green steel or cannith great x-bow until 24 or 26?

[kendo]

with the dearth of great x-bows for the upper teens, I am looking at crafting either a green steel or cannith weapon to use until I get up to 26 for the ToEE x-bow I have banked or get lucky enough to find something else.

my original thought was a radiant GS for the blinding but several posts recently have indicated that the blinding does not give sneak attacks. if that is correct, then next option I was considering was earthgrab. has anyone used that? does it proc enough in the 14 - 20/22 level range to make it worth while? otherwise, I guess the best I can do would be a holy burst of maiming Cannith x-bow.

other suggestions would be welcome as well.

[Jetrule]

If you regularly run with a pali you can use a lotgen great xbow espcially with heart seeker and trade it back and forth for the pali to holy sword it.

While it is true that blinding for some reason dose not enable sneak attacks the monster will start wandering around when you blind it allowing you to shoot another or easily kill it before it gets to you.

If you can roll up a Iconic artificer or have one in the teens in level you can run some quests just to get interesting crossbows and some favor. The loot gen wont be great base damage but heart seeker or ghost bane or deception, red slots and other effects can be interesting. I used named repeaters though at a lot of heroic levels.

[Sianys]

I have no experience with greensteel, so can't comment on that. But I've had some good luck with lootgen great crossbows, which suggests that if your crafting levels are high enough, then that may be the way to go. Any lootgen item I didn't find for myself I bought from AH, including a Vorpal of Riposte I'd been using until recently (found a good deal on a non-upgraded Thunder-Forged Alloy GXB). Heartseeking, Seeker, Deception, various procs: all super useful.

[Violith]

with the dearth of great x-bows for the upper teens, I am looking at crafting either a green steel or cannith weapon to use until I get up to 26 for the ToEE x-bow I have banked or get lucky enough to find something else.

my original thought was a radiant GS for the blinding but several posts recently have indicated that the blinding does not give sneak attacks. if that is correct, then next option I was considering was earthgrab. has anyone used that? does it proc enough in the 14 - 20/22 level range to make it worth while? otherwise, I guess the best I can do would be a holy burst of maiming Cannith x-bow.

other suggestions would be welcome as well.

I believe that radiance GS Still blind (and thus give SA) though you'd have to be within range. Its the thunderforge blinding fear that seems to be bugged. If you check the thread on it there is someone who says they use a radiance wepaon and still receive SA. any other effect does still seem to give blinding.

according to wiki, earthgrab is a DC 35. reflex which probably wont work that well in epics, never tried it though, but with a 4% chance im sure they'd roll a 1 eventually.

[jalont]

We don't quite know what blinding effects are broken, but it seems that GS radiance may still work.

If you have the mats laying around, I would make a GS bow. If not, make one from the Estar challenges. You can farm a few up within an hour and pick the one you like.

[Drwaz99]

OP, just note that if you get the correct effects on ES challenge bows they are quite good, the effects are randomly chosen when you get them from the vendor so it may take a while to get the one you want. Here's a link to those:

http://ddowiki.com/page/Eveningstar_Challenge_Pack

A base Thunderforged bow is level 22 and tho lacking in effects, it's base damage is very good. It's also fairly cheap if you have ran some TH content.

[Sianys]

A base Thunderforged bow is level 22 and tho lacking in effects, it's base damage is very good. It's also fairly cheap if you have ran some TH content.

Agreed. Base damage is 46.58 (which is easily twice the base damage of the at-level lootgen GXBs I've had), and equipping it as a pure Mechanic nearly doubles that (to 84.83). Well worth grabbing on its own when you get to 22.

[jscott457]

Just built one up yesterday and I can confirm that radiance from a GS does work to produce sneak attacks. Seems like that is a pretty good option to me.