Darksteel Longbow

I haven't tried this but i think we should be able to change the "Sundering" mod if we can change it i will enjoy the bow much more. Nope, we can't change the bowstring. We can only modify the bowgrip, and can't salvage it afterwards (I think).

Come to think of it, it would have been more useful if they made the bowgrip the "fixed," unmoddable one (like +30hp, or +7 vs physical) and left the bowstrings free. That way, a zealous bowstring may be able to mitigate the -5 energy hit when used with certain builds.

And I would have preferred the "+15% damage, -10 armor (while attacking)" mod vs the -5 energy, as most rangers are at the backline anyway. With the hit to energy though, I'll only consider using the bow in Asura territory.

about bowstrings, isnt sundering ones like awesome? i know that sundering for melee weapons sell for quite alot (mayb overpriced i dont know) wouldnt a sundering be good for a ranger aswell? so he does more damage I'm always nervous to bring these things up because it usually degenerates the thread into a Vampiric vs. Sundering debate, but since you asked..

In Guild Wars, the player-determined market price of an item doesn't necessarily reflect its worth as a mod. Sundering is a perfect example of a mediocre mod whose price is way out of proportion to its usefulness. Sundering is expensive because no one bothers to learn about how it works and compare it to others. I'll leave it at that.

about bowstrings, isnt sundering ones like awesome? i know that sundering for melee weapons sell for quite alot (mayb overpriced i dont know) wouldnt a sundering be good for a ranger aswell? so he does more damage I don't mean to add any fuel to a Sundering vs. Vampiric debate, but my personal experience has been that Vampiric mods are superior.

I used my warrior to conduct a test with a vampiric sword and a sundering sword (all other things were equal - i.e. no skills, same 15^50 mods). Using the Master of Damage (or whatever he's called), I found that, on average, a Vampiric sword did roughly 200 more damage over the course of 3 minutes than a Sundering sword. So that comes out to slightly less that 1 dmg per second with a Sundering sword. The results for the 5 second averages were marginally better with the Vampiric weapon; the only major difference was that the critical hit with Sundering did 7 more damage than a critical hit with a Vampiric weapon.

This is by no means a definitive scientific study (I only did 3 tests per weapon), but I feel that vampiric is better. One thing I noticed about the Sundering is that the critical hits with armor penetration don't really add that much more damage (and what are the chances of getting a critical AND having the Sundering?). Since landing critical hits is not something that you can predict, the more reliable, slightly higher average dps of the Vampiric weapon mod wins in my book.

Anyways, just food for thought.

EDIT: Yes, I realize this is a ranger forum. I only conducted tests with my warrior though; the principle will remain the same across all weapons.

EDIT: Yes, I realize this is a ranger forum. I only conducted tests with my warrior though; the principle will remain the same across all weapons. Bleh, sundering's even worse on a bow though - there's a lot of builds (standard BA or Cripshot - two of the best builds out there - for example) that run lower Marksmanship, and so wouldn't get a very big damage increase at all from sundering; then Rangers like having condition lengthening mods moreso than other classes - I regularly whip out Silencing, Poisonous and Crippling bows.