So how good are bow builds compared to magic?

[Nemerlight]

Finished game as mage and it was pretty fun. Was wondering how good are bows compared to magic?

[Sirius]

โพสต์ดั้งเดิมโดย OoOoOoooOOoOoorgle:

Radahn greatbow with his arrows is probably about the best you could do for a bossfight bow, but it would still be rough. You need to really know your animation timings and spacing to find shot openings (or have a distracting phantom/ash buddy).

Was lucky to get a great bow early as a drop from the giant in front of Morne's (I think?) and thought about incorporating it into my build, but there's several downsides.

As you mentioned, they are situational due to the wind-up and positioning.
And then there's the fact that you have to sacrifice a regular arrow slot for the GA's, leaving you with 'just' one batch of bow arrows.

Tried against the lake dragon and melted it though, so probably going for Radhan's bow later.

But yeah, there are fun options, it just really sucks to grind for the ammo, because you chew through it like crazy.

And yes I use a shortbow for close combat and status sticking, works well enough for regular mobs and to proc on bosses.

On the other hand, my lvl150 mage uses loretta's (single) greatbow as a main spell, and that's just straight up easier, more comfortable and it just needs FP. And no grind.

So yeah, sticky end for archers again. DS3 + 1 were rough too, was moderately successful in both until about mid to early-late game, and then it just sucked all the balls.

They don't want pure archers, that much is clear.

[OoOoOoooOOoOoorgle]

โพสต์ดั้งเดิมโดย |x|SiriuS|x|:

They don't want pure archers, that much is clear.

Right? It's disappointing, considering the huge variety of options ER presents in general.

The number of hoops you have to go through to get bows to basically function...maybe one of the devs got shot through at an arrow range and has a lifelong grudge or something.

Also, ya gotta love "Oh no, I can't possibly figure out how to carry more of these big arrows!" Meanwhile as a mage you can melt everything with your eye lasers and meteors, and melee builds can dual wield swords the size of an ox.

Or instead of hunting every goat to the ends of the earth for their little leg bones, and learning to identify blood roses and butterflies a mile away...we can just casually gobble a dragon heart and apply status whenever we want with smelly-breath.

It's just a really weird hill for them to insist on dying on lol.

[The Black Baron]

โพสต์ดั้งเดิมโดย OoOoOoooOOoOoorgle:

โพสต์ดั้งเดิมโดย |x|SiriuS|x|:

They don't want pure archers, that much is clear.

Right? It's disappointing, considering the huge variety of options ER presents in general.

The number of hoops you have to go through to get bows to basically function...maybe one of the devs got shot through at an arrow range and has a lifelong grudge or something.

Also, ya gotta love "Oh no, I can't possibly figure out how to carry more of these big arrows!" Meanwhile as a mage you can melt everything with your eye lasers and meteors, and melee builds can dual wield swords the size of an ox.

Or instead of hunting every goat to the ends of the earth for their little leg bones, and learning to identify blood roses and butterflies a mile away...we can just casually gobble a dragon heart and apply status whenever we want with smelly-breath.

It's just a really weird hill for them to insist on dying on lol.

Well It's a Japanese studio and katanas have also barely been touched when it comes to balance. Let's be honest historically speaking their steel was bloom steal, lots of impurities generally bad, required a lot of maintenence and had to be folded to get all the impurities out. Compared to what european sword smiths had at the same time, inferior. I would not expect them to look into how effective bows have been or actually care about any realistic aspect about armour in a game. It is a fantasy game where katanas are better than arming swords or maces.

[OoOoOoooOOoOoorgle]

โพสต์ดั้งเดิมโดย The Black Baron:

โพสต์ดั้งเดิมโดย OoOoOoooOOoOoorgle:

Right? It's disappointing, considering the huge variety of options ER presents in general.

The number of hoops you have to go through to get bows to basically function...maybe one of the devs got shot through at an arrow range and has a lifelong grudge or something.

Also, ya gotta love "Oh no, I can't possibly figure out how to carry more of these big arrows!" Meanwhile as a mage you can melt everything with your eye lasers and meteors, and melee builds can dual wield swords the size of an ox.

Or instead of hunting every goat to the ends of the earth for their little leg bones, and learning to identify blood roses and butterflies a mile away...we can just casually gobble a dragon heart and apply status whenever we want with smelly-breath.

It's just a really weird hill for them to insist on dying on lol.

Well It's a Japanese studio and katanas have also barely been touched when it comes to balance. Let's be honest historically speaking their steel was bloom steal, lots of impurities generally bad, required a lot of maintenence and had to be folded to get all the impurities out. Compared to what european sword smiths had at the same time, inferior. I would not expect them to look into how effective bows have been or actually care about any realistic aspect about armour in a game. It is a fantasy game where katanas are better than arming swords or maces.

Point well taken, heh. They do seem to oddly pick and choose where they opt for more or less "magical realism."

The whole thing is still just goofy as hell though. Here I am, drawing a bow taller than myself and thicker than my character's calves, I mean I don't even want to know what the draw weight on that would be. And it manages the impressive range of...well, roughly similar to a well-thrown paper airplane.

[The Black Baron]

โพสต์ดั้งเดิมโดย OoOoOoooOOoOoorgle:

โพสต์ดั้งเดิมโดย The Black Baron:

Well It's a Japanese studio and katanas have also barely been touched when it comes to balance. Let's be honest historically speaking their steel was bloom steal, lots of impurities generally bad, required a lot of maintenence and had to be folded to get all the impurities out. Compared to what european sword smiths had at the same time, inferior. I would not expect them to look into how effective bows have been or actually care about any realistic aspect about armour in a game. It is a fantasy game where katanas are better than arming swords or maces.

Point well taken, heh. They do seem to oddly pick and choose where they opt for more or less "magical realism."

The whole thing is still just goofy as hell though. Here I am, drawing a bow taller than myself and thicker than my character's calves, I mean I don't even want to know what the draw weight on that would be. And it manages the impressive range of...well, roughly similar to a well-thrown paper airplane.

Yeah they do :) The range of bows has always been weird in souls games. The damage fall off seems to be instant after a certain distance. Even with the rings/ talismans.
Even more so I find it personally weird that we cannnot look up, especially since this game a a lot more verticality and the cut off on how high you can aim up with a bow seems to be a 40-45° degree angle. Making it impossible to hit anything above you on walls.

Like this guy here. He was bugged and wouldn't jump down.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2797839178

Couldn't even hit him. The max distance would do no damage and being too close meant that I couldn't look up.

[KingOfFriedChicken]

โพสต์ดั้งเดิมโดย The Black Baron:

โพสต์ดั้งเดิมโดย OoOoOoooOOoOoorgle:

Point well taken, heh. They do seem to oddly pick and choose where they opt for more or less "magical realism."

The whole thing is still just goofy as hell though. Here I am, drawing a bow taller than myself and thicker than my character's calves, I mean I don't even want to know what the draw weight on that would be. And it manages the impressive range of...well, roughly similar to a well-thrown paper airplane.

Yeah they do :) The range of bows has always been weird in souls games. The damage fall off seems to be instant after a certain distance. Even with the rings/ talismans.
Even more so I find it personally weird that we cannnot look up, especially since this game a a lot more verticality and the cut off on how high you can aim up with a bow seems to be a 40-45° degree angle. Making it impossible to hit anything above you on walls.

Like this guy here. He was bugged and wouldn't jump down.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2797839178

Couldn't even hit him. The max distance would do no damage and being too close meant that I couldn't look up.

This is almost certainly intentional after all the bow cheese on the bosses in D1 and 2 lol they pretty much had unlimited range to devastate anything. I think the funniest one is the dragon sword in 1 lol I'm almost certain that was unintentional but became a feature lol

[Mozie]

I've played though about 2/5 of the game with a bow build. Honestly they aren't very powerful, scaling with bows is pretty bad. You'll mostly be relying on status arrows for damage. scarlet rot and bleed arrows will give you the most damage against things weak to them. But the damage will always pale to a melee weapon or magic. You'll probably want to compliment the playstyle with other things. For instance I started using Spark aromatics as a nice bit of pocket sand to throw at things the get close. And there were a couple instances where I pulled out fist weapons instead because arrows weren't doing it.

[Eunostos]

Magic is far and away the easiest way to blast through if that's the experience you want, while i'd put bows more like a challenge run.

A pretty achievable challenge run, but you'd pick your targets and path and priorities in ways a standard run doesn't have to.