Bow or Crossbow?

[Zagaran]

Just curious as i cannot help but wonder if there's a late game accessory or something that makes it where a crossbow reloads without using up an action or something. Because otherwise it feels like a bow would be better in general otherwise.

[game-zerox]

You'll be looking for some of the passives that helps with that one. Notably three comes to mind.

man of war for a mixed melee/ranged character
rolling reload for an easy activation
Heavy bandolier for those who just love carrying a lot of crossbows.

There's generally a case as of why you could use either weapon type. In most cases, it comes to what you'd want to sacrifice for the other.

[➕⁺+₊ ⁺]

I'd say using scout rifle "crossbow" early~midgame is worth it for +13 dmg and 7 range alone, as it lets you oneshot some thrash farmable enemies with minimum investment in skills (spell archon is a good example), and it becomes really good further down when you unlock warpblade with "free" movement skill to activate reload passive, but generally it all depends on your build and playstyle and difficulty

[frowningmirror]

I actually really like bows, they're usually a strong combination of not needing to reload and good range. Their damage is often mid for two handed weapons, but of the bows, there's 5 I know you can really build around.

1. Mechanical bow. Longest range bow. Pretty easy to get if you ask me, you just got to beat a dungeon West of Bilibas. I use it to detonate remote devices with a lightning trigger from far away so the low damage compared to scout rifle is not a concern.

2. Harp bow made with whistle stone. Harp bows get +1 extra range compared to every other bow that isn't mechanical, and scales with wind, stormshot class is basically made for this bow.

3. Gloam Bow adds a unique accuracy debuff status effect that causes opponents to glow. Deceptively good with multishot and another status effect trigger, everyone can take advantage of the sniper passive, and is of particular interest if you like things like sharpshooter / brawler for pummel + focus for a ton of damage. You get this at the smugglers secret shop in the South East where Domino is.

4. Spirithail is the only ruin weapon in the game, scaling with ruin and having a unique ability to go through guard. Since ruin does more damage to itchy inflicted enemies and gets turned off by wet, don't use teammates that use condense and put an itchy barb on this thing for your spell archon / unmaker / ravager / defiler

5. Coral Bow adds wet without using a trigger. You can do a lightning or ice trigger to immediately shock or chill them, or use it like gloam bow and put status effects on everyone.

But crossbows are a pretty strong investment from what I've been told, I've never done it, but I've heard the blunderbluss + multi shot from sharpshooter is one of the most damaging combos in the game.

[Romara]

I've gotten a lot of milage out of a swashbuckler type setup with a dagger and dragon pistol. being able to put 20+ damage into somethings face as they close is great, stab the next turn, and turn 3 use the pointblank shot for even more damage.