1. HS is significantly changed (old news) and I would recommend picking up the ability somewhere past 400 aa's now. 2. Elemental Bows for sale ... if you are tight on plat ... get the one from PoF - cheap and abundant. Heard many rumors about best elemental bows for TS and DPS ... did not make sense so I ran my own parser on test dummies of level 78 and 68, with and without MotM and the following order is: 1. Featherwood 2. Obsidian 3. Primordial 4. Stonewood - Dead last! Yes, you can get lucky and have one of the bows beat another one during a short parse ...but you don't buy lottery tickets because you have a 50-50 shot of either winning or losing! If you have mats for a bow and need one crafted (skill is 315 with mod) ... come to me on your high level ranger, join group so you see whether I succeed or fail and I will combine for free ... - Vudoman p.s. Drifting Death, Frozenwind, Brushfire, and sometimes Icewind, even with Featherwood are what I use if I'm not out of range or worried about aggro.
Bow of the Tempest - 175.5 Obsidianwood - 166.28 Primordialwood - 156.78 Stonewood - 153.33 Featherwood - 149.47 These were the 8-10 hour parses done on Al’Kabor before the server shut down with max 250 worn ATK, max AA and 100% Haste (bard song) against non-aggro bankers in Katta or Thelin 1.0 in Nightmare. I’m curious what changed in Live coding to bring Featherwood from last to first among the tradeable bows.
It has the best ratio with second best proc, the math says it should be #1. I'm guessing the mobs you were attacking had really low resistances and the obsidianwood proc landed for full damage close to 100% of the time, which it won't do on any mob that matters. Tho if that were the case time bow should be below air bow so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
IIRC there might have been an issue with low bow delays back then. If that parse was with a Fleeting Quiver it also used to give more haste. Now I haven't parsed current things beyond around with ST bow vs Bow of the Destroyer so I don't know the current state.
Fleeting Quiver and 225% Bard haste, shooting at the back of the mob - all the AA's at 65 and max worn attack - shammy and beast atk buffs - chanter atk buffs - the right ranger buffs ... this was after the melee dps nerf on the test server. Removed every variable I could and tested long enough for a good statistical sample. Darchon - Don't know the level of the mobs you were attacking or how they were defensive wise ... but when I parsed it - I did with the assumption of maximizing DPS within raids and specific to Agnarr set up.
Time bow was slightly below air but above Fire. Still would want the time bow though - the dps difference between them did not out weigh the 30 attack and simplicity of keeping it on character.
The reason the faster bow, featherwood, is better is because you add the arrow damage in. And a lower delay gains more from the arrow damage. Y'all need to specify what arrows you're using on those parses, cause it makes a big difference.
Shardwing ... 12 base dmg - no elemental damage to be resisted, same standing with the 11 base dmg and 4 fire, did not try it with the 1 arrow dmg up to 12 to see where tipping points could be for the bows. Just don't want to spend that much time fighting a test dummy ...
It's not about testing ever arrow it's about how it affects the bow ratio. 12 damage to a 24 delay bow is 12/24 .5 ratio added to the bow. 12 damage to a 37 bow is 12/37 or .324 ratio added to the bow. This is why it is important to mention which arrows used. Time Bow best bow. Featherwood best of the EP crafted ones. You should have the 11+4 Cold Damage arrows also and use them in places where mobs are fire resistant like Plane of Fire. Don't use those 12 damage arrows ever unless the mob is fully immune to fire/cold.
Except when resists aren't a problem. Then featherwood has a better ratio and a proc. There's also the bow that drops in air that would be better than both.
Listen bud you're talking to the best geared Ranger of that era from Phinny and one Rangers from other top guilds would frequently ask questions too because they knew i knew everything there was too know about the class for that era. Resist do matter because again 4 Fire damage added onto a 24 delay bow is a bigger deal in terms of ratio then 4 Fire damage added. Without that extra 4 Fire damage the Time bow has a better ratio. Which means for things like Bert in time the Time Bow actual has a better ratio. The Stun proc on featherwood is actually a negative. It might not seem like it's cause LUL Ranger agro is so low anyways. But the truth is Rangers have some pretty frontloaded agro from the fact that their nukes have 30s cooldowns so you want to use them ASAP when trying to maximize DPS. What this ends up meaning is random early procs on trash and xping results in ripping agro and getting summoned or moving the mob which results in a loss of DPS. It also means you need to hold back more spell DPS on fights like the Zek brothers due to the agro mechanics. You end up having to hold back more spell DPS then you would gain from the negligible difference from the ratios. source 6+ months of raiding time every 6 days. Rangers full BiS in PoP doesn't even cap worn attack with the PoTime bow, you actually need ATK augs from LDoN or to wear non-bis gear to cap worn attack which means the 30 atk is actually quit nice. As well as the extra AC/HP for offtanking adds on in Time ect. Alabaster Hilted and the Plane of Water mini bow don't drop on TLPs and never have. They were removed from the loot tables before any guild even made it to Plane of Time before originally. Time Bow Best Bow
There have literally been a hundred different changes in live code that might be the culprit. Trying to pick out which it is exactly will be a fool's errand.
Featherwood causes significant knockback on raid targets which is a huge negative factor, they are banned on most raids now
I am already at 300 worn attack - without all BiS - no Time bow or gear past P4. I wonder how much worn attack you give up for your version of BiS and if its significant. Sounds like you figured out you get a significant gain of DPS vs maxing worn attack ... Having 225 haste, atk buffs from your friendly Shaman and Beast help a lot with DPS - using spells also when you can is a way to boost your DPS. After maxing worn attack and capping stats ... I have heard every 10hDex is ~ 1% increase to dps ... I have not parsed that yet, anyone have those values for PoP? Getting the Time bow is great (sometimes Featherwood is better) - really wanted to let others know not to knock or feel like they are not significantly contributing to raid DPS by using the Obsidianwood. Its the best starting elemental bow imo ... cheap to buy and better than the touted Stonewood that is selling for top pp on Agnarr.
Compared to VT/EP gear a lot of the time gear ends up being downgrades in terms of worn atk but upgrades in terms of heroics/focus/ac/hp/resists ect. What ends up happening is you can't actually wear fully BiS until you reach LDoN because you won't be ATK capped, so you wear 1 or 2 EP/VT pieces until you can get LDoN attack augs. But you don't have room for a bunch of attack augs because you want to max you slots for Heroic augs/ac/hp/focus ones. As far as Heroic Dex goes it's a versus stat so it depends on the mob your fightings avoidance. But generally speaking the 30 Heroic Dex and Ranger can get from PoP items and LDoN augs increases hit chance by about 7-8%. So a little more then you have been told.
My guess is hDex turns the tide. Also - did PoP on EQMac have eagle eye or whatever that accuracy buff was? The improvement from accuracy on faster shooting bow translates better than on harder hitting but slower bows. Also - I bet Crit rates / math have probably changed on archery in TLP compared to the code from EQMac. FWIW I also found Featherwood was the best of the EP bows and was generally a RNG question if tempest or Featherwood out parsed the other. Anecdotal observation from 6 months of clearing Time twice a week on LJ with a CLR/RNG on night 1 and RNG/RNG/BRD on night 2.
