Rate the Weapon: Day Twenty Five - Ice Bow

[Ami]

Inspired by another topic, it occurs to me that many of us think weapons are bad or unusable, simply because we know what we like. But, do we know what we DON'T like? What's a worthy investment of your time and resources? In the case of polls which have multiple items bunched together, such as the ore swords, pick only the best one. If you love silver sword, but think iron sword is a waste of the bars, vote as if this were a poll for silver sword. I'll be logging these in a spreadsheet and making a compilation of which items users think are good, bad, OP, or a waste of space.
If they're bad, what would make them better? Lower cost? Autoswing? Projectiles? Different attack animation?
If they're OP, what would make them balanced?

Day Twenty Five : Ice Bow

VANILLAAAAAAA~

Everything you ever wanted out of a standard craftable weapon and less!

It's autofire, like repeaters (That's good!). Compared to hallowed repeater, Ice Bow has 108% damage, and 91% speed (It means the DPS is about the same), despite being obtainable before the mech bosses (That's good!). Unfortunately, arrows fired from the ice bow are turned into special icy-looking bolts that do not apply the frostburn debuff, rendering things like hellfire arrows, holy arrows, or ichor arrows worthless (That's bad!).

So, while it's a great candidate for use in conjunction with endless quiver for normal spelunking, it's got zero practical application for fighting the bosses you'd be able to use it against. Even underground, I'd like the ability to pop out to hellfire arrows if I need the AoE or knockback.

Early Hardmode items
Day 12 - Daedalus Stormbow - 4.8 (31 votes) - this guy probably needs a nerf. People intentionally go out of their way to not use it, as it makes progression too easy.
Day 11 - Nimbus Rod - 4.60 - (25 votes)
Day 21 - Spider Staff - 3.88 (17 votes)
Day 13 - Fetid Baghnakhs - 3.88 - (26 votes)
Day 23 - Magic Dagger - 3.36 - (19 votes)
Day 17 - Toxikarp - 2.84 (19 votes)
Day 22 - Queen Spider Staff - 2.86 (15 votes)
Day 14 - Chain Guillotine - 2.85 - (16 votes)
Day 15 - Bladetongue - 2.76 - (21 votes)
Day 16 - Dart Gun - 2.70 - (24 votes)
Day 24 - Frostbrand - 2.61 (13 votes)
Day 19 - Crystal Vile Shard - 2.6 (25 votes)
Day 20 - Flying Knife - 2.68 (22 votes)
Day 18 - Life Drain - 1.87 - (24 votes) - Maybe if this replenished life based on damage dealt, instead of providing a buff to regeneration, people would like it more.

Pre-Hardmode items
Day 4 - Yoyos - 4.23 - (17 votes) - The only low votes are from people who don't like this weapon's aesthetic (read: silliness), NOT from lack of respect for its power.
Day 7 - Pistols - 4.19 - (41 votes)
Day 8 - Covered in BEES! - 3.80 - (26 votes)
Day 5 - Boomerangs - 3.54 - (24 votes) - Contested. 8 low votes, 8 high votes.
Day 3 - Grenades - 3.44 - (27 votes) - Contested. 8 low votes, 8 high votes.
Day 2 - Ore Bows - 3.43 - (30 votes)
Day 10 - Gem Staves - 2.92 - (28 votes)
Day 9 - Throwing knife/shuriken family - 2.61 (18 votes)
Day 1 - Ore Swords - 2.44 - (29 votes)
Day 6 - Flails - 2.04 - (24 votes) - RIP Old, bad yoyos


Coming up: Flower of Frost, Shadowflame weapons, Mech Boss Weapons

 

[roozevelt79]

This weapon gets a 1 from me. There is no reason at all to use this over the shadowflame bow, not at all. The SFB is faster, hits harder and pierces. If the SFB wouldnt exist it would get 5 from me, but because of the SFB it gets a 1.

 

[Xakk]

Ice Bow is a bit of an oldie at this point. It, just like the Frostbrand, competes with it's Cavern counterpart for attention. But the Marrow has the distinguihsing feature of being the initial 'high crit' weapon of the class, with 5% higher crit chance. Also while both of these weapons rely on their somewhat impressive projectile speed to sell, I think Marrow's is slightly faster.
These weapons beat out early repeaters for damage but fall behind on speed with no autofire, as others have said. They're the sniping alternative to those, so if you prefer accuracy to spray and pray in a bow these are the ones you're after.
That said you lose a lot of the versatility of a ranged weapon when you remove the ability to customize ammo, so these weapons are pretty much as straightforward as it gets since they shoot their own ammo regardless of what you feed them.
That means both would get about a 3, but with the competition and nothing but raw numbers making it stand out, the Ice Bow falls to 2.

 

[roozevelt79]

Ice Bow is a bit of an oldie at this point. It, just like the Frostbrand, competes with it's Cavern counterpart for attention. But the Marrow has the distinguihsing feature of being the initial 'high crit' weapon of the class, with 5% higher crit chance. Also while both of these weapons rely on their somewhat impressive projectile speed to sell, I think Marrow's is slightly faster.
These weapons beat out early repeaters for damage but fall behind on speed with no autofire, as others have said. They're the sniping alternative to those, so if you prefer accuracy to spray and pray in a bow these are the ones you're after.
That said you lose a lot of the versatility of a ranged weapon when you remove the ability to customize ammo, so these weapons are pretty much as straightforward as it gets since they shoot their own ammo regardless of what you feed them.
That means both would get about a 3, but with the competition and nothing but raw numbers making it stand out, the Ice Bow falls to 2.

Never knew about the Marrow. That means the ice bow now has competition with both the shadowflame bow and marrow.

 

[Juno Brier]

Kinda out there.
While it is stronger than the Adamant/Titanium Repeaters, it's only stronger by a small margin.
Since it transforms your arrows into ice arrows, it also loses the special effects on the arrows it fires, meaning it doesn't get the DoT effects of Flaming, Frostburn, and Cursed Arrows, the defense reduction of Ichor Arrows, the piercing of Unholy and Jester's Arrows, the splash damage of Hellfire Arrows, and the falling stars of Holy Arrows.
The tradeoff isn't worth it, in my eyes.

 

[Xakk]

Never knew about the Marrow. That means the ice bow now has competition with both the shadowflame bow and marrow.

Despite what the wiki might say (and it's known for being only mostly accurate) the Shadowflame Bow does not have the kind of projectile velocity that these two do. It's more of a repeater that modifies arrows in the same way. Except in this case the arrows actually have a special effect instead of being bog standard. I really can't decide why superficially, they made it a bow rather than a repeater.

As for competition, I mentioned Frostburn in the Frostbrand thread. But one weapon (Flower of Frost) that you get from Ice Mimics already inflicts that, so what could be done to make this weapon more competetive, I don't know.

 

[roozevelt79]

Despite what the wiki might say (and it's known for being only mostly accurate) the Shadowflame Bow does not have the kind of projectile velocity that these two do. It's more of a repeater that modifies arrows in the same way. Except in this case the arrows actually have a special effect instead of being bog standard. I really can't decide why superficially, they made it a bow rather than a repeater.

As for competition, I mentioned Frostburn in the Frostbrand thread. But one weapon (Flower of Frost) that you get from Ice Mimics already inflicts that, so what could be done to make this weapon more competetive, I don't know.

I know, but the piercing is a good enough tradeoff for me. and the extra damage, speed and crit chance is very helpfull.

 

[Aurora3500]

Hmmm, the Ice Bow isn't able to autofire from what I remember. Unless this changed somehow with the 1.3.2 update.

Still, it is a good weapon to get for Early Hardmode. It's inability to autofire makes it less appealing to me compared to other bows such as the Shadowflame however. It is one of the 1st weapons I try to get at the start of hardmode along with the Amarok and Frostbrand. I usually end up replacing this weapon with the Shadowflame later in Hardmode still since autofire is important for me to have for Bows in Hardmode.

Also considering how the Ice Bow changes normal arrows into Ice Arrows that is a great benefit for me considering I use the Normal Arrows from Endless Quivers frequently.

 

[S3V3N7HR33]

There's no reason to use the Ice Bow when the Daedalus Stormbow exists.

 

[Juno Brier]

There's no reason to use the Ice Bow when the Daedalus Stormbow exists.

Or the Adamant/Titanium Repeaters, if you like to be more straight-forward with your enemies.