Question about bows..

[MysticoN]

Hello ppl.. im a new ranger so many of you may find my question stupid<img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />I find my self useing my bow ONLY for "spamming" my bow skills.. so when im in a grp i whil only use normal bow attack 1-2 times (while waiting for next skill to fire)so my question is: do dmg have anything to say on the bows?just have to say this one more time.. im a new ranger, so no flameing here<img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /> hehe<p>Message Edited by MysticoN on <span class="date_text">01-06-2006</span><span class="time_text">08:10 AM</span></p>

[Zholain]

<font size="2">If you're speaking or ranged (bow) auto-attack, I'd say you're well within the norm.  And as you level higher, you'll notice you're using auto-attack even less and less as you acquire more bow combat arts(CA's).  As a damage dealer, you want to always remain active and make sure that you're doing your job.  While waiting for bow CA's to refresh, this is a good time to move in and use your melee attacks to help maximize your damage.There are, however, exceptions to everything.  When raiding, sometimes it is better to sit back using ranged auto-attack than move in for melee.  Epic mobs nearly always have some sort of AOE, and with the offensive stance procs we can still deal a significan't amount of damage useing ranged auto while standing a better chance of avoiding omni-directional AOE.</font><div></div>

[illum]

<div></div><div>how you want to dish out the DPS (damage per second) is all dependant on the style you prefer.  one thing to remember is if you're using poison, EACH arrow you shoot has a chance to proc...so if you have a poison that does 100dd, and you use a bowskill that shoots 3 arrows, that's a possible 300dd total.  Now for different styles of dishing out damage:</div><div> </div><div>1. sit there, and just autoattack with your bow and throw in the occasional CA to take a bigger bite of damage out</div><div>2. spam bow CA's then move up to use melee CA's then move back when bow CA's are back up, rinse / repeat</div><div>3. have mages add proc spells to you, use poison, then use bow skill...gain aggro like no tomorrow</div><div> </div><div>and in case i totally misunderstood the question the damage done by just autoattacking with a bow can be changed by using a higher grade arrow, having higher str, and using the right bow (affects, bonuses, etc)...Note that using a higher grade arrow does NOT change the damage done by your special bow skills (or at least it didn't way back when I last checked).</div><div> </div><div>hope that helps</div>

[Ssindain]

Don't forget that your auto attack is still going off while you're hitting your CAs, in with the spam of poisons and procs it can be easy to miss.  It still waits the delay of the bow but will fire off after the CA when its time is up.<div></div>

[Jay]

<div></div><p>It's interesting, Zho's right that you'll use your autoattack less frequently for a while, but I'm finding that I'm now starting to use it more frequently than ever before. I have so many bow CAs that I can usually stay at ranged for the whole battle and just space them out, using autofire b/w CAs and recasting the arts as my timers refresh. Agreed on the raiding point, too - I almost always stay at extreme range there.</p><p>For you, now, you'll probably get into the habit of using your bow CAs and melee CAs together, which can get kinda busy sometimes. But for a while I saw that as the best way to maximize my damage - now, at later levels, I find that my melee arts aren't nearly as big a portion of my overall DPS as they once were.</p>