Ok, where to start? First, the auto-release on the bow is annoying, and the REQUIRED holding time for a ‘heavy’ attack that doesn’t do extra damage is just a failure.
Bows need to be buffed, please up the damage. They are pathetic now.
If you are worried about bows being overpowered… counter with armor. That’s the POINT of armor. Give bows full damage equal with melee weapons and let the armor do the work.
Allow kicking with the bow. This is essential, and it’s rather dumb that it wasn’t included.
Bows have become useless, whether as hunting or sniping tools. And despite this supposedly being a ‘melee’ game, it’s untrue to the setting that bows be sidelined. Many characters in the stories used bows, in the original movie, Conan’s friend Subotai favored the bow and daggers, his love was killed by a poison snake fired as an arrow.
Speaking of poison, with bows being so hard to use for most people as is, if you aren’t going to buff them, at least allow arrows to be poisoned, for hunting if nothing else.
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Indeed. Glad you mentioned hunting. I found it hilarious when I was unable to kill the game with bow (doing 1/6 of its total hp in one shot) while in the meantime I could run up close and flay it do death with daggers. SO IMMERSIVE 
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Bow’s aren’t that bad. I mean, I have 78% damage reduction with my armor, a dragon bone bow with dragon bone arrows will hit me for a whopping 7.92 points of damage! And I only have well over 400 HP that regenerates naturally. You can take me down with about 80 shots, provided I stand still and don’t do anything. That’s awesome.
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I would agree something needs to be done with the bow to make it more useful in pve and more viable for pvp.
From a pve point of view you can us it to attack npc from afar before going in with melee. But the damage is low so it’s only a bonus rather than the go to weapon of choice.
From a pvp point of view the damage is so minimal that it makes very little impact on the fight. It is easy to dodge the arrows as well so you don’t make contact as often as you like. Therefore its use limited to circumstances where you might want to hit someone climbing a wall, where someone is standing still or swimming across the water.
The cost of using a bow is high given the amount of resources needed to make high end arrows, compared to that needed to make and repair high end swords. Additionally arrows weigh a lot! So to take 200/300 arrows around with you takes a lot of your allowance.
It would help if one of the perks also reduces the weight of arrows and when crafting keep the cost the same but instead of producing 1 arrow at a time you craft stacks of 10.
The benefit of the right click firing of the bow makes little sense other than to see better when you aim. I think increased damage and being able to release when you like would make this better. Also I don’t mind not having a kick but would like to be able to go first person and zoom in slightly like before!
"Ten Ton Hammer: Balance is always going to be a hot topic in any game with PvP, and Conan Exiles is no exception. Archery is considered weak and armor variances don’t offer enough differences (everyone seemingly lumps for heavy because there’s no real drawbacks). What’s your thoughts on both? What are the main balance concerns for the team right now?
Joel: I think we disagree about archery. The problem here is that Exiles is a classless game, and people keep asking us for the ability to be full-time archers. Which is viable, but only if you invest fully in accuracy and getting the best bows and prepping ammo. It’s a possible route, but one that requires sacrificing viability in other areas."
Source: http://www.tentonhammer.com/articles/conan-exiles-an-interview-with-creative-director-joel-bylos
Here is what are devs think about archery, just had to put it out there. It’s embarrassing and should be shown for everyone to see. Anyone who actually played the game, should know archery is trash.
yeah, too bad even stacking the build like that, Archery is still hot garbage. You don’t need to stack strength for melee builds. Hell, most “meta” builds only take strength up to 20, opting for max vit and grit instead. Also kind of funny he avoided the armor issue. Everyone just runs around in Silent Legion armor with a spear and two-handed sword.
I put all my points into accuracy over strength, trying to be an actual archer. Still did extremely low damage. It’s a complete joke. It doesn’t even help that the way shooting works in the game is just so broken. Arrows fly around with no regard to where you’re aiming.
It is good to be reminded of this statement occasionally. Many take the statement by Oscar (and later reiterated by Jens) that they are looking into trying to re-implement how you used to be able to hold and aim as they are going to completely fix archery. That has never been stated.
Classless? Well, that is odd. I am playing a different Conan Exiles it seems. My Conan Exiles is filled with Archer I, II, III and Conchaka of Hyrkania and Galter of Bossonia and Lissa o’ the Longbow, Freya, Du’neman The Dragoon, Mandughai Hundred-Arrow and others.
The fact of the matter is that they had viable archery for the majority of EA that was too powerful in certain circumstances and mainly complained about by certain PVPers and that is a large (probably the largest) and vocal community (one Funcom is eager to drop and suckle for acknowledgement and approval). They were unable to find a proper archery solution that coincided with the showcase of the “world leading” combat system and so left the nerfed archery as part of the new combat. Then began the “CYA” campaign to support this action by stating archery is support, a sidearm and not meant to be a part of this melee-based world.
I know. I know. “Shoot” me. Funcom never implements knee-jerk, head shake causing quick fixes.
And in reality, can you look at the whole and call it a bad move? They gave a big meaty bone to the larger community (though I really think they bit off more than they can chew by putting their focus on PVP and will ultimately be unable to keep that community completely happy) and the archery community has a few scattered threads that mostly die out and occasional posts within other discussions and cannot even form and support a single, cohesive thread to get and maintain attention on the matter.
As an example, look at what happened when the PVE-C community was scorned by Funcom in favor of PVP. They formed up and hammered on Funcom, got responses and ultimately results. We’re simply too much a minority or a community too filled with Lone Wolves.
Oscar did comment on a streaming question about holding the drawback and release on demand its just the current combat system removed that ability. Its not that they didnt acknowledge the issue they just havnt done anything about it. I think they know archery could use some love but they probably don’t feel its that bad as we see it.
This is a melee based game and they wanted to keep that intact. I believe they even said bow was never meant to be a primary weapon, but a secondary. Thats fine and all if its damage is slightly less but it should atleast function well. As it stands I dont even have a bow in my build, it sits in my inventory if I can’t reach a target reliably which is only been dreg buttons so far.