I'm stubborn and really wanted to play a bow build this League. What I've found so far is that Bow / Nature's Recurve is outperformed in every way by pretty much every other build. For reference, I went Kandarin > Kourend > Tiranwyn. I grinded out Nature's Recurve early and then grinded Echo Hunleff for full Crystal + Bowfa. I haven't done CoX so I don't have TBow yet, but for mage I also don't have Wrath Runes.
- Damage - I did significantly more damage with both air and water spells than I'm managing with a bow build. With mage my best Zulrah was 20 seconds. With bow (tried both Nature's Recurve and Bowfa) my best Zulrah was about 30s, and it feels far less consistent.
- Healing - Nature's Recurve's healing is so low that it barely feels like it exists. By contrast, the Crossbow, Mage, and Thorns builds all have significant self-healing AND overhealing that makes them incredibly safe. Nature's Recurve barely heals, and when it does it also can't proc overhealing.
- Build Hybridity - Bows are 2-handed which completely locks you out of anything requiring a shield/off-hand. This makes the majority of the magic tree and the melee tree useless except for +Accuracy nodes. Your only option would be to weapon swap.
There's two core issues that I think could be easily solved to make bows more viable.
For one, allowing us to infuse the Nature's Recurve with Bowfa and TBow to increase its damage output. Its healing and prayer regen are nice, but its damage falls off so quickly compared to other echo weapons. It's extremely accessible (in my opinion), so keeping it weaker and allowing you to power it up with other bows would be a nice way to balance that.
Being able to power up the bow would inherently buff its healing, but without overhealing it's incredibly dangerous compared to other builds and hardly feels like the "overpowered" levels of playing a League that I feel in other builds. Making Nature's Recurve's healing effect proc the "Demonic pact healing can overheal" effects would give bow builds extra survivability that they're severely lacking right now. Allowing us to infuse Bowfa and TBow into it also solves the issue of losing all of your survivability just to do more damage (and still less than other builds).
I'm curious what y'all think. I really want to play a bow build but I'm really struggling in late-game content like Colosseum and Inferno in a way that I don't experience with other builds. I love the fantasy of using a bow, so I'd love for Jagex to consider some improvements to make it a bit more viable!