Bows: are they underpowered?

the part about a bubble and a half is easily dodged imooooooooooooooooo
either that or just stand there and take it cause the only bows that can do that distance without height advantage is long and flatbow and last i recall both of those are quite easy to freakin dodge... but yea thats all i have to say wont really contribute anything else...

/agree with Archon.

Bows can apply tons of conditions from afar. Scythes can't do that.

Bows are the best interrupting weapon in the game. And good choice for condition spreading. Not everything is about solely damage. Bow are a fine weapon of choice.

bows are just fine, rangers are fine, people that complain should go play WoW and pick one of the overpowered classes so they can have the obvious ingame advantage to compensate for their lack of actual playerskill.

If you realy want to start comparing the basic damage of weapons, i'd say spears are overpowered, not bows are underpowered.

face it, 14-27 damage, 1.5 seconds interval as opposed to 15-22 damage, 1.33 seconds interval on a sword. Yet spears are ranged, and have spammable attacks, aswell as a permanent IAS that doesn't realy have any drawbacks ...

I don't think bows are underpowered at all. Archers get Savage Shot.

Besides having the longest range, pretty good firing rate and a differnet bow for every situation, Bows suck..............WTF you want to put mini nuclear warheads on them.....

GWO has a bunch of whinny nubs, so does guru but they got more than us

yeah bows suck, but there are a huge range of preps you can add to bows to make em unsuck!!!

My latest fave for spiking is Glass/Brutal then dual and forked arrow... Can't wait to get triple shot and try it out...

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Its not worth the effort. I gave a reply to his in my first post. Its the little bit at the bottom referring to certain pricks...

I'm still waiting for people to show me where these bow rangers are in PvP since the profession obviously has no problems with its DPS. Oh except its slower refire is only made worse by things like Faintheartedness. The only reason BA gankers are so potent is because of the degen vs opponents with limited healing.

Rangers get Savage Shot doesn't mean anything. That only works if you interrupt a spell. Can't take something into account for DPS when it depends on the enemy doing something.

Why exactly can't i bring Scythes into this? They are by far the most unbalanced weapon in the game. Yesterday while messing around on the Isle of the Nameless i managed to get a critical hit of about 340 from a regular attack. Course thats the extreme... but 340? A Ranger can only dream of damage numbers that high on 60 AL targets.

The bow line needs more damage. Either the bow needs a buff, because its really starting to look completely outclassed now when compared to the other lines, or the Marksmanship line needs a buff.
Just compare the Spear line to the Bow line. Bow has the ability to give 3 conditions, bleeding, but quite conditionally, burning on 1 elite, dazed on 1 elite 1 normal interrupt and an elite and non elite cripple. Spear gets adren based Burning, spammable adren based bleeding, 1 elite dazed, multiple deep wounds.
Only advantage bow has is that preperations, which basically attempt to make up for its obvious lack of damage is the ease of application of poison, which can be used by all other professions too if they wanted. They force it to specialize in either conditions or damage. You can't get both a good mix of both outside of Burning Arrow which isn't as strong once your back with healing. But Spear is 1 handed, attacks faster, has access to almost as many conditions.

Theres a reason why bow rangers don't actually exist in PvP... they suck for damage. You can find pretty much every Rampage as One variant known to man, a huge variety of trappers and spirit spammers and only 3 actual bow builds. 1 is BA which we already know is strong pressure vs opponents with limited healing, BHA and some sort of Glass Arrows spiker.

Oh and the last time i checked B/P was only effective because it involves 5+ Rangers all buffed with Winno/FW/Orders hitting multiple targets because the enemy AI isn't exactly brilliant.

Bows would be unbalanced if they could do strong dps, it's as simple as that. Spears do more damage because they only come with the ability to hit in a short range and can't interupt NEAR on the same level as bows. This brings me to a point that I think Evilsod is missing entirely. People don't bring BA rangers for the degen, they bring them for the utility and ability to split. This is the much of the same reason that Cripple Shot rangers were so popular. They can bring 2 spammable interupts (dist and savage) to interupt, a running skill to backup the flag runner, self preservation (mending touch, troll, defensive stance), AS WELL as some damage. If a group just needed some degen, they would bring a necro or mesmer. Cripple Shots were able to provide more utility by snaring opponents and BA rangers were able to bring more pressure.

If bows could do DPS at a competitive level with something like a spear, there would be no reason to use a spear except as an adrenaline charger for a paragon. Bows can do everything a spear can do except for deep wound, but with more versatility. You can't change the range, arc, or refire rate of a spear mid battle to suit your needs.

Bows are also not comparable to Scythes, because a Scythe, just like warrior weapons requires melee range. If all weapons dealt the same damage, a melee weapon would deal less dps by far by virtue of the fact that you had to first get to the position of your enemy, then keep up with your enemy to be able to even land an attack.

People take the damage range in to account here, that's not even a problem.

What rangers need is a tiny buff to attackspeed at bows. Shortbows and flatbows put on the same rate as spears for example. You'd still be 8-16 armor below a spear user. And btw, spear users can inflict deep wound aswell. Wanna see a bow doing that.. Stunning spear is for Daze.

People take the damage range in to account here, that's not even a problem.

What rangers need is a tiny buff to attackspeed at bows. Shortbows and flatbows put on the same rate as spears for example. You'd still be 8-16 armor below a spear user. And btw, spear users can inflict deep wound aswell. Wanna see a bow doing that.. Stunning spear is for Daze.

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Barring attack skills, bows are certainly worse off than spears. But otherwise, bows have a much better variety of skills than spears do....spears have the potential for a deep wound yes, but it is conditional for both skills (vicious attack and cruel spear). Spears currently have two elites, both of which are ok but certainly nothing to write home about. Bows have a huge variety of elites, from damage to pressure to interrupts. The only truly significant factor separating bow damage from that of other weapons is the limited access to a good IAS rangers have.

I fail to see how the two weapons can even be compared when skills are factored into the equation. Consider preparations and I think spears just completely get trumped in comparison. Granted, spears are comparatively weaker due to the nature of the class as a whole, which is warranted.

While I disagree that bows are underpowered, I do agree that scythes are a weapon that have been needing some tweaking for a while, something I feel the community has neglected. With the highest base damage, AOE, high potential for spikes, and great skills in the line, the only downside to scythes is the attack speed, which is hardly debilitating considering some of the excellent IAS skills that Dervishes have. But this is really a separate issue.

I think there's something to be addressed here. Scythes do very high damage, but they are balanced because they cannot spike like a warrior can spike their weaponry. A team may run with a Melandru Dervish, but Dervish will never replace warriors because a warrior can pressure AND spike, even if the c-space damage of their weapons equates to less.

Paragons have weapons that deal out decent DPS, but aren't mean to damage enough to replace warriors since they were designed to be a support character.

Rangers deal aren't supposed to be on the same level as Warriors and Dervish because they are utility characters. They can and should be able to deal enough dps to make themselves useful as a damage dealer in some cases, but their abilities and skills allow them to have survivability and disruption above most classes. Ranger spike may be long out of the metagame, but it did show that rangers can kill. B/ps in PvE also show that rangers can deal out numbers as well, but overall they were designed to be much like a Crip Shot or BA ranger is: Durable, agile, and flexible.

Actually i was directing insults out to anyone who was dumb enough to just instantly quote me back and say that even though that wasn't even what i was saying... looks like you won. Your arguement wasn't rational, you basically read what i said, made your own assumptions about what it meant and attempted to mock me for it. I covered my ass in my first post. Yours was just ignorant shite.

PvP exists outside of GvG/HA.... well bugger me. Sadly GvG/HA are the ONLY 2 forms of PvP Anet balance things around. HvH/TA/RA may get the odd gimmick build sorted out if its too strong and isn't use anywhere else in PvP but they sure as hell don't balance around it.

Congratulations... you did 'more than that' with an assassin using a combo... i said i did with 1 normal attack you cretin. Stop replying if you don't even know what you're talking about. Actually you've already decided your gonna stop... so i'll hold you to it.

The ability for a Paragon to change doesn't really mean a great deal... they have a fixed attack speed, lower than all the bows. They have a fixed arc, its low enough to hit easily. Its low enough, when combined with the distance to be reasonable for interrupts. They may not get the ability to change to suit things ideally but they don't exactly have to...

Because what really matters in this game is how balanced weapons are vs targets who kite... snares don't actually exist. Nor knockdowns. Doesn't matter if its ridiculously overpowered, like the Scythe, vs stationary targets, the fact its 'balanced' vs moving foes is what counts...

Yes, bows are underpowered. The only reason Burning Arrow is the elite of choice on a Ranger is because it's the one skill that enables a Ranger to actually kill things. Otherwise you're a couple of good interrupts on a hard target but not much else.

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