Thoughts on the Bow

[Ghost Bear]

The bow is a weapon that I enjoyed quite a bit in vanilla MHW, it was fun and dynamic and used to be my main weapon, now I'd hardly have called myself a pro with it, but I could pull out all hunts just fine. Come Iceborne that magic faded away. Most monsters in Iceborne take very poor range damage by default, I feel that if I'm not constantly tenderizing the monster I'm doing piss poor damage, having to tenderize the monster consistently kind of defeats the purpose of playing a range weapon for me. Eventually I just gave up and picked up a melee weapon.

Now I am not trying to imply that the bow is bad, I am aware some of the best speed runs are done with bow, what I'm saying is that to me it feels.... odd, no matter how well I'm doing I always feel like I'm doing subpar, which is not something I felt in vanilla with it. It is a weapon I wish to like but sadly I cannot anymore, I have a better time with bowguns when I do wish to play range.

Does anybody else feel the same way? If you do like how bow feels, how do you play it? What makes it fun for you? Please share your thoughts!

[gusopocho]

Like you in the vanilla game I was very confy with the bow, I started Iceborne playing against some monsters using the bow and little by little I felt like iwas not doing enough damage. The last time I played with a bow was against Kulve in Master rank, I was playing with a friend With safi weapons and I spend a lot of time to kill her (25 min) and then I tried with the katana and it was 12 min, i was shooting a lot in the tenderer parts but I don't understand why I can't do the same dps than melee.

[Imperial City Guard]

Bow's sick but it's not what it used to be.
In older generation the bow was like a greatsword ranged. Charge once and fire once.
But now it's more a consistent barrage of damage and mobility.
Personally i'm not really feeling it anymore.
I have over 3000+ hunts on mh4u and gen with bows.

[cronic0_0]

Yeah the claw more or less ruined bows in Monster Hunter ice-born as in you have to engage melee to tenderize when the whole point of playing a weapon like the bow is not to be in melee unless you choose to.... the bow is still a very very powerful weapon but it just requires a lot more work then most other weapons now just to do good DPS and require much much tighter build then a weapon say like the longsword.

Because with the bow you have to worry about stanima stanima surge and invade extender is really good for the bow.... unless you are constantly farming dash extract and drinking dash juice like a crack addict on crack you have to have stanima and stamina surge

[Cyseal]

Well, tenderizing made everything less fun overall. It's just an annoying gimmick that hopefully goes away in future titles. Clutch claw I can live with, but the tenderizing is just... Awful.

I used to use bow for some specific hunts like Legiana, Rathalos and it's variants and Kirin, but now I just go SnS for everything. Bow doesn't feel nearly as fun anymore, it might be because of the reasons stated here, haven't thought about it that much.

[LostArc]

Bow in Vanilla MHW = doesn't matter where you are aiming. Bow in Iceborne = finally having to aim at the small weak spots. I still think the bow is busted even after Iceborne nerfed the raw hitzones, just so they can balance the game around the new clutch claw mechanic. Bows are mobile greatswords and unbalanced.

[Imperial City Guard]

Originally posted by LostArc:

Bow in Vanilla MHW = doesn't matter where you are aiming. Bow in Iceborne = finally having to aim at the small weak spots. I still think the bow is busted even after Iceborne nerfed the raw hitzones, just so they can balance the game around the new clutch claw mechanic. Bows are mobile greatswords and unbalanced.

Ah i see, so you played spread bows did you? :D
personally i prefered rapid bows even if they did not had the best damage output.
it felt really fun

[Fang]

This post does not fill me with confidence.
I intend to buy Iceborne soon, and I beat the base game using almost exclusively the Bow - being my favorite weapon.

Melee is still awesome though, so I guess I can make the switch.

[cruste]

get the mod which turns normal arrows into dragon piercer, problem solved
no need to tenderize

[アリエルP]

it's good as always.. until capcom make some monsters with terrible hitzone for bow (safi, kulve, and alatreon)

[Bong-B Rippins]

Bow has it's qualities but the old playstyle had it's advantages as well. Bow was really, really fun in GenU (especially as the different styles changed the gameplay so much) even though it didn't deal a ton of damage. I'm kind of hoping they go for a Short and Long bow in the next game, like heavy and light bowgun.

Originally posted by Fang:

This post does not fill me with confidence.
I intend to buy Iceborne soon, and I beat the base game using almost exclusively the Bow - being my favorite weapon.

Bow relies on your build more than most weapons. Going through the main story with it is a little painful as bow's physical damage is nothing to write home about. Once you get along in the game and have enough room to be running your elemental damage skills and some stamina related skills it feels and functions a lot better. By that point it's one of the better weapons in the game. It has some of the best weapon models as well and we all know fashion is just as important as function in this game.

It's a good chance to try some melee weapons you haven't played before at the end of the day. People are sleeping on Hammer. It's got a huge range of attacks and it plays with the clutch claw really nicely. Maybe give that a try.

[Ghost Bear]

I could live with tenderize (would still hate it, but I could live with it) if all Light weapons had a specific attack that would tenderize in one hit like SnS and Dual Blades.

[Imperial City Guard]

Originally posted by Fang:

This post does not fill me with confidence.
I intend to buy Iceborne soon, and I beat the base game using almost exclusively the Bow - being my favorite weapon.

Melee is still awesome though, so I guess I can make the switch.

Well bow is that you need to do some rotations between your close and ranged phase as stamina management
You have to keep your charged arrow with dodging instead of charging.

[Bong-B Rippins]

Originally posted by The Senate:

I could live with tenderize (would still hate it, but I could live with it) if all Light weapons had a specific attack that would tenderize in one hit like SnS and Dual Blades.

It makes literally no sense that some weapons have well thought out integration of the claw and others do not. It would be so much better if every weapon could do it contextually and tenderize in one pass. If they did that and increased the duration of tenderize I bet my best pair of socks people would complain about the claw way less.

[Soliden]

Tenderizing isn't an issue for bow playing solo if you're playing right, you get so many drools from monsters (generally) you will always have that tenderizing opening. But I get what you're saying, it's pretty punishing getting hit with bow, a lot of times it's a one kill shot. that's why I always go into new monsters with melee weapons, and then come back with bow when I'm more familiar.

[DoT]

Another " tenderize" complaint

Tenderizing will save you a minute in hunts in optimal dps.

The reason its taking so long might be because

-you have low tier equipment just being fresh into iceborne
-you are attacking non weak points
-you are running around a lot learning the new openings and attack patterns

if you wanna do fights faster just sos
-if they don't show up then ask on forums / community / discord for help