Anyone found a good NB Bow build yet?

Alphashado

I just can't seem to get the same kind of sustained dps out of a bow with my NB.

I'm sure there is something out there, but I haven't had much luck yet.
Even with a glass cannon build (25k stamina, 15k health) I haven't been able to sustain anything higher than around 8k.
The best combo I've found so far is:

Reaper's mark
Relentless Focus (+8%dmg & +10% stamina regen)
Impale/Executioner
Poison arrow
Focused aim
Ult- Flawless Dawnbraker (+8% weapon dmg)

Trying to weave light attacks in just seems to drop the dps. The highest output I've gotten so far with this is Keeping RM up, keeping RF up, Keeping PA up, and spamming Focused Aim. That nets me around 8k-9k. Plus that is unsustainable.

It's ok, but I'm hoping someone has found something better.

xaraan

No, virtually every bow power is outperformed by similar DW and 2H powers unfortunately. Although you did better dps than I did with a bow, I didn't go that much into glass cannon, keeping my health with food above 20K. I did have really good gear sets however and have been playing bow since beta, so I can usually get a lot out of it, but switching to dw easily outperformed it. edit - although you can run something like sap on your alt bar if you care to get close enough to activate it for the damage buff, giving you the greater damage buff.

Alphashado

xaraan wrote: »

No, virtually every bow power is outperformed by similar DW and 2H powers unfortunately. Although you did better dps than I did with a bow, I didn't go that much into glass cannon, keeping my health with food above 20K. I did have really good gear sets however and have been playing bow since beta, so I can usually get a lot out of it, but switching to dw easily outperformed it. edit - although you can run something like sap on your alt bar if you care to get close enough to activate it for the damage buff, giving you the greater damage buff.

Yeah, DW is amazing right now. I was getting 12k+ dps with the DW build I was tinkering with.

xaraan

My biggest problem is how much more expensive everything feels, sustain is very hard now.

It's also hard to know what kind of fight we are talking about when people give DPS examples. We hunted down bosses that were tough and took 60-80 seconds to kill, anything shorter than that and it's easier to get a higher dps number, anything more than half of that and it's extremely easy to get a great dps number, even with a bow. Even then, it depends on your partner if you are in a group dungeon, if they are a little low on dps, then the fight takes longer and your dps can drop a bit, especially in that length of time due to the sustain issues, and if you don't have a fair amount of stamina when the boss hits execute phase your killer's blade won't do much good.

Alphashado

That's why I considered sticking with Impale so that I would have a full magicka pool waiting for me to spam it, That's worked great for me in the past, even with a very low magicka pool. But now the difference in damage between impale and Killer's Blade is so huge depending on your stamina/magicka pool, that you almost have to take killer's Blade anyways.

Alphashado

Take a look at Camouflaged Hunter now:


Has a 4% chance to proc on any target now which isn't huge, but take a look at the passive buff while slotted. Major Savagery. Very nice passive buff and you can keep it slotted on your Bow bar, then switch to your off bar for Killer's Blade. You could also keep it on your off bar so that you retain Major Savagery while spamming KB.

Thejollygreenone

Alphashado wrote: »

Take a look at Camouflaged Hunter now:


Has a 4% chance to proc on any target now which isn't huge, but take a look at the passive buff while slotted. Major Savagery. Very nice passive buff and you can keep it slotted on your Bow bar, then switch to your off bar for Killer's Blade. You could also keep it on your off bar so that you retain Major Savagery while spamming KB.

The 4% chance to proc on ANY target is actually much more important than you're letting off, in my opinion.

The reason for this is that you chose to link and are presumably using camoufloged hunter rather than evil hunter. With camo hunter, the proc is only for damage, while on evil hunter you get a nice chunk of stamina back every time it procs.

Even at 4% chance to proc, stamina regen is stamina regen compared to none at all when using camo hunter

EDIT: Now that I think of it, you'd need at least a couple procs to make it really worth it to maintain, the duration is quite low and I didn't take into consideration that only using it for the crit allows you to never have to cast it, thus saving a global cooldown and stamina. If you can negate the stamina cost with procs, and thus also add to your damage, then it becomes decently helpful.

ElliottXO

Melee DPS outperforming ranged DPS? Working as intended I would say.

Alphashado

ElliottXO wrote: »

Melee DPS outperforming ranged DPS? Working as intended I would say.

Yeah I've heard that argument before.
A bow build should at least be on par with a ranged Sorc build though and so far I haven't seen anyone come close to the 12k+ DPS I've been hearing sorcs are getting.

Thejollygreenone wrote: »

Alphashado wrote: »

Take a look at Camouflaged Hunter now:


Has a 4% chance to proc on any target now which isn't huge, but take a look at the passive buff while slotted. Major Savagery. Very nice passive buff and you can keep it slotted on your Bow bar, then switch to your off bar for Killer's Blade. You could also keep it on your off bar so that you retain Major Savagery while spamming KB.

The 4% chance to proc on ANY target is actually much more important than you're letting off, in my opinion.

The reason for this is that you chose to link and are presumably using camoufloged hunter rather than evil hunter. With camo hunter, the proc is only for damage, while on evil hunter you get a nice chunk of stamina back every time it procs.

Even at 4% chance to proc, stamina regen is stamina regen compared to none at all when using camo hunter

EDIT: Now that I think of it, you'd need at least a couple procs to make it really worth it to maintain, the duration is quite low and I didn't take into consideration that only using it for the crit allows you to never have to cast it, thus saving a global cooldown and stamina. If you can negate the stamina cost with procs, and thus also add to your damage, then it becomes decently helpful.

I was just showing the passive, and how it's changed vs 1.5

Synozeer

Thejollygreenone wrote: »

The 4% chance to proc on ANY target is actually much more important than you're letting off, in my opinion.

The reason for this is that you chose to link and are presumably using camoufloged hunter rather than evil hunter. With camo hunter, the proc is only for damage, while on evil hunter you get a nice chunk of stamina back every time it procs.

Unfortunately the stamina return got nerfed. On live its around ~200 stamina, and on the PTS I think it's ~800, which is only about 40%.

Sue_D_Nim

I'm curious to know what addon(s) you are all using to determine your DPS. FTC?

I don't like all those numbers floating all over my screen and ordinarily am not the type of player to need the number crunching. For a test, however, and to experiment with my build on the PTS, it would be valuable.

Deathztalker

On the PTS right now the bow is broke and with the weapon swap cool down some people are dropping the bow all together, I'm sure ESO is aware of this issues already.

The bow is a crit based weapon with a crit passive they broke bow DPS in 1.6 when they made changes to how critical attacks were handled. Until they fix bow DPS or even better the bow combat system (Instead putting on a band aid) they can't properly test the Champion points system with the bow.

One idea they could look at is removing cross weapon buffing so they could control DPS calculations better. Then add in a healing component to one of the shots for the bow then balance the weapon using passives.

Alphashado

Sue_D_Nim wrote: »

I'm curious to know what addon(s) you are all using to determine your DPS. FTC?

I don't like all those numbers floating all over my screen and ordinarily am not the type of player to need the number crunching. For a test, however, and to experiment with my build on the PTS, it would be valuable.

You can disable the floaty numbers in the FTC addon settings. That's what I choose to do. Also in the upper left hand of the UI, you will see a small box that displays dps, hps, and damage taken during each encounter. Then you can set a hot key for FTC to display a detailed report for each encounter.

Alphashado

Deathztalker wrote: »

On the PTS right now the bow is broke and with the weapon swap cool down some people are dropping the bow all together, I'm sure ESO is aware of this issues already.

The bow is a crit based weapon with a crit passive they broke bow DPS in 1.6 when they made changes to how critical attacks were handled. Until they fix bow DPS or even better the bow combat system (Instead putting on a band aid) they can't properly test the Champion points system with the bow.

One idea they could look at is removing cross weapon buffing so they could control DPS calculations better. Then add in a healing component to one of the shots for the bow then balance the weapon using passives.

Perhaps another option would be to make the base weapon dmg the same value as a 2h weapon. Would this be OP? Right now on both live and pts, it's the same as a 1H. Maybe viable with crit reduction?

Cody

You have to mix it in with either DW or 2H. bow alone wont get you far unless you are just that dang good.

EsORising

I have been asking myself this question since the game came out...

EsORising

One thing that bow users should have on their bar is the new revamped skill in 1.6 dehibilitate. -40% on mob +40% on user for 9 sec and puts a DOT and refunds the magicka.

I don't know if this will work in pvp but this def a great bow user skill. Also the new vamp drain is suppose to increase your speed +40% for 17sec on a drain.

Digiman

Alphashado wrote: »

I just can't seem to get the same kind of sustained dps out of a bow with my NB.

I'm sure there is something out there, but I haven't had much luck yet.
Even with a glass cannon build (25k stamina, 15k health) I haven't been able to sustain anything higher than around 8k.
The best combo I've found so far is:

Reaper's mark
Relentless Focus (+8%dmg & +10% stamina regen)
Impale/Executioner
Poison arrow
Focused aim
Ult- Flawless Dawnbraker (+8% weapon dmg)

Trying to weave light attacks in just seems to drop the dps. The highest output I've gotten so far with this is Keeping RM up, keeping RF up, Keeping PA up, and spamming Focused Aim. That nets me around 8k-9k. Plus that is unsustainable.

It's ok, but I'm hoping someone has found something better.

Do even do heavy attacks to help regain stamina in the mix?

Gyudan

Alphashado wrote: »

ElliottXO wrote: »

Melee DPS outperforming ranged DPS? Working as intended I would say.

Yeah I've heard that argument before.
A bow build should at least be on par with a ranged Sorc build though and so far I haven't seen anyone come close to the 12k+ DPS I've been hearing sorcs are getting.

Sorc here.
For non-pet magicka builds, 12K DPS is achievable only when using Power Overload for the entire fight, which is an Ultimate and not sustainable at all with update 6. The DPS with regular abilities (velocious curse, crystal fragments, crushing shock) seems close to what bow users are getting, even though I haven't tested it on trial bosses. We get a higher DPS during the execute phase with Mage's Wrath, but that only works for the last 20% of the fight.

Sue_D_Nim

Alphashado wrote: »

Sue_D_Nim wrote: »

I'm curious to know what addon(s) you are all using to determine your DPS. FTC?

I don't like all those numbers floating all over my screen and ordinarily am not the type of player to need the number crunching. For a test, however, and to experiment with my build on the PTS, it would be valuable.

You can disable the floaty numbers in the FTC addon settings. That's what I choose to do. Also in the upper left hand of the UI, you will see a small box that displays dps, hps, and damage taken during each encounter. Then you can set a hot key for FTC to display a detailed report for each encounter.

@Alphashado that's perfect; thank you.