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i dont know about all that inflated vs pure ranged attack bull shet that rbf had but ranged is and will always be better than wa because the amount of either you can get will be the same. whether chd is better than ranged is dependent on how much chd you can get at 100. chc will be tier 1.
I think the choice @ 95+ will be
RA+ CRIT chance vs CRIT chance+ CRIT damage boost.
Both RA and CDB will benefit in high Dex. But the main factor in RA is the weapon damage will sum up.
On a lowbie archer i used pure crit bow and xbow, xbow is way better, but it will be different story when you get lvl6-7 scatter. I much rather use bow, so that il crit more times just because of att speed difference. + you wont need to use that much money on mana pots but just autoattack and chaser from time to time
I wonder why most of the scout around lvl75+ use crit chance bow now..Quote:
Originally Posted by Demonic6000
I see them doing good with bow compare to me with xbow+ra.
If you play AA-based with scatter shot, the bow will scale better. The crossbow is better for those utilizing skill rotations and proper AA resets via interrupting crossbow animations and casting. If you're unfamiliar with the crossbow and use AA's a lot, your kill speed will drop significantly versus that of a good bow in the later levels; weapons early on provide a lot of static offensive pressure through base weapon damage, and the scout doesn't shine until gaining access to most of their skills at ranks 5+ in the mid-80's and early 90's. The pre-70 levels certainly favor crossbows, especially since bow mastery won't be maxed to even come close to reaching the difference in what's almost double the base weapon damage on the crossbow.
Kiting with a crossbow is easier because it has a substantially longer attack range, to which Long Shot also scales further ahead of the bow. However, if comparing a good crossbow to a good bow, since the range is only applied to AA's, the bow performs similarly in a purely kiting setting in respects to killing a target as it approaches. Though the crossbow build will be slightly more mobile given the periods of AA downtime into a full-run between its animations.
At the higher levels where Scatter shot and so on have a higher level of precedence, I suspect a crit-based bow will out-damage a crossbow in all fronts in PvE. My initial thought on the scout, which seems to be holding pretty true, is that a crossbow should be used mostly in PvP-based builds - skipping bow mastery entirely - while a bow should be used in PvE for the AA and AoE speed on Scatter Shot. I suspect PvP endgame crossbows (The legendary ones) should move to RA/Weapon Attack over crit chance due to an enhanced Legendary crossbow based on current trends having close to if not more than 2000 base weapon damage, while the bow will cap in the 1300ish area. Expecting a 4-5% amount of RA/WA per part on the 16 parts needed to make the weapon, this would imply 64-70% Ranged attack and similar stats on Weapon Attack, boosting effective white WA/pure RA from the crossbow stats alone to well into the 3000's which then gets re-scaled by the % RA since WA will contribute to Ranged attack appropriately - now pushing over 4000 RA from a weapon alone. Doing so will effectively multiply base damage by a factor of three if my numbers are correct in how weapon damage scales on defense, and will likely double PvP damage at near-endgame stats - substantially more than the gains from critical hits suggest as dex plateaus into the ~1.5k-2k mark, as crits will be only boosted by this static amount, and not every attack will be guaranteed to crit. I suspect that even the Ranger's Critical Shot, which also has a built-in extra dex:crit scaling on the attack, will still deal less damage in a crit-oriented build than one which runs WA utilizing a crossbow (which also takes advantage of gains from Mastery - Woohoo ~5000 RA from weapons alone!)
That being said, the bow still has plenty of purpose in PvP and is an option in particular for playing crits; the stagger effect on-crit can delay enemies, and the gains from speed wind at the estimated 40% crit chance with the legendary bow specced for crit will potentially allow scouts to shoot with relative safety with the constant staggering on top of more Frozen procs and permanent CC locking given 200 int.
I'm a 9x scout,
I enjoy bow for pve because of scatter shot and my aoes, I crit faster and kill mobs faster. I've heard some people saying xbow is better but to me I've tried both and still enjoy the use of a bow.
I enjoy xbow for PVP because the base damage is higher for auto attacks.
Everyone has their own preferences it's just best to find out what is yours.
I also use my full vit defender to help tank mobs so it helps as well.