride it's recoil from low to high if you empty the whole clip, but I love it.

[(XBOX)ThermalStone]

3 hours ago, (PS4)Silverback73 said:

 

The Zhuge is a .50 cal machine gun that fires armor-piercing rounds disguised as a (cross)bow and is one of the nicest weapons released in a long time in terms of looks, fun-factor, and function.  You have to ride it's recoil from low to high if you empty the whole clip, but I love it.

Since I last posted about the Zhuge in here there have been several bow only sortie missions and my Zhuge has led in damage every single one over Dreads and Rakta Cernoses.  I embrace the inaccuracy and use Heavy Caliber and spray and pray.  Best Bow in the game.  

Edited January 17, 2017 by (XB1)ThermalStone

[KuroShiranui]

You can skip to 3:25 for the main part.