Why is the Bow Skill-Line for PvE completely useless? (Single Target)

Miwerton · February 2016

Main problem with bow in pve is with spamming focused aim between poison injection and volley, it takes on 1 sec for animation and another sec for it to actually land, leaving you with a 2 sec pause of damage, bar the volley and poison injection dots. While for comparison a sorc can hit in a crystal frag mostly instantly, other would be assasin will (which i suspect gets more damage on a magicka nb, due to its magicka cost would mean it scales of spell pen), Focused aim is the one skill takes a long time before reaching its targe, because Tamriels lawls of gravity.

RoyJade · February 2016

DPS and weapon damage aren't the same. With a large amount of weapon power and stamina, spamming snipe will do far less damage than wrecking blow.
You need to have a good rotation, and that's mean you need some good damage skills. Bow just have good dots in pve in comparison with DW and 2 handed who both have great single target spammable attack.

Alucardo wrote: »

I don't want to sound like the negative nancy here, but shouldn't DPS on a bow be lower than 2h/dw anyway? I mean, if you could pull the same numbers from range, why would you ever want to go melee again?

You're right, but the actual gap is far too high. Doing 75% of a melee build with a ranged build sound good, a 80-85% should be great, but we speaking about a roughly 50% dps only. It's too low.

Alucardo · February 2016

RoyJade wrote: »

You're right, but the actual gap is far too high. Doing 75% of a melee build with a ranged build sound good, a 80-85% should be great, but we speaking about a roughly 50% dps only. It's too low.

Yeah that is pretty bad. I don't PVE, but I have tried bows in PVP and it's near useless, especially with the upcoming patch because everyone is getting physical resistance, which will reduce bow attacks EVEN MORE.
If they buffed the standard damage of bows a bit, reduced snipe damage a little and its cast time to .5 secs, it would be quite nice. Maybe a passive that increases poison damage as well.
All of that with the new Marksman set (if they change the 8% to be all targets, not just players), and bows would be pretty useful again.

Xjcon · February 2016

Not sure why ZoS doesn't just add a buff to some of the BOW single target morphs that reads, "Does +% damage to boss".

That will give stamina a single target buff to ranged DPS without wrecking the pvp aspect of it.

Xjcon · February 2016

Alucardo wrote: »

I don't want to sound like the negative nancy here, but shouldn't DPS on a bow be lower than 2h/dw anyway? I mean, if you could pull the same numbers from range, why would you ever want to go melee again?

Have you been in Mol yet?

Ajaxduo · February 2016

Wish I could rock bow for single target...but you know, reasons.

RoyJade · February 2016

But how boosting bow dps without unbalanced pvp ?
Tweaking bow's dots is useless, because DW and 2H build will exploit these even better.
Boosting snipe will result as a lot of complain in pvp.
Scatter shot may be boosted, but it's a close-ranged attack (so why taking a bow?).

Perhaps give a passive who boost damage against poisoned target while using a bow. Poison arrow and lethal arrow will act as a booster for snipe's spam and other dots, boosting bow's dps by a good amount. ZOS just need to adjust the value to be not really good in pve.
Another idea : give to all bow attack tiny personal dots who multiply themselves when all these different dots are applied. Spamming snipe won't be good, but snipe + poison arrow + volley will give a really nice dot exclusively to bow user. Using the five different bow attack will result as a really powerful dot who can bring bow to a competitive level when using at close-range (for magnum shot and arrow spray). And it give an another dot-specialized gameplay to the game.

cschwingeb14_ESO · February 2016

Alcast wrote: »

@Wrobel

enlighten me.

In case you do not know what I am talking about, I basically can only do half the DPS I can do with 2h/DW as a Bow user. Smth needs to change to make this Skill-Line viable again in PvE.

Probably because bow is almost the same as destro staff. It's supposed to be half of the damage equation. Destro+class skills is the same as Bow+DW or Bow+2h. Or for the classes that have good stam morphs, Bow+class skills (where class skills are used with DW/2H for extra WD and a skill or two)

You can't tell me that 2h/2h is better than 2h/Bow. You also can't say that DW/DW is better than Bow/DW. If that were the case then that would be a justification for a buff.

Autolycus · February 2016

I'm not sure what this perspective stems from. I run with bow users that pull 25-30k sustained single-target dps in pve. They consistently pull more than 20k on every boss in trials and dungeons (including vIP and vWGT) and get 30k+ on shorter fights, like crematorial guards.

These same people are also doing insane amounts of damage to people in pvp. I've seen them effortlessly put down other players within the first few shots, and have seen them kill other players simply by running up a few DoTs and avoiding/mitigating everything until they die (no snipes needed, and has been done both in mid- to large-sized groups and duels).

ningauble_7b14_ESO · February 2016

Autolycus wrote: »

I'm not sure what this perspective stems from. I run with bow users that pull 25-30k sustained single-target dps in pve. They consistently pull more than 20k on every boss in trials and dungeons (including vIP and vWGT) and get 30k+ on shorter fights, like crematorial guards.

These same people are also doing insane amounts of damage to people in pvp. I've seen them effortlessly put down other players within the first few shots, and have seen them kill other players simply by running up a few DoTs and avoiding/mitigating everything until they die (no snipes needed, and has been done both in mid- to large-sized groups and duels).

Can someone explain what they are doing to wring out double the dps most people can do with bow?

Also the only people I see dying to the first few shots to bow users are manning siege, riding horses, or oblivious/afk/lagged.

Is this a viable weapon for all 4 classes to do decent pve dps/effective pvp damage?

ZOS_KNowak · February 2016

Hey guys,

Thanks for the discussion on Bow PvE DPS. We agree that "pure" Bow PvE builds are parsing a little bit lower than we'd like in dungeon and trial encounters. We want to improve Bow's sustained damage without buffing its burst (especially from Crouch), and we targeted a change that will help out Bow builds without influencing the hybrid Dual Wield/Bow or Two Handed/Bow builds (which are already very competitive).

In the next PTS build, you should see following change to the Hawk Eye passive:

Old Hawkeye:
Increases the damage of your Bow attacks by 8/15% when striking off balance enemies.

New Hawkeye:
Your successful Light and Heavy Attacks increase the damage of all your Bow abilities by 2/5% for 4 seconds, stacking up to 3 times.

A standard Bow PvE DPS rotation should be able to generate and maintain Hawk Eye stacks throughout a boss encounter, and this keeps it out of reach of Crouch burst or hybrid builds who only use Bow to keep up Volley or Poison Injection.

mr_wazzabi · February 2016

Alucardo wrote: »

I don't want to sound like the negative nancy here, but shouldn't DPS on a bow be lower than 2h/dw anyway? I mean, if you could pull the same numbers from range, why would you ever want to go melee again?

Not when sorcs with destro staff do equal or higher dps than 2h/dw builds at range

Cuyler · February 2016

ZOS_KNowak wrote: »

Hey guys,

Thanks for the discussion on Bow PvE DPS. We agree that "pure" Bow PvE builds are parsing a little bit lower than we'd like in dungeon and trial encounters. We want to improve Bow's sustained damage without buffing its burst (especially from Crouch), and we targeted a change that will help out Bow builds without influencing the hybrid Dual Wield/Bow or Two Handed/Bow builds (which are already very competitive).

In the next PTS build, you should see following change to the Hawk Eye passive:

Old Hawkeye:
Increases the damage of your Bow attacks by 8/15% when striking off balance enemies.

New Hawkeye:
Your successful Light and Heavy Attacks increase the damage of all your Bow abilities by 2/5% for 4 seconds, stacking up to 3 times.

A standard Bow PvE DPS rotation should be able to generate and maintain Hawk Eye stacks throughout a boss encounter, and this keeps it out of reach of Crouch burst or hybrid builds who only use Bow to keep up Volley or Poison Injection.

Interesting. It's nice to know you guys recognize an issue here AND are actively approaching solutions to the problem. Hope this one works out!

Gilliamtherogue · February 2016

ZOS_KNowak wrote: »

Hey guys,

Thanks for the discussion on Bow PvE DPS. We agree that "pure" Bow PvE builds are parsing a little bit lower than we'd like in dungeon and trial encounters. We want to improve Bow's sustained damage without buffing its burst (especially from Crouch), and we targeted a change that will help out Bow builds without influencing the hybrid Dual Wield/Bow or Two Handed/Bow builds (which are already very competitive).

In the next PTS build, you should see following change to the Hawk Eye passive:

Old Hawkeye:
Increases the damage of your Bow attacks by 8/15% when striking off balance enemies.

New Hawkeye:
Your successful Light and Heavy Attacks increase the damage of all your Bow abilities by 2/5% for 4 seconds, stacking up to 3 times.

A standard Bow PvE DPS rotation should be able to generate and maintain Hawk Eye stacks throughout a boss encounter, and this keeps it out of reach of Crouch burst or hybrid builds who only use Bow to keep up Volley or Poison Injection.

Wow this is great news! I'm really glad to see that this passive is being reworked to an innovative and responsive change that forces the player to interact with it to get efficiency, rather than just a flat calculation that offers free damage. I hope you decide to take this approach in the future (especially that juicy stam focused patch of Dark Brotherhood) to allow for new and more advanced play styles that promote high skill cap growth.

I do offer a word of advice though, please try to stem away from % procs in the future when you do so, as RNG should have little place in overall DPS or any sort of combat performance. Take the set IC introduced, Essence Thief. On paper this set looked to be unparalleled in overall damage if the player was good enough to use it properly. However due to the many issues of % proccing and other internal workings of this set (doesn't add duration to timer when you activate it while the buff is active, does not deal damage on proc, too hard to see, etc...) this set is heavily out preformed by other basic "freelo" sets such as Hundings Rage that guarantee damage regardless of play style.

Dissentinel · February 2016

ZOS_KNowak wrote: »

Hey guys,

Thanks for the discussion on Bow PvE DPS. We agree that "pure" Bow PvE builds are parsing a little bit lower than we'd like in dungeon and trial encounters. We want to improve Bow's sustained damage without buffing its burst (especially from Crouch), and we targeted a change that will help out Bow builds without influencing the hybrid Dual Wield/Bow or Two Handed/Bow builds (which are already very competitive).

In the next PTS build, you should see following change to the Hawk Eye passive:

Old Hawkeye:
Increases the damage of your Bow attacks by 8/15% when striking off balance enemies.

New Hawkeye:
Your successful Light and Heavy Attacks increase the damage of all your Bow abilities by 2/5% for 4 seconds, stacking up to 3 times.

A standard Bow PvE DPS rotation should be able to generate and maintain Hawk Eye stacks throughout a boss encounter, and this keeps it out of reach of Crouch burst or hybrid builds who only use Bow to keep up Volley or Poison Injection.

@ZOS_KNowak Is this buff granted only when the bow is equipped? Will it go away when I swap weapons? And, if I used Volley then swapped to a melee weapon, would I be able to increase Volley's damage while light/heavy attacking with that melee weapon?

lolo_01b16_ESO · February 2016

lolo_01b16_ESO wrote: »

An idea to solve this would be some kind of focus rating, that increases your damage for each arrow you shoot at the same target and stacks multiple times.

ZOS_KNowak wrote: »

Your successful Light and Heavy Attacks increase the damage of all your Bow abilities by 2/5% for 4 seconds, stacking up to 3 times.

Did you take my idea from this thread or did you already plan on doing that before I wrote it?
@ZOS_KNowak

I55UE5 · February 2016

ZOS_KNowak wrote: »

Hey guys,

Thanks for the discussion on Bow PvE DPS. We agree that "pure" Bow PvE builds are parsing a little bit lower than we'd like in dungeon and trial encounters. We want to improve Bow's sustained damage without buffing its burst (especially from Crouch), and we targeted a change that will help out Bow builds without influencing the hybrid Dual Wield/Bow or Two Handed/Bow builds (which are already very competitive).

In the next PTS build, you should see following change to the Hawk Eye passive:

Old Hawkeye:
Increases the damage of your Bow attacks by 8/15% when striking off balance enemies.

New Hawkeye:
Your successful Light and Heavy Attacks increase the damage of all your Bow abilities by 2/5% for 4 seconds, stacking up to 3 times.

A standard Bow PvE DPS rotation should be able to generate and maintain Hawk Eye stacks throughout a boss encounter, and this keeps it out of reach of Crouch burst or hybrid builds who only use Bow to keep up Volley or Poison Injection.

Very nice change. My bowplar thanks you much.

RoyJade · February 2016

Hey, that's a good new ! Thanks !

ningauble_7b14_ESO · February 2016

This looks like a big step in the right direction, thank you.

Essiaga · February 2016

ZOS_KNowak wrote: »

Hey guys,

Thanks for the discussion on Bow PvE DPS. We agree that "pure" Bow PvE builds are parsing a little bit lower than we'd like in dungeon and trial encounters. We want to improve Bow's sustained damage without buffing its burst (especially from Crouch), and we targeted a change that will help out Bow builds without influencing the hybrid Dual Wield/Bow or Two Handed/Bow builds (which are already very competitive).

In the next PTS build, you should see following change to the Hawk Eye passive:

Old Hawkeye:
Increases the damage of your Bow attacks by 8/15% when striking off balance enemies.

New Hawkeye:
Your successful Light and Heavy Attacks increase the damage of all your Bow abilities by 2/5% for 4 seconds, stacking up to 3 times.

A standard Bow PvE DPS rotation should be able to generate and maintain Hawk Eye stacks throughout a boss encounter, and this keeps it out of reach of Crouch burst or hybrid builds who only use Bow to keep up Volley or Poison Injection.

Wow. 42 posts. ZOS loves bows. Not Templar. We're over 42 pages and nothing but a mod telling us to stop bashing Wrobel for his asinine this my house, homogenization ends with the Templar BS on ESO Live.

They gave us a buff (and a few nerfs) this week and but didn't make eye contact. I can't believe they have plans for the bow and not a class they've been nerfing into the ground with every "balance" update.

Grats on the bow buffs though guys. They needed something.

Helluin · February 2016

ZOS_KNowak wrote: »

Hey guys,

Thanks for the discussion on Bow PvE DPS. We agree that "pure" Bow PvE builds are parsing a little bit lower than we'd like in dungeon and trial encounters. We want to improve Bow's sustained damage without buffing its burst (especially from Crouch), and we targeted a change that will help out Bow builds without influencing the hybrid Dual Wield/Bow or Two Handed/Bow builds (which are already very competitive).

In the next PTS build, you should see following change to the Hawk Eye passive:

Old Hawkeye:
Increases the damage of your Bow attacks by 8/15% when striking off balance enemies.

New Hawkeye:
Your successful Light and Heavy Attacks increase the damage of all your Bow abilities by 2/5% for 4 seconds, stacking up to 3 times.

A standard Bow PvE DPS rotation should be able to generate and maintain Hawk Eye stacks throughout a boss encounter, and this keeps it out of reach of Crouch burst or hybrid builds who only use Bow to keep up Volley or Poison Injection.

Thanks @ZOS_KNowak !

Speaking about bow there is a bug related to Lethal Arrow and poison status effect in general.
Can you please fix this as well please?

Synthetically:

poison status effect still uses spell penetration, spell critical damage and spell critical chances instead of armor penetration, weapon critical damage and weapon critical chances
Lethal Arrow's poison status effect is affected by this issue
Poison damage weapon glyph/enchantment is affected both on direct damage and dot
Poison status effect and Poison damage weapon glyph are correctly increased by Mighty
The proc "Venom" vs targets weak to poison (I tested this with Ogres in Wrothgar), instead, gives always the same damage no matter how you spend points in Champion System

Disease weapon glyph, Poison Arrow and morphs, Acid Spray, direct damage of Lethal Arrow are not affected by this issue.
If you need more info, I'll gladly help.

Thanks, kind regards!

P.s. In the name of Y'ffre, a tiny bonus to bow damage or ranged damage should be a must for Bosmer racial passives!

Bandaari are amazing with venoms, but archery is Bosmeri!

Slayyer-AUS · February 2016

Alucardo wrote: »

I don't want to sound like the negative nancy here, but shouldn't DPS on a bow be lower than 2h/dw anyway? I mean, if you could pull the same numbers from range, why would you ever want to go melee again?

I agree with you range dps should be lower, It shouldn't be on par with mele.

bow/dw is by far the best dps for stamina build atm

Joy_Division · February 2016

@ZOS_KNowak

TY for letting us know that you are aware of these issues and your future plans to deal with them.

Autolycus · February 2016

ningauble_7b14_ESO wrote: »

Autolycus wrote: »

I'm not sure what this perspective stems from. I run with bow users that pull 25-30k sustained single-target dps in pve. They consistently pull more than 20k on every boss in trials and dungeons (including vIP and vWGT) and get 30k+ on shorter fights, like crematorial guards.

These same people are also doing insane amounts of damage to people in pvp. I've seen them effortlessly put down other players within the first few shots, and have seen them kill other players simply by running up a few DoTs and avoiding/mitigating everything until they die (no snipes needed, and has been done both in mid- to large-sized groups and duels).

Can someone explain what they are doing to wring out double the dps most people can do with bow?

Also the only people I see dying to the first few shots to bow users are manning siege, riding horses, or oblivious/afk/lagged.

Is this a viable weapon for all 4 classes to do decent pve dps/effective pvp damage?

I'm pretty familiar with their builds, but I won't claim to know every detail. The primary components are through poison injection and lethal arrow being buffed with Thaumaturge and Precise Strikes (which changes a fair bit in the next update, since poison damage gets buffed by Mighty instead). Sheer Venom is a large portion of this as well, although some use Hundings instead, and the difference between the two has been almost negligible until the TG update hits live. Post-TG Hundings has statistically higher output, but unfortunately I'm not the one who tested it so I can't post the results.

I'm pretty sure NBs have an advantage in this build pre-TG because Thaumaturge buffs both poison damage and class abilities, but now they will have to split their CP across Mighty and Elemental Expert in order to buff both. My understanding is that boosting magic damage will be forgone, at least for those I've discussed this with, and in TG they will put their stars into Mighty and Precise Strikes.

I'm sure this only offers a limited understanding of the build itself, but hopefully offers some helpful insight. It is feasible in both PvP and PvE, but there are some inherent drawbacks to it as well, the obvious ones being reflect mechanics (flappy wings) and poor melee survivability (which can be overcome, but is true for bow builds in general). One of the major advantages I've seen with the use of Sheer Venom is how much the DoT can tick for when the right damage types are buffed. Without a purge or a strong heal, targets affected by Sheer Venom typically die.

nagarjunna · February 2016

Essiaga wrote: »

Wow. 42 posts. ZOS loves bows. Not Templar. We're over 42 pages and nothing but a mod telling us to stop bashing Wrobel for his asinine this my house, homogenization ends with the Templar BS on ESO Live.

<SNIP>

Grats on the bow buffs though guys. They needed something.

49 pages, now! Apologies for barging in on this thread!

Kaliki · February 2016

@ZOS_KNowak: Additionally to the Hawk Eye passive change I think it would be great if you could fix Long Shots.

Tooltip says:
WITH BOW EQUIPPED
Gives you a damage bonus of up to 12% against enemies at longer range.

This bonus only applies to bow abilities though.
If it applied to ranged class abilities it would maybe give players running a bow nice synergies (comparable to the crit or flat damage bonuses you get with dual wield or two handed) .

CP5 · February 2016

ZOS_KNowak wrote: »

Hey guys,

Thanks for the discussion on Bow PvE DPS. We agree that "pure" Bow PvE builds are parsing a little bit lower than we'd like in dungeon and trial encounters. We want to improve Bow's sustained damage without buffing its burst (especially from Crouch), and we targeted a change that will help out Bow builds without influencing the hybrid Dual Wield/Bow or Two Handed/Bow builds (which are already very competitive).

In the next PTS build, you should see following change to the Hawk Eye passive:

Old Hawkeye:
Increases the damage of your Bow attacks by 8/15% when striking off balance enemies.

New Hawkeye:
Your successful Light and Heavy Attacks increase the damage of all your Bow abilities by 2/5% for 4 seconds, stacking up to 3 times.

A standard Bow PvE DPS rotation should be able to generate and maintain Hawk Eye stacks throughout a boss encounter, and this keeps it out of reach of Crouch burst or hybrid builds who only use Bow to keep up Volley or Poison Injection.

This. This is the kind of stuff I love seeing. Thank you for bringing this up, i'll gladly get back on pts to test this out.

dsalter · February 2016

ZOS_KNowak wrote: »

Hey guys,

Thanks for the discussion on Bow PvE DPS. We agree that "pure" Bow PvE builds are parsing a little bit lower than we'd like in dungeon and trial encounters. We want to improve Bow's sustained damage without buffing its burst (especially from Crouch), and we targeted a change that will help out Bow builds without influencing the hybrid Dual Wield/Bow or Two Handed/Bow builds (which are already very competitive).

In the next PTS build, you should see following change to the Hawk Eye passive:

Old Hawkeye:
Increases the damage of your Bow attacks by 8/15% when striking off balance enemies.

New Hawkeye:
Your successful Light and Heavy Attacks increase the damage of all your Bow abilities by 2/5% for 4 seconds, stacking up to 3 times.

A standard Bow PvE DPS rotation should be able to generate and maintain Hawk Eye stacks throughout a boss encounter, and this keeps it out of reach of Crouch burst or hybrid builds who only use Bow to keep up Volley or Poison Injection.

very interesting but mind either buffing up to 3/6% OR 5 second stacks?
and would it be able to be looked into about lowering DoT durations but buffing the damage up so it requires less poison ticks to deal it's damage else poison from bows is a little lacking

Solariken · February 2016

ZOS_KNowak wrote: »

Hey guys,

Thanks for the discussion on Bow PvE DPS. We agree that "pure" Bow PvE builds are parsing a little bit lower than we'd like in dungeon and trial encounters. We want to improve Bow's sustained damage without buffing its burst (especially from Crouch), and we targeted a change that will help out Bow builds without influencing the hybrid Dual Wield/Bow or Two Handed/Bow builds (which are already very competitive).

In the next PTS build, you should see following change to the Hawk Eye passive:

Old Hawkeye:
Increases the damage of your Bow attacks by 8/15% when striking off balance enemies.

New Hawkeye:
Your successful Light and Heavy Attacks increase the damage of all your Bow abilities by 2/5% for 4 seconds, stacking up to 3 times.

A standard Bow PvE DPS rotation should be able to generate and maintain Hawk Eye stacks throughout a boss encounter, and this keeps it out of reach of Crouch burst or hybrid builds who only use Bow to keep up Volley or Poison Injection.

This is awesome, @ZOS_KNowak, and we really love and appreciate this type of communication. Can we please get some developer commentary in the Templar thread? We're all in a confused rage over there and want to know more about what is happening with the class, or even some acknowledgment that we are at least being listened to. Surely there are more improvements coming. Right? ...Right?...

NativeJoe · February 2016

I don't use bows...but in pvp I'm taking 14k focused aim shots to the knee....thats 28k pve damage.... I think thats perfectly decent dps lol...