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Same as we did for guns, we’re taking a peek at the top-end bows in the game. Let’s jump right in!

The Marksman’s Bow is the horde equivalent of the Veteran’s Musket. Absolutely worth grinding that Hellfire Peninsula reputation to obtain? Sure, unless you have a chance to run Karazhan. The first boss there drops a crossbow that will match or surpass this bow easily. In our opinion, Shattered Halls is in the bottom of fun instances. Two to four runs to the first boss in Kara instead of grinding Thrallmar rep for this? Take it every time if you can.

The Wraithtide Longbow is famous for being one of the best non-raiding ranged weapons one can obtain. This drops from heroic Steamvaults, one of the easier heroic instances in the game. It’s gun-contemporaries are the Don Santos and the Gyro-Balance Khorium Destroyer, but both of those are expensive, (Auction House and engineering, respectively). This bad boy is a simple loot item! Unfortunately, it has no +Hit like the Marksman’s Bow or the aforementioned Steelhawk Crossbow. If you raid, you’ll want one of those two instead of this puppy, just for the +Hit.

Known to all hunters by the word Sunfury, the Sunfury Bow of the Phoenix drops from Prince Malchezzar, the top-most - some say Final, others disagree - boss in Karazhan. A hunter with one of these gets a little more respect in most parts due to the effort needed to win one; it’s the closest thing to an Epic Hunter Quest reward we have anymore. Is it “better” than the Wolfslayer Sniper Rifle? For Trolls, probably, for Dwarves, probably not. For everybody else, we say it depends on your playstyle and spec.

Can your guild clear Zul’Aman? If so, you’ll have a chance to get an Ancient Amani Longbow. This is a Nice Weapon, with Ignore Armor and a lot of it. It may be heavily Trollish on design, but this is one of the very few bows over which we’d fight our guild hunters.

Have you noticed that all but two of these bows have the same 3.00 attack speed? As a BM hunter, that’s just too slow for our tastes. We’ll always choose a faster gun over a slow bow, but the AAL tempts us a lot. If only we could get our guild interested in clearing ZA… and there were more raiding days… and we only needed three hours of sleep…

Your 25-person guild clears Serpentshrine Cavern and you get your pick of the loot! We know what you want, the Serpent Spine Longbow. Of course we’d pass on it if we were guaranteed the Steam Pistol, but it’s still a meaty ranged weapon every hunter would take. Slow. Again too slow for us, but so are they all.

Do you have 3750 arena points lying around? Check the sofa. Found em? Go grab your Vengeful Gladiator’s Longbow, foshizzle. Of course, you need an 1850 rating to buy the silly thing. We will never own it, that’s for sure. Don’t know about you, but a ranged weapon whose only real purpose is PvP doesn’t really turn us on, anyway.

Mount Hyjal coughs up a hunter weapon, sort of, in the form of the Bristleblitz Striker. But look closely at the stats. Which class is in desperate need of both stamina and crit? Hunters? Um… Warriors? Rogues? No… Enhancement Shammys? Ret Paladins? /boggle. Just a freaky weapon, actually. High DPS is great, mismatched stamina/crit is kinda weird; it’s a PvP weapon without Resilience.

Black Temple has something for hunters as well. Can you knock off Illidan? Piece of cake, right? If so, remember to watch for this piece of hardware, the Black Bow of the Betrayer. Does this bow win the Best Looking Ranged Weapon contest? It just might at that. Is that mana-drain proc different? Totally. Is gaining 8 mana per successful ranged attack the bomb-diggity? Well it isn’t chopped liver, sarsaparilla. Would we turn it down? Nevah! Do we wish it had two red sockets, Ignore Armor, and didn’t have the mana-stuff? Yeah, we honestly do.

Now the Golden Bow of Quel’Thalas is coming in patch 2.4. As such we cannot really talk about it because it could change any second.

But that Legendary Netherstrand Longbow bow is ridiculous! That thing is beyond crazy! Has its own ammo, increases physical damage taken by 5% and can be stacked 5x, and critical strike bonus damage by 50%?? That’s way above and beyond the call of duty. What you hear is the sound of ever squishy in the game going on strike. Could the days of a 6000-damage Aimed Shot crit be approaching?

No. This weapon can only be used against Quel’Thelas Kael’ Thas (spell-check error, we swear). That’s a neck-punch, right there. That’s a no-reach-around and no-kiss.

/sob

You can play with our emotions, but you’ll never take… OUR FREEDOM!

/puts William Wallace back on the shelf