«Bows are the lifeblood of Elden Ring», if Elden Ring was a month old half-eaten corpse.

I gotta give bow users a bit of respect though, I didn't know a group of people could be this dedicated to just flat out forcing something into viability, and as a YouTuber I can 100% sympathize with that plight.

Suboptimal scaling, no skill flexibility, and just a general lack of damage have mostly resulted in the playerbase just not knowing what to do with these weapons outside of status affliction.

Oh, and additionally I saw a few comments recommending I order them inversely to what I've usually been doing since the better weapons of any given category are usually more obvious, and I thought I'd give that a try, so if you're one of the five people that had this idea, then uh, then that means if this video sucks then it's your fault.

Yeah, see? We're getting the easy ♥♥♥♥ out of the way early.

Although technically the weakest of the greatbows in terms of math, the 20% boost it gives to Radahn Spear Great Arrows perform well enough to excuse the slight deficit.

The unique skill is an improved variant of Rain of Arrows that, when used alongside Radahn Spears, becomes a force of nature against anything bigger than a small sedan.

The effect still persists if the bow is on your person, so as long as you're holding it in either hand you can still reap the benefits, affording the 20% boost to a greatbow with overall higher scaling like the Golem's Greatbow.

It's not the strongest on paper, but all the extra benefits make it an exemplary case of damage and scaling not always being the most critical assets of a weapon.

Then again, getting bent out of shape over a bunch of numbers and algebra problems seems somewhat on brand for the game's playerbase, so shut my mouth I guess.

Yeah, we're ranking the crossbows too by the way.

On top of being a direct upgrade from the Hand Ballista, I also really enjoy the backstory of how this weapon was literally carried by actual soldiers all the way to Volcano Manor, fully intent on coming back with Rykard's head on a plate and a mental image of an avalanche of bodies rolling down the side of Mount Gelmir after being thoroughly dominated due to the incompetence of not knowing how a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ cannon works makes me a very happy person.

The Jar Cannon has a base damage of 672, and the reason it's so ass-kickingly high is because crossbows have zero scaling on any stat.

The strength requirement is a bit of a fib, because two-handing it is already a necessity to fire it, meaning it only takes a bare minimum of I think like 23 strength, which is a much more accessible number in the mid-game to builds that are prioritizing something else.

Despite it being a chance drop from Golem Archers, farming for it isn't actually the worst experience.

It has a base chance of 10% to drop from respawning golems, making it very easily farmable outside of Stormveil near the bridge or outside of the Deep Siofra for well.

It packs an amazing punch for a greatbow, in fact it's mathematically the best option, and after you've met the requirements for the regular greatbow, having 4 extra strength to spare isn't a huge commitment.



Normally through-and-through would be a pretty rough skill to justify, especially since it's the default on all greatbows except the Lion Greatbow, but once you factor in the stealth damage done on a target that's unaware, multiplied by the motion values of 130, you can end up smacking someone for a good couple thousand damage with a single shot, provided your character doesn't take 3-5 business days to knock a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ arrow.

Stack this ♥♥♥♥♥ up with perfumers, bolts, and talisman, and swallow a firecracked tear and watch before your very eyes as crossbow damage climbs up to a number that isn't reprehensible bird ♥♥♥♥.

The Pulley Crossbow is THE weapon of choice for any crossbow-related build.
Don't even bother considering anything else.



The triple burst chews through stat resistances almost as quickly as it does your ammo reserves, and it shouldn't be of any surprise that what's objectively the greatest crossbow in the game also means that much more time you'll be spending either dramatically reducing Leyndell's page population or begging the Raya Lucaria Merchant for a discount because he's the only one that sells meteor bolts.

The damage per shot is significantly reduced to offset the triple tap, but it still ends up being the hardest hitting crossbow if all three shots connect, and the lack of status reduction per bolt ultimately leads to procs after one or two bursts almost 100% of the time.

Realistically, it's probably the only crossbow in the whole video that actually has enough bite to justify mixing it into certain builds.

I mean the bow still looks cool, I guess it's my fault for getting my hopes up.

Split magic damage actually isn't too restrictive of an issue here because 77 magic damage accompanied by 210 physical means there's still a clear focus being put somewhere.

But the Horn bow is paired best with magic damage arrows like Spirit Flame or Dwelling Arrows.

From there, all you're missing is a cracked tear and some Terra Magica and you can start distributing your slightly better damage among the masses.

Because when it comes to bows, even marginal improvements are only in store on the best of days.

I might be slightly embittered towards this bow if only because seeing the ancestral railgunner snipe me from the next county over only to find out that I can't do the same sort of gives the vibe of a 5 year old playing Monopoly and suddenly deciding the car piece collects double money and is immune to jail time and can shoot plasma beams out of its headlights or some ♥♥♥♥.

I don't think I need to offer much explanation on why having barrage as a skill on a long bow should be a felony.

One of the most difficult bows to master?
I don't know about that man, I'm feeling pretty ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ untroubled over here.
I love being able to reliably inflict status on a Longbow.

The low visibility gives it a really nice visual appeal to stealth builds that incorporate darker clothing, and the wood being carved to resemble a blade gives me the headcanon that they were a hair or two away from putting functional bow blades in the game until some bald bastard decided they would just be better off making it a DLC item.

I don't know why he's bald, maybe I'm just projecting. I'm gonna move on now.

Comparably the damage seems abysmally low for a Longbow, but using the barrage skill gives you the highest DPS output of any bow in either category, and short bows are really only as much of a utility as they are because of their innate skill and faster moveset, so getting your hands on this means you'll never need another short bow for as long as you live.

I know the base drop rate is only like 2% or something, but it's not like these chimps are an endangered species or anything.

One clean sweep through Castle Morne and you'll probably end up with two or three of these in your back pocket without even realizing it.

The Misbegotten bow scales with strength, unlike any other in its class, because I guess even short bow mains need a reason to look down on short bow mains.



On a build that's evenly split between strength and dex, this bow outperforms all other short bows by like 20 damage per arrow.

That's the best you're gonna get on a bow build, so take it or leave it.

The accessible stat requirements make it probably the single greatest short bow you can get your hands on.

Having Barrage on a bow that's very obviously torqued in favor of strength makes as much sense as using wooden spoons for arrows, but I feel like complaining too much about that is just gonna give me an aura of pretentiousness that someone could smell from a few nautical miles away.

There are many moments where it just feels like the reload delay is too much.

I don't want to see an animation of my character spit-shining the weapon frame for 10 seconds, and then non-consensually slapping its would-be ass like they're showing it off at a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ flea market in South Carolina.

I get that it's supposed to be heavy, but this animation makes no sense.
Is this supposed to be what reloading a ballista looks like?
Is this how people did it back then?

Are you gonna try and convince me people reloaded muskets here by loudly screaming into the barrel?

Two-handing ballista weapons are required to actually fire them, so that 30 strength requirement has the same rules applied to it as the Jar Cannon's 34, where you need considerably less strength to wield it properly than the menu suggests.



I think that might be the only advantage I would give the Hand Ballista over the Jar Cannon, and even then we're talking about a 3 point difference.

Otherwise, just make a beeline for the Volcano Cave as soon as you can.

I think the Pulley Bow is an ideal representation over where the problem lies with bows in general.

The scaling is definitely piss-awful, even though it's one of the better scaling bows in the game, but if it were the same as any other weapon, you would just shred through everything and turn the game into a point-and-click adventure.

It's not even that it doesn't deal damage, it's just that making a bow your primary weapon gives you no close-range option when you get rushed, and the combat loop becomes regimented in a way that only allows you to take fights from a distance.

This brings me to my ultimate point with the Pulley Bow.

More range is nice and all, sure, but it's very little utility if you aren't killing anything in a single shot, because once an enemy looks down and sees the holes mysteriously appearing in its chest, the first thing they're gonna do is start closing distance anyways.

If it's the range you're after, just use a great bow that gives you stopping power to boot.

I used to think standard crossbows were just downgraded variants of actual bows with more maintenance and smaller range, and I still think that, because that's what they ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ are.

But leaving the discussion there, I feel is a bit dishonest, because crossbows have a hidden utility that no one really considers, which is the fact that they can all be reloaded separately from firing.

You can't knock an arrow on a regular bow and then just cram that into your pocket while you switch to another weapon.

This is the benefit of crossbows.

You can use them in your offhand while mainhanding another weapon, or a catalyst, or even a shield in case you want some extra protection.

No scaling also means no worrying about which stat to sink resources into for maximum optimization. You know, sort of in the same way that you skip the hassle of making a salad by eating an entire lettuce head.

Surprise, I was actually insulting the crossbows this entire time.

The Arbalest tops out at 308 damage when fully upgraded, which isn't a lot at all, but the fact that it can be fired from one hand means you can stack it with other ranged damage like sorceries and incantations.



To my knowledge, this is the only benefit of using crossbows over regular bows.

Otherwise, trading stopping power, range, and weapon skill flexibility all at once in exchange for being able to fling stones from your fingertips every so often is never going to be a deal worth taking.

Remember what we already went over.

Bows take two hands to wield, so any stat requirements this menu gives you is a bold-faced century gothic 0.72 lie.



Bows actually require only 2/3 of the Strength stat listed, meaning 13 or 14 Strength should be more than suitable, and that's something you can easily roll out with on a few of the starting classes.

What this also means is the discrepancy of strength between using the regular Greatbow and the Golem greatbow is even smaller than what's listed, since it technically takes 16 Strength to properly use the Golem variant.

I'd at least point out the 4.5 pound weight discrepancy if it actually meant something significant, but if 4.5 pounds is getting in the way of a good couple hundred more points of damage, then that just sounds like someone needs to stop skipping leg day.

This crossbow presents a string of odd problems that make me feel like I could only fully understand them if I were the crossbow's mother.

Using wholly infused bolts on a crossbow with innate magic damage and an Intelligence requirement is the kind of detail you need only read once before concluding that someone at the writers meeting just fell asleep.

At least until you're reminded the point of the crossbow all along was to represent unity between the two elements.

Is this why the description refers to meteor bolts as a source of holy damage?
Are you serious?



That must have been some serious S-tier misinformation if even the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ detached narrator got fooled. I think we've officially found the cutoff point where storytelling starts to get too immersive.

That's the kind of exposition you put on the head of a statue somewhere, not in the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ item description.

But once you actually figure out how to use it, the damage is marginally better than most other crossbows.

If only because the base magic damage is somewhat high and can easily be boosted by other tools the game gives you.

It's a perfect 5 out of 10 crossbow at the end of the day and that's really the best it's gonna get out of me.

If you're dedicating yourself to a longbow build, your hardest decision is going to be choosing between this and the Pulley bow.

The dex requirement is enough to throw people a bit off, especially since dexterity doesn't share the benefit of being knocked down a few points just by using both your hands, but the bigger problem ends up being how it scales with Dex.

The albinauric bow totals out to a 0.53 per point of dex, which is less than the Pulley bow's 0.49, yes, but that's a scaling the Pulley bow has in both physical attributes.



Splitting yourself evenly between Strength and Dex will always result in the Pulley bow handing out more damage.

The only situations where the albinauric bow pulls ahead is if you're focusing entirely on leveling dex, but even then, if your strength manages to inch anywhere past I think like 25, the Pulley bow's just gonna steal the lead again anyways.



All those points being valid enough, it still might be worth it to consider this bow because at the end of the day, one has a default skill that can be replaced and the other one does not.

And with bows being in the extraordinarily weak spot that they are in comparison to most other classes, the attached weapon skill is usually more than enough to make that decision pretty easy.

I've just accepted holy damage will never be in a usable state.

It's one of the many necessary evils we've just accepted about reality like capitalism and AIDS.

Holy damage being synonymous with someone whacking you over the head with a piece of packing styrofoam is just something we've grown used to.

But the way the Erdtree Bow handles it is, it's just meme.
It feels like a practical joke.

It's one of the few bows that actually have higher base elemental damage than physical, meaning you can use this in tandem with golden arrows and be dealing damage of mostly a single type, even if it is an element.

Meaning you don't have to worry nearly as much about it piercing through multiple flat defenses and shooting golden arrows suddenly feels like you're sending explosive warheads through someone's face.

And I just find that extremely funny. Sort of like a prank you play on a newcomer that's convinced his golden order paladin build is just going to pay off at some point.

It's funny how giving the Black Bow access to the Barrage skill nearly doubles its versatility, yet giving the Composite Bow similar treatment by allowing it access to Mighty Shot just makes it seem indecisive.

I'm not sure why this bow behaves the way it does.

I just know that no matter how you tailor your character, the Misbegotten Shortbow just ends up being more powerful.

The Composite Bow surpasses it every now and then, I guess, but only in the awkward transitional periods where you don't feel like your stats reflect your playstyle as much as they should.

Obviously, going full dex will make it perform better, since that's what it scales with, but investing the slightest bit into strength rapidly tips the scale in the other direction.

You can wind up with 50 or 60 dex and still have the two perform roughly the same, so it's not like it even matters.

Mighty Shot on a shortbow just makes it feel like a weaker longbow, and knocking more arrows per second doesn't mean much when there's an objectively better shortbow waiting somewhere in Castle Morne tapping its foot like it's about to ask for a manager.

Well, I can't say I expected much from a bent twig the Samurai picks up off the ground at the game start, but I somehow still walked away from the longbow feeling a certain disappointment.

Maybe some of the other starting weapons never leaving my side for the first six hours have manufactured some unhealthy expectations.

Or maybe I did my math wrong, even after double checking just to make sure it actually did theoretically do more total damage than the pulley bow at a +0. But as it turns out, that's exactly what's wrong with it.



The damage numbers by themselves are a bit misleading, because with more range comes less noticeable damage falloff, which is why the pulley bow doesn't seem like it measures up on paper but ends up doing more in practice.

The D's in scaling are almost insultingly misleading, because the actual scaling ends up being a 0.39 for Dex and an even more staggeringly disappointing 0.30 in Strength.



I think the reason it felt so reliable at the start was because of the fire arrows the samurai starter class is supplied with, and a split damage of 0.95 and 0.15 favoring fire essentially bypasses the flat defense problem so effectively that the 0.15 physical damage just ends up dangling there like a piece of dead skin on your pinky finger.

I don't really know what to say about this one, other than it's a straightforward regression from the composite bow in nearly every single regard.

It requires more dex despite it losing the scaling battle to the composite bow on both physical stats, and it literally never gets better.

For all intents, this thing is just a re-skinned composite bow with slightly less attack power.

I guess it weighs a half pound less, but again, like I said earlier, you almost never need to actually decide between two weapons of similar stats for this reason.



If you don't want to cosplay as an olympic gymnast that's been cursed with lead ass cheeks, just grab yourself a jar talisman or maybe take that stupid cape off.

I swear to god, some of you guys act like middle-aged women on a keto diet.
Stop making a big deal over like two pounds.

This greatbow is the cornerstone example of why you should never fall in love with potential.

Scaling all arrow damage off of faith sounds nutty at first glance, but it's actually just a really roundabout way of telling the player that the faith scaling on this greatbow offers more return on your investment than the two physical attributes.

Sort of how tying cinder blocks to your ankles is a more efficient way to get to the bottom of the lake than just diving normally.
It's a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ 0.54!



Christ man, is it really so important it needs to hog up space in the item description?
Is the big D at the bottom center of the menu next to the word faith not a clear enough indication?

Additionally, the idea of a greatbow scaling with faith has zero utility outside of holy damage using the golden great arrows, because using a greatbow to deal elemental damage limits you to magic and holy, because those are the only two elemental arrows that exist in the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ game.

This feels like a psyop. This ♥♥♥♥ was done on purpose.

A menacingly explosive 260 damage at +25.

And no, the weight of the crossbow doesn't determine reload speed.
Nothing does.
They're all the same.

I don't know what prankster started that urban myth, but to the five people who can't find it in themselves to reorganize their life enough to prevent them from giving a ♥♥♥♥, let's just end it here.

All standard crossbows have the same reload speed.

It can be bought from the nomadic merchant near the Weeping Peninsula for the price of like two happy meals, making it the only crossbow of the standard three to not be tied to an arbitrary bird ♥♥♥♥ drop rate.

And for that point alone, the light crossbow at the very least deserves a space or two above the rest of its competition.

You can squint at these two like you're taking an optometry exam, but there is almost no benefit that the Heavy crossbow holds over the light variant outside of slightly bigger damage numbers.

It only has a drop rate of 2%, but it also drops from basic soldiers throughout the game.

No matter what contorted freak they end up worshipping.

So you can just start walking in a random direction and probably trip over one of these by accident within a couple minutes.

But the fact that the game even asks me to farm for something as insignificant as a crossbow just feels like someone's trying to piss me off and ruin my day.

So I'm placing it exactly one space below the light crossbow as a means of symbolically conveying to the dev team that nobody ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ owns me.

In the real world, shortbows have been really appropriate weapons for highly mobile archers riding on horseback.

So I was wanting to see a little performance bonus in that regard.
And boy did I see some damage.

The emotional damage as a result of your attempt to get anything remotely decent out of this bow, when you turn around and the entire Lands Between is just laughing their ass cheeks off like they're attending a live showing of George ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ Carlin.

D's in both physical stats mean naught but ♥♥♥♥ when the scaling for either is a meager 0.26.

It gets slapped with the second weakest damage of all shortbows, even when fully upgraded.



There's a merchant in Lyonia that sells the composite bow for 3,500 runes and directly south of you is a castle infested with enough misbegotten to open a zoo exhibit.

The game is practically begging you to replace this driftwood trash the second you get it.

That's the whole purpose of its existence.
And that's not a bad thing, by the way.

Introducing players to a weapon class by just giving it to a merchant 10 feet outside the building you emerge from is honestly a really nice way to make build testing as low maintenance as possible.

I don't argue that the shortbow shouldn't exist,

I just argue that it's a piece of ♥♥♥♥ is all.

Okay, so I think this explanation has been a long time coming.
Yes, I understand why people like poison moth flight.
I know it does the poison detonation thing if an enemy is afflicted with poison.

I kind of didn't know that when I made the Ash of War video because I just never attempted it, but I understand that now.

I understand why people say poison as a status ailment is underrated.

Now, allow me to properly explain in greater detail why poison is literally designed to be obsolete by the time you crawl your way into the mid game.

Poison isn't just trash because the status itself is susceptible to being outpaced by most other lingering DOTs.

It's also trash because, much like holy damage, poison has a substantial drop off in utility towards the end game because most enemies you'll find are either resistant to it, such as Cleanrot knights, Oracle envoys, and late game Banish knights, or they just flat out shrug it off entirely, like Gargoyles, Putrid avatars, Black knives, and Vulgar militia.

Introducing us to ranged poison builds with the serpent bow almost feels akin to a tech demo that's 10 years behind everyone else.

It'd be like if some big wig ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ CEO announced that his company was working on testing the limits of procedural generation...



and then just showed you ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ Minecraft.

The weakest of the three standard crossbows.

I saw the damage numbers this over-glorified nerf gun dared to throw at me, I knew exactly how dog-♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ inefficient this crossbow was going to be on all fronts, and somehow I still wound up disappointed.



I don't know how to transition into a statement as out of left field as this, but just a word of advice for anyone wanting to make their own videos on stuff like this, find a cheat table somewhere.

Like, please, don't subject yourself to farming for ♥♥♥♥ like this just to record a minute of footage you'll never use again.

You deserve better than that.

Just boot up Cheat Engine and spawn the item in yourself.

If you're going to make weapons with the combat versatility of a plunger, the least you can do is not force us to grind for it.

Not counting the pulley crossbow, for obvious reasons.
This is the weakest crossbow in the game.

The existence of this crossbow, and what it decides to be, upsets me tremendously.

47 range is a stat that regular ass longbows can outpace in their sleep, but the item description suggests that it's appropriate for sniping.



238 damage on a +10 and you're telling me to just pick a spot behind a bush somewhere and start killing ♥♥♥♥.

This crossbow doesn't make me feel like a sniper, it makes me feel like someone owes me a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ apology.



It's this exact weapon that chiseled the question into my head and forced me to recognize what little sense crossbows as a weapon class actually make in the game.

If something can't even be bothered to give me proper scaling, it has no business hiding behind a stat requirement.

Just, period.

I'm not grinding out 16 decks for a Van Helsing prop, and it should feel ashamed for even asking me to do so.

Expecting anything useful from this crossbow is as hopelessly misguided as a sandpaper tampon company.

The weakest shortbow, which all but guarantees its placement as the weakest overall bow in tandem.

If you thought bow scaling across the board was a joke, then the scaling on the harp bow is a piece of wet paper that says working hard or hardly working duct taped to your boss's wrinkly forehead.

The more you try to force this bow to work, the more those gimmicky little corks drums are just gonna start pissing you off.

I don't know where this trend started or why it's persisted for so long, but can we please stop intentionally bottlenecking a weapon's performance and then pretending like a cool visual design just makes it okay?

It's embarrassing admitting to 487,000 people that this is my personal favorite bow in the game, because why the hell wouldn't it be?

Look at it, look at how cool this thing is.

The weaker damage doesn't even need to be the death sentence that it sounds like. If you're building around bows, damage of any kind is the last thing you're expecting.

We could have messed around with aura buffs upon firing, charm effects that allow you to pull aggro easier, maybe just a touch of arcane scaling to make it more compatible with sleep arrows,

I don't know, ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ anything
except an audio byte of someone slapping their ♥♥♥♥ on the keybed of a piano.

• Ranking All 16 Elden Ring Daggers From Worst to Best
  
• Ranking All 18 Elden Ring Staves From Worst To Best
  
• Ranking All 25 Elden Ring Bows From Best to Worst
  
• Ranking All 47 Elden Ring Gestures From Worst To Best
  
• Ranking All 64 Elden Ring Spirit Summons From Worst To Best
  
• Ranking All 69 Elden Ring Shields From Worst To Best
  
• Ranking All 70 Elden Ring Sorceries From Worst To Best
  
• Ranking All 88 Elden Ring Unique Skills From Worst to Best
  
• Ranking All 91 Elden Ring Talismans From Worst To Best
  
• Ranking All 91 Elden Ring Ashes of War From Worst to Best
  
• Ranking All 101 Elden Ring Incantations From Worst To Best
  
• Ranking All 115 Elden Ring Consumables From Worst to Best...
  
• Ranking All 308 Elden Ring Weapons From Worst to Best
  
  
• Oh God, Now He's Ranking The Elden Ring Great Runes...

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