(Bow) Hawk-Eye Passive. Why does this exist?

Thejollygreenone

As far as I know, there is nothing in the bow tree, nor much for ranged in general (outside of interrupts that is) that would set a target off-balance to see benefit from this passive.

And even then the idea is to get one heavy attack off to prolong the stun, so they want us to have 15% increased damage on virtually one attack (does it even affect heavy attacks?)? Is this really worth existing when there's no real ability to put enemies of balance consistently within the bow tree?

Or is there something I'm just misunderstanding about the passive? Someone please enlighten me as to why this seemingly minutely useful passive (as my understanding is now it's not even worth two skill points) takes up a passive ability slot of which is vital due to its limited quantity.

I get that it's the mirror to DW's 'ruffian' passive, but even that has a wider range than 'vulnerable' targets which i'm assuming means off balance. Which is many times less useful than stunned, immobilized, disoriented, or silenced that DW is afforded. Honestly, my suggestion would be to get rid of the hawkeye passive altogether and try something different with more use and synergy to the bow tree.

On a side note I'd like to bring up that I think the bow passive Long Shots isn't as effective as one would hope given current trial mechanics. In most trials I've done, group members were encouraged and sometimes forced to all stand together for aoe heals, which limits a bow users ability to freely move to max range to utilize the passive. On most trial fights I had been to I was around or within 10m of the boss, which means the bonus received from this passive is probably less overall than that of Cycle of Life from resto staff, which in itself I think is messed up. If someone can argue against that I'd love to be proven wrong so I can feel good about continuing to use my bow

TLDR; Hawkeye, useless? Also, Long Shots, could/should be better? Please tell me I'm wrong.

golem75eb17_ESO

The passives of bow are lackluster in general. Compare DW for example.

aco5712

As far as i know, vulnerable means stun/disorient/silenced/feared? Thats what i have come to understand it as. Now idk if this is a NB only thing (i think it is) but stealth attacking anything stuns them. So in pvp, i know when i snipe someone from stealth, they go into a 2-3 second stun i believe. Its really this time, where the skill comes into play. I do agree that bow needs new passives, maybe increased armour/spell penetration but thats another topic.

Brasseurfb16_ESO

aco5712 wrote: »

As far as i know, vulnerable means stun/disorient/silenced/feared? Thats what i have come to understand it as. Now idk if this is a NB only thing (i think it is) but stealth attacking anything stuns them. So in pvp, i know when i snipe someone from stealth, they go into a 2-3 second stun i believe. Its really this time, where the skill comes into play. I do agree that bow needs new passives, maybe increased armour/spell penetration but thats another topic.

Doesn't Ruffian tooltip says it works against a Disable target?

So a Vulnerable target might actualy be something completely different as far as I know, maybe Armour/Attack debuff or even the Staggered state maybe?

Edit : I think they need to clarify the tooltip like they did with Ruffian, it would actualy answer a lot of questions around that passive.

Thejollygreenone

Brasseurfb16_ESO wrote: »

aco5712 wrote: »

As far as i know, vulnerable means stun/disorient/silenced/feared? Thats what i have come to understand it as. Now idk if this is a NB only thing (i think it is) but stealth attacking anything stuns them. So in pvp, i know when i snipe someone from stealth, they go into a 2-3 second stun i believe. Its really this time, where the skill comes into play. I do agree that bow needs new passives, maybe increased armour/spell penetration but thats another topic.

Doesn't Ruffian tooltip says it works against a Disable target?

So a Vulnerable target might actualy be something completely different as far as I know, maybe Armour/Attack debuff or even the Staggered state maybe?

Edit : I think they need to clarify the tooltip like they did with Ruffian, it would actualy answer a lot of questions around that passive.

I'm all with you, some clarification is certainly needed. However..

From my understanding ZOS has commented on this 'vulnerable state' before in unrelated posts using it in the context of an enemy becoming vulnerable after being interrupted while casting something.

So, I wrote the OP under the assumption that this was the case with the hawkeye passive.

If it was while the target is under the effect of an armor debuff as you and I've seen others suggest? Now that is something that would be worth while even if it has no real synergy inside the bow tree, simply it could have a pretty damn high uptime on any type of enemy with the right itemization.

I think I'm going to go do some testing and see if I can get to the bottom of this.

Thejollygreenone

Back with results. The passive hawkeye, as I had assumed, provides a 15% damage bonus to bow light/heavy attacks and abilities when the target is 'off-balance'. Meaning the state that occurs naturally when interrupted mid spell/ability cast which can turn into a prolonged stun if the off-balance individual is hit by a heavy attack.

Of course there are other abilities that trigger this state, but they are few and far between. But the bottom line is that the off-balance vulnerable state is merely a setup for one to heavy attack the off-balance target furthering the duration of the stun.

That means that in solo situations you get one heavy attack with a 15% damage bonus if you want to actually take advantage of the stun mechanic. Maybe you could weave in a bow ability before starting the heavy attack. At it's base, this ability is good for one to two attacks solo, and no more than three or four when you have an ally to do the heavy attack stun for you. That's when a situation occurs when an enemy is actually set off-balance. Which brings me to my next point.

In pvp, people tend to avoid cast time abilities in combat like the plague unless they have one of the few decent cast time abilities at their disposal (Crystal shard prime example). Because of this avoidance of cast-times in a general sense, a target letting himself get interrupted is a very rare occurrence, and even then they have the ability to CC break out immediately making that one time interrupt useless from the perspective of the damage buff.

And the situation isn't much better for using peripheral sources of the vulnerable state. The only ability that is afforded to me which can set a target off balance is one that is illogical to use with my bow since I'd have to be in melee range, a NB ability (veiled strike). Maybe the morph of blur could help when coupled with evasion but that's hardly consistent and takes up two ability slots to be remotely effective.

Anyway, I'll quit ranting and conclude by saying that this passive is synergy-less junk, and the bow tree in general could use some work. So ZOS, how bout we start by scrapping hawkeye and giving us something we have more use of?

EDIT: ZOS stealth changed the tooltip of hawkeye on the PTS, it now clearly states off-balance targets. A little late, but thanks for the clarification guys -.-

aco5712

Well then i will be wanting my 2 skill points back... Only thing that it can benefit from is stunning a caste with venom arrow.... useless passive.

Brasseurfb16_ESO

aco5712 wrote: »

Well then i will be wanting my 2 skill points back... Only thing that it can benefit from is stunning a caste with venom arrow.... useless passive.

Well you can also trigger it when you block a heavy attack, make an ennemy miss a melee attack with Blinding Flashes or Mirage and Immobilize a target with Bombard followed by a Lava Whip.

That's about it, but you get the idea.

aco5712

only reason i use bow is to nuke nubs in pvp. i only used bow for 1 thing in pve, scorched earth on them and then swap straight out to DW :P

kijima

Having the right Armour to have some synergy with what you are trying to do is your friend.

There is some VR6 medium armour that I (and a friend of mine) improved to epic and it works very well when you combine with stealth.

Beeftips

I've crit for 1700s with heavy attack on disabled targets with bow. Don't take away my hawkeye.

Thejollygreenone

Has someone actually found repeated uses for this passive? I'd like to know how to better utilize this passive if there's something I'm missing, but so far I've never even noticed when doing damage to an enemy that was in a vulnerable state. Maybe that's my problem, but that's why I'm asking, to fix that

Aside from my plea for help, I feel I must question the credibility of this statement:

Beeftips wrote: »

I've crit for 1700s with heavy attack on disabled targets with bow. Don't take away my hawkeye.

Even if I ever saw my vr12 crit for 1700 with a heavy attack against maybe I'd feel similarly to you.

But in pvp, I can't ever get a heavy attack off because your enemies are too smart to just sit there while you charge up.

So now I should ask, how often is this happening in a competitive environment? While leveling up, yeah it's a cool passive I guess and can see a few uses, but in a trial environment? No way. In PVP? You can try, good luck, but I never have to time to put any more than an attack or two in, even if I'm not trying to do one heavy attack.

And while on the discussion of PVP, I'd like to see you crit for more than 1.5k with a heavy attack against an actual semi-armored target, since we all know pve enemies have crap for armor, which would account for such high crits.

Unless you can tell me you're noticing this bonus multiple times in any given play-session like I see for passives like Long-Shots, then I'd like to reassert that Hawk-Eye would probably be best of being scrapped for a talent that's used more often.

But one last time, to be fair, if there's some technique to getting targets off balance all the time with a bow to make this semi useful that I'm just missing, by all means enlighten me. I'd like to get use out of all of our passives the same as anyone else ^.^

Beeftips

@Thejollygreenone What faction are you?

The most i've ever crit with heavy attack was 1713 on a VR12 nightblade. I'm not saying I pound out 1700s all day long, I was just stating that I've gotten one.

My usual heavy attack crit (from stealth) is 900-1200s, 500-900 non stealth crits and random numbers over 1k if the target is disabled.

Thejollygreenone

Beeftips wrote: »

@Thejollygreenone What faction are you?

Aldmeri, why do you ask?

Beeftips

I can give you a demonstration tonight if you like.

Thejollygreenone

Beeftips wrote: »

I can give you a demonstration tonight if you like.

Sounds good, you can friend request me if you want, my account name is the same as my forum name.

Thejollygreenone

Thejollygreenone wrote: »

Beeftips wrote: »

I can give you a demonstration tonight if you like.

Sounds good, you can friend request me if you want, my account name is the same as my forum name.

I remain unconvinced even after an explanation/demonstration. At best, hawkeye is OK for leveling up, which is a situation where casters wont expect to be interrupted and set off balance, or for PVP if you have some hella coordination with some skills that have 0 synergy with the bow tree (e.g. molten whip, concealed strike, primarily melee ranged abilities)

When it comes down to it, this passive adds zero value to pve end game, and barely noticeable and infrequent/inconsistent value in pvp end game. If it was up to me, this passive would be totally scrapped for a new one with more consistent uses.

It's just a cheap knockoff of dual-wields 'Ruffian' is what I think. Bow deserves better than a half-baked pvp-only passive in these times of such dire dps levels for stamina builds. 15% damage increase on one heavy attack once a fight, if even that frequent, just in pvp? No thanks, I'd rather have a passive that I get some use out of on a consistent basis.

DracoMars

bump

Aett_Thorn

Why the frick would you bump this?