Just tested on my assassin: Zephyr fires faster than a long bow in my experience. I noticed long bow doesn't take as long to pull the string back as Zephyr, there appear to be actually nocking the arrow( affected by quick draw and Zephyr) and pulling the string back( not affected by quick draw and zephyr, though maybe it helped a little and I didn't notice), heavier bows take longer to pull the string, each bow( save Zephyr) takes the same amount of time to nock the arrow. So Dragonbone is still pretty viable when it comes to speed, it just takes an extra second or so to pull the string back. I'll stick to Zephyr for the faster firing rate and I don't want to craft that much( not even sure I'll try to get to Arcane Smithing). So both should certainly be taken into consideration :] *Note: I tested this on Xbox and pure observation, I tested with a long bow, Zephyr, Dwarven, and Dragon. I can't dispute any DPS stuff but I think Zephyr dropped weaker enemies quicker than the others but Dragon dropped heavy bitters quicker than the rest.
Just tested on my assassin: Zephyr fires faster than a long bow in my experience. I noticed long bow doesn't take as long to pull the string back as Zephyr, there appear to be actually nocking the arrow( affected by quick draw and Zephyr) and pulling the string back( not affected by quick draw and zephyr, though maybe it helped a little and I didn't notice), heavier bows take longer to pull the string, each bow( save Zephyr) takes the same amount of time to nock the arrow. So Dragonbone is still pretty viable when it comes to speed, it just takes an extra second or so to pull the string back. I'll stick to Zephyr for the faster firing rate and I don't want to craft that much( not even sure I'll try to get to Arcane Smithing). So both should certainly be taken into consideration :] *Note: I tested this on Xbox and pure observation, I tested with a long bow, Zephyr, Dwarven, and Dragon. I can't dispute any DPS stuff but I think Zephyr dropped weaker enemies quicker than the others but Dragon dropped heavy bitters quicker than the rest.