Why cant ppl make bows?Follow

I can't say for sure, but I'd hazzard a guess that it is an area where they are leaning towards a little realism and finding that it wouldn't play well. In the area of actually making weapons in real life, guns are indeed a completely different skill than that of the blacksmithing skills involved in making swords as they are in the game. IRL, making bows and making arrows are two additional seperate skills performed by a bowyer and a fletcher. In the game if they added these as two main professions that could be learned, who would pick them? How many characters would choose something with such limited benefits?

If you pick engineering you get to make many other things to benefit your character. If you pick blacksmithing you get to make other things at the lower levels and you are able to make things for other players to make money or to help your friend's and guildies. Considering the drawbacks people already face with blacksmithing and engineering, I wonder if it could really be worth it for the development team to find a way to make bowyer and/or fletcher into worthwhile choices.

Nice ideas, TseTsuo. I do think the game could be made even richer with fine ideas for the development team to be working on. I don't know anything about programming or any of the limitations that they have to work within, but I hope some of these things that get batted around can be added eventually. A profession that is not wildly popular but is beneficial (&fun) to those who do choose it has a place in the game, IMO.

Or they can include it under Weaponsmith in the new expansion. Considering there is already swordsmith, axesmith and macesmith, I think having a bower/fletcher and pollarm crafter would be nice aditions to the trade. I've never met any weaponsmiths so I'm guessing a very small group of people choose the trade, meaning bower/fletcher would only make choosing a specialization that much harder.

They had something literally identical to this in EQ2 (bow/staff/totem making, player-housing furniture, and chests for bank slots, though I think all this might have been split up into 2 different professions). I liked it there, and I'd like it if this made it into WoW.

I totally agree that Blizz needs to get on the stick (so to speak) and get woodworking as a profession. It's lame that there are so few Bows in the game really. Especially in the high end of the spectrum.

At lvl. 70 I only really see other 70's using one of 3 bows. The Valano's longbow (wich I have),Sunfury Bow of the Phoenix (wich is a raid drop so you better be in a serious guild to get one.) or the Skyfire Hawk-Bow (wich is not as good as the Valano's really). Please don't hesitate to chime in if I'm wrong.

The bottom line is, the choices are really limited. True, there are others out there but I never really see them. Do you?! I mean, I allways inspect other Hunters before a round of PvP and I never, ever see anybody with anything else.

Just as an exercise, go to the AH and look up bows... See what you come up with... 3 Valano's longbows for 50-100g. each right?!

Blizz makes no distinction between distance weapons. It doesn't matter whether it's a gun, crossbow, or bow, and there already is a profession that can make distance weapons. What is the difference between a Gyro-balanced Khorium Destroyer and Valanos' Longbow? Well, 75.5 DPS, and +30 STA with a socket instead of 66.4 DPS, +10 INT, and +22AP +10 crit.

As far as other ranged weapons that are good at L70, there's also Veteran's Musket (Alliance) and Marksman's Bow (Horde).

You might want to learn your subject before typing. You have so many facts wrong that your post can be dismissed as "having eaten bad mushrooms".

As far as bows go, there are several types: self, composite, and compound. A self bow is made from a single piece of wood by a specialist. You seem to feel that any old branch will do, but that's not so. A composite bow is typically made of horn or wood, reinforced by layers of sinew. A compound bow is a present day bow, that uses cams and pulleys to increase leverage and springs to provide the tension.

Catapult = single-armed siege engine, designed to throw round shot or rocks. There are many types of catapults, but they all have a single arm. Typical catapults are the onanger, the mangonel, and the trebuchet.

You are probably thinking of a ballista, a two-armed torsion siege engine, designed to throw round shot or spears. However, the ballista was first developed in China around the third century BC, as offshoots from Crossbows, not the other way around.

You could also be thinking about an Arbalest, but those were also developed from crossbows.

Crossbows are an intuitive extension of the bow, and the first was probably developed when a lazy archer got tired of maintaining a pull, and used an arrow shaft to maintain the tension of his bow.

By the way, gut (and sinew) is obtained from BUTCHERING an animal. Skinning only gets you the outside.

Edited, Aug 15th 2007 4:43:08am by ohmikeghod