Short vs Long bows

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first of all: hi guys.

i recently began playing bg2, still in the soa-part but i have tob too.
so i was wondering, im playing an archer, currently grandmaster with longbows. i read on this site that longbow proficiency is not recommended and shortbows offers a lot better items - my question is, does this apply to soa only or also to tob?

a simple "longbow/shortbow is better" answer would suffice, im not keen on getting spoilered

thx in advance.

 

shortbow is better

 

Shortbow.

 

right, thx for your help!

 

If you expand your horizons a bit, there is a killer Crossbow available for purchase in SoA (but only if you have ToB installed).

But I still favor Short Bows.

 

Rate of fire of a crossbow is too slow... longbow has good range but there's a lot more enchanted shortbows that are useful.

 

Longbows beat shortbows any day of week. Sure, Taralash and Gessen don't need ammunition, and Darkfire bow are all nice items, but the damage they make is inferior to those of, lets say, Heartseeker and Ripper. Grand mastery in longbowss will dish you nice damage and to hit bonuses, plus some extra speed, and you can visit Watcher keep early in the game, to get the ammo belt on the first floor, to stash your arrows in there. Or, you can install ease of use unlimited stacking component for your convinience. Put Heartseeker in your archer hands, and you're ready to kill dragons in few rounds. Believe me, if I can play throu IA with archer with GM in longbows, you can use it in vanilla game too.

So, in short, longbows

 

he asked for a low spoiler answer

 

If you take this for a hight spoiler answer...

 

toyed around a bit with shadowkeeper, dont have gesen's bow yet... so i compared the heartseeker with tuigan's bow +1 and the complementary grandmastery and WOW did the latter add a punch.

sure, the damage is relatively low, but its just so much faster its not even funny anymore - which makes dmg/round higher i think.
only problem i face now is that i seem to run out of ammo very fast ~~

mordokai, are there better bows than this heartseeker? cos that one's nice, but not halfway stunning.

about crossbows, nice idea, but i want to be using bows, dunno why

/edit: one more thing, its not about what i _can_ do, havent had a problem, but i just want to be using powerful items on my pc

 

I believe the heartseeker is the most powerful longbow in the whole game. Unmoded, that is. Longer road adds a longbow which produces unlimited +4 arrows by itself to ToB, and item upgrade can ugrade heartseeker even further, but in vanilla game, I believe the heartseeker is the top of the line for an archer.

Except... maybe you will like Strong arm better. You can purchase that one at Ribald.

 

You're just fine with longbows. As Mordokai mentioned, Strong Arm is an excellent choice for an archer. I think it's the best choice for an archer, followed by Heartseeker and Ripper. The only problem is all the arrows you go through (not much of problem since you can find so many). In ToB, this problem is eliminated by two great items (actually in Watcher's Keep).

I'm certain someone would give you the spoiler to these items if you ask.

For short bows, the Tuigan Bow giving that extra attack is an absolute killer for archers. Early on you won't hit as often (and Strong Arm or Tasheron's Bow do more damage on average), but later in the game your archer will have so many bonuses to hit that you'll only miss on a one even with the lowly +1 bow. Add up all the bonuses for grandmastery and archer class, and now one extra attack makes all the difference.

If you want to cheat, download the grandmastery fix to give yourself yet another attack -- but be warned, your opponents with grandmastery will also get an extra attack (still, if you kill them before they get to you...).

Here's something I posted a while ago...

Strong Arm has the same average damage as the Short Bow of Gesen (but slightly lower max damage). Once again, magic arrows really pump up the damage.

[ February 01, 2007, 16:12: Message edited by: T2Bruno ]

 

IMO Short Bows (and even Crossbows) are much better than Longbows in BG2 (unfortunately).

- There is no Longbow in the game which doesn't require ammunition in addition to 2 Short bows (Gesen's,Tansheron's) and 1 Crossbow (Firetooth).

- The fastest bow in the game and the best against Mages (stoneskins/spells' disruption) is a Short bow (Tuigan).

- With a Longbow you cannot hit an enemy who can be hit only with +4 weapons or is protected with I.Mantle.
Not a problem for Short bow of Gesen or the crossbow Firetooth.


- As for damage:

The most damaging single hit from a bow is from the Short bow of Gesen when used in conjunction with the Arrows of Biting (the only arrows where STR bonus is applied ) and high STR.
Second is the Firetooth +5 when used with Kuo ToA bolts.

Even for average dmg/round the shortbow of Gesen (when used in conjunction with arrows) does more damage than the best Longbow (Strong Arm).

But if you have the True G.Mastery patch then the Firetooth crossbow is the most damaging bow in the game (for average dmg/round) with second the Short bow of Gesen.

 

I have to agree that shortbows are better than longbows in the long run, because of the sole fact:You can not hit a monster which requires +4 weapons to hit if you only use longbows. Those critters are rare, (Demogorgon, Demiliches, Mages with Improved Mantle active) but are troublesome, and you will hate them when your killer weapon proves to be ineffective against them. Gessen's bow on the other hand, can hit them IIRC.

 

Most damaging?? Crossbows...

Best? Shortbows...