I’m just going to be short and simple here.
Bows currently deal underwhelming damage from the time you spend charging the attack and the fact that it uses focus.
Bows, despite scaling with dexterity, cannot be used alongside the only dexterity weapon I found so far, the dual wielding dagger, that by itself generated a lot of confusion with several other people, by what I saw on threads on Steam forum and reddit. Some, including me, seemed to think it was a bug, this is the level of nonsensical this design decision is.
Most importantly, bows are mechanically underwhelming, currently being just a non elemental ranged rune. Which I’m going to assume, will not benefit from any of the enemies elemental weaknesses. Most of the feedback I saw, which I agree with, is that the weapon should be a primary weapon, balance be damned since any ARPG will always have an OP build and that’s what constitutes as a difficulty slider on these games. That is, if we assume the enemies AI couldn’t be balanced around a ranged weapon, that has a long charge timer and slows you down as you charge it.
Furthermore, bows using focus prevents equipment such as quivers with different arrow types from being implemented in the game which, and this is the most important factor, would be fun.
