Recurve Bow

To use your bow, you have to equip it in your "Ranged" slot on your inventory sheet. Once it is equipped click on the bow to get an icon hovering over the mouse, and place it on your "Quick-bar" on the left of the screen. To nock an arrow you press the bow icon on your Quick-bar once. After you nock the arrow, the message box will tell you "you are ready to fire." Press the key again and it will fire the shot.

To auto-fire you simply press the key a second time BEFORE that message appears, and you will see a message that says, "You will now automatically release the shot." You can also auto-load by pressing the key a 3rd time before you release the shot. Once you have started the cycle you only have to press the key 2 times for each following shot: once to auto-fire, second to auto-load. Using your bow will drain your endurance, so you cannot use it indefinately.

Specializing in Recurve Bow affects the damage we deal, and gives us access to shot styles.

"With no specialization, your damage varies from 25-125% of your base (which is determined by your weapon's stats and your level). From there to 2/3 specialization, the minimum damage you will do is increased linearly up to the 75% mark, at 2/3 specialization it will be 75-125% of base per swing. Past 2/3 both minimum and maximum raise until at 100% spec your range is 100-150%. Points from items *do* count in this calculation."

- Dave Rickey, Mythic Class Developer

The "damage range" is based on the formula given in the Basics section, so if you multiply it by your damage range, you can figure out the minimum and maximum damages you can do.* This is a smooth curve, so there are no jumping points; for example you would not suddenly go from 75-125% damage to 100-150% if you spent the spent the proper amount of spec points. It is in relation to your current level, so a level 10 Ranger with 10 points in bow would have the maximum damage range (100-150%), while someone with 9 bow at level 10 would have a 90-140% damage range.

Every spec point also raises your "WeapSkill" when you are using a bow. Items that add to your specs count for the damage range equation, and they add to your WeapSkill (items actually boost WeapSkill by 2x what you gain from spending spec points). The only thing you do not gain with items are styles. If you had 24+3 bow spec you would only have Crit Shot VIII, while someone with a natural bow spec of 27 would have Crit Shot IX.

Every spec point beyond 50 (including Ranks and Items) will only increase damage on normal shots by 1.5, and critical shots by 3. Because of this it is generally not worth spending the Spec Points to get 50 natural bow spec unless you choose a Sniper template. Someone with a total of 60 bow spec will only do an average of 15 more damage per shot and 30 more on crits (plus a small amount gained by the increased WeapSkill) than someone with a total of 50 bow spec.

See the Style List for the complete bow styles listing.

*There are many other factors that go into damage, such as Absorb, resistances, Armor Factor, Realm Abilities, etc... So do not take the WeapSkill/Damage range formulas as exactly what you will see when you take a swing at someone in-game.

Arrows and Range

Most of the low level arrows do Thrusting damage, while the better ones are slashing. With the addition of new high level arrow types, archers can now choose any damage type they want if they can afford them. They are called Keen (slashing), Barbed (piercing), and Blunt (crushing) Footed Flight Broadhead arrows. These aid greatly in soloing because they allow for a larger selection of targets.

Short, Great, and Heavy Recurve bows should have ranges:
clout 21 paces (1260 /loc units)
normal 25 paces (1500)
flight 33 paces (2000)

Recurve bows should have ranges:
clout 23 paces (1380 /loc units)
normal 27 paces (1620)
flight 35 paces (2100)

Critical Shots

To use this ability, place your bow and Crit Shot on the hot-bar. Next find a gray con mob to practice on. If you do not already have the bow equipped do so by clicking on bow hot key. Next click on the Crit shot hot-key. This will show you how long you have to aim and whether or not you are in range. Once you are ready to fire, it works just like a normal shot, you click on the bow hot-key to release your shot. You can set up auto-fire and auto-load, but all following shots will be normal.

The damage we deal with Crit Shot depends on the con of your enemy (their level compared to yours).

"So with 1.45 patch to live servers, they changed the critical shot calculation to approximate:
Targets that would con high gray to your bow spec level would have a multiplier of 2.0 applied to their normal shot.
Targets that would con green to your bow spec level would have a multiplier of 2.0 applied to their normal shot.
Targets that would con blue to your bow spec level would have a multiplier 2.0 of applied to their normal shot.
Targets that would con yellow to your bow spec level would have a multiplier 2.0 of applied to their normal shot.
Targets that would con orange to your bow spec level would have a multiplier 1.7 of applied to their normal shot.
Targets that would con red to your bow spec would have a multiplier of 1.4 applied to their normal shot.
Targets that would con purple to your bow spec level would have a multiplier of 1.1 applied to their normal shot.
The multiplier would never decrease below 1.1 times the normal shot, nor be larger than 2.0 times your normal shot."

- Oakleif (Scout Team Leader)

Crit shot does not work when the target is engaged in combat with another person, or moving forward. Players (inexperienced ones) can be Crit shot multiple times as long as they don't move (you can crit someone who is merely backing up, strafing, or standing around in combat mode but not attacking anyone). Mobs begin moving or engage in combat once they get hit, which means multiple crits are not possible on them. However, multiple rangers can crit shot the same mob if timing is correct (more on this in the Grouping Tactics section).

Rapid Fire

Rapid Fire is an ability gained at 35 and 45 bow spec. It is an utility ability, so it's purpose is not to increase damage output. To turn this on you simply click the toggle button, then draw and fire like you would for normal shots. To turn the ability off you click the toggle button again. Loading a Crit Shot will automatically turn Rapid Fire off, so make sure to toggle it back on after firing a Crit.

While it is on it allows archers to fire much faster than they normally would be able to, at the cost of doing reduced damage. The amount of damage you do depends on when you release the shot. The fastest you can release a shot with this is a 50% of your drawtime, which will allow you to do 50% of your normal damage. If you released at 52% of your draw time you would deal 52% damage, at 66% drawtime you would deal 66% damage, and so on (in other words it is linear, drawtime directly correlates to damage dealt).

However with each shot you release you use the same endurance you would have for a normal shot. While you are not losing damage output while Rapid Fire is on, you can wind up only doing half as much damage with a full endurance bar. Rapid Fire II at 45 spec uses slightly less endurance, but will only allow for around 4 extra shots to be taken with a full endurance bar.

Penetrating Shot

This ability allows archers to penetrate Blade Turns cast by other players. It will not penetrate a Blade Turn a player cast on themselves, so it will not penetrate the self-BT on a caster, and it will not penetrate the Pulsing Blade Turn (PBT) on the class that cast it. If you target another player in the PBTer's group, you will penetrate the BT with this ability. It is passive, so it is always on. When you shoot someone with a BT cast on them by another player, this ability will do damage, and drop the BT.

Penetrating arrow has 3 levels at 30, 40, and 50 bow spec. Each level does 50%, 75%, and 100% damage through the BT respectively.

Draw Time

You can shoot faster if you increase your Quickness attribute. Your damage per shot will remain the same (despite many myths), which means you will do much more damage in the same period of time with very high quickness. For every 5 points of quickness past 60, your draw time will be reduced by 1%. Once you reach 250 total Quickness, you will only gain 1% for every 10 points in quickness. As with all your other stats, 300 is where Quickness is no longer effective, so the most you can reduce your draw time by with quickness alone is 43%.

To find what your current reduction as a percentage is, plug your quickness and bow speed into the following calculation (this works exactly the same for melee weapons):

DT = Spd * (1-(Qui^-60)/500)

For Qui below 250, Qui^ = Qui
For Qui above 250, Qui^ = (Qui-250)/2 + 250 (e.g. 270 Quickness is = 260 Qui^ for the formula)

e.g. I have 180 quickness, and a 4.7 spd bow.
(1 - (180 - 60) / 500) * 4.7 = 3.572

My current draw time would be 3.57 seconds.

With the same bow and 270 Quickness you would do this:
(1 - ((270 - 250) / 2 + 250 - 60) / 500) * 4.7 = 2.82

The only other haste that affects draw time is a Realm Ability called "Mastery of Archery", which reduces draw time by 3% per level (maximum of level 5 for 15%). Druid spec-buff haste's only affect our melee attack speed, not our bow. To figure your haste into the equation you simply do this:

(1-(Qui^-60)/500) * (1-haste%) * Spd

e.g. with the first example , adding in MoA 3
(1 - (180 - 60) / 500) * (1-0.09) * 4.7 = 3.164

If you want a simple way to find your draw time, you can use this tool (it is slightly out of date, over 250 qui it will not handle it correctly): http://www.uberdevelopment.com/DAOCBowFormula/