question about bows in diablo 1

[Zenda]

At any rate, these bows are very unpredictable

True, but not in a way you seem to imply. The reason you can get much higher damage as 314 is because the used formula is not correct.

For elemental bows, damage is applied in 2 steps. First comes the normal damage, which is character damage (based on level and stats) plus physical weapon damage (including any bonus from Merciless and the like). Then, a number of elemental attacks are processed (9 for fire and 7 for lightning, as stated). Each of these attacks require a separate check for hitting the target, and as a result, total damage can be very little or even nothing. The damage from each elemental attack is character damage plus elemental weapon damage, which is far more as just the elemental damage, ofcourse. So, for level 50 rogues using a big merciless burning bow, maximum total damage could well be over 1000. Shooting warriors like that can hardly be called dueling, if you ask me

The direction of the shot does matter, but only in such a way that certain angles cause the elemental damage to be applied on the wrong tile, resulting in no elemental target-damage at all. In a similar way, a target might get struck by elemental damage even if the shot missed, when that target is standing before a wall.