question about bows in diablo 1

[Kal]

Trying to simplify everything down to a matter of DPS often misses a lot of considerations in games like this. Throughout most stages of the game, a rogue will be struggling to get enough damage per shot to interrupt the enemy and put them into hit recovery. This is one of your primary *defensive* abilities, so it is a very important consideration. So for the developing rogue, damage per shot tends to be more important than damage per second. If your bow of swiftness doesn't do enough damage to stun, you will spend more time running away from the enemy than shooting it.

On the flip side, the high level rogue with maxed stats may not really care how much damage her bow does. She may rather have a resist all bow so she can use a plain zodiac ring or a dragon's ring of something. Of heavens suffix will actually give a few points of damage to a high level rogue, but also helps to wear full plate, increases survivability, and increases magic chance to hit. But certainly at high levels where most of the damage is coming from *base* damage, a swiftness bow can mow enemies down slightly faster than the alternatives. Except of course, if you consider chain lightning as an alternative....

Windforce and bow of the bear have to be considered as a separate possibility. The knock back effect has to be played in a different way. The good news if you play a developing rogue with one of these bows is, you don't need to worry about the stun damage issue anymore. The problem is you need to line up your shots so that your arrows continue to hit the enemy after it is knocked back. For a high level character who will always stun anyway, this can be more annoying than beneficial, regardless of the big damage of Windforce.

Great points here Nystul, though I've never liked using knock back personally.

My preference has always been for the Needler, mostly because I enjoy it's obscurity, and have only found it a handful of times, the quick attack is nice, and with the inherent high base damage of high level rogues the item damage itself is not as important as you stated.

-Kal