spears vs. bows

After seeing how awesome a ranger was with a spear I wondered if he was equally awesome with a bow and I just didnt take the time to notice.

I ran some arbitrary test to compare bows to spears and my results were that spears out dps all bows.
The spear has shortbow range but it attacks faster. Even though the damage is 1 less than a bow, overtime the time of say 5 attacks (ballpark number) its +23 damage.
This is not including the skills, which during the beta, spears appear to have a number of superior damage attacks to marksmanship.

Thats an offensive and potentially defensive advantage, because spears are one handed weapons.

This was a quick observation, so I want to hear from anyone that can better confirm the damage potential of a spear vs. a bow.

But given that observation, if correct, Im left to wonder why use bows to deal direct damage? (not like this happens outside of pve anyhow)

If you like to make builds that work great, for a ranger, spears edge out marksmanship in everything except cripshot and interrupting.


Why use anything besides a composite/long/horn bow to rspike, interrupt or spread conditions? (why use a shortbow if youll get better results with a spear)
Or why have or make marksmanship skills that arent focused on interrupt or spreading conditions? There are about a dozen of them so far.

If this is a clear case I propose - keep the speed of spears the same, (its an adrenaline building tool) but either bring the damage of spears down or bring the attack speed of shortbows up to the point that shortbows out dps spears to insure that pure classes are stronger in their attributes, if not as versatile as a cross class.
I vote to bring the attack speed of short bows up because of the creeping defensive buffs all of the classes have been getting. ... or maybe a little of both options.

perhaps because the spears only had a couple of interrupts, and those required that the target be conditioned in some fashion, bows don't.

stunning strike > punishing shot, savage shot, and distracting shot all in 1 skill.

i really like seeing spear-rangers

aside from being more damaging than annoying... they look awesome.

I bet they will keep this simply because while the ranger is more focused on attacking, the paragon attacks, shouts, casts, attacks... ya know?

Making a w/p or A/P for the spear would be interesting....
Also interesting will be the P/D using scythes and the D/P using spears

Having 2 new weapon styles is going to make ths game so much more varied and customizable to each individuals' liking for combat classes/builds

Spear totally pwnt bow in the preview - I was seeing dps similar to what I'd see with my axe war with tigers fury, eviscerate & executioners strike. Plus I could stun, poison _and deep wound_ with spear.

I can't believe the difference will be this great in the release version; spears must be toned down quite a bit.

So, yeah, I loved playing a R/P, and spear > bow, but I think spear at release will be a completely different beast.

Uhmm, I have to disagree on this one. Yes, Stunning Strike is a nice skill, however...

Elite Spear Attack. If this attack hits, you deal +10...34 damage. If it hits a foe suffering from a Condition, that foe is also Dazed for 5...13 seconds.

Please note 2 things, 1) it does not interrupt 2) it has a cost of 8 adrenaline, which means roughly 12-16 seconds downtime without any adren modifiers. Furthermore, inflicting dazed != interrupt. Subsequent hits afterwards, provided the target had a condition when you hit them with it, will interrupt, but on it's own, it'll only interrupt skills that are already flagged as easily interruptable (traps, etc).