Quote from Intimacy;1268748:
Finally tried my hand at bows, i have the second upgraded gore bow, the one that takes S magala parts and i'm in HR8 for storyline, and hr 5 for guildquests.
I'm using jaggi S armor for the Attack bonus reload speed and halve stun. On one hand i love the range and I've picked up 'perfect' spacing to get the explosions/screenshake atleast 90% of the time.
My two gripes would be, even with power coating fights take forever. I also get 1 shot by just about everything, not sure if that's intentional, full jaggi set upgraded to the third tier stone gives me about 113 armor for HR and get's me literal 100-0% with 1 attack from most monsters.
Maybe im just doing something wrong lol
Small note, Hunter Rank is different from Low/High/G Rank quests and Quest level/*.
The cat has a lot of good advice to follow. In general for any weapon, if a hunt is taking a long time then you should check to see that you're hitting the right hitzones especially if you're prioritising element heavy weapons. With all monsters hitting the wrong hitzone and/or using the wrong element means element does 0 damage. Element is separate from raw (raw will always do damage unlike element) but it often goes that decent element comes at the cost of some raw.
http://kiranico.com/en/mh4u/monster
Lists all the monsters and their hitzone modifiers. Bow falls under shot type damage. A common trend is that the head is the weakest point but it also typically goes that that's the most difficult or dangerous part to hit. Using Shaggy as an example shot type damage does 60% damage on the head but only 20% on the wings so someone hitting only the head will basically complete the quest three times faster than someone hitting only the wings.
Gaijinhunter has some good articles on understanding the detailed mechanics behind damage but at a practical level hitzone knowledge is all you need :p
Also 113 armour is sorta low. You should by your quest progression have access to at least some Heavy Armour Spheres (red, fourth tier) and unless you can't fit skills in you can get a decent bit more defense by going with the blademaster headgear rather than the gunner headgear (approximately 70 def after some upgrades vs 30). With HR5 you should have access to the 5* Gathering Hall quest Lagombi Lair which has you hunt a pair of lagombis. With them you can craft a set of gunner armour that with a decent charm gets you Evade Extender and Evasion+2 which should not only help boost your survivability a lot but also open up new offensive windows through aggresive dodging. Upgraded and using the blademaster cap you should have well over 200 def (My lagombi set gives me 252 as of writing though I may have used some of the fifth tier Hard Armour Spheres).
And yes, upgrade your weapons (or diversify). I can't speak for coatings but there should be several weapons available to you now that are significantly more powerful. With 8* caravan available to you you could try the Tigrex bow and even upgrade it once for 264 attack which should do over 50% more damage than your Verzweiflung.