lulwut? Bow is the strongest ranged single target weapon in the game and the king of ranged dps.
Seriously, if you didnt put so much effort into this post I would think you were trolling.
Bow is strong but he makes a good point about the relevance of the perks. They are all bad for pvp purposes. There is no point in adding perks to the game that nobody will use.
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every pvp bow perk has like 20% dmg increase XD
did you even read my post? im talking about item perks, not weapon skilltree passives.
First of all there are only 2 ranged single target weapons in the game. So your point about bow being the strongest one makes no sense, compared to all the other weapons. Not to mention that musket is pretty strong rn and depending on situation even better than bow.
Secondly, if you think bow damage is good i dare you to try and fight a full heavy healer with a void gauntlet. But im not even talking about damage in my post. I am talking about actual useful perks. They don’t even have to be damage perks, they could be purely mechanic as well.
If you read all the weapon perks side by side and you still think the bow perks are good as they are, you are the one that must be trolling.
Well, firstly I agree that compared to other weapons most bow ability perks are weak, but I disagree of calling some of them as completely useless for pvp.
Enfeebling Poison Shot is very good to use in short distance, before you go into melee to apply Weaken and reduce your enemy’s dmg. Due to the short distance it is also not that difficult to hit it if you are a good bow player.
Energizing Evade Shot is actually useful, but the numbers make it meaningless. Additionally, the ability is currently not functioning at all. It would need a buff, because +18 Stamina is nothing. But if it would give enough Stamina for a full dodge (30), I see at pretty much viable in PvP. Everything allowing you more to iframe is good.
Fortifying Rain of Arrows needs skill to hit, but it is truly a gambling ability. I mean you apply Bleed, Slow and Dmg if you hit, with the perk you even get Fortify that reduces you being a sitting target. How many abilities with upgrades and perkl are there in the game creating 3 status + dmg. It is strong, but maybe they have to increase the radius a bit again.
Penetrating Rapid Shot is bit more controversial. Another ability making you a hitting target, but for wars not quite that bad if you are defender on the wall not requiring evade shot. So additional armor pen on the last hit is something. I mean bow perks must be build around rewarding the player for hitting. Yet, if only one shot from rapid shot hits giving armor pen for the next attack after the ability would be bit too strong compared to the other perk.
Refreshing Penetrating Shot has the issue of being next to power shot the strongest range single shot ability. Therefore its perk giving an additional buff would make it maybe too much stronger. As it is, it is truly a useless ability, even if ones uses penetrating shots for execute. 14% CDR are completely meaningless and it requires a buff to maybe 50-75% CDR or a complete change that slightly rewards the player for hitting it.
Empowering Splinter Shot is complicated. I mean Empower (+% dmg) can stack to give max +50% damage. Musket players gets empowered by headshotting what is easier looking from the sniper zoom. We, bow players on the other hand only get +15 % after dodging that is active for only 5 sec, giving you a very short time to align your shot.
If you play a bow build maximazing your single target bow dmg rather than stacking single ADS shots, you would seek the Keenly Empowered perk (+15% dmg for 5 sec), the empower dodge upgrade and Splinter Shot perk for +50 % (55) dmg on the following shot that would be optimally Pen Shot. Giving up poison, rain or rapid for this may be questionable, but as I said it is useful used like this.
What many players don’t understand, especially those who main certain weapons is that some weapons/abilities/perks are useful in certain situations or useless in others depending on many factors. The goal of AGS should be regarding the Bow perks to reward us for hitting our targets. Therefore naturally, we should receive buffs of the ability type.
For example:
Evade Shot is a defensive ability, so we should get a defensive buff what could be additional speed (but already exisiting as rune upgrade), additional protection like Fortify or additional defense utility as it is now by extra stamina. The stamina should be increase to at least 30 though.
Poison Shot and Rain of Arrows are mostly debuff abilities. Means they apply debuff with some additional damage like poison, bleed or slow. Therefore, the perks should either give additional status effects as debuff or buffs or strengthen the already applied debuffs. The later should rather be done through the rune upgrades which are good for rain but require some changing for poison. Last Hit should be change places with Infected Arrows and Infected receive a significant dmg buff; I mean seriously? +2% dmg for a rune point, it is not worth at all to get Infected Arrows! This poison change would also make the Poison perk viable. Rain of Arrows should meanwhile should not give a defensive status effect on hit. I mean it is already a gamble to use it, since you make yourself an easy target. I would therefore prefer changing it into rewarding the player for hitting several targets with it like “hit additional eniemies +% dmg” or sth. An offensive weapon doesn’t need defensive buffs, evade shot is enough, we don’t need Fortify. Also, think about not moving the Poison perk with Infected Arrows, longer duration for hitting rather than additional debuffs. Debuffs should be on the skill tree!
Rapid Shot and Splinter Shot are offensive abilities as is Penetrating Shot, but the prior two doesn’t allow you to use them from the moving making them somewhat similar to Rain of Arrows. The last shot from Rapid Shot is the strongest and naturally any buffs giving from perk should apply to it. I don’t see a problem with both perks. I mean the only issue is on the skill tree as it is for poison shot. Final Blow should change place with Rapid Accuracy and the later should be changed. Hitting all three shots and only getting 50% CDR?? No, not worth a Skill Point at all as for Infected Arrow. Make the perks viable by making the abilities more viable by such skill placement changes. Splinter Shot’ Calculated is similar to Rapid Accuracy, where I would even say to change the Empowering Splinter perk to that Skill Upgrade - like each succesful splinter hit gives 5% Empowering. The perk is useful for Empower builds, but change Calculated to make the ability truly viable.
Penetrating Shot is also an offensive ability and the strongest single target bow ability. The ability upgrades are acceptable, but the perk isn’t worth it as it is for only 14% CDR. I mean should Rapid Accuracy and Calculated stay, we Bow player may not need additional CDR, yet if the cdr pen perk should stay changing it to 50-75% CDR (not stacking) would make it truly worth seeking. It may look scary on the paper, but on the field it truly difficult to get consistent pvp kills with pen for pen shot to become a gatling.
That’s all I have to say regarding this.
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Yes, bow perks are subpar compared to what you get to other weapons. They should at least bring the enfeebling poison debuff to 12 seconds, and maybe change one of the others to slow.
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My fault I’m tired af. Yeah those perks are pretty trash but the poison one makes sense because maybe they shouldnt have made poison op as shit then there could be a good perk for it. 30 second poison doing mid 200 ticks is stupid enough to warrant a bad perk for it
thanks for your elaborate feedback!
i agree with your points about evade shot, the number needs to be buffed.
For poison shot, this may be true if you are running medium armor and 150 con, when those 14% weaken actually stack with the defense you already have, but on light armor? This makes next to no difference in my experience. Also regarding the cooldown of poison shot makes it a bit unlikely to even have it off cd when that melee is charging you. And i disagree with poison shot mainly being a debuff ability because it hits as hard as pen shot does.
Rain of Arrows, yes you could apply 3 status effects but the slow is almost neglible. Compare this to the IG abilites, you can’t even dodge or jump in those. Furthermore, if you really want to put rain of arrows in a pvp build, you absolutely can’t take those bleed and slow runes, you need those points elsewhere. I am running this currently and it hits like a truck to the point the other 2 runes can really be neglected. Also i think for bow you need burst damage rather than damage over time. Most of the times people just chug regeneration pots plus t5 meals and especially on heavy healers, those effects just do absolutely nothing. In the current state you almost need to burst them down before they can even use their pots.
I specifically didnt talk about the splinter shot perk just because the ability is pretty useless and i have never seen any bow player run it and the scenario you describe happens every 1000 years when the planets align.
Agreed. Tried all perks, 1000 hours into game, and only perk worth a damn is poison while shooting it on point during wars. AGS, make the perks worthwhile…they are clearly not relevant to most gameplay, even PvE.
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If we are talking about ranged it is clearly musket and if we compare the item perks for bow with musket, bow perks are just useless 
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yeah, I recently started playing more with bow too and noticed that.
They should rework a lot of the perks IMO.
The mage weapons are kinda weird too:
Ice gauntlet and Firestaff both have only one good perk, Unending Thaw and the Pillar of Fire one.
Voidgauntlet for example has like 3 good ones. Putrefying Scream, Nullifying Oblivion and Voracious blade.
What is viable depends on the situation. There are so many playstyle out there and I don’t believe that there is one single ‘correct’ one for any weapon. You gonna use the advantages of your weapon naturally, but bow being ranged is big advantage by itself. Builds therefore can be very different and still of use.
We may agree that some changes are needs to the perks or skill tree. I don’t dislike the abilites as they are. Splinter is usefl for example in OPR if the enemy team is coming to rush from a door. Then dodge + empowerd keen active from splinter and you got yourself a pen shot through several enemies with +50% dmg, it being headies makes it maybe even deadly. Don’t force or reduce yourself to meta, be like water regarding your bow build. That is what it truly means to master a weapon.
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ok but why put a bad perk in the game in the first place? just replace it with a better perk for something else then.
correct me if im wrong, but the poison perk only triggers on a direct hit? so you can only debuff 1 target max. if you hit it.
what about empowering fireball? is that shit? because to me it seems like it’s flat out 30% more damage. Or is that ability unusable?
Yeah true I forgot about that one. Pretty good too.
I know however that it was bugged for a while, not sure if it actually works now.
yes he does, but why only bow? every weapon has shit perks that are just better left not picked up.
His point however is true regarding the perks
(he is on drugs with the bow stuff tho, hands down best wep atm)
Regarding the perks, they need to be beneficial to getting to a state of being able to kill, and not provide bonuses UPON killing. why would i need that after i kill someone? thats the end of that fight? its like making me box and nother boxer and at the end when i knock him out i suddenly trigger a perk to get steel gloves. ITS NICE, but completely useless after the guy is dead.
Good example of a perk i find usefull: Accelerating Defiant Stance, it doesnt do much it gives me haste but with that haste i can catch up to a person while having my tankyness up, super usefull imo. then there is stuff like indeed
18 stamina?? , i regen that in 1 second… whats the point? instead it should indeed at least provide like 40 so u can 100% dodge after it, making it reliable and usable and perhaps even desired to have.
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Honestly no ideas I have faith that it effects everything being dotted 
i looked it up again and it’s definitely only on direct hit with the arrow, sorry brother