Been a while since ive played, I tend to only play pve and was wondering, Are bows still trash? Last time I played you put all your points into making a good archer and still ended up doing 1/4 the damage with soft pitch arrows that a blind person could dodge. Has this finally been fixed or should i stop holding out hope?
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Archery did eventually get a decent update. When it was trash (shortly after the game came out of EA), I had improved it with a mod. Once Funcom made their changes, I stopped updating and maintaining the mod. Effectively their changes made my mod actually nerf what they did, so they took archery into the slightly OP side of things.
I think they did another pass to bring it in line and its not in a bad spot. However there was a recent patch that broke the power shot. They tried to give it utility to push back monsters and knock down people, which works, but it took away its bonus damage.
So you can use <=39 Accuracy to power shot for extra damage. 40+ Accuracy you only power shot for the knock down. Its a bug, and its been reported. It doesnāt make archery bad, but it is a bummer.
Iām currently maining Archery and from a PVE point of view, it makes the game pretty easy. Especially if you use a Thrall with an envenomed weapon to tank. Youāll never pull agro if they can poison.
I guess ill keep trying it, friend and I started on a server and are up to hardened steel weapons, he is using a 2 hander and does around 7x the damage i do so far and can engage 3+ enemies all at once doesnt waste resources per attack like my bow does and he hasnt even really specced into str yet im already feeling more and more useless
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If they donāt have STR but you have ACC, you should be doing equal damage or even a tad more. Now you have to understand 2H Swords will attack quicker and hit more things at once. Melee DOES have more DPS. Its part of the perk of being within range of attacks.
It might be in range but it doesnt cost per attack, I ended up swapping out to a melee build and am having a lot more fun doing a ton more damage. If bows are going to have a cost per shot and limited on hiting targets then they should honestly do more damage then a sword. It makes me sad because i prefer range weapons
In PvE, bows might appear useless.
But if you look at PvP in this game, they are very strong:
Funcom canāt bufff bows at the moment because they donāt balance PvE and PvP separately. Any buff would make them OP in PvP again.
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I wonder how well that works with targetting disabled. Most servers Iāve PVPād on have it turned off.
Targetlock was disabled on this server
I only see a bad piker vs a good bow user, the piker could have swapped out to shield and ignored the bow user, or timed his attacks quite a bit better instead of spamming while the guy was rolling, he kept trying to spam attacks long after the bow user had rolled and run away. Great player with crap weapon > bad player with decent weapon
considering the costs and the drawbacks to using a bow they need something, just not worth it for what they require, super specific build, light armor , tons of your weight being used for arrows multiple bows to quickslot different types of arrows, easily dodgeable arrows( also hard to target because nothing runs in a straight line), can only engage 1 target.
You donāt need multiple bows. If you have the ammo types on the bar, they will equip to the bow you have readied.
As to your other concerns. You should probably stick with melee. Thereās no reason not to in the Vanilla game. You can pretty much get in heavy armor, and right click any boss to death with your choice of melee weapon. The game is that easy.
Though if you play with Age of Calamitous or Endgame Extended Weapon Arsenal, this isnāt so much the case. Those two mods add in challenges that require a bit more effort from both ranged and melee that the vanilla game simply does not offer.
Bad piker? Nah this guy is decent.
How would a shield killed the archer? It would just have let him block the shots.
I have a hard time to believe you would have done a better job tbh. You are welcomed to try tho. Dogs of the desert private server wich wipes tomorrow. Come and show us, since you calling that guy a bad piker.
I know how I would have dealt with the archer, and itās kinda the same way that guy did. But still itās not an easy task, since archer have the range and can play really defensive against you.
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I never found the bow/archery trash, always used it.
Keeping distance is efficient.
Butā¦ the bow has hardly anything with good nice archery as in some games but nothing is very good in terms of fighting in CE (imo)
The bow can be very usefull in/for soloplay.
As lots of things in CE you need to adapt to the quircks of it.
Above that - if they worked, archers are (where) good defense attillery.
Using a bow from horse is also quite fun and actually not that difficult.
Iām new to CE, only playing for a couple weeks now, and I usually prefer a ranged approach to most games. Itās the playstyle I like.
Iām playing on a PvE server with a couple of friends just exploring the world and having fun building, and Iāve thrown in for an archer build while my roommate goes 1h Axe & shield. Weāre in the late 30ās and early 40ās for levels and heās devastating entire camps while I have trouble warding off even a single NPC sometimes. I land only a few shots before the NPCs close in and I have to switch to melee, which is super weak because Iām not building into it. Archery just doesnāt feel viable for even basic animal hunting. I am using a level appropriate bow and arrows, as well. Iāve read on some of the forums already that late game bows are great and good for damage but the experience of getting to late game has been a pain in terms of combat.
Iāve tried taking a bear pet along but I canāt seem to get a reasonable set of commands on it to prevent the bear from charging into fights it canāt survive, even with my assistance. If I tap āxā to try to get the bear to return to me or run away, it just turns and fights again as soon as an enemy swings at it. It makes me more sad than frustrated to constantly see pets die because I canāt figure out how to control them better (Iāve tried multiple command combinations and tried to google better ways and havenāt found a good one yet, my poor bears).
I agree that archery feels far more resource intensive than it is worth, as well. I have to repair my bow, plus dump a ton of materials into the arrows (increasingly so, like all other things, as you go for better arrows), plus I have to maintain my melee weapon, shield, and armor on top of that. Whereas my roommate is burning a lot less resources repairing his gear, with no ammo spent (feels pretty crappy wasting bars of metal and feathers with only a few misses in combat). Sometimes I canāt even manage to kill basic deer/elk because the first shot doesnāt kill them and then they go shutter-glitching their way across the landscape, impossible to hit again (not to mention weird issues like an arrow ricocheting off their face and doing no damageā¦might be a server thing? Iām on Xbox with a paid private server, 
).
Conan Exiles is a tough world and thatās fine, but archery as a build just doesnāt feel viable in PvE. As support thatās fine but if I am not following my roommate around and when I canāt get a pet to not Leeroy Jenkins itself to death, it gets very frustrating.
And itās understandable that PvP should be considered, especially since they arenāt balanced separately like something like Destiny, but PvE mechanics shouldnāt suffer horribly or become much less viable because of PvP. There must be a better solution.
TL:DR - This game does a lot of things really well compared to other survival games and Iām enjoying playing with my friends, despite a few other weird issues weāve run across (our most deadly opponent so far has been the elevatorā¦), but the archery (and pet) system has been really frustrating.
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Iāve seen that shooting the legs cripples, but by the time I line up another shot the cripple has worn off. And thatās if Iām lucky enough to have a single target.
Coming out with āLike I saidā and reiterating the bow is ānot a dps weaponā is not a helpful response (have the devs ever come out and expressed such a statement directly?). Following up with ābut since youāre newā comes off as patronizing. I agree with what others have said that if you have a full stat dedicated to something it should be more viable. I donāt expect to be one- or two-shotting enemies with a bow (ādps top dogsā). I expect it to be a viable weapon to build a playstyle around with some semblance of balance with the others.
āAxe and shield outclasses most things in CEā sounds like a balance problem to me. Especially with the specific example I gave. Axe + Shield = 6-7 enemies with no problem. Bow = 1-2 enemies, with difficulty. Thatās quite a disparity. But since you see an entire weapon class with its own attribute as a utility and not something to do damage with, that would make sense to you. I gave an opinion as a new player, in a way that was attempting to be constructive, but your response feels like a patronizing attempt to shut down that kind of discourse. Forums exist for community but also for devs to get a feel for what people enjoy, dislike, find confusing, etc. Such opinions should be welcome, if they are respectfully shared (for example, Iād avoid calling bows ātrashā but do feel the system is frustrating and imbalanced).
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You should be able to keep three targets crippled indefinitely.
That feels like a very āgit gudā answer. Can you elaborate? Iām playing on xbox and you could probably get some quick shots off to multiple creaturesā legs but the accuracy required on three moving targets would be something special, and youāll be there a while with the damage of non-charged shots. I assume itās easier with a mouse and keyboard(?).
Much. It wasnāt indicated you were using a controller.
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I still find that bows have their uses. Not as a main weapon, no - but as a support weapon. I can pull aggro with a bow. I can probably kill two or three hyenas if I start shooting at them from a distance before they reach me. I can hunt meat with a bow. I can snipe isolated NPC camp guards with a bow. And sometimes, if my thrall is tanking, I can attack a boss with a bow (although I prefer melee there as well).
So whether bows are viable depends on what you expect them to do. If you want to win all your fights with a bow - then no, itās not going to serve your purposes. But if you want to start an engagement from a distance and soften your opponents before engaging in melee, bows work just fine.
Bows do less damage than melee. Bows have a cost to use. Both of these are drawbacks. In return, you gain distance. You gain a chance to kill or at least seriously hurt your opponent before it has a chance to harm you. Thatās a massive advantage.