Bow damage

[Siliva]

Is the bow suppost to be hitting for around 40 damage using dragon piercer on a breakable part of a monster. I am using the nergigante set along with the Nergal Whisper, also have the defense charm rank 3. I have fought both Xeno'jiiva and Nergigante and on both of them the bow did around the same damage.

[IrisMachina]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0lWPoPrv4g4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XI7H0LU9CQ0

[Tregrenos]

Bow is working as intended. Taking potshots, forcing the monster to move away from melee to chase their tsudo-ranged *** down, making me hop half way across the zone to bring the boom.

Gunlance!

[chefcook90]

Bows rely heavily on elemental weaknesses for damage output, and with only 120 Drg, the Nergal Whisper is one of the weakest Dragon bows there is.

Dragon damage is really only for Rath hunting anyways - you should have a bow for every element for taking on different monsters.

Outside of Kulve weapons, the best bows for each element are:

Fire: Anja Arch III
Ice: Legia Snowfletcher
Thunder: Flying Kadachi Strikebow
Water: Hunter's Proudbow with Free Element 3, otherwise Water Shot III
Dragon: Dragonbone Bow III

[Yoel]

Also, dragon piercer doesnt do much elemental dmg (what bow is all about btw)

[Warkrunner]

Oh, Dragon Piercer does do a lot of damage. If he wants to use Dragon Piercer, he just needs to optimize it.

@Siliva
IF you want to do the "meta" bow play, Nyanko Sensei's post has good videos for that.
IF you want to use Dragon Piercer for style points and fun, go for something like this:

https://honeyhunterworld.com/mhwb/?278,130,72,70,112,114,2,aff,0,0,76,76,0,24,76,5,30,30,30,58,0,0,65,30,0,26,94,94,3

With this, you should see something above 100 damage per tick.
The key skills are Special Ammo Boost, Piercing Shots, Elementless, Critical Draw, and Critical Boost in that order with the Cera Coilbender or Taroth Arrow Horn.
The idea is to sheath then draw your bow into a Dragon Piercer attack to proc Critical Draw for a 100% crit chance. Quick Sheath and Focus skills improve the speed for the attack, charge levels and sheathing, but aren't mandatory. They just further increase your DPS.

An early game version would be something like this:

https://honeyhunterworld.com/mhwb/?278,67,80,70,59,57,48,aff,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,26,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,3

IF you want to try it out, and prefer that playstyle.