I just realized something fairly important about special arrows that makes them seem like much better damage dealers than the numbers would indicate.
Special arrows ignore armor. This can be a pretty big deal.
For instance, Steamcloud Arrows essentially do 100% damage and give a tremendously small chance of blinding. So basically they take 6 AP to do guaranteed 100% damage. That seemed kind of bad to me, when you consider that a normal attack from a Quickdraw crossbow is 5 AP and 100% damage. I thought you were just paying 1 extra AP for a guaranteed hit, which could be worth it but basically makes it the same as using Ranged Precision Stance except you can't get a crit. So I thought Steamcloud Arrows were bad. But Steamcloud Arrows also ignore armor. And, especially later on, enemies will often absorb around half the damage you do. But they won't absorb any special arrow damage.
That makes the high damage special arrows like Steamcloud and Poisoncloud arrows into the equivalent of really high damage single-target spells with no cooldown. Moreover, they do normal damage, so elemental resists won't work on them.
And it also means that many of the other arrows actually do much closer to normal damage than you may realize (on top of their other effects). For instance, the stat debuffing arrows do 50% damage, which can often be about equal to a normal shot after damage is absorbed. But you get that for only 4 AP, with no chance of missing, and a negative effect on top of that.
Of course, special arrows are not subject to some damage boosts that you might use. As I understand it, Guerrilla bonuses do not work with them, nor do Bully bonuses. I also think that Ranged Power Stance does not work. So there are ways of pumping up normal arrow damage, but against a well armored foe, special arrows STILL might be more effective. And you can't always be sneaking or attacking a knocked down/slowed/crippled foe anyways. I should note that things like Oath of Desescration that effect the base damage listed in the inventory DO affect special arrow damage.
So special arrows aren't OP or anything; pretty much any type of character can rack up higher damage in some way. But I do think that in certain circumstances (high armored foes, can't sneak, etc.) Steamcloud or Poisoncloud Arrows are easily the best damage option for an archer. And many of the other arrows seem like a much better balance of CC and damage than I realized. I was not expecting this since I had read lots of people saying you shouldn't use special arrows for damage.
