Fighting PreferenceFollow

It's been a slow day at work so I decided to throw together a small Access database to show me what does the most damage for whatever level I happen to be at.

After putting it together and looking at the information I noticed something. At a lot of levels there is a difference between which weapon/ammo combination does the most damage per hit, and which does the most damage over time.

So my question is, which way is better to fight? Should we go after doing more damage over time during a battle; or concentrate on doing big damage with as few shots as possible?

This is the data for every 5 levels up to 55 (after which nothing made a difference). The data used for this is from the lists on this site (so some of the items are missing from the analysis). The last word in a section is the kind of ammo. In the case of silver it means which ever type (arrow or bullet) is appropriate. F,I,L refers to the Fire Ice and Lightning arrows since they have the same damage.


LVL \ One-Shot \ Damage Per Second

LVL 5 \ Longbow+1 Wooden \ Light Crossbow +1 Bronze
LVL10 \ Ryl. Arch. Longbow Bone \ Ryl. Arch. Longbow Bone
LVL15 \ Hunter's Longbow Iron \ Hunter's Longbow Iron
LVL20 \ Powerbow +1 Iron \ Powerbow +1 Beetle
LVL25 \ Arquebus Bullet \ Powerbow +1 Silver
LVL30 \ Great Bow +1 Silver \ Greatbow +1 Silver
LVL35 \ Serpentine Gun Bullet \ Greatbow +1 Silver
LVL40 \ Battle Bow +1 Silver \ Zamburak +1 Mythril
LVL45 \ Battle Bow +1 F,I,L \ Battle Bow +1 F,I,L
LVL50 \ Serpentine Gun Silver \ War Bow +1 F,I,L
LVL55+ \ Eurytos' Bow F,I,L \ Eurytos' Bow F,I,L


I hope the formatting for this holds up.

Ok it didn't let me see if I can figure this out.
not great but it'll do.

Edited, Thu Jan 29 11:48:49 2004 by Jigensan

Edited, Thu Jan 29 11:49:47 2004 by Jigensan

With EQ it was more like toss in a couple of big nukes and sit back and get back mana, in this as a ranger I'd say you should go for the big bangs and just try to lower delay with the arrows a bit, I hit pretty quickly with a greatbow +1 and beetle arrows.

[quote=DioranSchafier]My problem with slower weapons, in general, is that if I miss a shot, I feel like I'm really killing my DPS over the course of the fight. With faster weapons, a miss doesn't matter to me as much, even if the damage of each hit is a little lower.[quote]

Agreed, and also keep in mind if you go for slower bigger shots, it means more damage with multiplier-based specials like barrage (and Sidewinder from what i hear).

But I did see a marksmanship RNG out damage me in Yhoator Jungle around 32. Mostly because she had Holy Bolts (lvl30) which deals light proc and worked really well on Mandras. She would hit for 40-50 and then proc for another 30 80% of the time. I hit around 80 with silver arrow, and shot slower. Dont know if the same will be true against other mobs