Quote from radionoise;582651:
Well, good to know that at least HLB can beat Wing/LLB by a tiny amount of damage at the very end... so that makes it not completely useless, but still can't come anywhere close to Ring Bow ego.
Arbalest and all the wooden weapons were a huge surprise, but seems like ultimately not all that much will change in terms of the ideal weapons for damage:
-People with Bastard Sword egoes will keep them.
-People with Ring Bow egoes will keep them.
However, those with other considerations get to have some fun:
-People who went with Muramasa for the crit it has over bsword will probably jump ship to Cutlass.
-People who went with LLB/Wing Bow for the high maximum range and ok damage can switch to HLB.
-People with Crossbow can switch to Arbalest (I'm assuming crossbow doesn't reach that much max/crit but Kaeporo might correct me on this one).
-Elf meleers can switch to Machete/Broad Stick/Francisca for a huge boost in their damage.
I greatly appreciate the update ACME. It'll definitely help our community come G15S2. Thank you.
In my opinion, the most important thing about choosing a ranged spirit weapon is to select one which has features that you value. This would include things like ease of repair, maximum range, mobility, ammunition, rate of fire, hit count, damage and critical. It's not terribly difficult to hit 130 critical without having to sacrifice damage these days, so most people opt for high damage weapons. I don't blame them. They'll generally end up with greater average damage output.
Here's my argument. Do those tiny little stat bonuses really matter? Well, they certainly add up if you're missing enough of them. However, with metalwear upgrades and combo cards, we can overkill pretty much everything in the game even with an imperfect build (minus perhaps the NPCs in G15S2 theater missions). If the crossbow is only slightly worse than the arbalest when capped, i'll stick with the crossbow because of its ease of repair. I can repair over a hundred dollars worth of durability (using NX repair pots) by proffing NPC crossbows in a few hours.
Oh. I also calculated the average damage and adact of some ranged weapons combined with their mastery skill.
[SPOILER="Spoiler"]Leather Long Bow
149AVGD
197ADACT
Wing Bow
144AVGD
198ADACT
Highlander Long Bow
152AVGD
201ADACT
Ring Bow
167AVGD
205ADACT
Crossbow (Unfinished)
117AVG
191ADACT
Arbalest
128AVGD
208ADACT[/SPOILER]
I'm interested to see the final stats of my current spirit weapon. Could you please upload the stats of a capped spirit crossbow?