Caverns of Ice - Ranged Weapon Analysis

Very often, your character will run into situations where there are a lot of ranged attackers firing at you at the same time. In such cases, good strategies would be to melee using Telekill, use happy feet strategy to avoid enemy fire and chase after the enemies or to use bows (or crossbows).

Which is the best bow is a question that has popped up many times before and i will attempt to answer this question today. Essentially, this analysis covers only rogues of levels 20 and up. Brief summary of bow usage for the other classes can be found in the conclusion.

Ranged Weapons	Rate	Average Damage per Arrow						Average Damage per Second
Ranged Weapons	Rate	20	25	30	35	40	50	20	25	30	35	40	50
Character Damage	----	17.5	25.6	42.8	62.1	77.0	101.3	----	----	----	----	----	----
Emerald Bow of Heavens	0.35	28.0	36.9	54.8	74.9	90.5	116.3	80.0	105.4	156.4	213.9	258.6	332.1
Savage Bow of Heavens	0.35	37.8	46.6	64.5	84.6	100.3	126.0	107.9	133.2	184.3	241.8	286.4	360.0
Merc. Bow of Thunder	0.35	38.1	46.3	63.4	82.8	97.6	121.7	108.9	132.1	181.1	236.4	278.9	347.6
Massive Bow of Swift.	0.30	33.3	41.4	58.5	77.9	92.8	117.0	110.8	137.9	195.0	259.6	309.2	390.0
Jade Bow of Swiftness	0.30	25.0	33.1	50.3	69.6	84.5	108.8	83.3	110.4	167.5	232.1	281.7	362.7
Eaglehorn	0.35	30.5	39.1	56.8	76.6	92.0	117.3	87.1	111.8	162.1	218.9	262.9	335.0
Needler, The	0.35	19.5	27.6	44.8	64.1	79.0	103.3	65.0	92.1	142.5	207.1	256.7	337.5
Windforce	0.35	40.5	48.8	66.0	85.5	100.5	124.8	115.7	139.3	188.6	244.3	287.1	256.4
+ 10 strength / dexterity	----	1.00	1.25	1.50	1.75	2.00	2.50	----	----	----	----	----	----
Merc. Bow of Heavens	0.35	41.1	50.0	67.9	88.0	103.6	129.4	117.5	142.9	193.9	251.4	296.1	369.6
Gnat Sting using multiple arrows	0.35 0.50	19.0	27.1	44.3	63.6	78.5	102.8	54.3 114	77.5 162.8	126.4 265.5	181.8 381.9	224.3 471.0	293.6 616.5

For rogues under level 20, bows with damage prefixes are preferred since character damage then is still rather low compared to bow damage, so the damage bonuses from the bow will do much to improve the efficiency of a rogue. Windforce is useful here as it helps to improve the chances of stunning the enemies and provides knockback ability to keep enemies off your back.

Towards the middle levels (lvl 20-35), the choices of bows become greater as character damage starts to get significant. It is around these levels that the damage done per unit time by of Swiftness bows begin to overtake the damage done by non-swiftness bows. The knockback effect of the Windforce begins to become irritating, especially against ranged attackers.

At higher levels (lvl 35+), resistance bows such as the Emerald Bow of the Heavens and Jade Bow of Swiftness become more feasible as the rogue would have been doing very high damage already with any bow. Damage bonuses from bows is very much less significant than it was before due to the high character damage done.

In Hellfire, two very good bows also surfaced - the Merciless Bow of the Heavens and the Gnat Sting.

My Pick: The Savage Bow of Heavens for low-middle level rogues and the Massive Bow of Swiftness or Emerald Bow of Heavens for high level rogues (depending on needs). Gnat Sting is great fun too.

Basically it would be a rare situation which requires any of the other classes to use bows. But just in case, here are my recommendations for each of the other classes:

Bards have a high enough dexterity, and with some decent jewels, should be able to manage without having to use prefixes which adds to-hit. Thus, a Merciless Bow of the Heavens would probably be a good choice for bards as the heavens suffix adds twice the usual amount of damage to damage (since bards get bonuses from dex and str).

Sorcerors have an okay dexterity but would do well to add some to-hit using dexterity adders. The low damage means that in order for sorcerors to deal enough damage, a damage prefix is almost always required. My choice would be a Savage Bow of Perfection or a Merciless Bow of Thunder.

Warriors have low dexterity and consequently would need to-hit bonuses in order to hit the enemies properly. Thus, a good bow would be the Strange Bow of Heavens or the Weird Bow of Perfection as these two bows adds much needed to-hit. Damage would be decent as the warrior has quite okay damage with bows.

Barbarians and Monks should NOT use bows in my opinion due to their pathetic damage and rate of fire.

	Emerald Bow of Heavens is a bow mainly for high-level rogues who no longer needs damage from bows to stun or deal massive damage. The resistance here lessens the need for good resistance jewels and gives way for other jewel prefixes such as +mana.
	Savage Bow of the Heavens is a good all-round bow until the higher levels when the damage prefix starts to lose its shine as character damage gets significantly larger than the bow damage. A better version in Hellfire would be the Merciless long war Bow of the Heavens.
	Merciless Bow of Thunder/Burning serves as a high damage bow which deals spectacular damage vs enemies not immune to the element as the lightning/fire arrow damage is be dealt repeatedly to the enemy upon hitting, sometimes doing almost 10 times the supposed damage.
	Swiftness bows are simply great for middle-high level rogues who have significantly large character damage. Massive is the highest level damage prefix that can come on the bow though while Jade is the highest resistance prefix. These bows can be found in the caves as well as bought from Griswold around character level 18-21. Rare in the sense that there is only a restricted time you can get the bow.
	Unique bows basically are pathetic compared to the above mentioned bows. In Hellfire though, there is the Gnat Sting which makes available the possibility of triple damage or the stunning of three enemies.