Bow Upgrade Discussion

I created this topic hoping everyone can state their favorite bow upgrades and their reason why. The type of bow is important also because for example, a vampiric/zealous string is more effective on a faster bow like halfmoon than a slow longbow (someone else said this before, but I forgot who, so sorry I can't give credit).

Other bow upgrade-related discussions are welcomed as well.

I am wondering how effective a +30 fortitude bow grip is on any bow. I always thought rangers was one of the classes where health/armor wasn't a main priority because they are long-ranged. However, I see +30 fortitude grips go for as high as 50k. Please explain why?

For now, my preferred upgrades are vampiric strings and marksmanship grips for halfmoon/shortbows. Vampiric strings supposedly add more damage to your attack because they steal life although I can't confirm this and marksmanship grip because I don't see any other grips that compare (besides maybe fortitude). I think a ranger's bow should be all about adding as much damage as possible, because I really doubt that extra 30 health is going to make a difference.

I am open for other's opinions though, so please enlighten me.

(Edited for clarity)

Your logic is severly flawed.

Okay so you're in a pvp battle. You see a warrior/monk encased in iron, then sitting in the back is some silly ranger/ele. Who are you going to target?

Poisoners>vampiric anyday. a 5:-1 vampiric BARELY gives you any life stealing when you factor in the -regen and thats only on the fastest bow. The only way to use it for regen is with skills that let you hit more targets or faster. So if you're using just for damage poisoners can get you a hell of a lot more than 5 damage.

Zealous is cool if you have a secondary class that is using your mana, expertise should keep you pretty squared away with your ranger skills.

Hope that helped, see ya.

So you use a poison's string for pvp? I just joined a pvp guild yesterday and could use all the pvp help possible. I know apply poison works for pve, but is it as effective for pvp? I hear traps are also useful in pvp (spike trapped?) though I haven't tried it. Thanks.

Personally I love the poisoners string on my long bow. It allows me to poison a mob that is out of the detection area for 20 seconds with poison arrow. For short range I personally like the sundering string. As for grips Fortitude +30, Defense +4, Or Enchanting 20% are all useful.

I'm thinking that grips of fortitude are most desirable to those who are running major or superior runes, and are looking for counters to the decrease in HP their use incurs.

Look at it this way: you raise your marksmanship 2 points with a major rune and get the increase in DMG 100% of the time you fire. For this, you take -50HP as a trade-off. Slap a +30 grip of fortitude on there, and you're now only -20HP which is a pretty reasonable sacrifice for adding +2 to a major skill.

OR

you raise your marksmanship +1 with a grip of marksmanship, but only get the increase in DMG for 1 in every 10 shots say (10% chance on hit). You haven't lost 50HP in doing so, but you've used up a bow upgrade and aren't going to be doing the same DMG per shot as you would in the example above.

Which would you choose?

For PvE I vary my strings based on where I am, but all of my bows have bow grips of enchanting on them. As a R/Mo, I consider myself a smiting ranger. Typically I have 5 monk skills and 3 ranger skills on my skill bar. When I cast enchantments, with the bow handles I have on my bows, these enchantments last 20% longer than normal. That's a big benefit for all of the enchantments I use (balthazar's, shield of judgement/mark of protection, healing breeze, etc.)

As far as strings are concerned, for the Shiverbacks, I use my bow that has a fiery bow string. For the desert I use my sundering bow string. For the lava islands, I use an icy bow string. However, none of them are really that important. My bow damage isn't my primary reason for existance. It's just a tool to deliver the goods. A shutdown monk is a dead monk.

One of my favorite bows is one that increases the length of poison duration unfortunately it's one off of max but still I enjoy it in PvP, I use my max damage bow in PvE (it just looks cool lol). I like the markmenship being at least 15% chance.

As for why anything in this game goes for that high of the price, is that there are some crazy players out there paying that amount. Can't blame the seller if folks are willing to fork over the cash.

Yeah, I considered that. Then I thought why not just forget health, and go for all out damage. I am currently using a halfmoon 15-28 15>50 4/1 vampiric 18% marksmanship bow with a sup marksmanship rune on one piece of armor. My health is running low though, down to 435 if I remember correctly.

I also like sundering. The 4/1 vampiric came with the bow I bought, so I thought I'd try it out, but it's really not my style so far. Supposedly vampiric strings work well with barrage, allowing you to steal a lot of health at once. However, I don't really like this idea because I prefer doing a lot of damage to one target (using apply poison [barrage disables preparations skills]).

Barrage while it may remove preperations, does have a bonus to damage based upon your marksmanship. Furthermore, barrage doesn't touch enchantments, such as conjure flame, which gives you a damage bonus if your using a flame based weapon (fiery bow string). Now if you have barrage and a 4 or 5/1 vamp string, and you've got a teammate that knows necromancy, you could have him cast Order of the Vampire while you barrage a group. A good level in the right necromancy attribute and a close group of monsters means your barrage just sucked 14 or 15 health away from each monster it hit and gave it all to you, on top of the normal damage you just did. Barrage is a very nice skill to use against closely bunched opponents.

So for pve, vampiric would be good while pvp, a poisoner's? I want to get this clear because I have a 4/1 string that I'm not sure I want to replace or not.

I would only use a vampiric if I was completely diligent about switching out weapons after a fight. If you're not diligent at doing that, you could quite possibly find yourself dead after going afk for a few minutes. Even with Barrage, it's still hit and miss. I've fired Barrage at a group of stacked mobs many times only to see it hit ... 1 mob. Dual shot, on the other hand, will give you 2x the return always. However, is carrying around dual shot and a preparation, particularly flaming arrows, worth it for the 8 health you receive? In my opinion it's not, but I'm a secondary monk and I can blow 10 energy on a healing breeze and be done with it.

In the end, it's really all about what you want. Just be careful with that 4/1 string. Those are hard to come by.

I use either ebon or icy bow strings (fire and lightning are more often defended against) and bow grip of defense.

Thanks for all the advice. You guys really opened my mind to other possibilities for upgrades and conjunction of ugprades with skills. I still haven't made up my mind, in fact, now it's harder with all the choices. But yes Lewick, I guess it's all preferences in the end.

i have a half moon 5/1 vampuric bow, with +20hp on it as well, i also carry with em a zealous long bow cant remember what the grip is. but i just changed my sec proffession to r/e instead of r/mo, so ill probably trade my long bow for another short/half moon bow so i can put a cold string on it, so i have vamp and cold, i like vamp it adds 5 damage that ignores armour, and as long as i switch to my other bow while not in battle i am gaing hp, not losing, pair it whith stuff like dual shot and barrage (havent got barrage yet) and it works...