Looking at the difference in damage and the only slightly higher penetration of war bows: why use war bows over short bows?

Looking at the difference in damage and the only slightly higher penetration of war bows: why use war bows over short bows?

Essence Interrupter is a hunting bow and is considered maybe the one with the most dps.

See I'd look at it the other way around - looking at the only slightly lower damage of short bows and big difference in penetration, why use hunting bows?

 

Hunting bows are for clearing unarmored trash.  War bows for hitting targets with armor.

 

An archer character really wants to have one of each equipped to swap between depending on the target.

Edited January 4, 20197 yr by Ensign

Because slightly higher penetration may translate into substantially more damage in certain situations. Furthemore, it has +2 pen modal that puts it ahead of all other ranged weapons except for the sceptre (which also has +2) in these situations.

Having innate dual damage and high pen is very valuable in PotD, frostseeker has a useful and unique mechanic and is available right after port maje, and the other 2 war bows have very interesting enchantments. They both scale really well with crits, even after the nerfs.

 

 

Hunting bows have a great modal for pure right click dps against enemies with lighter armor but struggle against high armor. The essence interrupter with its shock/pierce dual damage mostly ignores that penetration issue though.

Edited January 4, 20197 yr by Eraflure

 why use war bows over short bows?

Frostseeker. That's the entire reason, for me at least. Frostseeker.

Veilpiercer can be pretty good on a Ranger. If you're tired of abusing OP things like Frostseeker + AS.