War bow vs. Hunting bow

[Berra_la]

My ranger is trying to choose between these two bows (war and hunting). According to the stats, they are identical, except the war bow does more damage (they are also priced the same so one shouldn't be strictly better). However, in the description text below it says that the hunting bow is faster than the war bow.

 

Which is it? The attack is the same, the recovery should be as well, is there some difference in "draw back the string speed" that isn't listed? In game I can't see any real difference, maybe a slightly slower animation before the actual shot on the war bow, but I'm unsure.

 

How does bows work? Draw, fire, recover?

[Berra_la]

tl:dr, Average =/= Average, thanks for useless statistics game!

 

 

I made some more effort in testing this. When making more controlled tests I quickly realized the two bows were indeed shooting at different speeds. But here's some more stats that I gathered at the same time:

 

Tutorial area, first wolf. Combat in slow mode. Ranger with 3 might and 10/20 dex, bear tanking while spamming stop command. 5 shots, (including recovery time after).

 

10 Dex

Hunting bow: 5 shots 24,4 sec. @ 5*12,5 dam. (avg) = 2,56 dps (x2 for normal speed)

War bow: 5 shots 36,5 sec. @ 5*16,5 dam. (avg) = 2,26 dps (x2 for normal speed)

 

20 Dex

Hunting bow: 5 shots 18,5 sec. @ 5*12,5 dam. (avg) = 3,38 dps (x2 for normal speed)

War bow: 5 shots 27,0 sec. @ 5*16,5 dam. (avg) = 3,06 dps (x2 for normal speed)

 

Clearly the Hunting bow shoots faster. The War bow does slightly less dps, but should still be better because of damage reduction being less effective against few strong attacks versus many weak ones. The dps almost increases the full 30% at Dex 20, the small loss coming from the actual shooting animation since that is not (?) reduced by high Dex.

 

Edit: War bow better for raw damage against armored targets, Hunting bow better against unarmored targets or for interrupt builds.

 

It boggles my mind how such an arbitrary "statistic" as average is put in the middle of all those numbers that actually mean something... not to mention average is not the same thing as average. Thanks a lot! 

Edited March 27, 2015 by Berra_la

[ShadowTiger]

Thank you for this detailed breakdown!

[Nurot]

I was wondering about this myself. Thank you so much for clearing this up!

[DruidX]

hey in those screenshots under "Damage",  where it says "0/12" what does that mean exactly?

Edited March 28, 2015 by DruidX

[kryadan]

hey in those screenshots under "Damage",  where it says "0/12" what does that mean exactly?

Something to do with enchanting

[Berra_la]

Yeah, I haven't actually enchanted anything yet, but each enchantment has an "anvil" value. My guess would be that you cant add enchantments totaling above that value (also, there seems to be a limit on the number of enchantments of a certain type, but that's only visible through the actual enchantment window).

[Malignacious]

I was also confused by this, I immediately noticed that my second rogue in the party shoots much faster with a hunting bow but when I looked at the stats the speed was the same.

 

This is really bad for making informed decisions throughout the game.

[Zorfab]

Agreed that numeric value should replace or at least complement the fast/average/slow description.

[Emerwyn]

I'd go with War Bow in Hard or PotD difficulty only down to the fact that most enemies have high DR, and it's preferible to shoot fewer shots, but with a higher damage per shot.

[Nosey and Opinionated]

I had wondered the same thing. Good to know.

[Berra_la]

I'd go with War Bow in Hard or PotD difficulty only down to the fact that most enemies have high DR, and it's preferible to shoot fewer shots, but with a higher damage per shot.

 

Yeah, currently using the War bow with vicious shot for max damage and accuracy. Make the shots count.

[Mungri]

If I have a marksman rogue with 20% of hits converted to crits, should I use the hunting bow instead?

[RealGrognard]

Thanks. I was trying to figure it out myself. Average ain't average these days

[Jasta11]

In my experience, hunting bow is better early on, but at level 6+ enemy DR catches up and you will often end up just scratching the enemy. War bow is then better. 

 

In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if hunting bow is just an unviable weapon later on. You just need stuff like arbalests or firearms to punch through the 20+ DR some enemies have.