Is it me or Ithas Bow is crap?

You know, all I expected out of my pre-order item was something small to help me through the first few levels... a novelty with no real impact on the overall game.

But these seem to be completely useless... at least the ithas bow. I set ranger as my secondary just so I could get to use it. By the time I had the 10 marksmanship and could use it, I had another bow that only required 6 that did nearly the same dmg range, and with customization did more damage than the ithas.

Not only can you not use the ithas bow (at least not with stats at all) until level 11-12, but by that time you could easily have a better bow... and by level 20, you will find bows that are much superior to the ithas bow too.

What is the niche of this item? rangers for lvl 11-13? I don't get it, there are better things in game, and you have to wait before you can even use it.

Kinda disappointing.

rant off

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I was at least hoping for some unique type of flat bow or half-moon, but this was a joke I mean, the 13-25 damage range already puts it out of competitive range, along with the unmoddables, but to make the bow innately suck in statistics in range/rate of fire/trajectory is just too much.

What do you mean unmoddables, I put a bow grip of Fortitude on mine and it works fine. I'll probably keep using my bow until I find a better one, at least for sniping and pulling. I found a slightly better purple anmed half moon bow that I use for most of my damage now.

Oh my bad then, does this mean it has 2 slots? Or just 1? If 1, won't bother, if 2, it might make a worthwhile newbie bow.

Call a wahhhbulance.

I got the sheild. It's amazing! it's got awsome buffs and dosn't require that many skill points!

Except I'm a monk! I CAN"T USE IT!!

What do you expect?

An item that your character starts with to be at ultimate level, just because you preordered the game?

I would consider that a little bit of an unfair advantage.

I mainly think of them as a trophy item..in about six months not many people are going to be using them and you can wear it proudly, showing your dedication to Guild wars, and that you have been playing since the beginning.

The items aren't really that bad for low-levels. If they do damage, at least. For instance I got the Bone Idol which was worthless until I got 8 Blood Magic points. But with the bow you can at least attack using -some- of the damage points you get.

Any class can use any items and recieve some benefit. The listed requirements are to get the most from the item. If you use your Ithas Bow immediately after character creation...it won't do the full damage but is much better than what you'll find laying around. If you don't meet those criteria you just won't get the full benefit but will grow into the item slowly. For example the Censo'rs Icon will give you +5 energy if equipped from the get go.


Vladimir Dracu
The Gryphon's Alliance

The items seem to be good for low level because of the base effect, then poor for a period until you get enough in the relevant attribute, then ok for a time, until you eventually find a better item. If you a playing the "wrong" profession or build, only the first period will be interesting.

This is slightly better than what most people guesses, namely a good beginners weapon you have to drop soon. Not quite as good as what some of us hoped for, namely a weapon that would "level up" with either our level or a relevant attribute (like spells do).

I found the Ithas bow great so far - my Monk/Ranger has a good time with it. I tried other bows, but they weren't much use to me - didn't cause as much damage as the Ithas.

The Censor's icon is great - if you can find a good staff of some sort to use with it. Thus far I haven't had any luck with a weapon stronger than the bow.

True.
Itha's Bow requires marksmanship of 10 and doesn't get +20% of customization.
I found a 13-24 bow which requires 8 marksmanship which I am using now.
It's not a bad item, but not as great as I first thought it was.

My only beef with Ithas Bow is the arch of the arrows. It's almost impossible to hit a moving target unless you're using Read the Winds or Favourable Winds. Other than that it's fine.

Yes it does. It starts customized with +20%.

Ithas bow (and maybe the other weapons) is better than anything else you'll find pre-searing. I think Ithas is 6-8 damage or something if you don't meet the requirements, that still kicks ass level 1-6. It's true that after that it's useless, I've already found a bow with better min/max damage that requires only 8 marksman, but it still looks neat, and I'll hold onto mine.

I just enchanted my Ithas Bow...

Zealous Ithas Bow of Fortitude.

Piercing Damage 13-25 (req. 10 Marksmanship)
Health +23
Energy Gain on Hit: 1
Energy Regeneration: -1
Armor +5 (Req. 10 Expertise)
Customized

Just to let everyone know, even if you destroy a preorder item, or input a preorder key after you started a character, you can get all the preorder items assigned to you account using the /preorder command. So if you dont feel like carrying around that Ithas Bow just to show it off later, you can delete it and make it reappear when you want it.

Make a new character, delete its pre-order items, use the /preorder command and try it out.

LK

I added a grip on it (by mistake) but as you see, it's not +20% customized damage.

That's interesting. Perhaps you should contact support. Or try using the /preorder command to make a new one.

I had the same issue. It seems to occur if you had the preorder item prior to A.Net balancing them. If you run the "/preorder" command, you'll get one that has +20% customization damage.

BTW, my first post.

Giving us a truly worthwhile weapon for pre-ordering the game would have been a major blunder on the part of ArenaNet. Were they to give a free bow that was useful at the end game, they would be trivializing one fun aspect of the game for a good portion of players (yes, finding cool new weapons is fun).

Besides, I found that this bow was better than any other newbie weapon granted when you create a character, so you can get at least a few levels out of it. It seemed to do more damage than anything I could find up until about level 8 (despite its 10 Marksmanship requirement, it can still hurt things below that level of skill),

~ Captain Blackguard of the Pirate Ninjas