Hello to everyone reading, my name is Bears Say meow. Today I'm going to be sharing the knowledge I have acquired over the past week about what I believe is one the strongest weapon in the game. Bows. These weapons are extremely versatile, and the sky is the limit with what you can do. Now I'm coming from Xbox, a pvp perspective, and I only tested with precision bows. One of which has 700 draw speed because of the masterwork I have on it. Just something to keep in mind when I explain some numbers later on. So what we will be talking about today is, the bow itself, stats on the bow, how the stats work, how to use it, good ways to synergize perks, and some tips I found to make them into one of the best weapons.
The Bow
So first lets talk about the bow and how it work. The bow is a single shot weapon that does 151 to the head and 101 to the body. This means that you can get two headshots or two body shots to kill any guardian, but there are benefits to hitting headshots. We'll get to that later. Every time you shoot there is a reload animation. Then there's the draw time to when the bow is ready to shoot. If you hold the bow for to long however, it will shoot automatically. It will also do less damage the longer you hold it. The bow can be held for about .5 seconds. You can also half draw the bow to shoot it faster. The down side to this is that it will have travel time, do less damage, and will have a steep drop when fired. Only when it is fully drawn back will it be a hit scan weapon with no travel time. You will know that the bow is fully drawn back when you feel a rumble in your controller, and a little light on the side will glow green.
Stats
Stat wise, the bow is different from other weapons. Its the only weapon in the game that has a visible accuracy stat. The rest of the stats are normal. This includes Impact, Stability, Handling, Reload, and Draw time. Some of the non visible stats are Aim Assist, Recoil Direction, Weapon Size, and Zoom. The main bow we will be referring too today is the Subtle Calamity. This is because it is the only bow as of now that can roll with random stats. The Subtle Calamity has an Impact or 76, Accuracy of 79, Stability of 46, Handling of 52, Reload of 46, Draw Time of 760, and a Aim Assist of 70. The impact just shows what archetype it is in, and tells us how much damage it will do. Stability is how much the cross hair will deviate from its target after it is shot. Handling is how snappy the bow feels. Its how fast you can switch two and from the bow, and aim down sight. Reload is when after you shoot, you grab another arrow so you can shoot again. Draw time is how long it takes to draw the arrow fully back to do max damage. Aim Assist is how sticky the bow feels when going over an enemy and how much it slows down when you're strafing. It helps you keep your shot on point. They also have a hit box, which is extremely forgiving on bows, and seems to differ from weapon to weapon. Now for Accuracy. Accuracy is tied to the accuracy cone. When you pull the bow back when not ads, you will see the cross hair get tighter. That is the accuracy cone. This means when you're shooting from the hip, it could go in random places inside of that circle. So how this comes into play is when you hold down the bow for more then .5 seconds, the accuracy cone starts to get larger. This will mean that you will have more of a random shot placement. So you need to make sure that you fire before this happens, or you can reset the bow. Ill mention this in the tips section.
How To Use
Now that we have a general idea of what the bow is and how it works, lets talk about how to use it. With no fancy perks on the weapon and nothing to help it out, a 760 draw time bow can fire 2 shots in 1.36 seconds. Now that is a terrible ttk. I would say one of the worst in the game, but there's a lot we can do to lower this ttk. One thing we can do is peak shot. Peak shooting is when you're near cover, you shoot your gun, go back into cover, then shoot again. This is useful because your taking away that 1.36 time to reload and draw another arrow. By doing this you do a ton of damage, while taking little to no damage yourself. Another thing you can do is slide, shoot, slide. I like to do this, but its a little more risky. What you do is you slide, draw you bow mid slide, shoot when fully drawn, then repeat. This can completely throw off your enemy, but against good players it wont work all the time. A third way to use this is when you jump. The bow can be drawn while you are jumping, and has extremely good in air accuracy. this can really mess with your opponent if executed correctly. Something else you can do is crouch shot. This, like everything else, is used just to throw off your opponent so that they miss some shots on you while you draw another arrow. You should never rely on your opponent missing shots, but it never hurts to try. An extremely good tactic to use is team shooting. This weapon does so much damage in an instant, that you can basically kill any guardian as soon as you have that shot. Its defiantly one of the best team shot weapons in the game.
Optimizing With Perks & Abilities
I'm extremely excited to talk about this next part and nerd out. So Many Numbers! We have discussed a good amount of the foundation of bows now. So I hope you guys have a better grasp of it, and if anything can get something from what I said. Now however, we will be talking about what is the best way to optimize this amazing weapon. There are sooooo many ways to build a setup around a bow. You can get the ttk down to around .9, have amazing in air accuracy, or be more mobile. This mostly depends on your preferred playstyle, but here's some numbers on the perks that I have tested. As a starting point, a 760 bow reload an arrow in .66 seconds, you then draw the bow back in .72 seconds with no perks added to it. With a reload perk on your arms, it reload in .03 seconds faster. With sneak bow you can reload in .06 seconds faster, with both that's .09. Now if you use an exotic that helps with reload, like ophidian, or dragon shadow, you can get the reload down even further! I only have a hunter, so I used dragons shadow, which reduces the reload by .15! With all that added up, you can get your bow down to a ttk of 1.12! That a pretty good difference. But wait, we still have the draw time to talk about. If you use a string that decreases draw time, you can get a bow down to 740 or 720 from 760. If you have a masterwork on it for 10, you can shave off another 40 points. My bow is at 700, but can get down to 680. At 680 you can bring the draw speed down .12 seconds. Then the last thing you can do to decrease this draw speed is with archers temp. This perk states, "If you get a head shot, you have a short period of increased draw speed." After you get a HS, you draw speed goes down .09. But again with DS, it brings it down with archers tempo .18 seconds. So with all those perks added up, you can have a ttk of .94! Now that's a HUGE difference! But wait, there's more. You can also shoot your bow two frames before the light turns green and have max damage and have it be hit scan. So the grand ttk that you can get your bow to with all these perks, and abilities, is .87 seconds. The same as Ace of Spades, but only requires two shots!
Tips, Tricks, & Random Tid Bits
Phew, that was a lot. Lastly we can move onto some tips I have found while using bows. One thing is you can reset the timer to prevent your bow from shooting automatically. How you do this is you press the reload button, then you will start to undraw your bow. However, if press the reload button then immediately hold the fire button again, you will draw it back without having to redraw the hole bow. The bow can also role with quick draw. If you don't want to use your bow as a primary, you can use it as a priming weapon. You can shot someone in the head for 151, then clean up with a HC like Crimson. Or any weapon you would want to pair with a bow. Moving target is also a great perk for bows because it gives you that increased movement speed and AA while moving. It also increases you strafe speed past the maximum amount while at 10 mobility. They also flinch like crazy, so make sure that you use that to your advantage. A way I love to use them is against shotgunner. If you already have your bow drawn, you can shoot them in the head, then one burst them with an aggressive sidearm. I find this extremely useful. Sidearm's are my go to with bows since they cover almost every range in the game. They're a very good counter to snipers since they have such a crazy flinch. Because of this, sneak bow is a perfect perk to have. It decreases reload speed and increases hold time while crouched. Very good to slide then shoot a sniper. I think that's about it. If you have anymore tips, feel like I missed something, or that I got something wrong, let me know in the comment section below. Thank you to everyone that read this, and have a great day. Peace
