Crappy bow

I have a Black bow of Pharis upgraded via the normal path (+15) and i think its pretty useful. Nevertheless, i wanted to try a chaos long bow, since its damage is supposed to scale with humanity. Well, i did it, i must say that the red titanite slab was a complete waste. The numbers "lie". The chaos bow shows some awesome statistics when used with fire arrows plus the needed humanity, but at the tryouts it was simply overpowered by the Pharis bow.

I dont understand yet why did this happened, anyone care to explain?

Thanks

Any +15 weapon with the appropriate stats will generally out perform a elemental weapon due to how the damage is calculated. Because the elemental damage is split into 2 smaller ARs while the +15 has one bigger AR it does more damage. This is due to the increasing returns on damage, which makes a higher AR do exponentially more damage.

mmm...i see, so due to the dex modifier on Phariss bow its stronger, been the ONLY modifier that affects the damage.

theznake wrote:mmm...i see, so due to the dex modifier on Phariss bow its stronger, been the ONLY modifier that affects the damage.

No, it has nothing to do with the scaling (not in this particular case), even if the base damage+dex bonus in the +15 black bow of pharis is the same as the base damage+fire damage of the chaos longbow.

The game caclulates defense by substracting a certain value from the damage output.

If you deal purely physical/magic/fire/lighning damage, the game will substract the said value from the damage output.
But the problem is that it handles each type of damage separately, it means that if you use a weapon that deals two types of damage, it will substract the defense value once for each type of damage, and that's twice, compared to once for weapons that deal pure damage.

So, it'd be better to use pure damage weaponry under most circumstances?

If you have decent stats, yes.
Have you tried using fire arrows with your chaos longbow?

Yes, and it sucks still...nevertheless, i'll test in several cases, who knows, maybe there's a case in which that bow may come in handy.

How much dex you have?

I use that bow, but ascended to the lightining, works a lot!

I don't think there's many creatures (I can't actually think of one) that would be so weak to fire that the chaos version is going to be a great option. Keep the fire arrows though. They can be handy. For instance, I dislike Creature A and also would like a sandwich. Creature A is susceptible to poison damage.

Step 1: Equip Hawk Ring

Step 2: Position yourself way outside aggro range

Step 3: Shoot at creature with bow from outside aggro range
Step 3a: For those with good eyesight use standard arrows to home in on Creature A until you can see it hit (usually an impact animation or bloodspray)
Step 3b: For those with poor eyesight, use Fire arrows as they are easier to "trace"

Step 4: Once properly sighted in, use poison arrows to inflict poison

Step 5: Get sandwich


You may be asking yourself, why not just start with poison arrows? They're expensive and more importantly VALUABLE. At least in the above scenario. Yes I know fire arrows are just as expensive but they don't have VALUE. So if you're short on souls just sight in with standard arrows. Also, if you're not in a snack mood you can just equip feather arrows and you'll be able to headshot things from pretty dang far away with no repercussions, making a much faster kill.

Conclusion: Fire + Bow = Meh

But don't feel bad I turned my first ever long bow into a Magic Long bow. Sounded cool at the time.

Slimes are weak to fire, i can't think of any other

Hachouma wrote:Slimes are weak to fire, i can't think of any other

The Ents in Darkroot Garden...

Why make an elemental long bow when the composite bow has more base damage? That makes it much more effective when turned ellemental

After making one bow along a non-regular path I would say: Why make any bow elemental ever?

lovely_shonen wrote:How much dex you have?

I use that bow, but ascended to the lightining, works a lot!

My DEX is 47, and actually i have a fully upgraded Blackbow of Pharis. I didn't create the chaos bow to actually play whit it but to test it.

skarekrow13 wrote:I don't think there's many creatures (I can't actually think of one) that would be so weak to fire that the chaos version is going to be a great option. Keep the fire arrows though. They can be handy. For instance, I dislike Creature A and also would like a sandwich. Creature A is susceptible to poison damage.

Step 1: Equip Hawk Ring

Step 2: Position yourself way outside aggro range

Step 3: Shoot at creature with bow from outside aggro range
Step 3a: For those with good eyesight use standard arrows to home in on Creature A until you can see it hit (usually an impact animation or bloodspray)
Step 3b: For those with poor eyesight, use Fire arrows as they are easier to "trace"

Step 4: Once properly sighted in, use poison arrows to inflict poison

Step 5: Get sandwich


You may be asking yourself, why not just start with poison arrows? They're expensive and more importantly VALUABLE. At least in the above scenario. Yes I know fire arrows are just as expensive but they don't have VALUE. So if you're short on souls just sight in with standard arrows. Also, if you're not in a snack mood you can just equip feather arrows and you'll be able to headshot things from pretty dang far away with no repercussions, making a much faster kill.

Conclusion: Fire + Bow = Meh

But don't feel bad I turned my first ever long bow into a Magic Long bow. Sounded cool at the time.

I only use poison arrows to kill the giants in Sen's Fortress and not always, in any other case i found such method aboslutely boring...i prefer to shoot light or normal arrows.

Lol. It's very boring. I used to use it to farm souls in Anor Londo in NG. Poison the three giants near the mimic box. Poison the other three across the way. Run to the stairs before the O and S fight and kill those ones. Usually by the time you reach the pair near the stairs the other six were dying. IT turned out to be very efficient (until I killed O and S then Gwyndolin and turned the world dark that is).

Also, feather arrows with hawk ring is absurd how far away you can mess things up from. If you're going the "out of aggro range" method that's much faster. Poison arrows = sandwich time. Only benefit

Bows could definately use a buff...even with a +14 pharis bow and some feather arrows the damage is laughable, wich is a shame, since I love bows, so, one day, after reading about their elemental path I decided to try a +4 chaos composite bow with fire arrows.... wow....how that thing sucked....

At 47 dex, stat scaling damage far exceeds any elemental upgrade you could make.
You should also upgrade the composite bow for close range and DPS (you can do 300+ damage with comp. bow + heavy arrows and hawk ring, and it fires faster than other bows)

Hachouma wrote:At 47 dex, stat scaling damage far exceeds any elemental upgrade you could make.
You should also upgrade the composite bow for close range and DPS (you can do 300+ damage with comp. bow + heavy arrows and hawk ring, and it fires faster than other bows)

Oh, I know, its just that they said chaos composite bow "hitted like a brick", wich is tottaly not the case. I already own both a +14 BBoP and a +14 Composite bow with 50 dex, and they are still kinda meh...composite hits harder, but pharis bow is much more cooler looking and has that awesome range.

ClassicBlaze wrote:Bows could definately use a buff...even with a +14 pharis bow and some feather arrows the damage is laughable, wich is a shame, since I love bows, so, one day, after reading about their elemental path I decided to try a +4 chaos composite bow with fire arrows.... wow....how that thing sucked....

Indeed, i did it for the very same reason and here we are...

Random info: It also depends if you are snipping your enemies. Pharis has a longer reach and is made for snipping, therefore its attacks from far away, obviously make more dmg.

Pharis + Feather Arrows + Hawk Ring = Snipping

Chaos.CBow + Heavy Arrows = Close Range

I have found the composite bow at standard +15 is the hardest hitting bow and apart from its low range does more damage than anything else. As far as I can tell elemental bows are only useful if u have no stats in dex or str. They are just back up weapons for int or faith builds.

This one is seriously plagued by it.

It has been revived like...4 times? in 2 pages

to my opinion bows should really only be magic, divine/occult, and normal i say the others as i jave an occult pharis bow on my 100 and with the moonlight arrows it does pretty good dam specially since i run into sorceror people who buff their spells with dusk XD. i also belive that for a bow pharis is the best (at least for me) as i like to have some range and stil like to deal a good amount of dam without the hawks ring.

I've made a chaos composite bow +5 for a toon with 14str/16dext (will be used with heavy arrows). He won't go further.
Before trying to make a regular CB+15 and wasting chunks and slabs, I'd like to know if th CB+15 will do better. I auto assumed that it would not be the case at these relatively low stats, but reading this topic, I'm starting to wonder.
As anyone tested the difference at these stats or close?