Bow Trajectory

Does Bow Trajectory affect how long it takes for an arrow to hit a target, and does it change the odds of hitting a certain armor area?

Does the trajectory affect the time it takes for an arrow to strike its target? Yes.

Does it affect the hit location? You know, that's a darn good question. I've never heard anyone mention it. I'm not sure how we'd tell, short of... hmm... testing with a person fully armored but for one location, and checking the damage dealt.

Maybe that's something to do next BWE.

—Siran Dunmorgan

I don't think it would matter anyway seeing as how everyone's going to be equally armoued all over when all is said and done.


The trajectory does affect how fast your arrow reaches your target through. And if you hadn't noticed, certain skills such as favourable winds make the trajectory completely strait.

I haven't read anything yes or no regarding trajectory being related to hit chance.

I do believe most head armor has 10 less than other slots it you use an attribute buff?

An interesting question. II don't know myself although Ensign and Zrave have done some looking into hit locations and trajectories individually (Ensign's hit location percentage estimates can be found in his Mechanics article here while Zraves findings on bow arcs can be found here), I'm just not sure if they've looking at them together. As has been said, something to look into next BWE because various weapons and situations altering hit location could have some impact on things...

Not necessarily. Consider, if you will, headgear. All characters, even Warriors now that +attribute helmets are in, can have armor on their heads that gives them a +1 to any primary attribute. Those pieces of headgear, though, typically have less armor than the other pieces of armor a character is going to wear. As an example, look at the Elementalist's Tiaras. You either get 60AL or 50AL and +1 to an attribute. That's considerably less than other options available at lv20 when you can have a Master's set at 50AL +24 vs. Elemental or one of the elemental suits at 60AL +10, -10 to a set of elemental damages.

Since the average Elementalist isn't very likely to leave the bonus AP of a tiara sitting athome, they'll have a definite weakness in at least one armor slot. If you can figure out a way to aim at their heads consistantly you're going to increase your damgae, generally by the margin of at least a good 10AL, if not more.

In other words, you're right Lamaros, and that's just the tip of the ice berg. At the highest level it's actually not that uncommon to see mismatched sets of armor. The best example being the Ranger set up of a Drakescale chest piece and Studded Leather everywhere else (You don't lose the energy that way and hit location chances being what they are most auto-hits are going to land on your chest, most auto-hits are spells, most spells are elemental damage and that means you're protected just as well if not better. It's the same reason you might see someone with a Master's chest piece on a set of Elementalists armor or to try and anticipate with a Aeromancer's or Pyromancer's.). Armors can be mixed and matched for effect and armor can also be swapped on the fly just like weapons can.

Tragectory has a big influence on flight-time. Composite (fastest) is in the air for less than half the time that a flatbow (slowest) is. That has a very noticable effect on how easy your arrows are to dodge.

Trajectory in no way influences hiy location.