I’ve always preferred damage light weight and action speed.
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Now go shot a elite wild stock in the face 
Just been doing that on the grandeur hunt!
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I asked myself this question a few days ago. Glad to see a recent topic about it. Went on and forged several different diamond bows just to not-so-scientifically test them. Narrowed it down to two bows (after making a few assumptions).
1- Multi-shot, Dmg, and (Random boon).
2- Crit chance, Crit dmg, and Dmg.
At medium distance (which is the avg distance between a player and a mob I believe during a hunt), I found the 2nd bow to be better. The multi-shot spray wouldn’t always hit from such a distance. Being too close to the mobs isn’t convenient and isn’t always safe. Didn’t rigorously test it as I couldn’t spawn animals (aside from a T1 meteor) but I found the 2nd sling to actually have more damage (most of the time since the crit chance was 90% and crit dmg 100%).
Would appreciate more input regarding this or even more scientific tests whether multi-shots cause more damage or a single shot with almost always critical hits.
It might be worth mentioning that I’ve always enjoyed the multi-shots with dmg and heavy projectile but it’s sort of dangerous to come too close to mobs with extremely heavy projectiles. I wonder if combinations of multi-shot, crit chance, and crit dmg would be better (albeit harder since now you use 3 different gums - also, by doing this you lose the dmg boon). On the other hand, multi-shot, crit dmg, and dmg (then eating criticaling pie) might unite all the good aspects but it takes away the chance to use teaching pies (or even might be costly if you keep dying before fully utilizing the criticaling pie).
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Multishots and singleshots narrows down to having a different purpose.
Each multishot projectile does 60% damage, so with the bows you generally see which have 4-6 projectiles, they do up to 240%-360% damage provided you land all your shots.
Max crit effect adds 100%, so it gets maxed out at 120%, meaning you can do up to 220%…However, half the gem bows have 0% crit chance(Emerald, Sapphire and Amethyst) while the other has 20%(Diamond, Ruby and Topaz). Max crit chance adds 50%, making that 50%-70%, and with crit pie and max agility/attribute bonus, adds another 40% making it 90%-110% crit chance, or 40%-60% without the crit chance boon.
So technically similar in terms of damage output if you ignore that you have to split boon points between three boons (damage, crit chance and crit effect) compared to two for multishot bows (multishot and damage). Not to mention multishot bows now have an extra boon slot to further add damage output (action speed, crit effect, crit chance ect)
This prob would make it look like multishot bows are much better, but it does have it’s drawbacks. Higher risk for getting close, as you mentioned, or having lower damage output by shooting from a distance missing some shots.
Then there’s also armor. Spitters and cuttles get much higher armor as their size goes up, even further if they get armor buffs from meteors. Since that flat out reduces all incoming damage, multishot bows have a harder time punching through armor to do significant damage with elite spitters and cuttles since the damage for each projectile is lower. Instead of getting damage reduced once like singleshots, each projectile gets damage reduced by armor. Makes it hard or even impossible to punch through armor buffed elite cuttles with bows like topaz or amethyst depending on the damage boon level even with damage 3 augs.
Interestingly tho, wildstocks have 0 armor regardelss of size. Elite wildstocks melt pretty fast if you manage to hit them with multishot bows up close.
Tbh tho, it’s all about personal preference. Doesn’t matter really since this game isn’t competitive or anything, nor do we need to min/max things out as of now. (we need those new enemy types and T8 hunts devs hint hint)
TLDR; multishots are great for cleaning up mightys and lower, singleshots for beating down elite cuttles, this all doesn’t matter much since it’s a matter of preference.
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Appreciate the input. Crit pie adds 100% (of original crit chance?) so basically (0%-20%) for different sling bows x 2 (because of crit pie) = (0%-40%)+ 20% from skills so 20%-60% plus the 50% max from forging. That’s 70%-110% and not 90%-110% crit chance ?
Never thought of it but it makes sense. Explains why a multishot I bought earlier (with no dmg boons) kept getting repelled by armor while a single shot (with some dmg added I think) (same gem sling) could pierce through the same cuttles.
These are only 2 gums (effect and ease gums).
Crit pie only affects your character’s base crit chance, which is 0%-20% depending on your agility and attributes stat. I said 40% from skills cause welll, you wouldn’t be using crit bows without max agility, would you? 
But takes 3 boon slots to share the boon points. You can only level boons as much as stability and vigor allows you, unless you fiddle with pastes and do vigor stacking… but by then the costs far outweigh the bow’s usefulness.
When the new skill pages hit, maybe haha xD. I didn’t know that about the pie though!
Should mention I come to the game to chill so I avoid min/max-ing. It’s just that my old batch of multi-shot slings is running out and I wanted to forge a new batch of all gem types. I wanted to try my newly-discovered crit chance + crit dmg + dmg but I feared they’d be too weak in comparison. So without delving into the numbers again (haha), you’d say the crit crit dmg slings shouldn’t be weak eh?
Honestly, anything that includes the damage boon is strong enough. They all just have different preferences with the other boon slots. Like I said, it all boils down to your personal preference.
Heck, I even have bows with light projectile, range and projectile speed for roadrunner hunting… tho now I’m using it for T3 hunts 
Made these back in my noob days. As you mentioned, they’re good for the birds xD
Ok. I stopped being lazy and jumped on testing where I made the 2 slings I mentioned earlier. For the sake of the argument, let’s assume these 2 slings are average of their respective types (so I don’t have to forge a dozen batches of each).
Using the magical page of pfiffel, we see these values:
First sling (+4 shots (total 5), lvl 7 dmg boon, lvl 4 heavy projectile)
http://www.pfiffel.com/bl/dmg/#2,0,4,7,9,1,5,1,0,0,0,4,0,0,9,0,0,0
Second sling (lvl 7 dmg, lvl 8 crit luck, lvl 8 crit dmg)
http://www.pfiffel.com/bl/dmg/#2,0,0,7,9,1,5,1,0,0,0,0,8,8,9,0,0,0
Obviously these values are without augments or strength brews (which means the dmg values could be further increased). For the 5 shots sling, I ticked the box of (full shot) assuming you land all the projectiles on target. Also, this is on a fully skilled out char.
Looking at the average values (which ARE affected by the crit chance and crit damage), we see the single shot sling has more damage. Magic.
Edit:
For the curious tubios, here are the sling specs respectively 
:
Sling 1 (multi shot, dmg, heavy projectile)
Sling 2 (dmg, crit chance, crit dmg)
Share your thoughts Tubios, did I just scientifically change the sling forging game? 
Isn’t that multishot damage number a per-projectile damage? Since there are five shots, the average damage if all projectiles hit would be 27,550, wouldn’t it?
There are two other factors in this as well. Since there are more shots, it takes less time for the crit RNG to average out. You get a larger sample size much faster. Second, since the per-shot damage is lower, if the monster has 6k armor, the multishot does 0 damage and the single shot does 5k damage. (assuming I understand armor)
If you look at the chart below, you can see that pfifel says the multishot takes fewer shots if all projectiles hit
Single:
Multi:
I thought the same but when I killed a few mobs from a T1 meteor, I got the avg numbers for both slings (around 5.5k for multi shot and around 10k for single shot).
Now I wonder though if the damage is 5k only for the multi shot, how did I get 30k and 40k+ dmg in the pas5 using multi shots?
I don’t think you get damage indicators for overkill damage, so you would want to do that test on a higher tier enemy. Likely you want to shoot at a T6 elite to test.
Seeing the tables, I must be missing something. Wise Tubios enlighten me before I forge the things
We need to summon the wisest of the Tubios to weigh in with his opinion (James that is) 
What do you think you are missing? I’m 90% sure the multishot does 5 hits that do 5101 base damage each. The single shot does one shot that does 5786 base damage.
If you want to see this in the Pfiffel tool, change the number of projectiles from quintuple to sextuple and look at the damage output - it should stay the same since there isn’t a damage reduction at that level.
I’ve definitely seen unexpectedly low damage indicators on T1 planets like you describe. Have you tried looking at it on a higher tier world?
I know nothing about the worlds on testing so I didnt bother beyond the T1 meteor I got.
Yeah I saw that with the 6 shots as you mentioned. Hmm could be that that damage is per shot… need to test that. This explains the low average (since total damage is divided by 5 shots)
Durability, Damage, Speed…
Though i typically just hunt on T3 or T4 and will use unforged bows since with max skills you get these benefits.
I think you only need forged equipment when hunting on T5+ or are low skill level on T3-4, otherwise you can get away with using standard equipment.
I like multishot w/ damage and light flight boon. It doesn’t work very well unless you get max projectiles but it works really well around mid-range and close range. The spread seems tighter with the lighter projectiles.
After some pondering and thinking, I think the multi one (plus whatever other boons you like) is indeed better. I thought the single shot far-shooting sling might be good for tagging enemies but I understood from the forum that this is no longer a thing. This means whatever can immediately mow down enemies gets exp advantage - and the multi shot is better at doing this.
1.5 hours later, 10 million mouse clicks, and with some compromises, I forged myself 6 slings of each gem type with multi shot, dmg, and heavy projectile boons. Come at me mobs.
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