Is Bow Sorcerer still a viable build?

Zynkei

Hey y'all, I'm a player who played in the beta and at launch, and off and on for the first few years the game was out, but haven't really touched the game in about 8 years. Planning to jump back in, and wanted to ask for input. My main was a Khajiit sorcerer using a bow and summoning minions to tank. This was a great build for me (a primarily solo PVE focused player), and was a decent build back in the day.

I'm curious if it's still viable after all these years, and if so how should I focus my time in-game to get my character back up to speed? I'm not concerned with the build being "meta", I just want to be able to enjoy the story as a (mostly) solo player, and to be able to survive in the PVP areas long enough to get stuff done that can only be done there.

Any tips or tricks to get me back in the game quickly?

AcadianPaladin

Companion tanks. Actually, they all make fine tanks so I go primarily for personality. Mirri in my case. An advantage Mirri has is a nice little 'disappear for a few seconds and heal' spell that really helps keep her alive but is short enough she barely loses taunt. To get something similar on another companion you have to put them in 5 medium armor pieces (and normally 2 heavy), whereas with Mirri's organic skill I can keep her in 7 heavy for more durability. Honestly, they each have minor pros and cons and ever so much more important is how you equip them and the skills you select.

Hybridization. Most folks (for dps) put all 64 attribute points in either stamina or mag based on their primary weapon. That would be stam for an archer. Hybridization means the game uses your biggest resource pool (stam or mag) to help determine the damage your skills do - whether the skill you cast is powered by stam or mag. So in this case, your mag skills hit just as hard as your stam ones. A big stam pool simply means you can cast your stam skills more often than your mag ones. Having some mag skills on your bar helps balance the use of your stam/mag. Respeccing your attribute points if you want to change them is simple, just costs a bit of gold at a shrine.

Subclassing. Yes, you have the right of it.

AcadianPaladin

Several really big things have changed.

The companion system allows you to have a much better 'tank' than any summonable - they can be both more durable and taunt quite well. Properly set up and with you slotting an ability to heal them, they can really hold bosses, allowing you to focus mostly on your rotation.

Hybridization means all your skills (mag and stam both) have their damage determined by the higher of your mag or stam. The fallout of this, is that you actually want to include some mag skills on your stam archer to help ease the demands on your stam usage. As a stam archer, you want a stam spammable but several of your other skills can be mag to ease your stam use.

Subclassing means that you can trade one or two of your skill lines for one or two skill lines from different classes. For example, a bow sorc might drop daedric summoning and pick up animal companions from the warden. That would allow for using the bear in your ultimate slot (very nice passive damage) and using Deep Fissure - a powerful mag on the ground AoE that you only cast every 9 seconds. That is just one possibility to illustrate the flexibility subclassing can provide.

Zynkei

AcadianPaladin wrote: »

The companion system allows you to have a much better 'tank' than any summonable - they can be both more durable and taunt quite well. Properly set up and with you slotting an ability to heal them, they can really hold bosses, allowing you to focus mostly on your rotation.

Is there a specific companion I should be going for to supplement my build? I don't spend a lot of time on MMOs generally speaking, and have limited gaming time overall, so I like to be able to laser focus on a goal.

AcadianPaladin wrote: »

Hybridization means all your skills (mag and stam both) have their damage determined by the higher of your mag or stam. The fallout of this, is that you actually want to include some mag skills on your stam archer to help ease the demands on your stam usage. As a stam archer, you want a stam spammable but several of your other skills can be mag to ease your stam use.

Is hybridization an automatic thing built in under the hood? My magicka and stamina are kinda balanced but I actually have more magicka (currently 25k magicka, 19k stamina - my old build was focused on keeping up summons and then throwing up buffs and attacking).

AcadianPaladin wrote: »

Subclassing means that you can trade one or two of your skill lines for one or two skill lines from different classes. For example, a bow sorc might drop daedric summoning and pick up animal companions from the warden. That would allow for using the bear in your ultimate slot (very nice passive damage) and using Deep Fissure - a powerful mag on the ground AoE that you only cast every 9 seconds. That is just one possibility to illustrate the flexibility subclassing can provide.

I'm currently level 24 so it'll be a hot minute before I hit 50 for subclassing, but I'll keep this in mind. So you drop a whole category of your base class to pick up a category from another class as your subclass?

Thanks so much for the in-depth reply, sorry for asking a lot of questions but there's so much that's different. I also am remembering now looking through my skill trees that I was focusing very heavily on crafting. So now I'm trying to figure out how that's gonna change my play style.