Questions for VR14 DW & Bow DPS NBs doing Craglorn dungeons

tintin_milou

Hello to the really good DW & Bow NB's,

I would like your help in setting up skill bars (for high DPS) for those hard Carglorn and Vet dungeons. By the way, I wear 7 pieces of Medium Armor with 5 Hundings/ 4 Nightmother's bonus.

I am at VR6, yes still "leveling." My skill bar that I now rely on for 95% of the fights have many skills for "survival" that doesn't directly cause damage (e.g. Shadowy Disguise, Heated Blades, etc). Needless to say, when I get to higher VR levels to do Craglorn, I must select other skills that increase my DPS.

So what do you have on your skill bars to do Craglorn dungeons? What minimum DPS is good enough? Thanks for your help!

In many chats people still highly recommend that I ditch medium armor for light armor, and then carry a staff. But I would like to see what we DW & Bow NB's could do.

Savos_Saren

Hey buddy! Your set up is much like mine. I'm a VR14 NB Bosmer vampire. Set up for stealth attacks (bow primary with dual wield secondary). I use 5 medium armor (for the full medium set perks), a light armor hood (for the magicka benefits), and heavy armor gauntlets (for the health benefits). I'm maxed out on all passives- so the benefits are worth having two non-medium armor pieces. When I have bow equipped, I have 5 hunding rage pieces and 3 night mother pieces. When I swap to dual wield, I now have 5 night mother and 3 hunding rage.

I keep all armor pieces set at divines EXCEPT head, chest, and legs. Those are infused with magica, health, and stamina (for max gains). Of course, you know that my Mundus stone is the Thief.

Here is my set up with Bow (Weap Dmg enchant/Precise trait) equipped:
Impale>Concealed Weapon>Focused Aim>Magnum Shot>Ambush with Soul Tether as the Ultimate. This gives powerful weapon shots as well as high crit concealed weapon strikes.

I used this as a primary source for enhancing as much crit, magica, and health benefits. The stamina is a given due to the nature of our characters.

With the Dual Wield equipped (Sword weap dmg/infused)(dagger decrease health/infused):
Impale>Concealed Weapon>Flying Blade>Haste>Shadowy Disguise with Soul Tether as the Ultimate. This is AWESOME for high crits and up close powerful attacks.

Wearing medium armor as a Bosmer vampire maxes out all stealth abilities. You can literally walk up and whisper in your enemy's ear before giving them a devastating slash from the concealed weapon attack.

Let me know what you think!

Stannum

My Craglorn build
1 DW (used for large groups of mobs)
- focused attack (stamina regen buff + crit bonus via passive, cast before attack)
- volcanic rune (CC - thrown to the middle of the mob cluster in the begining)
- ambush (or lotus fan) (charge in the middle of the mob cluster)
- power extraction (great damage buff, casted while mobs are in the air via volcanic rune)
- steel tornado spam untill all are down (you can also sometimes drop volcanic rune under your feet)
ulti: flawless dawnbreaker (for passive dmg bonus) or vail of blades (for protection)
2 bow (single target boss bar)
- venom arrow (DoT + cast interrupt)
- lethal arrow (main spam from safe distance)
- magnum shot (helps keep away from boss when you have caught aggro)
- impale (finisher, start to spam when boss is under 25%)
- cripling grasp (fot DoT and speed boost) or swallow soul (for heal and heal bonus)
ulti: flawless dawnbreaker

Hypertionb14_ESO

i may be weird but i treat the craglorn stuff in the exact same way i do most else.. tho i throw in reaper mark when fighting groups for that half way through the fight heal...

tintin_milou

Thanks everyone for sharing your skill bars!

As I am mainly interested in Single Target DPS skills, my main bar for taking down final quest bosses (stunnable ones) during my leveling in VR6 is:

Killer Blade
Shadowy Disguise
Surprise Attack
Rapid Strikes
Heated Blades
Veil of Blades (Ult)

My standard rotation is to sneak behind target then

1) Surprise attack
2) Rapid Strikes (x2)
3) Shadowy Disguise
4) Surprise attack
5) Rapid Strikes
... (repeat 3- 5 if necessary, may need to down magicka potion due to high cost of Shadowy Disguise + Surprise Attack combination). This rotation lets me live! as the target is always stunned!

For unstunnable special bosses, well there is another skill bar I use (for another discussion).

But I think the DPS from this bar is not high enough for Craglorn dungeons. Furthermore, even for regular 4-man dungeons, there is too much movement (and dangerous AOE's) during boss fights for this melee skill bar to be effective. So for those hard dungeon boss fight, I probably should use Bow.

My Bow skill bar for Single Target DPS contains

Venom Arrow
Focused Aim
Crippling Grasp

I gave up the very nice Magnum Shot due to the 10 m max range since I don't want to be that close to boss. What 2 other skills should I have to complement the three for high DPS? I see from your posts that you both have Impale. I have the other morph (Killer Blade) though.

I heard people say a DPS 800-1000 is needed for the Craglorn bosses. What rotation should I use (with my 3 skills so far) to achieve this?

Thanks alot!

KenCleanAirSystem

If you are going for dps then both of your bow abilities would be better with the other morphs (poison injection and lethal arrow). Crippling grasp deals a bit more damage, but I prefer swallow soul/funnel health for its healing tick. Those are the three offensive abilities on my bow bar. I usually open with lethal arrow, then use cancelled light and heavy attacks with poison injection, with swallow soul thrown in to make sure stamina doesn't deplete too much.

My current bow bar is lethal arrow, poison injection, swallow soul, reaper's mark or double take, shadowy disguise and flawless dawnbreaker. Can't really help with dual wield as I use one Hand and shield on my other bar for melee combat.

Hypertionb14_ESO

good dps,

Bow = Focused Aim, Light Attack, Poison Injection, Focused aim spam untill injection wears off and restart.

this holds high dps.

Vs Undead = Focused Aim, Light Attack Poison Injection, Light Attack restart order.

additional attacks are intended to proc evil hunter, to restore stam and do additional DPS.. the added light and injections otherwise dont do any more DPS so the non undead leaves that out.

always Flawless Dawnbreaker. Add in Reapers Mark if you know you wont be getting attacked directly.

DW = Surprise Attack, Rapid Strikes untill Surprise attack wears off.

Main Bar should have Flawless Dawnbreaker. offhand bar should have Death Stroke or morph, use the ult then switch to main bar and spam rapid Strikes.

DW AOE = Power Extraction + Steel Tornado until everything is dead. Offbar ult should be Veil of Blades for massive defensive bonus and extra AOE dps. Keep up Elude and Mirage, Siphoning Strikes should be kept up as well.

all forms should hold 1k dps or close over a nearly infinite duration without dropping. (should actually get better as mob hp drops)

if your soloing large groups with the AOE build, have Reapers mark on your off bar and pop it on one of the non healer or tank mobs for a self heal as you burn the group down. you can also replace Veil of Blades with Soul Tether when soloing groups, as the Stun and Heal will usually be more helpful in those situations.


i have no problem soloing Group challenges etc with just whats above... even have taken my stam build into Vet DSA for fantastic Results.

tintin_milou

Hypertionb14_ESO wrote: »

good dps,

Bow = Focused Aim, Light Attack, Poison Injection, Focused aim spam untill injection wears off and restart.

this holds high dps.

Wow thanks for sharing Hypertionb14!

So in this bow attack rotation, essentially all the damage comes from Focused Aim + Poison Injection (DOT) + buffs from Reaper's Mark and Flawless Dawnbreaker then? I supposed Light attack would contribute a little too. And you get ~1000 DPS from this build right? Oh, I should ask about your total Stam number - which figures into the DPS too. And your armor, which gives additional buffs.

Hypertionb14_ESO wrote: »

DW = Surprise Attack, Rapid Strikes until Surprise attack wears off.

Main Bar should have Flawless Dawnbreaker. offhand bar should have Death Stroke or morph, use the ult then switch to main bar and spam rapid Strikes.

And here I guess the damages come from just Rapid Strikes + buffs from Surprise Attack, Flawless Dawnbreaker and Reaper's Mark? And also ~1000 DPS too?

So I am surprised that 2 bow attacks + buffs would get very high DPS. Just looking at the tooltip numbers of Focus Aim and Poison Injection gives around 500 DPS (Focus Aim also takes 1.5 sec to cast which would decrease the tooltip DPS some factor). And I guess the buffs + high stamina raise the DPS much higher then?

Also I must try out the Rapid Strikes + Surprise attack combo + buffs to get the high DPS!


Thanks again for sharing your successful rotations!

kijima

Lethal Arrow > Light Attack> Venom Arrow > Lethal Arrow spam (1.1sec draw time) untill venom wears off.

If undead I'll throw in some silver shards, and make sure my camo hunter is on. I've found Camo hunter is great with groups, once I've lit it up, I very rarely need to touch it again as I'm always dispatching enemies. And the additional 13% damage that flawless dawnbreaker gives you is a no brainer, got to have that on your bow bar.

Why Venom? I find that venom with the interrupt for casters is crucial for my build, glass cannons don't like getting hit, and I'm pretty darn glassy. Stuns with Venom help with Stamina regen for me too, with the stun I can then throw in a heavy bow attack or two if timed right and that really helps for the stamina regen you gain out of it.

I'm stupidly 84+ (over) softcap for weapon damage at the moment, and while not all in for stamina, I'm definitely stamina heavy.

Note: For giggles, you could try aggressive horn on your other bar for the ult.

DPS with that setup is pretty high.

Hypertionb14_ESO

Snipe takes 1.1 second to cast and back to back casting of it removes the cooldown period after casting between another cast (universal to all abilitys)

Poison Injection can hit for up to 160-600 damage on its DOT, which at the basic every 2 seconds all Dots hit for (even the well loved DK ones) that is 70-300 dps added for 10 seconds depending on Mob HP...

Snipe alone will generally hold 800-900 dps if you crit consistantly (due to hits
of over 1.5k with a good build on crits)

Lethal Arrow is 100% overrated for PvE, and adds nothing really for it.. No mob will really require the reduction to healing.. those that could be useful on are universally boss monsters who are also immune to the effect. the Extra range on Focused Aim however increases the Passive from bows that increases damage depending on your distance from the target, as well as giving a straight Weapon Damage bonus on the target...

tintin_milou

OK thanks so much everyone for sharing your suggestions for high DPS skills!

Special thanks also go to Hypertionb14 for his specific DPS rotations! Now I need to put those skills on and practice.