Highlights
- Key takeaways:
- Weapon Skills in Elden Ring, such as Sky Shot and Enchanted Shot, can greatly impact gameplay with their unique abilities on bows and great bows.
- Through and Through is a powerful shot that can penetrate multiple enemies, but its effectiveness is limited due to its rare opportunities for use.
- Rain of Arrows is a highly recommended Ash of War that can be applied to any bow, delivering impressive damage and allowing for quick infliction of status effects.
Elden Ring has a wide variety of Weapon Skills to choose from, with abilities ranging from high-powered weapon strikes to massive elemental explosions. Which Ash of War you choose to put on a weapon will often be just as impactful as the weapon itself.
However, for Light Bows, Bows, and Great Bows, the number of usable Ashes of War is extremely limited, which can make using them a frustrating experience. That said, the restricted selection does include some powerful choices, and this list will help you decide which of these Weapon Skills you should use.
7 Sky Shot
Sky Shot is a relatively niche Weapon Skill. It causes you to fire an arrow high into the air, which then arcs down towards your target. That has some minor benefits: it can be used to hit enemies behind walls, and makes it much easier to land headshots on enemies.
Unfortunately, it has almost no tracking, so if your enemy isn’t standing perfectly still, it will miss. It also hits the ceiling if there’s one above you. That makes logical sense, but it doesn’t apply to Rain of Arrows or Radahn’s Rain, which also shoot an arrow straight up. If you do want this Ash of War for some reason, kill the Teardrop Scarab near the cliffs to the northwest of the Isolated Merchant, in Dragonbarrow.
6 Enchanted Shot
Enchanted Shot doesn’t do all that much. Sure, it deals more damage than a regular shot, and it will follow moving enemies to a decent degree, especially if you’re far enough away. The trouble is, real players will probably just dodge the arrow anyway, and most of Elden Ring’s bosses run straight at you.
If you really, really hate it when your arrows miss, Enchanted Shot might be worth trying; and in that case, the Ash of War drops from a Teardrop Beetle in Nokron, Eternal City, north of the Ancestral Woods Site of Grace. But otherwise, you’re better off using something else.
5 Through And Through
When used, Through and Through launches a powerful shot that will punch through multiple enemies. When that actually works, the results can be quite impressive, but the opportunities for it to be effective aren’t especially common.
Through and Through can only be used on Greatbows, and is in fact the innate Weapon Skill on three of the four options. You can also find it as an Ash of War; it drops from an invisible Teardrop Scarab outside the front entrance to Volcano Manor. Although, it’s not totally clear why it exists, since the only weapon that can be given this Ash of War, the basic Greatbow, already has it, and you can’t give Greatbows different Affinities anyway. Maybe there will be some use for it in the DLC.
4 Mighty Shot
Mighty Shot is the default Weapon Skill for every Bow except the Black Bow, and can be applied as an Ash of War to most Light Bows. It’s basically a stronger version of your regular shot; it has longer range, penetrates shields, and deals increased status buildup (although it’s far from the most effective means bows possess to do so).
If you’re looking for an Ash of War that just does more without any fancy bells and whistles, kill the Teardrop Scarab on the Weeping Peninsula, on the road leading south to the Castle Morne Rampart Site of Grace.
3 Radahn’s Rain
Radahn’s Rain isn’t technically an Ash of War, since it is only available on the Lion Greatbow, which you get from trading the Remembrance of the Starscourge with Enia at the Roundtable Hold. It’s actually the only unique Weapon Skill available to bows.
The Weapon Skill is extremely similar to Rain of Arrows, with a few key differences. It costs more, hits in a wider area, and launches more projectiles at the cost of less per-projectile damage. And since it is attached to the Lion Greatbow, it will also deal more damage if you are using Radahn’s Spears. On the other hand, since Greatbows have no way to inflict status effects, you lose out on a lot of what makes Rain of Arrows powerful.
2 Rain Of Arrows
Rain of Arrows is the only Ash of War that can be applied to any bow type, and it’s one of the best. After launching an arrow into the air, multiple arrows will fall from the sky onto your target. This will not only will deal impressive damage, especially when using a Greatbow, but the arrow rain also keeps the status effect of the original arrow, allowing you to inflict the effect extremely quickly.
The only real flaw with Rain of Arrows is that, since there is some time between using the Weapon Skill and the arrows falling, it is tricky to land against mobile enemies or in PvP unless you’ve caught them by surprise. On the other hand, it is exceptionally useful on stationary targets, especially large ones, as more of the arrows will hit their targets.
Getting Rain of Arrows is somewhat more involved than the other Ashes of War on this list, as it is the reward for one of the game’s Painting puzzles; you'll have to find the Redmane Painting in Selia, Town of Sorcery, then find the Painter’s ghost near the Minor Erdtree in Dragonbarrow.
1 Barrage
Barrage is the innate Weapon Skill on the Black Bow, and every Light Bow except for the Composite Bow. And it can be given to other Bows and Light Bows as well. It fires multiple arrows in rapid succession, dealing high damage and applying status effects far more quickly than if you were shooting normally.
Rain of Arrows might outperform Barrage in specific scenarios, but Barrage will become better if your opponent is moving basically at all, making it the best Weapon Skill for general purposes. If you’re using a bow that doesn’t have Barrage on it already and want to try it out, the Ash of War drops from a Teardrop Scarab in Mt. Gelmir, just north of the Seethwater River Site of Grace.