So whats your opinion on bows?

[Deykar]

To me they are kinda disappointing. Scaling kinda sucks, ashes of war options are underwhelming and you cant infuse them with anything nor change scaling to keen/heavy etc. Also they are so slow that they wont hit unless the enemy is in melee range at which poínt you might as well use a melee weapon. Only use i found was for the greatbow to snipe people camping on high ground thanks to knockback. But its not really viable in a straight duel.

Whats your experience?

[Shard of Manus]

Black Bow.

Has the moveset of a shortbow, but the damage of a longbow. It's good.

[Codester]

They are a secondary weapon meant to pull enemies or to kill slowly from afar if you fear something up close. Or to take ancestral enemies out of their magic bow stance. Bows have never once been strong enough to be a primary weapon in any of these games.

[Codester]

Originally posted by Shard of Manus:

Black Bow.

Has the moveset of a shortbow, but the damage of a longbow. It's good.

Pulleybow is stronger.

[Lord Bob]

Originally posted by Codester:

Originally posted by Shard of Manus:

Black Bow.

Has the moveset of a shortbow, but the damage of a longbow. It's good.

Pulleybow is stronger.

Depending on the situation I used both on my first playthrough.
It's true that the Pulley Bow is stronger, but the Black Bow makes up for it with its barrage. Also it's really good for applying status effects.

[Warspawn]

Once you get the Black Bow and use its range with Barrage skill, it's pretty awesome with status effect buildup. Rot, bleed, poison, all stack insanely quickly. I had been using the pulley crossbow auto-fire before for the job, but firing arrows as fast as I could click at long rage made that thing crazy fun Having a variety of magic/fire/explosive arrows comes in really handy for clearing rooms before I drop in to the melee. Sleep arrows are just hilariously fun, too! Heh...especially with Delores puppet pulled out to fire them as well

o7

~War~

[balmora pete]

I only use them to apply poison or rot. Or to kill Guillemot for fowl feet.

[festizio]

https://youtu.be/ieEvXu0fr2A

[Bitterballen]

Black Bow - Barrage - Bleed, Rot, Poison = Fun

[Lord Bob]

Bows seem to fit into a lot of builds. There are bows like the Ertree Bow that scale with Fth or bows like the Serpent Bow, which scales with Arc which makes utilizing them a lot more interesting.

[Mad Hawaiian]

The bow ashes of war are pretty cool.

[Turt]

I think they are just underwhelming compared to how overdone magic was in this game. Combined with what OP said with how they can't get scaling infusions. I think Ds2 did them best.

[Deykar]

Originally posted by Warspawn:

Once you get the Black Bow and use its range with Barrage skill, it's pretty awesome with status effect buildup. Rot, bleed, poison, all stack insanely quickly. I had been using the pulley crossbow auto-fire before for the job, but firing arrows as fast as I could click at long rage made that thing crazy fun Having a variety of magic/fire/explosive arrows comes in really handy for clearing rooms before I drop in to the melee. Sleep arrows are just hilariously fun, too! Heh...especially with Delores puppet pulled out to fire them as well

o7

~War~

I can see that but my issue is that arrows are a finite recourse and the best arrows you cant even buy infinitely and have to farm for materials to craft them which makes it tedious. Which also makes it infuriating to see that most enemies got programmed to jump dodge arrows.

[FTZ35]

Lion Greatbow skill obliterates dragons or any big targets (make sure to use it with radahns arrows).

[Mikamus]

The damage on bows barely scales. Waste of time.

[Turt]

Originally posted by Mikamus:

The damage on bows barely scales. Waste of time.

I don't think a single short or longbow gets better than d scaling. Its sad :(