Elemental Upgrades: Bows

I read that elemental bows (i.e Fire bow) need special arrows. Arrows that share their properties, so for bows, you can only use fire arrows or moonlight arrows, so you can upgrade to fire/chaos or Divine/occult and maybe magic/enchanted. But I recently tested this, and saw no big diference in the damage output.

Fire Pharis +5: Does 117-119 damage to Hollow soldiers in undead church with standard arrows.

Fire Pharis +5 WITH Fire arrows: Does 157-159 Damage to the same enemies.

As you can see, there are only 40 points of damage more with fire arrows.

Now Standard arrows do 45 phys damage, and fire arrows do 35 phys damage and 50 fire damage, so

85 - 45 = 40 more damage.

That means that Fire bow only does more damage with fire arrows because the ARROWS DO MORE DAMAGE. Not because when you use fire arrows, the fire damage that the bow does applies.


Fire Pharis +5 damage shown in the stats with arrows (start menu):

299 damge with fire arrows
259 damage with standard arrows.
214 damage without arrows

Anyone tested this and saw a big difference using other arrows?

Here are Fire Pharis bow +5 stats:
107 Phys damg
107 Fire damg
=
214 damage

So in theory, this bow should do:

With standard arrows:
107 phys damage +45 phys damage from standard arrows = 152 phys damage

OR

With Fire Arrows

107 Phys damage +35 phys damage from fire arrows
and 107 Fire damage +50 fire damage from fire arrows = 299 damage (142 phys and 157 fire)

So anyone can help me here? Why does my bow do some much low damage? I thought that upgrading a bow to fire give it more damage but it seems that only phys damage applies? Anyway I can make the fire damage of my bow work?

just get it to 15+ normally if you can bows suck being elemental if you ask me

Keep black bow of pharis at +15. Trust me, the S scaling in dexterity is unbelievable. Even at 30 dexterity Im getting + 380 damage bonus from scaling alone.

Wade_Wilson wrote:Keep black bow of pharis at +15. Trust me, the S scaling in dexterity is unbelievable. Even at 30 dexterity Im getting + 380 damage bonus from scaling alone.

Thanks for the tip, that's a lot of damage, but I'm trying to make work the fire damage my bow has. Let's focus in that.

bump* someone has to know how does this work.....

Upgrading bows to elemental/divine/magic only effects the bows damage (R2), not the arrows it shoots. In fact, due to the removal of scaling, it will usually result in LESS damage to upgrade them along one of these paths.

aceluby wrote:Upgrading bows to elemental/divine/magic only effects the bows damage (R2), not the arrows it shoots. In fact, due to the removal of scaling, it will usually result in LESS damage to upgrade them along one of these paths.

Bows can't attack in anyway if not shooting arrows. Pressing R2/L2 will only change the type of arrows you're going to shoot. Pressing L1 zooms. Pressing R1 shoots. If you one hand it, pressing R2/L2 will change arrows too.

aceluby wrote:Upgrading bows to elemental/divine/magic only effects the bows damage (R2), not the arrows it shoots. In fact, due to the removal of scaling, it will usually result in LESS damage to upgrade them along one of these paths.

Bump

ChizFreak wrote:

aceluby wrote:Upgrading bows to elemental/divine/magic only effects the bows damage (R2), not the arrows it shoots. In fact, due to the removal of scaling, it will usually result in LESS damage to upgrade them along one of these paths.

Bows can't attack in anyway if not shooting arrows. Pressing R2/L2 will only change the type of arrows you're going to shoot. Pressing L1 zooms. Pressing R1 shoots. If you one hand it, pressing R2/L2 will change arrows too.

You are correct. I also read that divine bows do kill the skeletons in the catacombs, however I don't think it adds any damage. It's hard to verify since it definitely doesn't give any visual indication. I'll give it a go when I get home to see if a lightning bow does less damage than a lightning +1. I don't think it does.

aceluby wrote:

ChizFreak wrote:

aceluby wrote:Upgrading bows to elemental/divine/magic only effects the bows damage (R2), not the arrows it shoots. In fact, due to the removal of scaling, it will usually result in LESS damage to upgrade them along one of these paths.

Bows can't attack in anyway if not shooting arrows. Pressing R2/L2 will only change the type of arrows you're going to shoot. Pressing L1 zooms. Pressing R1 shoots. If you one hand it, pressing R2/L2 will change arrows too.

You are correct. I also read that divine bows do kill the skeletons in the catacombs, however I don't think it adds any damage. It's hard to verify since it definitely doesn't give any visual indication. I'll give it a go when I get home to see if a lightning bow does less damage than a lightning +1. I don't think it does.

It will probably do more damage because when you upgrade it to +1 lighting, the phys damage also raises, not only the lighting damage.

aceluby wrote:

ChizFreak wrote:

aceluby wrote:Upgrading bows to elemental/divine/magic only effects the bows damage (R2), not the arrows it shoots. In fact, due to the removal of scaling, it will usually result in LESS damage to upgrade them along one of these paths.

Bows can't attack in anyway if not shooting arrows. Pressing R2/L2 will only change the type of arrows you're going to shoot. Pressing L1 zooms. Pressing R1 shoots. If you one hand it, pressing R2/L2 will change arrows too.

You are correct. I also read that divine bows do kill the skeletons in the catacombs, however I don't think it adds any damage. It's hard to verify since it definitely doesn't give any visual indication. I'll give it a go when I get home to see if a lightning bow does less damage than a lightning +1. I don't think it does.

If you could get someone else to test this with you, the ultimate test would be to shoot someone with a divine bow, have them cast Great Magic Barrier, and shoot them again. If the damage changes, then the bow is applying magic damage. You could also do it with a fire bow and Water Veil. The problem with the +1 lightning upgrade is that it also increases base physical damage over the plain lightning weapon, right? How would you know whether the increased damage was lightning or physical?

Well, right away, I think you pretty much disproved the theory that arrows of the same element would somehow also make the bow's element do damage.

I think you're on the right track, just keep getting more numbers so we can draw more conclusions.

- Like ace suggested, check the damage an elemental bow does at each upgrade level. Are your gains in damage at each level corresponding only to the amount of physical damage the bow gained, or is it more?

If it's more, it could be that your opponent's defenses are soaking up the majority of the elemental damage. But if the increase in damage is the same as the increase in phys, and no more, then test it on a few more enemies. If it stays true for all enemies, then you've disproved that elemental arrows will stack with the bow's elemental damage.


- Also, test out different upgrade paths on the same bow. Try to get the same attack rating purely physical and split phys/ elemental, with the same bow, by de-upgrading it then going a different path.

If they're both at the same attack rating, but the physical-only one outperforms the elemental one against all enemies, then you'd have proven that elemental damage does, in fact, not work for bows.


Edit: I was writing while Strangejoy posted, but that's a good suggestion too!

Put this on the Archives section I will be needing this for my new DEX/Faith build! And thanks everyone!

bump* this topic was recently moved to The Archives so I'm bumping so people in this forum can help me with this research. Please read the full topic before posting.