Bows type and fixed speed attacks

Right - the topic of horn bows versus other bows comes up a lot, so I decided to test this stuff:

Theory on bow damage: Assuming 15% from a mod, 20% from customization and a max damage bow, the average damage per shot for a bow is

At 12 Marksmanship, AL60

Non-crit non-horn bow: 29.67
Non-crit horn bow: 32.92
Crit non-horn bow: 55
Crit horn bow: 61

thus the averages (given the crit rates) are
Non-horn bow: 34.12
Horn bow: 37.85

At 16 Marksmanship, AL60
Non-crit non-horn bow: 34.08
Non-crit horn bow: 37.82
Crit non-horn bow: 63
Crit horn bow: 70

thus the averages (given the crit rates) are
Non-horn bow: 40.82
Horn bow: 45.32

Versus higher AL the horn bow does a little better in comparison, but that's assumed.

The DPS then at 12 Marks vs AL 60 are:
Short/Flat bow: 17.06
Long/Recurve: 14.21
Horn bow: 14.02

and at 16 Marksmanship
Short/Flat bow: 20.41
Long/Recurve: 17.01
Horn bow: 16.78

Thus for normal firing the horn bow is outperformed by both other bows, though the lead is slight with the long bow/recurve.

Rather than list damages at various Al levels I'll say this - the DPS of the horn bow exceeds that of the long bow versus AL 69+, without preparations etc, and exceeds that of the flat bow at AL 164+. As soon as preparations enter the scene these values change.

Preparations/conjures etc
No preparations or enchantments boosting damage (conjures, Spirit Strength) were affected by the +10% AP of the horn bow. The Judge's Insight and Vow of Strength would be, but the DPS for Vow of Strength would suffer due to the lack of attack skills.

Specific skills:

Barrage

By my tests, a short bow or flat bow gets 26 barrages per minute, a long bow or recurve gets 24 barrages per minute and a horn bow gets 22 per minute.

The damage bonus for barrage is not affected by the 10%AP, nor is a winnowing, conjure, brutal weapon, splinter weapon, favourable winds etc, so for any of the additional damages the effect of higher attack rate would be amplified.

For one minute worth of barrage, per target, at 60 AL and 12 Marksmanship:

Short/Flat bow: ~1225 damage
Long/Recurve: ~1131 damage
Horn bow: ~1119 damage

Even at higher AL this tends to hold, thanks to the +13 damage bonus the barrage provides at 12 Marksmanship - at 16 it's even higher. The AL needs to be in the 72-179AL range to exceed the long bow, and simply never catches the flat bow.

The issue of Tiger's Fury has come up, and testing under Tiger's Fury gives roughly the same results (see post below)

Needling Shot
Needling Shot's damage is armour ignoring, thus Needling Shot alone provides no damage bonus from the horn bow interspersed with regular fire.

All bows tested had the same attack rate under Needling Shot, working out to ~52 shots a minute against a target under 50% health. Since there is no bonus for the 10% damage, all bows perform equally.

Quick Shot
Just spamming Quick Shot results in ~35 shots per minute for any bow; in this instance one could do better with the horn bow - but one can still outperform it.

By firing and then hitting Quick Shot the flat bow or short bow gets 40 attacks per minute; the long bow and recurve do not benefit however, coming out at ~34 shots this way, and the horn bow would lose out getting only 32 shots.

Thus with Quick Shot on the bar, the horn bow and long bow maximally get 35 shots a minute while the flat bow gets 40 per minute. The horn bow thus outperforms the long and recurve in this firing pattern, but is outperformed by the flat bow and short bow.

Quick Shot and Needling Shot
This is the first instance in which the horn bow has an edge - all bows attained ~43 shots a minute this way, with about 25% of those shots being Needling Shots which are unaffected by the 10% AP.

Working out the damage for 12 Marksmanship and 60 AL, the difference is about 2 DPS (assuming 33 Quick Shots and 10 Needling Shots) so you do benefit from the horn bow here; adding preparations and such doesn't matter though, since the damage bonuses aren't affected by the AP and add to the DPS of all bows equally.

For 16 Marksmanship the difference is about 2.5 DPS, with the same caveats.


Conclusion
In virtually all tests the horn bow is outperformed by the other bows; only in a spike or in the situation of using Quick Shot and Needling Shot together does the horn bow do more damage, and then it's a slight benefit, maximally about 2.5 DPS - but it is there. Against higher ALs the difference in total DPS is smaller, but the proportional gain is higher before the addition of preparations.

Wow, I haven't seen a really detailed post like this in a while, but it's nice to see one pop up.

This thread pretty much confirms what I had suspected about hornbows for quite sometime, but as Snipious mentioned on the "What type of bow to use?" thread, I believe that a hornbow can produce a little more dps in a barrage build when an IAS is used. I wish I still had my old bookmarks from my old comp so I could post the link from Jeno's post, but it's so old, it might not even exist anymore.

Unfortunately because of the hornbow's shortcomings, mine has been collecting dust for a good long while.

Yeah Horn Bows + Tigers Fury are probably the best for Barraging. Flat/Short you get a very dodgy refire, occasionally you miss it completely and fire a normal arrow. Hornbow times almost perfectly with the refire.

Good to know, Epinephrine.

Thanks for the research.

@Evilsod: I've retested, and my timing may have been wrong the first time (or I may have timed over a shorter period) but I got supporting results again. Under Tigers Fury (15 BM for 11 seconds, easily maintained) I got 27 barrages in a minute - it's a bigger gain than I had originally recorded, but it was a bigger gain for the other bows too. I recorded 29 barrages in the same span with the long bow and 31 with the flat bow - 3 times each.

Even under Tigers Fury the horn bow loses out; though it does more per hit (45 average instead of 40) when one adds in the +17 damage per shot (or +13 at 12 Marksmanship instead of 16) it works out:

horn bow= 27*(45+17) = 1674 or 27*(38+13) = 1377
long bow= 29*(40+17) = 1653 or 29*(34+13) = 1363
flat bow= 31*(40+17) = 1767 or 31*(34+13) = 1457

So the horn bow places in between them; add in extra bonus damage (from Favorable Winds for +6 and a vampiric for +5) and it shifts even more - that adds 11 per arrow, or 292 to the horn bow, 319 to the long bow and 341 to the flat bow. That's enough to put the long bow ahead again; put conjure elements in or an order of pain or something and you can put the horn bow in last by an even greater margin. Upping the AL value shift things around a bit, but the armour ignoring damage contribution actually becomes more important at high AL levels, so the higher RoF of the other bows actually makes even more difference. Horn bows just aren't the bow to use for this.

I'm not meaning to be confrontational about this, I want to get to the truth about it, and the truth is that while everyone talks about the horn bow and Barrage, it simply isn't supported - but it does seem to be the best choice for pure Quick Shot/Needling Shot spamming.

Now, it may be that Tiger's Fury/horn bow used to be better, back when TF was 33% IAS instead of 25%, Jenosavel's testing was a while back - maybe the timing improves or something that way.

Jeno's tests/numbers did indeed include a 33% IAS. You'd have to use something like Flail or Frenzy to get the same results. I think it was SirMad that noted that using an IAS affected how quickly you could use fixed interval skills. It'd be interesting to use that in your Quick+Needle tests to see how much of a difference there is.

Thank you for the tests, Epinephrine!

You also gave me backup for stating that using Tiger's Fury and Barrage can be worth it, a friend of mine said it would yield no benefits due to Barrage having a fixed recharge and so on.

On the other hand, your results are sad: Hornbows have an annoying slow RoF without an IAS stance, and they almost never give a benefit, always place behind the other bows.

At least we can have a Dragon skin hornbow with Flatbow stats by now (the new Stoneherder's Flatbow).

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Hehe, oops - that's 35 shots per minute, fixed

Yeah i think the last time i really used TIgers Fury was when it was 33% too. I still have it saved as a template, lol, but i never use it.

I did use to prefer IWAY barraging for the sheer lazyness of the IAS, but i did generally stick to my Drago's Flatbow back then anyway. I still prefer the Recurve over the Flatbow, even for Barraging most of the time, the fact is even with the lowered arc the Flatbow still misses (just like the Shortbow does w/o RtW/FW), whereas the Recurve almost always hits.

I think the enemies have just become slightly more... frantic, they seem to make tiny movements that make the bows miss, although that could be because they're chasing Alesia into a wall.

I think its the same for all 'fixed' skills. Needling definatly activates faster when you use Lightning Reflexes with it. So does Mighty Throw if you use it with Aggressive Refrain, even though it says has a 2s cast time.

Yeah TF pretty much died when it went to 25%... and why... because people were using it w/ anything except a bow... 10 after expertise isn't any better than 5 energy raw x-class... so yeah it needs probably a duration buff now (say scaling up to 15s instead of 10) if it's ever to reasonable use again.

Something the OP misses though. A fixed time attack is a much bigger pseudo-IAS for a slow weapon than a fast one. This same aspect shows up when you use .5s melee attacks w/ say a hammer or scythe as opposed to a an already fast axe or sword.

Assuming every other shot a QS: (dropping fractions so +-1 arrow)
2s: 30/min -> 40/min (20 normal, 20 fast), +25% IAS
2.4: 25/min -> 35/min (17 normal, 17 fast), +40% IAS
2.7: 22/min -> 32/min (16 normal, 16 fast), +45% IAS

The problem here is that this is only a pseudo-IAS. The stance will speed up all attacks especially those which do additional +dam. Using pseudo-IAS only works in a machine gun type arrangement where you're intentionally piling on +dam w/ preps, enchants, etc... Of the skills, only needling shot really functions as a +dam and then only against high AL stuff in HM where your basic arrows are only in the 16-20'ish a pop range to start with.

Overall for barrage purposes I think people are just splitting hairs... after a certain point you need a really marginal case for it to make a difference.

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Great research and interesting read. I will put this knowledge to good use.

Why is there no sticky for bows in general for all types of play?