Machine Crossbow  

first question. how will this compare to Ebow/hellfire+1 if you have AF2 body, AF1 hat, and some hands that give rapid shot also

second question. would this be insanely good for soloing for the reason you can shoot bloody bolts really fast.

edit: the hands only work in besieged

Edited, Oct 25th 2006 at 8:47pm PDT by gampishi

I'm a Ranger 70 on Odin and I'd like to debunk a few of the myths and misconceptions about this bow.

Current price of this bow is about 4 million - roughly half the price of a Eurytos' Bow and about one third more than the Hellfire +1. Whether or not it's worth the gil is entirely dependent upon what you want to do with it. If you do decide you want one, be aware that this bow is an absolute pain to make and there are very few in circulation. You may have to look quite hard or wait quite a long time to find one for sale.

First, contrary to what other posts here say, this bow is *not* the best damage in an xp party situation. Ebow and Hellfire +1 comfortably leave it behind. Although your rate of fire is mad, weaponskills, Barrage and Eagle Eye Shot will all do much less damage than they would with a normal weapon, especially as you don't get added effect damage on any of those. While you can push the added effect damage quite high by going for a MND build, it's still never going to keep up with the Ebow/Hellfire +1 vs VT or IT xp mobs. I've experimented with a number of different ammo types and the closest I've been able to get the Machine Crossbow is about 85% of the damage Ebow + Kabura Arrows, by using Holy Bolts with a lot of MND.

Second, TP gain on this bow is not that impressive. Remember, TP gain per hit depends on weapon delay. You may get 11 TP per hit with a regular xbow, but with this, you'll be getting 7 or so. When you take account of the fact that Barrage with this will not fill up your TP to anything like the extent it would with another weapon, your overall TP gain is actually going to be slower.

Third, the bow is not actually that expensive to operate, compared with bow and gun. My damage tests have shown that for most mobs, Holy Bolts are far better damage from this bow than Darksteels, so you get to use cheap ammo. With the price of Kabura Arrows and Silver Bullets currently about 3x that of Holy Bolts, the cost over time works out more or less the same, if not actually slightly cheaper on the Machine Crossbow.

So... what's the bow actually good for?

First of all, it's an insanely weapon for pulling with. For grabbing mobs in an over-camped area with contested pulls, this seriously cannot be beaten. It's so fast that the aiming animation doesn't actually get a chance to finish before it fires. I've out-pulled other pullers using regular ranged weapons, or even throwing weapons, many times using this. Even on NM camping, this weapon is awesome. With the second or so delay on using job abilities on freshly spawned mobs, this weapon can actually outpull a provoke if you're fast enough. I got my Moldavite Earring thanks to this xbow, beating off a whole bunch of other casters.

Also, its damage seems to be higher than normal in Dynamis and it seems to keep up with, or even exceed, Ebow and Hellfire +1 there. I'm still fairly new to Dynamis, so I'm not entirely sure why this is... but the added effect on holy bolts seems to stack up a lot better there. In larger Dynamis runs where mobs are dying very quickly, this xbow is a good way to make sure you get in more than 1 or 2 attacks per mob.

Finally, it's also the best damage vs certain mobs with very high def. If you've fought Genbu, you'll know how hard it is to inflict physical damage on him, even using your most powerful weapons. With the Machine Crossbow, if you boost your MND a bit, the added effect from Holy Bolts will actually make your damage slightly less embarrassing.

This thing outdamages an E-Bow on DoT. The catch is that it snorts bolts the way Robin Willians snorted cocain in the 80's

Has anyone tried subbing WHM, going for a MND build and spamming holy bolts with this ding dong? I'd imagine the addittional effect damage racks up pretty quick =/

the damage/delay and damage per second rate on this thing (as well as the ranged attk +18) is absolutely freakin' insane, and you can fire arrows one after another! best crossbow ever right? well, i think you may have to look over that opinion.

delay 130. combine that w/ your bolt's delay (if you use holy or darksteel it's 192), = 222 delay. so you're firing bolts approximately every 2 and 1/5 seconds. that means that in a little over 3 and a half minutes you will have shot an entire stack of 99 bolts, which IMO isn't a very good thing. a solution to this problem? wait longer, and don't fire every 2.2 seconds! but wait, this arrises another problem. let's say you shoot once every 6 seconds as opposed to once every 2 seconds. let's also say you use a stack of darksteel bolts. you will be firing 68 damage every 6 seconds, which means your total damage per second will only be 11, plus the ranged attk +18.

overall, it looks nice, but it's unnecessary and IMO impractical. if you're gonna use a crossbow most of the time, stick with othinus's bow. use it with darksteel bolts, and you'll be dishing out 104 damage at a delay of 624, totalling 16 damage per second, plus the very same ranged attk +18. an extra 5 damage a second may seem like not much, but trust me, when you think about the amount of times you'll be shooting at your enemies, it adds up. also, by shooting every 6 and 1/4 seconds, you'll use up 99 bolts in approximately 10 minutes and 20 seconds ^_^

If you have your marksmanship up, and this gun, man oh man, you would kill things so quickly. You'd probably run outta bolts quickly though.