What makes X-bows so good?

So I am close to maxing out my TH8 and I was wondering, what is so special about X-bows? I mean, it's not good to go solely by damage per second, but it and the archer tower are both single target defenses that do very similar damage per second and both can shoot at air and ground. Is it the range that makes it so special maybe? What makes the extremely expensive X-bow so much better than the archer tower even though they do nearly the same damage per second? I feel like this is a dumb question but I just feel like the X-bow is overrated.

one big difference is that xbows shoot very fast.
this makes it very efficient when killing low army-space troops like barbarians or archers.
if for example an archer tower shoots at a barbarian, and after the first shot the barbarian has only 1 hp left, the archer tower would still require a new full shot at the barbarian to take him down, which "wastes" a lot of potential damage.
the x-bow on the other hand does not suffer this problem, as it shoots very fast and does not waste a lot of damage potential.
i hope you understand what i am trying to say

Dat range...

Definitely overrated. But the ranges and the scary look make it different

The range and high speed of retargeting makes them deadly on wallbreakers. They also have high hit points, which makes them quite hard to kill. And if you look at how much time and gold it takes to get archer towers to level 11 vs xbows to level 3 and I suspect the xbows come out as being a lot cheaper and faster.

It does not suffer from wasted damage potential but also the intimidation factor is very useful also

Long range and high rate of fire.

When you have the x-bow people will think twice before attempt to attack you which also depend on where you place them. If you place them correctly, it will help to take out a lot of the troops while they are attack your other defensive buildings.

Yep, mostly the intimidation factor, which in my experience isn't really justified....

I'm TH8, nowhere near maxed out, and took down a TH9 base with 3 xbows just last night. I was super fun, and I only used giants, archers, wall breakers, a few minions, and some goblins - maybe not even my King. Well, I missed one xbow, but with a well-placed rage and heal spell, I got nearly all the loot as well as their town hall. Hopefully I showed them that their base design was pretty flawed, as it relied too heavily on a central compartment that contained two xbows and various other defenses, which when opened up let my level 5 giants run around smashing hings while they soaked up the xbow fire for long enough for the rest of my crew to get in and clean up - in particular, my archers cleaned out their town hall faster than the last xbow could kill them all.

Most of my clan mates, even the TH9 ones, do not attack a lot of bases with xbows, whereas I have raided countless TH9 that have them; to me they are just another defense for my consideration, nothing to be feared.

Attack a base with them and see for yourself... :rolleyes: