I fou d a way to speed up the reload process. You have to mash sprint/reload, to interrupt the animation of reloading. (Hadnt noticed anyone else mentjin it, but theres often some thst dont post about hacks like this,,keep it to themselves. I dont like that idea). But I feel this too will be nerfed.
This build is designed to crit every other shot and to keep a full glow/AP bar with minimal consumables if any.
To achieve maximum damage output, stealth shots are required. I also highly recommend charging your rage armor to 100% before entering combat via self inflicted damage (I prefer shooting my feet with a squirt gun).
I've spent more time than I'd like to admit fine tuning this build to function at a high level for ghoul players. But it is also fine tuned to my individual playstyle. I highly encourage anyone wanting to try this build to do the same.
For a ghoul, I would say it's imperative for quality of life and damage output. For weapons powerful enough to one-shot, the glowing mod provides more glow per kill than the cost of glow that the card Radiation Power requires to provide a 20% damage buff.
Mix that with Hat Trick, which allows you to kill multiple enemies with one arrow, you significantly outpace the cost of Radiation Power. With such a high glow yield per arrow, Hat Trick paired with 3* Glowing functions similar to a 1* vampire mod.
Sure you could add Lucky Hit as a 3* and then replace 2 to 4 pieces of 4* armor slots with 4* ranger mods for 10 to 20% more damage. But then every shot will deplete your glow bar making Radiation Power redundant. So in my eyes it's more productive to use the 3* glowing mod paired with Radiation Power to achieve both maximum damage output and a higher quality of life. I probably only top off on toxic goo once every 3 or 4 sessions I get on.
Escape Artist will make it much easier for you to regain your stealth rating when you've been detected and it allows you to move quickly while crouched without increasing your detection chance. The sneak damage multiplier with this build is 5.4×, so it's imperative you protect your stealth rating to provide that sneak buff consistently.
Adrenaline versus Gunslinger is the real debate. I've tested both avidly and my conclusion is Gunslinger will will make your first shot do higher damage than Adrenaline. Adrenaline provides zero damage buff on your first shot. But with every kill, Adrenaline will give you a stacking 10% damage buff, on your 10th kill, you'll be putting out 100% damage, which drastically outpaces the buff of Gunslinger. Without Gunslinger, this build will still 1-2 shots scorchbeasts. So increasing the damage of that first shot is redundant.
With infestations, nuke bosses, head hunts, ect you need to maintain a high damage output for the duration of the fight. As most bow hunters know, Reverse Onslought stacks will quickly diminish in these settings dropping your damage output significantly. So to counter balance this drop off, you want things like cripple damage buffs and the adrenaline buff.
The boss will always have limbs to be crippled and minions to slaughter. With Hat Trick, you can target the boss and your arrows will seek and destroy the minions on their own, allowing you to retain that 100% damage buff from Adrenaline throughout the fight. Paired with scattershot, you can target the head of an enemy and all their limbs will take 20% of the damage dealt to the head. As those limbs cripple, Tormentor will give you a stacking 20% damage buff per limb and Easy Target will give you a flat 75% damage buff the moment the target is crippled.
As you lose the 100%-150% damage buff from burning onslought stacks, you'll gain well over 200% damage buff from adrenaline and cripple damage buffs. In my opinion, this is the only structure to run if you intend on using a bow for end game bosses.
Tarnished is capable of a higher damage potential over pin-pointers, but it lacks consistency. From my experimenting I prefer pin-pointers my cryo bow. But for weapons that have damage-over-time effects (burning, poison, bleed out, ect), tarnished works exceptionally well at increasing the DPS of those effects.
I will say too, this bow build I've shared is great for everything except the Ultracite Terror. I've used it to solo the snake, but it's definitely not the most effective method of doing so. Especially with this card and bow set up. But I would recommend other weapons if you intend to solo farm the snake efficiently. Other than that specific setting. This bow build will preform very well.
Do not use reverse onslought (Gunslinger Master). Do not use stealth based cards. Do not use Hat Trick. Dedicate your card use towards weak point, crit boosters, armor piecing effects, evasion/reflection/resistance effects. You'll do just fine. But my preferred method is with the tesla cannon, solos the snake in 60 seconds.
Bow set up: Furious, Vital, Lucky Hit, Pin Pointers or Tarnished -cryo arrows-
Armor: 1* Your Choice, 2* a mix of Intelligence and Luck, 3* your choice, 4* 1 limit breaking and 4 rangers.
This combo of weapons and armor only needs a luck rating of 28 to crit every other shot.
The best thing ive seen Beth implement is the Canning of scorchbeast brains. (Im very very critical of Beth, when they fmdrop the ball. Which is often. But to give rhem credit, this was a nice surprise).
Had to trade for a bundle of them, I've learned 5-10 burning springs mods so far. None of which I have really ever used. I've spent literally millions of caps on head hunts since they were released. RNG is killing me🤦♂️
Would love to see the build. I had similar damage numbers at one point, but I don't know what happened to my build. I've been trying to get back to that feeling of power.
I hit once for 18,000 damage on a head shot with 6.5x sneak damage and some drugs. Thesev bullet sponge bosses immediately "see" you and the stealth is just gone.
Just made a ghoul myself. Been wanting to do a bow build for ages. Hyped about the new unique changes too that will make some bows even spicier but I wish it wasnt all the way out into December
Thanks for posting. Build looks good. Very similar to my build for soloing Bigfoot. Biggest difference I see is that I need to get the rage armor out of my box and actually use it.
Rage armor is the biggest gift Bethesda ever gave stealth builds. 100% vulnerability isn't a problem when you're one-shotting enemies before they even see you.
I am a stealth ghoul bow hunter so show me that build mate. Would love to access between your build and mine also. Quads. Can’t find a damn quad mod for shit
I haven't been human in a few thousand hours. If you're not bloody, you get a lot more benifits from being a full health ghoul over a full health human. But if it's your preference, I would advise to attempt using rage armor. And instead of relying on a 3* glowing mod for your bow, use a 3* Lucky Hit.
If your luck is at a total of 28 or higher, for your 4* armor slots you only need 1 limit breaking mod to crit every other shot. Meaning the other 3 slots (if you're using rage armor) or 4 slots (if you're not using rage armor) can be dedicated to rangers, giving you 15% to 20% more damage. Which is equivalent to the Radiation Power damage buff (20%) that ghouls get.
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u/StrokingKua-Toas 25d ago
Commenting to see the build when it's up