Flatbow Advice

First off, my usual weaponslots:

-Poisonous Longbow of Marksmanship (For trap farming)
-Elswyth's Recurve Bow (B/P or any other sort of barrage)

I want to try something new and am taking an interest in flatbows. I'm pretty experienced with rangers, though throughout my ranger's whole life I've primarily used longbows and recurves. Flatbows have the speed of the shortbow and range of the longbow, IIRC. However, I hear they have a high arc and are easy to dodge. Many people reccomend using Read the Wind/FW.

Personally I hate preparations, and I even only use Apply Poison when, say, I'm preparing other things like traps, and don't like to use it alone.

I don't know if I can stand using FW/RTW and a preparation like kindle arrows. I've heard in ways RTW/FW is more effective than something like kindle arrows (I use it in Maguuma and Hell's with winter for ultimate domination), because instead of elemental damage which an enemy may be resistant towards, it gives a general damage boost.

So I want advice from others who use flatbows - what kinds of preparations do you use, if any?

All replies are appreciated.

It's not preparations, it's just RTW or FW because it makes your arrows fly faster, making them harder to dodge, the accuracy of the flatbow is low so you'll need that if you want a good performance, personally I think flatbows are only good for Barrage, and since I think PvE is boring and too easy, I won't comment much on their use, if you want to use flatbows just know, you need RTW or FW for a good performance, the range is good like the longbow, the refiring rate is awsome but the accuracy is low, but since you'll have RTW or FW that shouldn't be a problem.

IMO I'd stick with your Elswyth recurve bow, it's awsome and good for almost everything, the only flatbow I have used is the drago but only because I love the skin on a female ranger.

Personally, if I'm not going to be under the effect of RtW or FW, then I won't use a Flatbow. That being said, I believe that a Vampiric Flatbow is the best bow type for a Barrage/Pet build since you should always be under the effect of FW. If FW drops, you can always switch to a trusty ol' long or recurve bow.

Longbow>Flatbow with a barrage build imo, longbows have a longer recharge time, but barrage has a fixed one, overriding the longbow recharge time. Ok the difference isn't that big, but it IS a difference.

I prefer flatbows for luring becouse it's better at luring enemies that are on higher grounds.

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Barrage has a one second recharge. The firerate of a longbow fits the one second for constant Barrage. I agree because I use a Longbow for Barraging and once my arrows hit and im ready to refire Barrage.

O I C
Well if I might make the suggestion, get a timer and make 100 barrages with a longbow, and then repeat the exercise with a flatbow on armor dummies just outside great temple. Just because barrage says 1 s recharge doesn't mean all bows will still fire at the same rate...
By the same token if fire rate makes no difference, how could [skill]Flail[/skill] speed up barrage? yet it does.

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