Bows | Elden Ring Wiki

This weapon class is not really viable. Poor scaling, slow-motion arrows that many enemies effortlessly dodge and many hyper aggressive enemies or enemies with shields that rush you down. Only good for pulling enemies out of groups ro rune farming. Fromsoft mseems to really hate this weapon class.

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Bow “users” in PvP when I pull out my cleanrot sword with unlimited rot grease:

SHlTTED PANTS

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bows are viable if you use the ammo swap bug

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bow mfs when stormwall

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I miss when you could infuse these with elemental damage (DS2) and have them on dedicated faith or Int builds. They were super useful that way I have no idea why Fromsoft took that from us.

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if I see a light rolling bow user, im busting out the halberd. not in the mood getting roll-shot or jump-shot 600 times in a row

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The erdtree bow is a great bow, not a bow

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Step 1: Start a bow build, getting some upgrades on black bow, nice and chill.
Step 2: you regret coz you don't deal too much dmg and your scaling sucks
Step 3: get Loretta's Magic bow
Step 4: Respec to become mage once again Lmao

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Medium bows need more love from devs. Light bows are reliable in PVP as how fast they can shoot while Greatbows are good for hard hitting, but medium bows aren't just good at anything as they aren't fast (except Black Bow), can't do a fast draw technique like Greatbows, and their damage is a middle between light and great bows.

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where's the Shortbow?

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the efficacy of bow builds basically hinged on how insanely broken lightroll was combined with the jump shots and rolling shots, now that light roll is fair, bow builds need to play it much safer to not just get run down by thrust attacks

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I think instead of giving bigger scaling to bows, Fromsoft should make them ignore a percentage of armor/absorption, to make them viable all game long while also never making them more damaging then the big ooga booga clubs

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piss damage, obnoxious moveset, literally the mosquito of elden ring builds

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I'm really hoping Fromsoft has 1 or 2 unique bows in the upcoming DLC :'( maybe one that uses fp to shoot magical arrows or something

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Does anyone even use a bow seriously? I only see them used for boss cheeses or rune farming.

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Imagine this being your favorite weapon class in these games.

Haha.

Couldn't be me.

Loool.

At least Bloodborne still has Simon's ;_;

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everyone talks about how annoying bows are to fight, since theyre so fast with low recovery time, forgetting that the swift glintstone shard for sorcerers is faster, more annoying, better damaging, and has tracking. an entire weapon class is worse than a single spell. not to say that they should become a better glintstone shard, i hate glintstone shard. so yes, drastically buff their damage scaling, but nerf the recovery speed alongside it. and nerf glintstone shard while youre at it

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Just like Staffs/Seals, both Bows and other ranged options got shafted in the Infusion and Ash of War departments.

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im just saying, longbow arrows should move as fast as the radahn arrows for greatbows

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fromsoft all i want is for you to buff the scaling on these things, its one small change to make these viable and thats it

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I am just guessing here, but i think if bows were given the chance to be buffed or have better scaling it would make them too powerful and annoying as enemy snipers are... in almost every aspect of combat they are good, except damage and resource usage. they are fast, with low recovery, safe, imbued with any status your arrow has,... FS already removed the silly super close targeting restriction of previous souls games.

Same reason sorcery has low tier homing ability

I mean, China made the great wall to keep a much smaller army of expert archers from invading.

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Yeah adding to the last comment, why are like half the bows in the game not listed?

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Why is the Composite Bow not listed here? (https://eldenring.wiki.fextralife.com/Composite+Bow)

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For the aspiring archer, use your quiver like so: Use one slot for your damage dealing arrows, pretty self explanatory. Your other slot is where it can get interesting. Use the second slot for status inflicting/utility arrows. Swap the arrows in this slot for whatever the situation calls for. Need to distract something so you can sneak by? Put some shattershard arrows in your quiver. Want to deal some DOT? Put some poisonbone/serpent arrows in your quiver, or perhaps even some precious rotbone arrows if you need alot of DOT. Want to leave a marker somewhere, mark an invisible enemy, or map out an invisible path? Use some rainbow stone arrows! That second slot can give you alot of utility if you make good use of it, makes being an archer quite a bit of fun actually.

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Bows are a more of a tool than a weapon. Use them to pick off or soften up mobs from range before finishing them with melee and they're extremely effective. They never have been and never will be primary weapons capable of taking on the thousands of mobs you'll encounter on their own; there's a good reason "bow-only" is a challenge run and not a common build. However, because so much of the challenge in these games is from getting swarmed, being able to pull one enemy from a group or delete an enemy sniper can turn a challenging fight into a complete cakewalk. Fire arrows can ignite explosive barrels, rainbow arrows can mark invisible enemies or paths, shattershard arrows can cause mobs to bunch up if they haven't noticed you, the list goes on. Use your head to divide and conquer and bows will be a vital tool in your kit.

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buff the scaling, but nerf the recovery speed of the short bow jump shots. make it better and more fun to play against. everyone wins

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im convinced the reason all bows scale so **** is literally how oppressive insta-jump-bowshot is

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why do fromsoft hate bows so much in elden ring. terrible scaling=piss damage late game, aside from rain of arrows no new interesting aow mighty and enchanted have the same animation, arrows are boring (at least in ds 3 dark arrows can home), while albinauric archers can shoot 3 arrows at once with magic and damage that can melt you in an instant. ffs from I know using bows can be seen cowardly and you're less likely to die since you have range but you cant use that reason with how op sorceries are in this game. buff bows in 1.08 pls, they're not as op you think they are.

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why do fromsoft hate bows so much in elden ring. terrible scaling=piss damage late game, aside from rain of arrows no new interesting aow mighty and enchanted have the same animation, arrows are boring (at least in ds 3 dark arrows can home), while albinauric archers can shoot 3 arrows at once with magic and damage that can melt you in an instant. ffs from I know using bows can be seen cowardly and you're less likely to die since you have range but you cant use that reason with how op sorceries are in this game. buff bows in 1.08 pls, they're not as op you think they are.

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Starting my bow build I used to believe bows didn't need a scaling buff because they'd be OP as offhand tools. I'm now at the end of my bow build believing the only thing holding these back from being a new fan favorite is scaling

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Regaurdless of build... "Trash mobs" be gone at no fp cost is where bows shine

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Anyone know of an interesting weapon combo for these? Like Longbow and Katana or something similar?

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whenever i complain about how bad longbows are people just tell me to use a greatbow and thats kind of the whole problem isnt it

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looking into it, some DS3 bows actually had rather good scaling, so why's that not the case now?

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I wanted to ask for some thoughts on a feeling I have; (quick context, I have only played DS2 SOTFS before Elden Ring as I had a bad laptop)
Did they make the lead calculation of the locked-on aim considerably worse? In DS2, I could easily hit running targets and it would miss only and understandably when the target changed speed or direction when the arrow is mid-air.
In Elden Ring, I regularly miss by seemingly 30cm when the target is perpendicularly aligned with me and just casually walking. I assumed they did that to make the enchanted shot AoW viable. But I still think its a bit annoying.

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fromsoft always makes an effort to make bows more viable with each game, but always give us the finger on the scaling. The golem bow has good scaling making it the best bow in the game, but not even nearly to the point where its overpowered...

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Imagine Fromsoft bows are as good as Dragons Dogma...probably never going to happen because of "muh realism".

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What tf is with From and being so stingy on non-magic ranged builds? You bring crafting to the table, and then decide to make bows practically useless?

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i miss you darkmoon bow :(

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Some might find this interesting and mildly useful. If you use manual aim to target an enemy far outside the bow's range the arrows wont do any damage when they hit, you'll see it clearly with fire arrows. Serpent arrows and maybe poisonbone, bleed or rot arrows will still proc their status effects though, but it seems to be at a reduced rate so I don't understand the reason why or how they would proc at all.

I first noticed this with the dragonkin soldier at the lake of rot, I didn't once consider fighting that thing ankle deep in rot water but I wanted the sword it drops. I had both arrow's sting and reach talismans equipped and I used the black bow with serpent arrows.

You have to make your way from pressure plate to pressure plate sprinting through the lake of rot dressed as a mushroom, past the basilisks that will try to have their way with you all while trying to not let the status bar fill with scarlet rot. But as you get closer to the grand cloister you can just make out where the dragon soldier is from some of the small stone platforms you raise out of the lake. The idea is to fight it from these platforms and good luck to you if your plan is trying to kill it as intended.

The trick is to find the furthest platform where you can still see and hit the boss with your bow, you'll know you have the right spot and found your range when you see it flinch when each serpent arrow hits, once you land enough hits the poison procs and you'll see the boss's health bar at the bottom of the screen that's the time to sprint straight for the rock outcrop you use to jump out of the lake and get to the entrance of the grand cloister and the dragonkin will follow you to that outcrop but at its highest point it wont be able to get anywhere near you while you shoot it full of arrows. It will start walking away now and again but comes right back when the next arrow hits, thankfully it doesn't do that thing some bosses will, vanishing back to its original spot when it gets too far from its station making it an easy kill.

I tried the same thing on one of the biggest envoys just before the second grace at the top of the Haligtree like the dragonkin soldier it was out of the pulley bow's range but with both sting and reach talismans I thought serpent arrows would work the same way on this enemy, they didn't and it's how I know arrows that proc status do so at a reduced rate if shot from too far outside the bow's effective range. I went through all 99 serpent arrows and 37 poisonbone arrows to kill it. These envoys don't have a silly resistance to both poison types either. After I got to and rested at the second grace I was curious, this time I used a shortbow with the rain of arrows AoW again with both reach and sting talismans and much closer to the envoy. Two clusters of serpent arrows from the AoW were enough to quickly kill it, I'd be interested if anyone knows why status arrows proc in the first place when it's at this much reduced rate and total effect.

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Are we just pretending the short bow doesn't exist or something?

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If you are getting ready to shoot but maybe choose the wrong arrow is there any way to cancel the shot without cycling through all three weapon slots and back to the bow? without the smart-arse option of equipping three bows.

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While you only need 2/3 the strength requirement to use bows normally since you have to two-hand them to fire, switching to a bow while on horseback treats it as though you're holding the bow one-handed even while being able to fire it. So if you fail to meet the strength requirement while one-handing it, you need to be two-handing it when you summon torrent, not when you equip it while riding torrent.

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Honestly i think the main reason people dont use bows isnt always the low damage, but just the fact that the moveset is really boring, especially on longbows. They dont have any kind of real heavy attack or anything.
Personally I think something that could make longbows more interesting is a charge attack related to how long you keep the arrow nocked. By default the Tarnished only pulls the arrow back about halfway, but I think it should slowly get pulled back farther than that, maybe about 2/3 or 3/4 of the way.
The damage buff on the charged shot could be about 10 to 20 percent, with a similar buff to the arrow speed and/or range alongside it.

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here for fromsoft's daily reminder to buff the scaling on bows already ffs

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Ideas:

Longbow class should be allowed Through and Through.
Shortbow class should be allowed Quickstep.
Black Bow should be allowed to change AoW.
Greatbows should be allowed AoW related to blocking, and should be allowed some pretty decent blocking.
All bows should have a melee attack.

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It’s extremely frustrating that you can powerstance every other weapon in the game but not bows! This is an injustice From >_<

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please god fromsoft improve the scaling, the highest it ever goes is D for any bow and thats just really, really stupid.

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In case anyone's interested, I tested these at plus 9/24 (depending on somber or regular upgrade requirements) and a few at 10/25. The Pulley bow has the highest damage at plus 10 with Albinauric slightly behind at 25. The Horn and Erdtree bows look like they have a higher AR, but in practice the split damage results on lower damage against the variety of enemies I tested against. The Black Bow is great for its barrage skill but is definitely lower damage if your sniping at a distance and lags behind Long Bow. I like the Serpent Bow but since its main point is to proc poison, there isn't much point to upgrading damage. However, I found it still lagged Pulley and Albinauric. I tested all within the range of 50. Didn't test the Pulley bows greater range but that's another reason it comes out on top. At 24, Albinauric damage is basically the same as Pulley at 9, although my character is Dex focused (but not min/maxed) so the experience may be slightly different based on your stats. Albinauric is more flexible since it can be infused. I generally prefer mighty shot anyway which the Pulley bow has, but it's sometimes nice to switch it up in some situations. If you're looking to use your rare ancient smithing stones before going into NG+, I think the three to choose from are Black, Albinauric, and Pulley depending on your play style and which stones you still have (somber or regular). I wouldn't upgrade all three and I chose the Black Bow personally for barrage, but if distance damage is your focus, I'd pick one of the other 2.

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Wondering when From will give bow gameplay the pizazz it deserves. Allowing Quickstep and slide and allowing arrows to be fired smoothly between dodges would have been a step in the right direction, then you would have had a makeshift version of the rollerskating Longbow gameplay in MHW. Allowing you to equip an arrow type without an ammo limit would have been a nice QoL change too, finding a new type of arrow dotted around the game would have had such a buzz behind it instead of 'oh 10 arrows I'm afraid to use because 1) I don't know how long I have to wait until I can buy them from a vendor or 2) until I reach the next grace to replenish.' That's not even counting being locked out of arrow stocks by multiplayer.

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Kinda unrelated but. I think im going to do a bow only run of this game, should i allow latenna (the bow summon) to be used in the playthrough?

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What's never mentioned in the info panels on the loading screen or on these wikis is that you can zoom in with the up and down on your D-pad. Really changes things.

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There are 3 other Bows to mention: Shortbow, Red Branch Shortbow and Misbegotten Shortbow.

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After finishing my bow only playthrough and a few pvp's, here's everything you need to know about a bow build and yeah it is viable and maybe even op in some cases.

1. The basic playstyle of a bow build requires many jump attacks and rolling and only bows and light bows are capable of shooting arrows while jumping and shortbows can do it after roll and in crouch mode. You need to always have an eye on your stamina bar. In early game you can get away with a shortbow and longbow until the golden shade boss (no spoilers) in leyndell. When you reach leyndell you can get the best bow in the game which is the "Black bow" this should be your main weapon like 80% of the time. barrage skill is perfect for applying status effects.

2. The only necessary talisman you wanna use is the "arrows sting" charm which raises your bow attack and the "ritual sword charm" since you're most of the time at full health. If you wanna go with a glass canon build get the "blue dancer" and "ritual shield" one too but the blue dancer overall doesn't get proper buffs until your naked af with a equip load of like 8 or lower so keep that in mind.

3. Every bow is good for a certain scenario but overall best bows in my opinion are: 1
Black bow 2. Pulley CROSBOW 3. Erdtree bow/Horn bow 4. Pulley bow


4. Your long range bow depends on what bow build you want to make and the damage scales only with that. The Erdtree bow with holy arrows scales only with faith so if you wanna get the max use of it go with 80 faith but you may have a problem with all late game bosses.
The Horn bow scales with int and you gotta use dwelling or magic arrows with it and pad you int up for a proper damage.
And the pulley bow doesn't scale with int or faith so if you don't want to up those stats you have to stick with this one
And keep that in mind your long range bow is only used in open world adventures in bosses you have to use the black bow since these ones are just too slow for that

5. And the ammunition.. in early game go farm some sheep for thin bones and don't forget to get the bone arrow cookbook from merchant kale. Then when you get enough runes go and buy massive arrows (not bone arrows) stock from Kale. Then if you beat the bell bearing hunter in the warmasters shack give his bell bearing to the twin maidens and you can infinitely buy bones. After you kill Godrick and your early game build stats is better go and buy some serpent arrows from the merchant in north Caelid. Serpent arrows deal HEAVY poison build up (it damages more than normal poison) it's basically a small budget scarlet rot. And the merchant in south caelid sells flame arrows too. If you got the bloodbone arrows recipe you can farm some bloodroses in and around fort haight (at the end game you can infinitely buy bloodroses from the merchant in Mohgwyn palace)
And in mid game if you want to buy holy arrows the merchant in between the leyndell and Altus Plateu sells them infinitely and the Mohgwyn palace merchant sells dwelling arrows (magic arrows) infinitely too.
If you hvae the heart go ahed and kill the merchants so you can buy all their arrows types at the twin maidens with their bell bearings

6. If you don't want to invest all in bows and just want to have one in your pocket get the pulley crossbow. It can be shot with one hand but needs reloading after every shot but this only crossbow fires 3 shots at once so is perfect for affinity build ups in fights (Burred bolt for bleed and the explosive bolt is great too + other affinity bolts) the other choice maybe pulley arrow or serpents arrow. Serpents arrow is lighter than the other and it has a passive that enhances your affinity buildups and i think the buildups is scaled with arcane (all buildups are enhanced except for rot)
* Keep in mind that the St. Trina arrows and black bolts are limited in each playthrough and cannot be bought or crafted (at least rn)

7. At last, overall bow builds are not only fun but actually viable both in pve and pvp but it requires so much skill in pvp to make it work since you don't have many moves or baits. Utilize jump shots and rolling shots with your arrows and always keep a mid range distance, mimic tear is not a good summon for this builds i usually go with the jellyfish early game and a blackflame monk or a knight, tiche or crystalline at the end game. Use mighty shot on your longbow to get enemies at long distances and jump shot and roll shot for other enemies and bosses and Use barrage skill on your shortbow to apply status.

--Spoilers--
+ Don't use greatbows. The jar canon always has higher damage but you can do some cheese strate with incantation buffs and the rain of arrows skill or Radahns rain with slow and large bosses like Dragonlord placidusaxx etc.. but they're heavy and slow overall + keep that in mind that some bosses are immune to some status effects and the elden beast is immune to every one of them


I hope i helped you how to make your bow build. I'm sure even if you try it for an hour you'll get addicted to it. Super fun and viable

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Ranged physical damage bad.
Ranged magic damage good.

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Difficult to main because of how fast enemies are and how many moves they can use to close the distance. They're meant to soften up the enemy or attracting attention from afar. FROM still treats bows as subpar because range can be abused because of the way aggro works if you can kill enemies constantly from afar and being able to keep distance. It's like they're allergic to bows, a shame because archers are pretty cool.

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There are a few bows missing on this list

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If you want an actual viable bow build in Elden Ring, don't bother. Base damage is bad, terrible scaling (i mean a D for Pharis Bow, really?), ammo is hard to get early on, and it really falls off damage wise once you reach Atlus Plateau. Even if you use all the arrow talismans, it still deals pitiful damage. Then again bow builds have never been the main focus in Dark Souls anyway. The only time they got close to actually being good was in Dark Souls II and we all know that game was an anomaly in the grand scheme of things. I mean, that's still the only game where you can dual wield Avelyns.
tl;dr If you want an actual ranged option, just go with Greatbows. They're also really good at Haligtree where it's open and full of deathpits.

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It's really lame how none of them have good scaling. Scaling was what made them unique from crossbows on builds. Unless, the scaling letters are all misleading us.

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Bows absolutely SUCK in PvP so if the idea crossed your mind don't bother.

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So disappointing, they should’ve added the slight tracking that enemies have with their arrows because you can completely miss targets that you’re locked onto if they move an inch.

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Why cant we put affinities on bows? Would add really good diversity to a very limited weapon class

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Longbow: is the best normal (str/dex) bow because you can get it early and if you want to use a bow in the game you'll need to upgrade it before getting to black bow/pulley/albinauric. Many of the other bows use somber stones though.

Albinauric: Slightly better than Longbow but slightly heavier and only available late-game. You'll have to re invest in upgrades to bring it up to your level. (Or does it drop with upgrades?)

Black bow: Lower base damage but higher dps because of weapon art. Wastes arrows faster though.

Pulley bow: Lower base damage but better overall damage because the increased range actually matters (unless you use bows point blank, which you dont).

Horn bow: Good bow for Moonveil builds because of the investment needed to INT.

Serpent bow: The only bow with ARC scaling, which means you'll want this if you have an arc build. The Arcane scaling does not help with damage but improves bleed and poison buildup (and rot?). Lower base damage than Longbow.

Erdtree bow: Faith version of Horn bow, but has larger part of damage in faith than standard damage.

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What's funny is that I think they had the bows more correct in Demon's Souls where you get stuff like the Lava Bow which just adds fire damage on top of arrows. I loved that weapon. They have interesting ideas as far as designs go, but they need to actually include some incentives to use these more.

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If you’re wondering if bows are actually viable, you should look up CapnHarland on Tik Tok. Dude does a great job with the bow! No status, no exploits, just straight, raw, damage!

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To alleviate confusion, there's 3 separate pages for three kinds of bows (Bows, Light Bows, Greatbows). You can find them at the following:

Bows: https://eldenring.wiki.fextralife.com/Bows
Light Bows: https://eldenring.wiki.fextralife.com/Light+Bows
Greatbows: https://eldenring.wiki.fextralife.com/Greatbows

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can these do melee attacks like in the old games?

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I completed a bow only build for Elden Ring not long ago.

My conditions were that I could not use a weapon or tool in my main or off hand that was not a bow of some type. Everything else goes. I started this as a new game rather than new game plus and I have some thoughts to share from my experience. Mind you I did this sub level 150 for the entirety of the run, and didn't go out of my way to reach high levels or late game equipment early. I also used spirit summons in fights, but the usual options are not as available as expected. Below I'm going to talk about bows, what talismans to use, and how to level a character.

Bows suck.

There's no doubt in my mind after defeating every major boss in Elden Ring with a bow that bows need a bit of a buff. They are limited in so many facets that it's hard to often compromise with the needs of a given moment, but I will offer some helpful advice to anyone trying this ridiculous build. First thing's are first, have to discuss scaling on bows and the types of bows.

Five bow types: light bow, bow, greatbow, crossbow, and ballista. Out of these, you "can" use any of them, but you're only going to need to really get along with two or three.

The bow move sets are the most important. The light bows have sprint shots, roll shots, backstep shots, improved jump shots, and generally a faster firing speed along with having access to the skill Barrage which will be discussed a bit more below.

Normal bows and crossbows can be fired while in midair but lock you down harder than you expect when you land. You will find yourself often unable to react to enemy attacks, especially from those that don't give you much breathing room. We're talking fast enemies that cause a lot of damage like Malenia and Hoarah Loux. Anything larger than a light bow won't give you much chance to breathe unless you can continuously apply knockdown or stagger. This can be accomplished on some enemies with headshots, but it is not consistent enough a strategy as bosses tend to have change up behavior during fights. This will be demonstrated by bosses like Radagon and Malenia who will respectively deflect or outright dodge everything you throw at them during segments of the encounters.

Crossbows have an early advantage of being able to separately reload and fire, making them better for fights that give the player little opportunity to fight back.

Greatbows have high damage output per shot, but not high damage output per second. They do not apply statuses but can be used to knockdown enemies as well as buff the player. Believe it or not, they suck for sniping mainly due to the range. The Starscourge Greatbow is the most effective greatbow per shot with Radahn's Spears as ammunition.

I found no valid use for ballistas in my run. You can potentially use explosive shots to knock enemies off cliffs or to initiate a fight against larger groups of clustered enemies, but otherwise this is a niche option.

There IS a best overall bow. It is not the pulley bow. It is the Black Bow. I will discuss why further down.

I don't have much else to say about the bow types. In my experience the best bow type is the light bow for the improved mobility. Other bows are viable, but you won't get much opportunity to fire them as enemies tend to close gaps faster than you can recover from firing a shot. Biggest offender of this are the Bell Bearing Hunters. Most players abuse the range of bows and hop on rooftops to shoot these guys from safety until they're dead, but light bows can contest them on the field. It's slower but you don't always have the cheap and easy option available.

I was confused about bow scaling for quite some time until I tested a lot of things and did a little research on the side.

Crossbows and ballistas do not scale. Arrows fired from a bow inherit the damage scaling of the bow they are fired from. All bows deal physical damage as piercing damage as all arrows deal either total or mixed piercing. Arrows do not inherit status scaling from the bows they are fired from, except for one outlier, the Serpent Bow, and this only applies to poison arrows and no others.

What this all means is that to maximize your damage values of a specific type, be it piercing or fire for example, you're going to want to use a corresponding bow that has scaling that effects that type. All greatbows, bows, and light bows have scaling for strength and dexterity, so physical damage shouldn't be an issue... except that the scaling on every single bow sucks. There isn't a single bow in the game that gets C rated scaling on any attribute. This is why bows suck. Their damage output is horrendous. You have to take advantage of the range of a bow, and a couple useful talismans to really get your money's worth out of them.

Fire and holy damage arrows scale with faith, magic arrows scale with intelligence, physical arrows scale with strength and dexterity, and lastly lightning arrows scale with dexterity.

What the bow description says is irrelevant, not to mention the Fullmoon Crossbow has an incorrect note. It doesn't work with holy arrows. It functions best with magic arrows. Keep that in mind.

What talismans to use? I have a couple options I haven't seen anyone talk about.

The obvious two are the Arrow's Reach and Arrow's Sting talismans, as they explicitly improved arrow range and damage respectively. I would prioritize reach over sting as arrow damage falloff is harsh and sting won't cover that damage gap as well as reach will.

The not so obvious two are the Claw talisman and the Spear talisman.

Why these two? These two are the foundation of light bow combat. They are the absolute best options for damage output as they both grant about a 15% damage increase and that increases to nearly 34% combined due to the damage function used in game. You have many options when firing a light bow for quicker shots, but they all deal less damage than a normally fired arrow. To improve upon this, using a combination of back jumps and counter firing, you can deal adequate damage to targets while effectively dodging attacks. This does deplete stamina quickly, so it's important to keep that in mind and manage your resources. This strategy is actually the only valid means of quickly taking down human npcs or players as they dodge spam reactively whenever you fire an arrow. I can state this as a fact as I fought Fia's champions with a bow and watched them all roll in tandem at each fired shot, unless they were in the middle of an attack animation.

This is common behavior for many enemies. They will dodge every projectile fired at them, sometimes you don't even have to fire in their direction and they'll just dodge anyways, so the only way to effectively counter this is to attack them when they are stuck in an animation. While they are stuck in this animation, you will deal counter damage... improved damage on a shot, and the Spear talisman will grant a bonus on top of that. It's quite necessary and there's a nice sound indicator that you have accomplished a counter shot as well. Jump firing to provide yourself some space is key. Bait enemy attacks and counter with a backwards jump shot. It can often land a headshot...

But, we come to a bit of an issue.

Enemy hitboxes are bullshit.

This is a From Software game. They put a meticulous amount of effort into crafting enemy hit boxes to match their current stances and poses. This is troublesome as a lot of enemies twist, duck, weave, and leap during attacks while very few enemies allow one to target lock a different position on the body. The beastmen of Farum Azula are heavy offenders to this. They are incredible hard to counter fire with jump shots. You'll have to time your shots very well in order to hit them.

I could talk about a lot more, but I'll summarize below for convenience.

The Black Bow is the best bow because it acts like a light bow with higher damage than any other light bow. The improved move set allows one to take full advantage of counter attacking, which is the best way to get more damage out of your shots. The Spear talisman and Claw talisman can help with this and compensate for the lacking bow damage values. The best arrow to use is often dependent on the enemy you're fighting, but I've found fire arrows to the be the least resistant and easiest to access arrows. Malenia is possible, Hoarah Loux is possible... and hilariously, the Bow is actually the best build I've ever used fighting the Elden Beast. In a fight where you spend most of your time running to the boss, you can focus it down at range with barrage and let your arrows fly while dealing with it's easier to judge ranged attacks. The best arrow you can buy is the fire arrow and the best arrow you can farm is going to be the stormwing arrows. Best places to do this are the Divine Tower of Limgrave grace point, the Rampart Tower in Stormveil, and lastly the Dragon Temple Rooftop in Farum Azula. Kill the Bell Bearing Hunter at the Warmaster's shack to get access to beast bones at the twinhusks and note that early access to frost arrows is heavily restricted. The only repeated instance of being able to farm these types of arrows are in Nokron and the Consecrated Snowfield. Best site of grace for Nokron is the Nokron, Eternal City site. The arrow economy early game is hard to manage, try to focus on using normal arrows until you can get a sustainable rune farming supply or when you deal enough damage with your arrows to kill enemies that more than compensate for arrows spent. This is another reason why light bows and the Black Bow are the best options. Great Arrows are expensive.

Notable mentions: Pulley bow for horseback riding, pulley crossbow for status application or explosive bolt stagger... the only way to deal with crystallians, and the Serpent Bow for its incredible status buildup.

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I completed a bow only build for Elden Ring not long ago.

My conditions were that I could not use a weapon or tool in my main or off hand that was not a bow of some type. Everything else goes. I started this as a new game rather than new game plus and I have some thoughts to share from my experience. Mind you I did this sub level 150 for the entirety of the run, and didn't go out of my way to reach high levels or late game equipment early. I also used spirit summons in fights, but the usual options are not as available as expected. Below I'm going to talk about bows, what talismans to use, and how to level a character.

Bows suck.

There's no doubt in my mind after defeating every major boss in Elden Ring with a bow that bows need a bit of a buff. They are limited in so many facets that it's hard to often compromise with the needs of a given moment, but I will offer some helpful advice to anyone trying this ridiculous build. First thing's are first, have to discuss scaling on bows and the types of bows.

Five bow types: light bow, bow, greatbow, crossbow, and ballista. Out of these, you "can" use any of them, but you're only going to need to really get along with two or three.

The bow move sets are the most important. The light bows have sprint shots, roll shots, backstep shots, improved jump shots, and generally a faster firing speed along with having access to the skill Barrage which will be discussed a bit more below.

Normal bows and crossbows can be fired while in midair but lock you down harder than you expect when you land. You will find yourself often unable to react to enemy attacks, especially from those that don't give you much breathing room. We're talking fast enemies that cause a lot of damage like Malenia and Hoarah Loux. Anything larger than a light bow won't give you much chance to breathe unless you can continuously apply knockdown or stagger. This can be accomplished on some enemies with headshots, but it is not consistent enough a strategy as bosses tend to have change up behavior during fights. This will be demonstrated by bosses like Radagon and Malenia who will respectively deflect or outright dodge everything you throw at them during segments of the encounters.

Crossbows have an early advantage of being able to separately reload and fire, making them better for fights that give the player little opportunity to fight back.

Greatbows have high damage output per shot, but not high damage output per second. They do not apply statuses but can be used to knockdown enemies as well as buff the player. Believe it or not, they suck for sniping mainly due to the range. The Starscourge Greatbow is the most effective greatbow per shot with Radahn's Spears as ammunition.

I found no valid use for ballistas in my run. You can potentially use explosive shots to knock enemies off cliffs or to initiate a fight against larger groups of clustered enemies, but otherwise this is a niche option.

There IS a best overall bow. It is not the pulley bow. It is the Black Bow. I will discuss why further down.

I don't have much else to say about the bow types. In my experience the best bow type is the light bow for the improved mobility. Other bows are viable, but you won't get much opportunity to fire them as enemies tend to close gaps faster than you can recover from firing a shot. Biggest offender of this are the Bell Bearing Hunters. Most players abuse the range of bows and hop on rooftops to shoot these guys from safety until they're dead, but light bows can contest them on the field. It's slower but you don't always have the cheap and easy option available.

I was confused about bow scaling for quite some time until I tested a lot of things and did a little research on the side.

Crossbows and ballistas do not scale. Arrows fired from a bow inherit the damage scaling of the bow they are fired from. All bows deal physical damage as piercing damage as all arrows deal either total or mixed piercing. Arrows do not inherit status scaling from the bows they are fired from, except for one outlier, the Serpent Bow, and this only applies to poison arrows and no others.

What this all means is that to maximize your damage values of a specific type, be it piercing or fire for example, you're going to want to use a corresponding bow that has scaling that effects that type. All greatbows, bows, and light bows have scaling for strength and dexterity, so physical damage shouldn't be an issue... except that the scaling on every single bow sucks. There isn't a single bow in the game that gets C rated scaling on any attribute. This is why bows suck. Their damage output is horrendous. You have to take advantage of the range of a bow, and a couple useful talismans to really get your money's worth out of them.

Fire and holy damage arrows scale with faith, magic arrows scale with intelligence, physical arrows scale with strength and dexterity, and lastly lightning arrows scale with dexterity.

What the bow description says is irrelevant, not to mention the Fullmoon Crossbow has an incorrect note. It doesn't work with holy arrows. It functions best with magic arrows. Keep that in mind.

What talismans to use? I have a couple options I haven't seen anyone talk about.

The obvious two are the Arrow's Reach and Arrow's Sting talismans, as they explicitly improved arrow range and damage respectively. I would prioritize reach over sting as arrow damage falloff is harsh and sting won't cover that damage gap as well as reach will.

The not so obvious two are the Claw talisman and the Spear talisman.

Why these two? These two are the foundation of light bow combat. They are the absolute best options for damage output as they both grant about a 15% damage increase and that increases to nearly 34% combined due to the damage function used in game. You have many options when firing a light bow for quicker shots, but they all deal less damage than a normally fired arrow. To improve upon this, using a combination of back jumps and counter firing, you can deal adequate damage to targets while effectively dodging attacks. This does deplete stamina quickly, so it's important to keep that in mind and manage your resources. This strategy is actually the only valid means of quickly taking down human npcs or players as they dodge spam reactively whenever you fire an arrow. I can state this as a fact as I fought Fia's champions with a bow and watched them all roll in tandem at each fired shot, unless they were in the middle of an attack animation.

This is common behavior for many enemies. They will dodge every projectile fired at them, sometimes you don't even have to fire in their direction and they'll just dodge anyways, so the only way to effectively counter this is to attack them when they are stuck in an animation. While they are stuck in this animation, you will deal counter damage... improved damage on a shot, and the Spear talisman will grant a bonus on top of that. It's quite necessary and there's a nice sound indicator that you have accomplished a counter shot as well. Jump firing to provide yourself some space is key. Bait enemy attacks and counter with a backwards jump shot. It can often land a headshot...

But, we come to a bit of an issue.

Enemy hitboxes are bullshit.

This is a From Software game. They put a meticulous amount of effort into crafting enemy hit boxes to match their current stances and poses. This is troublesome as a lot of enemies twist, duck, weave, and leap during attacks while very few enemies allow one to target lock a different position on the body. The beastmen of Farum Azula are heavy offenders to this. They are incredible hard to counter fire with jump shots. You'll have to time your shots very well in order to hit them.

I could talk about a lot more, but I'll summarize below for convenience.

The Black Bow is the best bow because it acts like a light bow with higher damage than any other light bow. The improved move set allows one to take full advantage of counter attacking, which is the best way to get more damage out of your shots. The Spear talisman and Claw talisman can help with this and compensate for the lacking bow damage values. The best arrow to use is often dependent on the enemy you're fighting, but I've found fire arrows to the be the least resistant and easiest to access arrows. Malenia is possible, Hoarah Loux is possible... and hilariously, the Bow is actually the best build I've ever used fighting the Elden Beast. In a fight where you spend most of your time running to the boss, you can focus it down at range with barrage and let your arrows fly while dealing with it's easier to judge ranged attacks. The best arrow you can buy is the fire arrow and the best arrow you can farm is going to be the stormwing arrows. Best places to do this are the Divine Tower of Limgrave grace point, the Rampart Tower in Stormveil, and lastly the Dragon Temple Rooftop in Farum Azula. Kill the Bell Bearing Hunter at the Warmaster's shack to get access to beast bones at the twinhusks and note that early access to frost arrows is heavily restricted. The only repeated instance of being able to farm these types of arrows are in Nokron and the Consecrated Snowfield. Best site of grace for Nokron is the Nokron, Eternal City site. The arrow economy early game is hard to manage, try to focus on using normal arrows until you can get a sustainable rune farming supply or when you deal enough damage with your arrows to kill enemies that more than compensate for arrows spent. This is another reason why light bows and the Black Bow are the best options. Great Arrows are expensive.

Notable mentions: Pulley bow for horseback riding, pulley crossbow for status application or explosive bolt stagger... the only way to deal with crystallians, and the Serpent Bow for its incredible status buildup.

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Guys this page is for normal bows only. Short Bows, Great Bows and crossbows are not included in this list. You can find the others in this wiki

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Misbegotten Shortbow is missing. 3.0 weight, requires 16 str and 8 dex, default scaling of D for str and E for dex.

"Shortbow wielded by the Winged Misbegotten. Fine fur clings to it."

"Designed to inflict additional damage by sacrificing range"

Skill: Barrage

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Hopefully the scaling for these gets bumped a bit in the future.

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why no short bow listed?

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The Red Branch Shortbow is missing from this list.

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Golem bow is missing, dropped by golems around the map

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Check the Lightbows category for more.

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For everyone asking why Bows are missing.
Short bows and Great Bows are different weapon categories that have their corresponding pages.
At the top of the page, the 4th line of text down has links to these said pages.

Reading is fundamental kids!

Would also recommend an edit to this page to rename it "Long Bows"

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For people confused why small bows like the Shortbow, Composite Bow or Redbranch etc. aren’t on this page, these bows are categorized as “Light Bows”, they are in their own category and there is a separate page for them.

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why aren't all the bows listed here?

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Even with the low scaling, these are all very good. Thanks, FromSoft

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From my very limited, rough and quick testing, at 30 dexterity and base faith the Erdtree Bow at +8 will do really high damage when paired with golden arrows, and the Horn Bow at +18 base intelligence (which it barely scales with anyway) will do slightly lower but still substantial damage when paired with dwelling arrows, both of which I compared to the Black Bow at +9. The Black Bow is amazing for bleed and other status effects, with its speed, while also being good for physical damage. Basically, if it's weak to magic/holy, the Horn Bow/Erdtree Bow will just do more damage no matter what your stats are. That being said, the Black Bow is a very good all-purpose bow and what I use 90% of the time.

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Shortbow is missing from the list? Why?

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I just wanted a damn C scaling, is that too much to ask?

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is this really all the bows in the game?

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What? This is all if them? Well, at least they made magic playable, on the next one we will have solid bows that can PVE

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This List is Missing the Red something Shortbow that the Pages drop (Got mine in Carian Manor by the Double Stairs)

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not all bows are here

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Unsurprisingly the best Bow is the Horn Bow because:

-it has 3 Scalings (even at low investment in each stat it should have better AR than all other Bows)
-Can change Ash of War
-Does extra damage with Magic Arrows
-Has the highest Base AR of all bows

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I missed getting the Black Bow before the Capital turned to ash... guess I have to wait until NG+

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Really feel like there needs to be some more options for bows. This seems extremely limited.

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Feels like bows should've been able to get scaling infusions. Considering not even a single bow sets c scaling I believe

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When I first got hit by these "tauren" archers with the giant arrows, I figured damn I want to do that too. Later it got even worse, at the snowy place with the invisible assassins there are these insane archers on the roofs with their 3 shot burst. Such a shame its not available for the players

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The Albinaurics and Latenna can do three arrows burst shots, I want to do that **** too, it would be insane for PVP.

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While bows did get some good utility in EldenRing thanks to jumping, I think they should get better scalings and possibly the option to be infused.

We dont have the autoaim as NPCs have (if you didnt notice their projectiles always curve towards you so you cant just walk sideways) and need to craft/buy arrows.
Having one or two bows scaling with A or even S in their respective stats shouldnt be too much out of line.

Considering you can finish the game bow only I still think they are underpowered especially compared to other ranged options whose only weakness is FP consumption.

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Bows outclass crossbows in higher skill pvp purely because of enchanted shot

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The flying half-human archers can also drop their bow

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Light bow in game

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My build is a mystic archer so Iam obsessive about all the ranged weapons. Though Bows look bad on paper and are outclassed by Crossbows at lower stat levels they do offer several advantages. 1) The range is better and I find it easier to snipe distant targets with them. At long distances bolts just seem to drop faster and are harder to predict. 2) They feel better to use. Especially in scope mode. Crossbows feel like loading a bolt rifle then pulling the trigger. Loading it pulls you out of aiming. It's clunky and sometimes I forget if it's currently loaded or not. Bows I can "feel" when I draw it and hear the creaking of the bowstring, firing doesn't pull me out of aiming it so it's easier to correct a bad aim or fire multiple aimed shots.
3) Bows have solid skills that do great damage from a distance. Crossbows have kick which is a close range poise damage skill. Mighty Shot, Barrage, Arrow Rain, Enchanted Shot and Sky Shot are all solid and useful. The multi arrow shots are especially good for inflicting status. Mighty shot turns arrows into heavy bullets and make it fly straight, fast and strong and most agile enemies can't dodge it. Perfect for sniping especially with status arrows.
4) Greatbows are just plain awesome at long range. Even fully upgraded crossbows and ballistas have a hard time competing with them. Through and Through is just plain brutal for penetrating defenses. An arrow rain with a Greatbow just decimates large groups.

And at higher stats bows are not drastically too far off crossbows base dmg due to scaling bonuses. Especially on a quality build.

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i've crunched some numbers

bows are useless. As far as damage goes, crossbows outmatch them in every way, even at maxed stats. The bow movesets take way too much time for combat use as well, with their lengthy draw animation and recovery. Maybe they could be salvageable if you could infuse them, but as it stands, the following are the best ranged options:

Jar cannon as your best heavy ranged option, or lion's greatbow if you realllly want the WA
Pulley crossbow for your big target/chip damage ranged
Arbalest for general use ranged
Full moon crossbow for general use ranged, but only with meteor bolts
Albinauric bow with arrow rain for cheesing big targets with status effect arrows

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Golem's bow is missing. You can drop it from Golems

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