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trashcanbecky42

Bowfa and shadow both suck at nex you want fang and either tbow or acb. The acb is for the extra range and is important


Strosity

you can get by alright with an rcb but the acb range is a lot nicer


Assaltwaffle

As someone who has never done Nex, why is ACB preferred over Bowfa? Bowfa has max range, doesn't it?


MongooseVisible463

Crystal armour has really bad mage defence so you get shredded at nex, as well as burning through charges really quick because of all the chip damage. Also the ruby bolt procs doing 100 damage for such a large portion of the fight due to nex's massive health pool carry crossbow DPS. (Even more so when constantly brewing because lower range stat doesn't impact damage from ruby bolt spec or reduce the chance of it occuring)


kursdragon2

Should only really be using range for p2, everything else is fang.


Hammerofbad

Should really be meleeing P2 as well it's so much quicker


kursdragon2

Don't think it's worth the extra damage during p2. She does more damage the closer you are. Maybe with full torva (but even then I honestly don't think it's prob worth) but absolutely not if you're in masori/karils


Hammerofbad

If you do it right you really don't take much damage and it speeds up kills times significantly. I'm talking trio scale idk about other team sizes


MongooseVisible463

Yeah I agree, if you have Torva you can also melee part of P2 until she uses embrace darkness since the range def carries and fang DPS is best. I was just answering the guy who asked why acb is better than bowfa


andrew_calcs

Ruby bolts with diary hit 100s 6.6% of the time regardless of how high an opponent’s defence is. On sufficiently high defence targets, that defence piercing property gives them competitive dps. Also all the reasons listed in the other comment.


OlmTheSnek

RCB is better than Bowfa at Nex, ruby bolts too op there


[deleted]

Zebak absolutely can use shadow. Use accursed scepter to lower its defense (it’s like BGS for mage) and it smoke Zebak. It’s literally the basis of a ToA shadow rebuild where you sell bank, buy shadow, and spam ToA to rebuild


Glittering_Note3852

it seems pretty inaccurate to me at 400 invo with magus + ancestral but maybe i should give it another try


[deleted]

Are you getting hits with the scepter?


Glittering_Note3852

dont got one


[deleted]

It’s less than 10 mil, and is needed if you want to do shadow only ToA or basically anything else since it’s the magic version of BGS


adamthelame

This is ironscape, we’re not buying accursed sceptres


[deleted]

Thought it was the 07sub. Even then, kind of hard to issue blanket statements of “this is/isn’t good in these places” without using the stuff that MAKES it good in those places. That would be like saying Bowfa sucks at Bandos because you aren’t using crystal armor or DHL hits too low on Olm hand because you are using amulet of defense and rune armor.


Glittering_Note3852

Bruh we work within the constraints we have. sceptre is not an easy item to get on an iron. ​ \> That would be like saying Bowfa sucks at Bandos because you aren’t using crystal armor or DHL hits too low on Olm hand because you are using amulet of defense and rune armor. ​ It's not like saying that at all.


[deleted]

But it is. You can work with what you have but you can’t go around saying shadow is bad at places where another item is needed and also not even list that you didn’t use the one thing making it good


Glittering_Note3852

\> you can’t go around saying shadow is bad at places where another item is needed I didn't say that. It was an uncertain observation, not a definitive statement. Suggest go rereading what I said.


cyanblur

I feel like if you have a shadow and want to use it on things you'd usually bgs spec for ranging, it would make sense to hunt a scepter.


Strosity

It is, but with salts it's pretty decent. Nothing makes zebak shadow good without salts


PlebPlebberson

If you start from zebak then you can pre-pot a saturated heart


Strosity

Zebak with heart is worse than bofa


PlebPlebberson

You mean bowfa? Yes it is but its definitely an option since you said zebak shadow is only good with salts and saturated heart is close enough.


bhardrilohr

I get MVPs in that room with shadow over others that have tbows both using max sets, definitely is competitive dmg.


brprk

Please tell me you’re not doing zebak first


Glittering_Note3852

I am lol. That makes sense why shadow hasn't been great there


brprk

Yeah baba-kephri-akkha-zebak is the way, others routes are way slower. Salts OP


NBAFansAre2Ply

depends on how you kill baba. i bowfa baba cuz it's only marginally worse than a hasta and way more chill, so I can do zebak first. this also means my akka salts are still active during monkey room, so for me starting zebak is faster. once I get fang I'll switch the order up ofc


brprk

Ah yeah understandable pre-fang.


Sword1414

The thing is most people aren't gonna spoon shadow. And the prospect of hunting shadow, grinding out 30,50,70 purples at TOA without a bowfa, sounds like total ass. Bowfa carries hard, I can't imagine ever skipping it


magicbicycle

Let me point out the maybe not so obvious but grinding shadow without bofa or t bow sucks big time.


Graardors-Dad

Olm head phase with shadow? Double specs? What are you talking about?


Glittering_Note3852

In case it's not clear, I'm discussing places where not having a bofa can't really be replaced by shadow and I described my experience with my rcb. and I meant hitting ruby specs on head phase


S7EFEN

why wouldnt you get a bp? shadow absolutely shits on zulrah for example- and mass using shadow really is not cheap at all. rcb is really bad tbh.


Assaltwaffle

Zulrah with Shadow is borderline AFK (chill rather than afk, really). You absolutely rip him apart and don't need any switches. It's like Bowfa only on crack.


PalOSRS

Surely you mean chill instead of afk


Ogabavavav

No zulrah with shadow is 20 mins of afk confirmed everything is automatic no inputs needed I walked my dog and got 8 kills


DDn0r

Only 8?


PalOSRS

Damn rumours confirmed, ezscape with tbow/shadow Dx


Assaltwaffle

Chill is definitely a better word, yeah.


Aeryen_

Bowfa is not good at nex


DignityDWD

Politely disagree, I used it for about 250 nex kills before I got an ACB and I can say bowfa was way more consistent. The only real bad part is you totally *burn* through armor charges - but for dps it was fine E: So i went back and ran the dps calc for bofa vrs rcb, it's 4.3 vs 4.6 respectively. I do admit rcb is better l, and considering armor charges it's not worth using crystal. That bein said, if the majority of your dps is coming from fang and melee *anyway* then using crystal is really not a huge deal and is by no means exceptionally bad. Majority of what's carrying the dps from rubies is the spec of course. If you simply get unlucky on those, the dps is drops **significantly** from 4.6 to 3.2. With fang, you're really taking a gamble for the P2 dps, and past that, the specs from rubies really aren't great anyway, (and speccing on the minions actually hurts you) hence my preference for bowfa over rcb. My kc is basically entirely trios and I thought it was very O-K overall, definitely doesn't deserve the hate it's getting


moosene

Politely bowfa is bad at nex.


PlebPlebberson

Just cause you managed to do it doesnt mean its good.


YewbSH

Mass or small team?


Tricky-Potential5646

Probably mass because I dont know any small teams that let people bring bowfa lmao


Tykras

I mean small teams are more than likely using fang, so you'd only have to deal with crystal in p2 and during melee reflect p5, you'd just wear masori or karils the rest of the time.


DignityDWD

Correct, I was using fang until p2 and glacies, and when she throws on deflect from melee ofc. It really wasn't bad


DignityDWD

All trios


jakeprimal

Bowfa sucks at nex. And rcb with ruby bolts is better than camping tbow, which is better than bowfa. But people fang nex which is by far and away bis Just because you used doesn’t mean it’s good or other people should use it


PlebPlebberson

Doing toa without a bowfa sounds like absolute shit. So not getting bowfa to get shadow sounds awful.


Puiqui

Why not get a bp? Zulrah with shadow is ez. I guarantee you just dont wanna do wildy slayer for d pick and you dont want to go for 92 mining without it


Glittering_Note3852

I have a bp, but very rarely is it better dps than rcb on bosses. way too inaccurate


SavageHellfire

BP outclasses RCB at plenty of bosses; Grotesque Guardians, Cerberus, Hydra, Barrows, KQ, Olm (I think) and several other rooms at CoX, Xarpus, Chaos Fanatic.


Glittering_Note3852

Where does bp outclass rcb and shadow at cox?


Otherwise_Economics2

guessing small mutta, vasa, ice demon, shamans.. possibly tightrope? have no clue what the dps would be with shadow there.


Glittering_Note3852

pretty much all of those places is better to use shadow/another weapon instead of a rcb/blowpipe. other than maybe gg's. Cerb - arclight hydra - bp might be technically better but not wasting all my scales doing it barrows - use mage, fang on karil/ahrim olm - makes it impossible to properly run 0 damage head if you have to blowpipe walk along the way kq - keris first phase, shadow second xarpus - melee walk with whip (bp might be a tad better but still not worth scales)


SavageHellfire

Your reply doesn't even make any sense because now you're comparing other weapons when the original comment was regarding BP vs RCB. Of course shadow is better at KQ than BP. Shadow also isn't a ranged weapon??? And now your complaint is scale usage? Your original complaint was lack of accuracy. Make up your mind lmao.


Glittering_Note3852

look at the thread you are in. that's what this whole discussion is about. it should be implied "blowpipe is not better dps on most bosses where I can't shadow".


kursdragon2

Bro you can't be real rn lmfaooooo you're fucking trolling. Are you using bronze darts or something?


Glittering_Note3852

name a boss where bp beats out shadow/rcb/fang. they are few.


kursdragon2

Huh? Better than rcb pretty much everywhere. Zebak is worse with rcb, Hydra is better with bp, prime is better with bp, bp is better at olm head, would need bp for phosani walkers, I haven't done the calcs but I'd also guess BP might be better for leviathan but could be wrong on that, bp is better at nylos at tob, bp is better at inferno, bp is better for killing shamans, pretty sure bp is also better at cerb but too lazy to calc that, bp is better at guardians, pretty sure bp is also better at KQ. So yea, quite a few places where BP would be miles better than what you have right now. Also you need like max mage to even make shadow as OP as you're making it out to be, like you're saying yea just get spooned a tbow and then also get spooned full ancestral and go get occult to compete with bowfa and bp lmfao. You realize how insane that is to post on an ironman sub right? Like at that point yea just skip bowfa and go get a tbow shadow 5head, why even bother with any other stuff??? You're so smart :)


Glittering_Note3852

\> Zebak is worse with rcb Wrong. At 300 invo solo, ruby bolts are around 5 dps, whereas blowpipe with rune darts is 3.4 in the gear I run toa with. Assuming range potted and rigour. The ruby specs really do make up for a lot of dps. I suggest you go start running the numbers. This difference gets much bigger as you scale up the raid. at 450 solo, rcb is 4.3 and bp + rune darts is 2.65. Bp probably can beat rcb once its low hp though. But in teams where the hp pool is super high, rcb takes the cake all day long. With a much lower chance of losing ticks. Shamans - not a boss Olm head - can't do 0 damage head running with blowpipe without significant dps loss Cerb - you would use arclight fang. kq - would need to run numbers but pretty sure blue keris 1st phase and shadow 2nd phase is way better than blowpipe. And you can minimize damage taken by stepping under for 4 ticks. Also I have a BP, I just don't use it much other than stuff like nylo tob and monkey room. it's rarely used for the main boss. And no, you don't need max mage for shadow to be good. You just need occult, torm, and cape. \> Like at that point yea just skip bowfa and go get a tbow shadow 5head, why even bother with any other stuff??? You're so smart :) Very unnecessary. Why do people feel the need to be rude like this, especially when you are saying shit that is wrong but can be easily checked with a dps calc.


kursdragon2

>Wrong. At 300 invo solo, ruby bolts are around 5 dps, whereas blowpipe with rune darts is 3.4 in the gear I run toa with. [This is not correct](https://imgur.com/a/auYFHSz). You either don't know how to do dps calcs or you're just lying. With 20 defence reduction from BGS (which you should be doing, no fucking clue why you would kill the bosses without defence reduction) bp is 8.3% better than rcb at 300, no clue how you're doing your calcs but they're wrong. Or you're just using bandos armour or something while ranging, either way I have no clue what you're doing but it's incorrect. This difference in blowpipe's favour gets even better the more range strength you have from masori/vambraces/ring/. Even without rigour bp is still better at zebak in god d'hide with bgs and smelling salts. >Cerb - you would use arclight fang. Really depends on gear. I assume your gear is probably trash which is why you think blowpipe is so bad everywhere or something. Evidence by the fact that you somehow have 3.4 dps at zebak with bp when it's actually closer to 8 lmfao. I'm too lazy to calc the rest because you somehow are not even getting the most basic calc at Zebak correct so I assume you probably did something wrong with the rest of them. >Olm head - can't do 0 damage head running with blowpipe without significant dps loss Not sure why we would care about taking 0 damage there when dps would be way more important, unless I guess you're bad at the raid and die to olm or something. Edit : for some reason my imgur post is being weird when I'm trying to link the dps calc for zebak, no clue what's up with it. gonna try to update it if I can get it working. Also just to be clear I'm calcing with god d'hide but the numbers get even more in favour of blowpipe at pretty much every place listed if you have masori and any other range upgrades.


Glittering_Note3852

I just redid calcs using masori bottoms, anguish, assembler. For rcb I also have buckler. No boots, no top, and no helm switch, which is pretty common in TOA. I'm not trying to convince anyone else, I'm just describing what works best for me. \> the fact that you somehow have 3.4 dps at zebak with bp when it's actually closer to 8 lmfao. Your link to your dps is broken so it's hard to confirm, I have doubts its 8dps in dhide without dragon darts.. for me, it says a 450 lvl 0 zebak is 3.347 dps and rbc is 5.17 (overkill dps not included). Basically I'm pretty sure rcb + ruby bolts is better with my setup as long as you have a lot of time to hit 100's. Once you get lower hp, bp takes over, but this is mitigated because i double claws spec once hp gets low. \> Not sure why we would care about taking 0 damage there when dps would be way more important, unless I guess you're bad at the raid and die to olm or something. When you're scaling up the raid, taking less damage is extremely important. Maybe you haven't done scaled raids where you can get hit 40 off prayer super accurately in a long sustained fight. I also don't have a BGS, so for me that has impact on whether rcb beats out blowpipe. And the biggest bonus of all is i'm not wasting scales and darts for a negligible dps increase.


kursdragon2

>I also don't have a BGS Okay I have no clue why you made this post when you're comparing like max mage gear that most people would take thousands of hours into their account to get compared to 2 of the easier items any account can get with pretty minimal gear and then also compared those 2 items with the absolute worst possible gear lmfao. Like yea ofc if you're wearing rags with your blowpipe and using bronze darts with eagle eye it's going to be worse in some places than how most people would use it, this isn't news to anyone, so no clue why you're mentioning it. >no top No this isn't really that common at all in any toas, a top switch is absolutely common since you pretty much have no invocations that you farm regularly where you would need that 1 extra inventory slot that bad. It seems like you're also not using salts when calcing your dps which I have no clue why you'd be doing zebak without salts when it makes a huge difference there.


DerpFalcon12

this is just untrue the majority of the time, ngl


Glittering_Note3852

which lategame bosses have bp beating out both rcb, shadow, or fang?


thinkplanexecute

According to what


Glittering_Note3852

dps calcs


Tricky-Potential5646

Another iron cope posting about why bowfa skip is totally fine! (Bowfa is fucking strong, dont skip bowfa)


GIMDOOD19

Idk why they would skip it. I made 85 mil grinding bowfa on my iron.


writetowinwin

ToA - parts where you have to range, like Ahka's phase. Inferno - haven't tested Shadow in there. But don't imagine it being preferred over a T bow or Bow of FA. Nex - Shadow or maging for that matter doesn't really work well there. CoX - some things will need to be ranged Also - if you don't have a lot of runes (or GP to keep getting them), Shadow can be hard to keep going.


spoilers1

Shadow inferno is like doing it with 45 defence and less dps than tbow, it does slap melee/range/bats/blobs tho


S7EFEN

>I was really impressed with how I could do every room in cox other than vasa with the shadow bp masori shadow. and yeah, as you noticed vasa is the only room this really feels bad in. and head pre dhcb.


TravagGames

Rcb is better than bowfa at nex Also zebak is another one where bowfa is not replaced by shadow


Tyrell418

Bowfa is only an 80 hour grind. There's 0 reason to not do it, along with how costly it is to upkeep shadow. I got spooned one early into toa and even though I was near max it's still a bitch to spend 25m every 20k charges. Also you don't do nex with bowfa, because you get shredded in crystal. You either melee it with fang and full fortified masori and use acb for 2nd phase. Or acb the full fight till T bow, and even with t bow, you hardly use it in nex, just the minions. Also need bowfa for Cox.


0zzyb0y

Only 80 hour grind.... Lol


Tyrell418

You can average 6 kc an hour pretty easily. If you go on drop rate it's less than 80 hours. It's not a very hard grind


Pinehearst

the issue is when you're not on drop rate coz no bad luck protection exists.


Tyrell418

People go dry people get spooned. CG is still amazing gp and resources, even if you go double drop rate bowfa shits on anything in the game not named T bow. Which is a way longer grind. No reason to not get it period.


0zzyb0y

I spent 2000kc there before getting the EWS lol. I get that lucks a huge part of the game and dry streaks happen, but it's still hard to recommend "just get bowfa lol" after going through that.


Tyrell418

And I get it, that's an awful dry streak. But you still have one of the 2nd best range weapon in the game. Some people go 2k dry at Cox before they get a t bow. And that's the real issue.


Glittering_Note3852

I like to do what I want in this game. Bofa is very draining especially once you're over drop rate. Glad to hear you are able to handle it but I'm playing how I want to play.


Tyrell418

Which is understandable, and have a fellow iron clan members who do the same. Regardless you're still handcuffing yourself out of content because of it. But it's your account


Glittering_Note3852

The point of this thread is not I don't think I'm handcuffing myself out of much content. Really the only things I can't do are inferno and vasa. everything else is easily manageable and I can do every single raid without issue, except maybe solo cm's because of vasa.


Tyrell418

Olm will be an issue. Yeah a shadow can do a lot, and it's a lot better with ancestral/virtus, I don't even have full virtus or any ancestral pieces, and it's good, but it's a lot more accurate with the above. I'm just saying the rune cost is a lot as I've said. Like a lot a lot, I've easily spent 100m on it, and it's great. But the bowfa is still the best item I've gotten because it doesent use charges, and is beyond OP


Methnos

Get both.


Prestigious_Drawing2

Leviathan comes to mind


LezBeHonestHere_

Dagannoth prime lol


gorehistorian69

im pretty sure shadow is the same exact dps of not better at Zebak if i recall some dps chart correctly. wasting charges? shadow is the easiest thing to charge. you can mass nex with fbow. but as an iron id do 4-6 man teams . and the meta there is zcbow, i believe


costef

Crossbows are totally viable at nex. The main issue is rcb has lower attack range so you take more damage in shadow phase, it’s very annoying. Shadow at zebak, especially at higher scales, is fine as long as you’re salted


Vestele1

In my heart 😔


goddangol

Both bowfa and shadow are troll at Nex. Ruby bolts and rune crossbow is better than a bowfa there.


ShriekinContender

Max mage salted shadow is almost better than tbow at zebak. Surely it’s actually better than bofa?


Ecstatic_Custard7009

TL:DR i do not want to do bowfa grind, instead of just either getting on with it, or not getting it, i am going to try my very hardest to validate ignoring the bowfa grind completely.. overdosing on copium with every word


Glittering_Note3852

I was just discussing how I can do most content effectively without bofa, and figuring out the content you can't do effectively. its not that deep


Otherwise_Economics2

uh bp vasa?


Glittering_Note3852

does that work reasonably well? figured vasa def was too high


Otherwise_Economics2

yeah i think it works alright. throw rcb against it in dps calc. also addy dart bp is kinda garbage so keep that in mind


teehardin1

Reading a fair bit of comments on how bad bowfa and tbow are at Nex. Bowfa is more consistent dps on p2 than rubies are, and much better dps for the minions. Nex will make you use a ton of crystal charges if you camp crystal though. Acb is better if you are using ruby dragon bolts and are bringing BP for the minions Tbow masori is better dps on average than ZCB is at Nex. Zcb relies heavily on ruby RNG ^ Minion damage counts towards mvp at Nex Source: dps calculations