Bows

Ok, i have most bows, most gold and with upgrades, i have a poisoners halfmoon bow of defence, and an icy ivery bow of marksmenship which i use alot aswell. I can not figure out the best bow type to use for my ranger/ele.

I love using the Half moon but its range sucks.

Seeing as the Half moon is poisoners, where can i get a poison arrow skill to take advantage of this, or would you guys reccommend a different upgrade of strings and grips?

As mentioned above where can i get a poison arrow skill?

It takes a lot of time and dedication to become a decent Ranger. Anyone can create and play a Ranger but very very few are good at it. Part of that is figuring out how you want to use your Ranger in any given situation. If your half-moons range sucks you are not using it correctly. Short Bows, and Half-Moons are meant to be close range. Thier rate of fire is excellent when combined with a high ratio vampiric or zealous string. Couple that with Lightning reflexes, Tigers Fury, or Barrage and you become a self sustaining machine at close range. Monks will thank you if you can look after yourself.

I could go on for a while with recommendations but for now i'll summarize a couple points for you to keep in mind.

#1 Grips of defense are essentially useless for a Ranger, especially in the late game. Our armor rating is second only to warriors AL and with our +AL to elemental damage we have the best all around armor available. This alone makes the grip of defense a peice of crap.

#2 Marksmanship grips are only beneficial when the %chance is really high. If you only have a 5% chance at the skill bonus there is little point in even carrying it.

#3 elemental strings are fine if you are up against a mob that has an elemental weakness. Otherwise you aren't gaining anything above the bow's base damage by using an elemental string (firey, icey, shocking, ebon)

#4 You should carry a minimum of 3 bows at all times. One long range, one short range, and one special catered to the mobs you will be up against. How you spec out that special bow is a no brainer if you are worth a sh!t as a Ranger.

#5 Always and I mean always customize your bows. That extra %20 adds up.

You can get Apply Poison from Captain Greywind in the Ascalon Settlement outside Lions Arch. Poison Arrow is an elite skill. You can only capture that from high level mobs after the Crystal Desert (unless you are successful in reaching Camp Rankor via Lornars Pass).

Yes i intend to make a good ranger... i don't go for a dmg approch i want to use the bow to apply poison/bleeding from range. I have a vampric and a zelous bow, wel two zelous, but i find them useless for my approch. I never thought of using more than one bow, but yeh that would be a good idea.

I need to get poison arrow, that is my goal. So i will try to capture it soon. Then make my bows poisoner to take full advantage.

Thanks for that post though!

Personally I run A poisoners Flat bow. Zelous Short. And a Sundering Half moon. All of them have Fortitude grips... I do have a Nice +20% vs troll, and a +17% vs. Undead that I'm looking for a good bow to put it on. As for Vampiric strings... anything less then 5 does you more harm then good.

PS - Poison Arrow is great for sniping and all but Apply poison is a little better since every arrow poisons not just the first one, and you will more then likely have a group of mobs to attack not just one.

I think you need to decide which 8 skills you will use, then decide which bow to use, and what bow to get. Poison arrow is elite skill, which means you can't use barrage anymore.

Oh poison arrow is in whitman's folly.

The first 3 weapon sets I have contain a longbow, another longbow, and a shortbow. Thery're the only bows I use. All of the bows have +19% enchantment handles on them (R/Mo and I use monk smiting skills a lot). The first bow currently has an icy bow string on it. The second has a fiery bow string on it. The third has a sundering bow string on it.

I vehemently refuse to use flatbows and hornbows now. Flatbows take WAY too long for the arrow to get to the mob, and hornbows just take too long to fire. I use the longbow to pull, for its range, then immediately switch to the shortbow. It takes some tenacity to make sure you switch back and forth, but it works quite well.

I also have tried zealous bow strings, as well as vampiric bow strings. I don't like either one just for the degeneration implicit on them.

It's mostly up to you though. I don't like preparations and I don't think preparations last long enough. I use a nature ritual (favorable winds) often, since it lasts for 126 seconds at 12 marksmanship.

You don't seem to have a ranged bow. The ivory bow refire rate is extremely high (most rangers can't stand ivory bows except that they're pretty.) Ivory and horn bows are the 2 slowest bows in the game. Short and half moons are the fastest, with the shortest range. Long and flat are the longest range (100') but I really don't like the flight characteristics of the flat bow at all. Feels like I'm firing straight up in the air when I fire one.

Flatbow is the best bow since it has longest possible range and fastest possible firing speed. However, I've been told that the rare eternal bows and storm bows have the same stats as the flatbow as well as fastest arrow flight time, making those two bows the best.

I've never seen a rare eternal or storm bow... i must look out for them sometime, whats different about them... I thought i was seeing things when i saw a invisible bow.. well white, but was that one of them?

Yeh i've customised my half moon as my primary 1. and using fiery longbow as second, and icy ivory as third incase i run into anything hot .

Not a bad set up. I've gotten Apply poison now and ill use that when i get up my attributes on it. Thanks for the posts, keep them coming if you want to.

Flat bows will always be my favorite until someone gives me exact flight stats on eternals and storm bows.

The flight time for a flat isn't insanely long and there are skills to speed it up.

Eternal bow is a see-through green dead bow. Like the ones the Ghostly Hero uses.

Storm bow is a jagged war-bow looking thing that is pure white. It has rings of lightning sparking from the bottom of the bow to the top.