*Warning, this is a 1343 word post to accompany an equally long TWAB post. I tried my best to section off as much as I could into easier to digest sections so that you aren't inundated with information. Any additional post structuring is welcome to make it easier for future readers. First I will preface this post by saying that I am not a Le Monarch user, I main a legendary bow alongside Leviathan's Breath paired with Oathkeeper. Always have, always will be. Looking at this weeks TWAB, regarding the in-air efficacy stat, I can already see how, as a hunter bow main, the bonuses on either legendary bows, or Oathkeeper needs to be bumped up by a couple more points. A fifth of the way down the TWAB, Bungie states this: [quote]This stat (In-air efficacy) has been hand tuned on... everything that shipped in Season 16 or 17, and everything that's ever shipped as Trials of Osiris or Nightfall loot. Older Legendary weapons have a default value, set per weapon archetype to a value just below the middle of the allowed stat range. [/quote]The valid stat ranges for Bows set by Bungie are from 0 - 20. As of making this post, barring Fel Taradiddle and Under Your Skin being released this season (16), not a single one of the 8 remaining non-sunset bows has ever been a reward for either Trials of Osiris nor Nightfall. This means that taking this statement at face value, every single bow in the entire game is [quote]set to just below the middle of the allowed stat range[/quote] we can safely assume legendary bows will be set at 9. Bungie stated that [quote]The Airborne Effectiveness stat comes from three sources: weapon, subclass, and armor.[/quote] If most bows in the game are to be set to 9 out of 100 with the addition of Icarus Grip raising their efficacy to 24, then, as hunter, my options for buffing older (virtually all) bows from my armor and subclasses better be pretty potent. The first exotic armor option weirdly available to Hunters is coming from Foe-Tracers of all things. [quote]Foetracer: +20 to all[/quote] This raises our in-air bow efficacy up to the 31 - 50 bracket (9+15+20 = 44). In this bracket [quote]a character will have around the same in-air accuracy as Icarus-equipped weapons do currently, but with noticeably lower aim assist.[/quote] Next is Oathkeeper, the hunter arm exotic hand tailored to fit a bow-oriented play style. [quote]Oathkeeper: +40 to Bows[/quote] The only value higher than this is a temporary buff from Sealed Ahamkara Grasps (SAG). [quote]Sealed Ahamkara Grasps: +50 to all for 5 seconds after a melee hit[/quote] This brings our bow in-air efficacy to either the 51 - 70 bracket(9+15+40 = 64) with Oathkeeper or to the 71 - 99 (9+15+50 = 74) bracket for 5 seconds with SAG. This leaves us either with [quote]better accuracy than retail weapons with Icarus, with fewer misses due to randomness, but with reduced aim assist[/quote] from Oathkeeper, or [quote]no airborne accuracy penalty, with very slightly less aim assist[/quote] from SAG for 5 seconds. STOMP-EE5 is left out for obvious reasons... Hehe. [quote]ST0MP-EE5: -50 to all[/quote] Lastly, is our bonuses from Subclasses. Now, while I do own Witch Queen, I no longer have access to Beyond Light since it was removed from game pass and due to my personal dislike of Stasis as a concept it is probably going to stay that way. Now out of the default three subclasses: Solar, Void, and Arc, warlocks have [quote]the Heat Rises ability: +70 while Heat Rises is active (i.e., on consuming your grenade) [/quote] from their Solar subclass tree while Titans have [quote]the Tempered Metal ability: +20 after getting a Solar weapon kill [/quote] from their Solar subclass tree. A Hunter has...none of these abilities available in their default three subclasses. Now, of course stasis (if you have it) is available to all three classes including Hunters and thus for 12 seconds we can take advantage of [quote]the Whisper of Hedrons Stasis Fragment: +20 after freezing a target. [/quote] This means that in totality, from a [b]Stasis Hunter's[/b] perspective, with Oathkeeper in addition to the other bonuses, after freezing a target your bow is in the 71 - 99 bracket (9+15+40+20 = 84) for 12 seconds. For SAG, after freezing a target and then inflicting melee damage (optimally in that order), your bow is still in the 71 - 99 bracket (9+5+50+20 = 94) for 5 seconds before it reverts to the 31 - 50 bracket (9+15+20 = 44) for the remaining 7 seconds before further reverting to the 0 - 30 bracket (9+15 = 24). This leaves bow Hunters in an interesting spot when compared to Titans and especially Warlocks. In the current sandbox, there is no shortage of legendary ARs or SMGs, Solar or not, from either post-Season 15 loot, the Nightfall, Trials of Osiris, or the new Raid, so Titans equipped with either Actium War Rig [quote]Actium War Rig: +30 to Auto Rifles and Machine Guns[/quote] Peacekeepers [quote]Peacekeepers: +40 to Submachine Guns [/quote] or Lion's Ramparts [quote]Lion Rampant: +50 hipfire only [/quote]will have plenty of weapons to choose from that are at their highest ranges possible since Bungie stated that[quote] Higher tiers of Legendary weapons (Trials, raid, Nightfall) use the upper end of these ranges, as with other stats.[/quote] This means that just starting out their weapons can have close to +25 for ARs and +30 for SMGs. Slap on an Icarus Grip and the weapons by themselves are already at +40 and 45 respectively. Add on top the armor exotics and you're up to +60 (+80 Hipfire) and +85 (+95 Hipfire). Introduce their subclass perks for either their Solar or Stasis subclasses and Titan's can get to +80 (+100 Hipfire) and +100 (+120 Hipfire) pretty consistently. That's not even mentioning that warlocks can slap on Wings of Sacred Dawn [quote]Wings of Sacred Dawn: +50 to all [/quote] to grant [u]+50 to all weapons[/u] even before weapon stat ranges and icarus grip are even considered. With how high some of the in-air efficacy weapon ranges are, with an icarus grip they are already at 100 in-air efficacy. Add this with the Heat Rises ability and warlocks can completely ignore in-air efficacy stats [b]on all weapons in the entire game[/b] since they get [u]+120 in-air efficacy[/u] in totality. Suffice to say, Hunters are in a bit of a pickle. I'm in no way suggesting that Hunters be the masters of the sky like warlocks, and, at the same time, in the context of bows in the current sandbox, with Bungie stating that [quote]if you want the best possible Airborne Effectiveness, you'll generally have to go all in on weapon, Exotic armor, and subclass. [/quote] Non-Stasis Hunters can only access two of the three sources of in-air effectiveness unlike non-Stasis Titans and Warlocks. Even then, the amount of effort to get all of the ability procs to align (SAG + Whisper of Hedrons) to only have 5 seconds of the highest possible in-air efficacy , which, if my assumption for old legendary bows is correct, having a stat below 10, isn't even a 100 in-air efficacy. While I don't mind [b]general[/b] weapons stims like from SAG or Dragon's Shadow as a concept, It is kind of annoying that the [b]exotic made specifically for bows[/b], isn't stronger than a general buff given that hunters don't have access to any consistent subclass in-air efficacy bonuses. In addition, a Stasis Hunters [b]MAX[/b] investment aka "All In" on a legendary bow can potentially not even get the bow to 100 in-air efficacy! With the way that in-air combat is outlined now, even in the event that a bow comes with the max in-air efficacy of 20, with Icarus and Oathkeeper, legendary bows are only sitting at +75 in-air efficacy, 85 max with SAG with no means of getting it to 100 for non-Stasis Hunters. The only means I can think of for rectifying this is either making it so that Targeting mods grant an in-air efficacy stat bonus, having Solar 3.0 weirdly revolving around in-air gunplay with aspects buffing in-air weapon performance, or raising bow stats to 25 or 30 and/ or the bonus given by Oathkeepers to be 50 or 60 to get bows closer to perfect in air accuracy at max investment to account for the fact that people don't have access to a [b]completely optional [/b]subclass. If you say that I should just use stasis then you are saying that if I want access to an inconsistent means of getting 12 seconds of +20 in-air efficacy, [b]I need to pay real money for better in-air combat[/b] whereas being a Titan or Warlock I wouldn't need to pay at all since they are abilities on the default subclasses. Thank you for coming to my TED Talk and congrats on getting through this post.