Bowcek balancing, before you have it nerfed, a better idea.

Let me be clear by making the primary statement first, the only thing the bow needs to be balanced is a reload or cool down similar to the Lstar. In my opinion the reload or cool down should kick in after 5 shots. If a player is using the bow as a sniper it won't hurt them to reload after 5 shots but in mid to close range fights it will force a player on to their secondary weapon to keep up sustained fire. 

I think the bow is a great addition to apex. It rewards precision with good damage while offering some  diversity in its play style allowing you to fire shots faster at the cost of dealing much less damage which makes the bow a very unique an fun to play weapon.  

I know the community is saturated with complaints about nerfing the bow, remove the bow, its to op etc but outside of the infinite mag in comparison to the other weapons the truth is the bow is actually quite balanced from a damage an time to kill perspective.  The triple take for instance has a higher headshot damage with nearly equal body shot. A charged Sentinel is capable of 176 dmg headshot and 88 body an now with the tempo can be fired about as quickly as the charged bow shot but as its a sniper can do so with up to a 10x sight. Outside of snipers a player can 1 clip a dummy in the range as fast or faster than they can with the bow.  

I know ppl will want to argue that but if you compare equally lets say body shots the bow needs to fire 3 fully charged shots to body kill a 200hp target dummy. Compare the time it takes to fire 3 fully charged bow shots an compare it to say 1 cliping the target with any assault rifle or smg and you'll find even the alternator can kill as fast as the bow.

If you compare headshots it'll take you 2 head shots to kill with the bow just like any sniper, a charged 3030, or wing man. However the wing man can do it much faster =)

"The bow has no drop off" ...this is just not true, the bow can only take up to 3x sight but put it on an shoot at the very distant targets up on that hill at the left side of the firing range...from the item platforms its around 350 to 390 meters....to hit the target you'll need to position the bottom of the vertical on the 3x hcog just above the target, then do that with a sniper and you'll see every sniper has less bullet drop an it feels like all the snipers get to target faster which means they have a higher velocity than the bow despite many claiming the opposite.

I've watched our favorite streamers use it an miss 20 shots before they land one at mid range I know that's not always the case but if we could look at accuracy figures with the bow from even our greatest players I'd be willing to bet there are few with better than 30%. This may again be attributed to not having a reload an just getting to fire for free...a reload or cool down may force them to be more careful with shots dramatically changing the way the fights have been playing out.

Taking all this into account makes nerfing any damage on the bow extremely difficult..dropping dmg values may very well make it not worth picking up at all which would be a shame because it is a fun weapon however its my opinion that limiting it to 5 shots then reload or cool down will balance the weapon for reasons mentioned above.

For those that always try to bring reality to the topic...arrows shouldn't hurt worse than bullets...lol that's not true either..the 3 bladed broad head typically measures 1 inch or larger across the blades making a much larger entry wound than any bullet outside of a close range shotgun and while in the body cavity it continues to cut internal organs an tissue as the prey moves turning your insides to jelly..so you see...arrows do hurt worse than bullets but lets leave reality out of the game otherwise you would get sent back to lobby with one head shot from a p2020.

Does the bow need balancing? I believe it does but not by reducing damage or rate of fire but in the number of consecutive shots that can be fired without penalty in the way of a reload or cool down..personally I think 5 shots is a good number but I'd love to hear what others think would be a balanced "clip size" for the bow.