Sunday, October 17, 2021

Destiny 2 - Everything you need to know about Combat Bows

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A young bows fan’s notebook By Vechor Bows are shrouded in mystery and misunderstanding. This guide reveals their secrets, while breaking up the stereotypes. The main one states that they aren't worth your attention. Is it true though? Introduction «Combat bows are a simple and clear type of weapons». Sounds plausible until we get into the Destiny universe. There is absolutely no clearness here, but there is a rabbit hole. The hole I have scouted inside out, and now I’m ready to share the map with all its showplaces. There will be a lot of facts about bows in this guide. They will help you understand the most unobvious mechanics. Nevertheless, my map still has gaps. Feel free to fill them up in the comment section! Finally, I can say the very line… Piveet to all bows fans! Have a great read. Stability Stability. Bows. Stability and bows. Stability… It is useless, isn’t it? It is and it isn’t. Indeed, stability won't help against the bow recoil because it doesn't exist. However, this parameter affects bowstring holding time. Everything is simple: the more stability you have, the longer you can hold a draw. A maximum damage window increases at the same time. I suggest drawing attention to the arrow of your bow. It affects two useful parameters: stability and accuracy. Obviously, the latter is more important, so… Then why are you talking about stability? Great question! The thing is that accuracy is objectively better just because you cannot replace its value with keystrokes. Despite this if you always aim down sights, it would be smarter to take stability. Speaking of replacing stability with the keystrokes… Now you've observed the most obvious and stable way of holding the bowstring for a long time. The so-called trick consists of the following actions: a bow draw (it is “M1” on the clip), progress reset (“R”), cessation of the bow draw (release the “M1”), the repeated draw of the bow(“M1”). Everything should be done quickly. The trick can be repeated as long as you aren't tired. But there is a little spoiler. You'll get tired soon. Pressing such amount of the buttons is a tough task, so let’s just stop doing that. We're using one iteration of the trick right before a shot this time thereby dealing the most damage. It should be mentioned that these tricks are vital for the Le Monarque’s gameplay. You surely want to apply poison with every shot, right? But can’t we just use Oathkeeper? You can. If you are a Hunter and don’t mind losing the exotic slot. It’s funny, but I have never needed the gauntlets since I began using this holding method on a regular basis. However, I'm not forcing you into breaking your own fingers. Use without remorse anything that helps you play with bows better. Reload and Handling The second section is here which means I play a trump card. This time we'll talk about reload… And what is wrong with it. It's a great time to analyze a bunch of numbers showing reload time, but I won't do this. And no, it's not because I'm too lazy to count… Since I've already done this:[docs.google.com] …But simply because these numbers are almost useless. It's hard to understand what and how affects them in a pure form, so let’s divide reload time into three parts. We’ll use one annoying glitch to find the first part. I'm sure any fan of bows has faced it at least once: The time between a shot and a bow appearance is the wanted part. It lasts for ~683 milliseconds and is the same for each bow. The only exception is Leviathan’s Breath with its ~750 milliseconds. The first part can confuse you with its “correctness”, but there is no surprise. Nothing affects it. The first part is maximally standard. Pressing the trigger during a reload is enough to fix it. Now the «reload speed» parameter of a specific bow is magically starting to affect the first part. The bigger it becomes, the shorter reload gets. For convenience, let's agree to call a reload with the abnormal first part «spam reload». Turns out that the regular first part is broken. It’s impossible to find the actual reason now, so I have no choice but to speculate. Let’s look at the situation from a different angle… For example, in the third person: It was the spam reload. It looks weird but works right. And here is the normal reload. Tries to look realistic but works awry. Because of this, I can assume that somebody has broken reload trying to make the animation prettier. But again, this is just the speculation… The first reload part has ended while we've been making assumptions. That means it’s a great time to measure the second one. It will start as the first part finishes and end with a white number appearance. Looks randomly, but trust me it's convenient.
The second part depends just on a bow, its parameters and perks don't matter. There are only two groups. This part lasts ~92 milliseconds for the bows from the first group and ~ 142 milliseconds for the second group members. All Lightweight bows (except for the Spiteful fang), Wish-ender and Ticuu's Divination form the first group. Here lies the reason of the weird Spiteful Fang's behavior. It has been goofing me up all along, so I'm glad to see the exception proves the rule. A reload doesn't end with our number appearance. I'm pleased to present you the mysterious last part. The way I found it is described in the table above, so let's immediately skip to interesting stuff. Meet the third part and three factors affecting it: the «reload speed» parameter, the group of a bow and a reload limit. You’re probably familiar by hearsay with the first two because of the previous parts. I'll just clarify that the Spiteful Fang joins the Lightweight bows group this time. But the reload limit is something new. The reload time can't be reduced endlessly. There is a certain limit. I can spot it without a problem but describe… It’s beyond my skill. The reading error mentioned before is the reason for this. Oh, I’m tired of reload explanation. It will be awkward if reload can be skipped… The way to skip it: A bow reloads if it's holstered. We get podancially the fastest reload by combining this with the quickdraw glitch. If you are unfamiliar with it, here is a quick guide: A weapon swap animation can be skipped if you start running at the right time. I press (sequentially but briefly) weapon swap (it's «F» on the clip), sprint («Shift») and forward movement («W») keys. The shown result is faster than any normal reload. At the same time Inserting Quick access sling is enough to achieve it. This mod works amazingly on bows because it gives extra weapons swapping speed after emptying the magazine. By the way, it's impossible to reload faster than that. So, builds with a bunch of Handling perks and mods are useless. “Remember, switching to the second bow is always faster than reloading”. Let's expand our skip with this simple truth. Looks cool, but we can't save more than 100 milliseconds by doing that. Is it worth losing the whole slot? Yes, bows for the bows fan No. Bowstring draw and arrow flight The next section takes a special place in this guide. The thing is that this theme has always drawn my attention. It has seemed like it is the most important bows part, I’ve been trying to accelerate, optimize and understand string draw for hours… But the reality is a brutal thing. Everything is prosaic and simple. Draw time from the parameters was incorrect a long time ago. The developers spotted and fixed it… At least they thought so. Now a number from the parameters matches with a duration of a draw animation presented in milliseconds. But we’ll call it imaginary anyway. The reason is simple: a bow is regarded as full drawn even before the animation ends. It’s not difficult to count full draw time. Inserting imaginary value (D) into this formula is enough: t = 0,85D + 46. We can learn to use this. For this purpose, draw attention to your bow sounds. If specific crack doesn’t appear, but damage is maximal, then you do everything right. Archer’s Tempo and Archer’s Gambit are the only perks affecting full draw time. They equally reduce it and an animation duration. The first makes them 1,35 times less, the second makes them 3,15 times less. Let’s recall here that bows aren’t hitscans. Even full draw doesn’t make them such. This means that it’s necessary to take into account the arrow flying time during the long-distance shooting. Impact Hurray, we made it to the most interesting section. There are a lot of numbers and few comments here. The conclusions based on these values will be presented later, but now enjoy:[docs.google.com] And here is DPS of the same bows with the best reload and draw time:[docs.google.com] And here is bows damage in PVP:[docs.google.com] And here are just numbers and bows names alongside: Hope you enjoyed looking at the numbers. Exotic bows A new section implies new rules. We'll come down to earth this time and look into interesting moments of individual bows. Let's start with the most important. Have you ever wanted to shoot yourself? Experienced bows fans will tell you that it's impossible. If you actually fire in the air and step in front of a flying arrow, nothing will happen. On the other hand, I wouldn't spend so much time introducing
You can hit yourself with Wish-ender. Shooting through an opponent while being inside him is enough for this: I'll point out that shooting yourself is not only fun but effective. So, your test enemy receives multiplied by several times damage. Wish-ender pulls these tricks not for the first time. Simple ways of dealing broken damage were fixed long time ago, but the glitch itself still exists. Shooting at the enemy while there is an object inside him is enough to activate it. For example, a Guardian, enemy's corpse, or Titan's barricade will do. The conditions aren't the easiest, so this glitch serves just as a reminder of the past glory. Since we're talking about broken things, let's go back to The Spiteful Fang. Its bond with Le Monarque interests me specifically. These two bows have taken some features from each other. The Spiteful Fang have got one unnatural reload part. Le Monarque in turn speeds up a character while it's equipped. And they also have the same sights: Only this couple and reskins have such a trait. Coincidence? I think not… The poison is another Le Monarque feature. Our bow hits several enemies at a time because of it. This is especially beneficial with overload arrows. They easily stun champions in PVE and slow down restoring of the enemy's abilities in PVP. Nevertheless, Le Monarque's ability to deal area damage isn't unique. Explosive heads of Subtle Calamity, Tyranny of Heaven, The Spiteful Fang, Accrued Redemption immediately come to mind… and Trinity Ghoul, of course. The last one interests us a little more than the others because its effective area can be easily increased. It’s better to shoot Trinity Ghoul at the ground near enemies without a bow draw. Damage appears to be almost the same as with the full draw, but larger area is covered. Ghoul becomes the most «creative» bow in the game because of this. The projectiles recover a trajectory which we can endlessly play with. If you want, you can shoot vertically up or use plunging fire. Furthermore, it’s better to shoot while you’re jumping. Thus, the arrows fly apart more increasing kill zone. The similar situation is with Ticuu’s Divination. The arrows will find their target in any case after locking onto. We can take to extremes and shoot the opposite way from an enemy. If there are no walls around, everything will be cool. It’s rationally to fire while aiming down sights after Ticuu’s Divination’s hip-fire shot. It’s possible to get up to three damage buff stacks if you explode three «burning» enemies at a time with a headshot. Notice that all these conditions are important. Playing with style is joyful, but you crave an efficiency, right? I suggest moving to the heavy artillery from the world of bows, to the most anticipated representative of the kind… Please welcome, inimitable Hollesss-IV. It has one cool bug (feature): acquiring it from the collection gives you Holless-IV copy without active perks. We can use it and leave the bowstring “empty”. Thus, draw time decreases. Holless-IV can’t combat the best Precision bows even after these manipulations, but as known, a blue in the hand is worth a god roll in the bush. Perks I could have dedicated this section to the legendary bows by analogy with the previous one, but there is a problem. They are each other’s reskins with few exceptions. Nevertheless, there is a nuance distinguishing them, and it’s called perks. Let’s agree that Archer’s Tempo is the best out of them. A bow draw speeded up by ~1,35 times for a headshot? Give me two. We’ll continue with two powerful perks: Rampage and Swashbuckler. They allow to kill Guardians with three and five stacks respectively with one Precision bow headshot. Sounds cool, feels even cooler in practice. However, the latter is relevant only after heating up these perks. They are absolutely useless without the stacks. Their damage multipliers are the same for both PVP and PVE: Rampage – 110%/121%/133% of regular damage Swashbuckler – 107%/113%/120%/127%/133% of regular damage Impulse Amplifier and Rangefinder accelerate arrows. They would be a great addition to bows if they worked with full draw. Uh, it’s a shame we throw such podancial in a garbage bin… Wait, I’ve completely forgotten about Impulse Amplifier’s side effect! It moderately speeds up a reload after all… Oh no, still the garbage. The only bow Impulse Amplifier drops on has the best perk in the same column. Sympathetic Arsenal, on the other hand, is an ideal example of an interesting perk. It loads stowed weapons if you reload a bow after a killing. A random helpful fact: bows reload after each shot. Back to the controversial perks: reload benefits from Sneak Bow, Threat Detector and Frenzy can be easily replaced with two Bow reloaders. Only side effect of the last perk is worth attention: 115% of regular damage looks tempting. We can safely ignore Sneak Bow and Threat Detector based on this.
We keep swinging, Explosive Head is on the field. The majority of bows is restricted by one target at a time, so spare area damage only benefits them. Besides that, summary damage from one arrow increases. But not everything is that perfect. The latter isn’t relevant in PVP, so you shouldn’t take Explosive Head there. Finally, having both Explosive Head and Rampage at the same time is a terrible idea. Rampage doesn’t affect an explosion, so summary damage decreases. Till you get used to the good, let’s switch to Rapid Hit. You have to tense up and continuously spam a bunch of arrows just to get any value from this perk. Rapid Hit is so unadjusted to bows that the regular version of reload lasts longer than it does. In short, spare yourself, don’t use it. Killing Wind is something weird. It slightly increases mobility and moderately improves handling for killing. I should immediately add a couple of notes to the first part. The mobility doesn’t affect running speed, but jumps and walking depend on it. Killing Wind is useless if you have 100 mobility. In the end, we get a working perk because there are no worthy competitors in the same column on the only bow where it drops on. The serious comments on the perks are over now. Then I list those that are decent but can’t be discussed for a long time: Dragonfly – area damage but rare Unrelenting – additional healing Firmly Planted – Sneak Bow on steroids Thresh, Wellspring – additional abilities energy Quickdraw – can replace Quick access sling when you skip a reload, combines well with Sympathetic Arsenal. TL;DR The more stability a bow has, the longer you can hold a bowstring draw. Reloading of bows divides into three parts. Nothing affects the first one by default. The «reload speed» parameter starts to affect it if you pull the trigger during reloading. The second part depends just on a bow, its parameters and perks don't matter. The «reload speed» parameter, a group of a bow and a reload limit affect the third reload part. We can skip reloading if we holster a bow and then pull it back. Using the quickdraw glitch makes this skip unbelievably fast. Quick access sling works amazingly on bows. A bow is regarded as full drawn even before the animation ends. We can count the actual time with inserting a value of the «Draw time» parameter (D) into the formula: t = 0,85D + 46. Wish-ender can hurt its own Guardian if you fire it while being inside an enemy. There is still a broken Wish-ender’s damage glitch in the game. Le Monarque works amazingly with overload arrows. It’s more effective to fire Trinity Ghoul, while you’re jumping, avoiding the drawing and direct hits. It’s possible to get up to three damage buff stacks if you explode three «burning» enemies at a time with a headshot. Holless-IV can be acquired from the collection without active perks. If you leave the bowstring “empty”, the draw time will be less. Archer’s Tempo is very cool. Rampage, Swashbuckler, Sympathetic Arsenal, Explosive Head, Killing Wind, Dragonfly, Unrelenting, Firmly Planted, Thresh, Wellspring, Quickdraw are cool. Impulse Amplifier, Rangefinder, Sneak Bow, Threat Detector, Rapid Hit are very not cool.

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