Silkroad Online Forums

The views expressed in this are my opinions, feel free to comment or correct if I misspeak.

The most popular build for a bow is a strength bow. Bows typically have much better physical damage, which compliments strength builds. I would recommend a pure, to 90% pure strength build. Bows are very nice for PvE and they can be pretty decent in PvP. If I get a crit on a pure int user of my level (or 1-2 higher) they go down in one hit, or just after my 4 arrow combo.

Bows
The gear used should be a bow with a good critical. Because you are using strength the physical damage is also important, but most important is the critical. 8 is a good crit, 10 very good, and anything higher is really nice. Bows are expensive and the better the crit the more you will pay. If you want an SOS you had better have a lot of gold or be very very lucky. Anything +3 is good, I wouldn’t spend a lot of time looking for a +4 or better, they are hard to come by and you’ll pay close to what an SOS costs, but with a longer wait. Make sure you have a bow waiting for you at your next level. The worst thing you can do is to hit level 32 (when you get a nice new bow type) and have to spam WTB lev 32+3 bow (don’t forget bows can have +3 str too!). If you wait you will overpay because you need it now.

Armor
As far as gear I would recommend garment or protector. The bonus to mana consumption is very beneficial to strength users as you have low MP. The magic defense is nice when killing monsters like Taoists, gunpowders, scorpions, dark/red eyed ghosts, etc. Always try to get gear with str bonuses. Every little bit helps. As with the bows plan ahead, look for deals and buy early.


Bow Skills
The primary attacks by bow users will be anti-devil and multi-arrow combined with elemental imbue. Alternative attacks will be imbue, Strong bow or berserker arrow (pick the one you like and stick with it or sp farm a little and get both) followed by multi-arrow. At max range using these you should be able to kill any silver/white mob before or just as they reach you. Note: as you reach the 60's it takes alot more damage to kill grey/silver mobs. You may need a few extra hits.

The passive you should max AR is good.
The white hawk max as you will need that to get the blue, black hawk1 point, then max the blue.
Skip autumn wind.
Put a couple points in demon soul, the payoff isn’t worth investing too much.

How-to:
Activate your anti-devil, wait a moment until just before arrow release then imbue, then activate multi arrow. This will give you the max imbue time. If your skill deactivates it may be due to insufficient mana, adjust your autopot to compensate.

Elemental Skills
I’ve used cold, lightning, and fire. I believe that fire most suits the strength bow as the passives and flame body will increase the physical damage. Others are good secondary and tertiary skills.

The skills you want are:

Fire –Max to level 70
Fire Force (imbue) – max it
Passive – Max
Flame body – Max
Fire Protection – Max (optional) I use this as I wear protector, if you use garment you may want the cold buff.
Fire wall - Skip
Fire shield – Skip
Flame Wave – Skip
Passive – Max

Lightning – Level 50
Grasswalk series is a must – Max
Piercing – Max (this one is optional since it gives a lot less benefit to str users)
Thunder Force (imbue) – Skip it, I had it and the damage was low. I used the SP elsewhere.

This uses 190 of the 300 available skill masteries and goes to level 70 and leaves a lot open to things like force, cold, or Spear (for that tasty HP bonus). Play with the skills, delevel if you need to.

I'm currently pushing a zero gap to get to 70 and am very SP poor. Had I farmed 30-50k SP I would have been better off. My fire and lightning skills are lagging, but bow skills are good. To get my fire, lightning, and bow (some of the nice to haves like having berserk and strong maxed) skills to the max from where I'm at now I'll need over 30k SP. I hate SP farming but will do it at 70 if I have no choice.

As far as damage vs other classes goes:
Nukers will out damage every class in PVE very easily, but are easier to kill in PvP unless they block.
Glaivers will kill you in PvP every time unless they really suck, they level about the same speed in PvE but can take on higher level mobs with help from stun, and multi mob attacks.
Bladers are boring to fight, lower damage, but they KD and block. They will most likely eventually beat you in PvP, it will take a while unless they have godly SP. In PvE They are a bit slower to level, but can take higher level mobs and tend to aggro lots of stuff.


Edited 8/24/06 to reflect my views at level 66 (not much changed)

*thumbs up*. Sticky it please. Only thing: I should max Light to 52, there you get the 40% increase move. Worth a sticky IMHO.

Why not just stick with the fire imbue? Youre choosing to save some mp for a lot more sp ? lol

Fire Force (imbue) – max it

Words are made for reading.
Edit: Woops, didn't see the fine print(*wink*) my bad,

resist - I had the lightning at 40 something and figured I'd test it. Its decent damage. Costs to delevel and i've already deleveled cold so I'm going to leave it. Its optional, but useful.

Okay, that's the guide I need, right there.

Good guide!

I am going to do the same except i will go with gold not fire
Cold less Sp needed and more defance, ill be wearing garment so phy defance is very good.
Plus i will max force skill, as i want to be healer

Resist wrote:Why not just stick with the fire imbue? Youre choosing to save some mp for a lot more sp ? lol

with only three trees to max, you should have no problem with SP.

great guide, hellsharpt. stickied :)

I have a question. I was going to go pure STR bow, but I accidentally added 3 or 6 stats to INT.

Should I stick with str, or go hybrid-str?

if its low lvl restart other wise just go pure from now on and you'll be fine. plus you'll imbue will do a little bit more

Silver wrote:I have a question. I was going to go pure STR bow, but I accidentally added 3 or 6 stats to INT.

Should I stick with str, or go hybrid-str?

stick with str.

anyway very nice r0x maybe some people will actaully look at it instead of the "new Topic button" XD

just as an fyi, i put a few points into int early on, I think like 5 or 6. Thats not that many and certainly no need to reroll unless you are a perfectionist.

Glad you guys like the info, please post comments or alternative ideas.

i'm str fire glavie like half of the server lol, i kill bow users in a few hits and crits, and they hardly get my health down to half unless they crit hard, i would recommend cold cz against they last ages and they constantly freezing me, fire is strog but really poor against other str builds, and cold is alot better against nukers as you not need alot of dmg to kill dem, you just need 1 or 2 crits.

wery nice guild to a good build i think

Ice_Warrior wrote:i'm str fire glavie like half of the server lol, i kill bow users in a few hits and crits, and they hardly get my health down to half unless they crit hard, i would recommend cold cz against they last ages and they constantly freezing me, fire is strog but really poor against other str builds, and cold is alot better against nukers as you not need alot of dmg to kill dem, you just need 1 or 2 crits.

thats the thing. bow do crit hard. alot. you don't know the build of the peolple you beat. they could have been 1:1 hybrids, or int, or had NPC gear. there r to many variables to say things like that

well yeah dat is a point, but i would go cold as the crits will do enough dmg and fire just adds that little bit more, buyt against nukers, bows are bad cz skills cast too slow, nukers would of KD you or nuked you twice by then.

I caped against a glaiver of my level this weekend. It was a long and boring fight. It lasted a couple of minutes and no one won. Cold wouldn't have mattered. Both of our health was 6500+.

Lag, a bad autopot % and lots of criticals after a stun (or freeze) will turn the tide.

That said I've left lots of masteries open if you want to get cold as well. Its all about personal choices. Everything has strengths and weakensses.

???

makisquirrel wrote:*thumbs up*. Sticky it please. Only thing: I should max Light to 52, there you get the 40% increase move. Worth a sticky IMHO.

better get lightning to 68 to max out all the buffs

perhaps someone with higher levels than I can comment, but as I am mostly full str the piercing force doesn't add alot of damage. OFC you might be referring to grasswalk. Either way I don't know that it's woth the extra masteriy or SP usage. 18 additional levels is alot, I'd rather put that into cold.

I see hellsharpt mentioned the bow skills, and some of light, but what are your thoughts on:
Bow - Berserker/Strong
Light - Lion/Con/Wolf
I'd like an overall description on the skills if you could awa describing what payoffs or benefits/negitive they have on this build.
TY

cyrax wrote:I see hellsharpt mentioned the bow skills, and some of light, but what are your thoughts on:
Bow - Berserker/Strong
Light - Lion/Con/Wolf
I'd like an overall description on the skills if you could awa describing what payoffs or benefits/negitive they have on this build.
TY

Get Berserker and Strong, but don't bother getting Strong too high IMO. He mentioned both, I'm pretty sure.

Lion-useless, only good at killing stuff 40-50 levels lower than you.

Wolf-useless, takes too much sp for no benefit.

Con-meh. Some say Parry makes a diff, some say it doesn't. Either way, its a buff for a better 'chance'.

im currently following your strat hell... everything is going fine.

btw... you didnt mention about the bow skills? do we have to max ANTI - DEVIL and MULTI - ARROW and HAWK MASTERY?

Thankyou this will come in handy. thankyou.

Since when you follow the SP farming guide u can master 80,80,80, and 60. Does it matter if u add Fire, Cold, or Lightning.

hi guys i am currently abt lv 50 [ire str/fire,but i would say bower itself can win againest all build but not glavie/spear.The reason is because once we bower get stun by glavie we are death.

for currently bow/str/fire user,i would hope u all concider abt using the lighting grass walk both the 10m and 50% skill,because that one and only way to win glavie user.
or
up some ice lv abt to lv 20 for better pvp.using ice to pvp is good as it really slow other user movement down.However the main problem with ice/str/bower now is with this newupdate of alchemy people can be total(fully) immunie to ice freeze,which we lost another way to win in pvp fight

The currenlt plan i was doing now was using the potion from item mall to changemyself to either sword/spear user(personal view) as i hardly win in pvp


BUT bower itself is not to that extend of useless.when we are pve we rock as we do not really need to move alot to kill mob ^^ but other may say we keep ksing them as we are fast in kill

Great guide! Thank you for your time and effort.

I especially like the advice about buying your bows in advance. I had a really hard time finding a decent lvl 42 bow for my character, but fortunately, I was all set by the time I was lvl 44. In the same day, I bought a lvl 45 +3 bow crit 10, and a lvl 48 +3 bow crit 10. And then at lvl 46, I bought a lvl 52 SOS +3 crit 10 bow, that I am still using, now.

My experience with ice is that it is really is worthless in PvP. Seriously. I have close to 50% freeze resistance, and I always use the strongest universal pills when I know I am going pvp or hunting those white-face spiders in Karakoram. However, it has been a pretty safe bet in the past that most people do not know how to deal with ice, and thus will get frozen.

Against the glaive users, I admit, I have had a hard time with glaive users just a few levels higher than me in my 40's, but since I got my Anti devil bow-Steel, I have had no issues. I have taken them out before they reach me.

I am now lvl 5x pure str/fire/bow. I have SP farmed a little, so I have been maxing everything in bow, just the things you mention in fire, maxing the passive, harmony therapy, and rez in force and have lightning at lvl 33.

I want to delevel some of the bow buffs, but not sure just yet, which. Good to hear from another bower what is important to them.

I haven't looked in on this in a while and saw some questions. I've continued to max strong bow, Anti-devil and multi arrow as well as the blue hawk. I have to say its ALOT of SP. 680ish per mastery now. I've put off berserker, although I have started to see some better damage from it.

I also have been a bit lacking in upping any of my light and fire skills as they will require alot of SP that I just don't have now. Had I farmed, they would have been wasted elsewhere so I still don't advocate it at low levels.

A comment on antiDevil steel. With a Crit of 8 on my Bow I crit avery other shot of anti devil when hitting green mobs. When going after whites it seems to be more like every 6th.

Any other bow users *cough*Ryoko*cough* want to add some input?