Snipe or Silver Shards?

RedFireDisco · July 2022

I'm running an NB and noticed that from stealth and heavy bow attack into a silver shards takes the same amount of time as a Snipe light attack combo.

Focused aim gives minor breach which is about 5% more damage in addition to doing 10% more than silver shards.
Silver shards can proc sundered and give minor breach anyway and gives 3% more weapon damage and 10% more against vampires & ww.

My HA/shards was hitting for 21k non crit
My FA snipe/LA was hitting for 17.3k non crit from 28mtrs

Crit damages is 125% btw (if these numbers seem low)

Snipe can hit from longer 40mtrs but can't weave LA
Shards has some cleave

My HA/Shards combo uses practically no stam.

Is there something I'm missing?

Anybody out there who gets far more damage from one over the other?

ESO_Nightingale · July 2022

Silver shards is generally better and doesn't require using a bow. It's a 1 gcd instant spammable that does good aoe damage and gives you access to fighter's guild passives. Snipe is better for pvp ganking.

CP5 · July 2022

From a PvE perspective, snipe, with it's .8s cast time, can be light attack weaved, all you need to do is input a light attack during the cast time to get one off, and if you hold the light attack key down while the channel is happening and release it with the snipe it can even count for a medium attack, in what edge cases there are. The focused aim morph also is cheaper than shards, has a higher base damage, and if you're keeping hawk eye active will have that higher damage raised another 25% by that passive. The bonus aoe damage shards does is enticing, but whenever I need to cleave things with my bow I tend to use bombard instead.

Unified_Gaming · July 2022

RedFireDisco wrote: »

I'm running an NB and noticed that from stealth and heavy bow attack into a silver shards takes the same amount of time as a Snipe light attack combo.

Focused aim gives minor breach which is about 5% more damage in addition to doing 10% more than silver shards.
Silver shards can proc sundered and give minor breach anyway and gives 3% more weapon damage and 10% more against vampires & ww.

My HA/shards was hitting for 21k non crit
My FA snipe/LA was hitting for 17.3k non crit from 28mtrs

Crit damages is 125% btw (if these numbers seem low)

Snipe can hit from longer 40mtrs but can't weave LA
Shards has some cleave

My HA/Shards combo uses practically no stam.

Is there something I'm missing?

Anybody out there who gets far more damage from one over the other?

I've tested this in pvp and found snipe worked out better when factoring follow up damage but heavy attack into spamable is good for sustain.

MudcrabAttack · July 2022

I guess for a solo experience silver shards is all you would need, it’s a 5 meter radius physical damage centered around the first target.

But when grouped with a tank that applies minor breach, acid spray is hard to beat for AOE with its 20 meter cone, lethal arrow for single target. Both tend to proc lots of poison damage on top of everything else, and gain buffs from weaving light attacks to build up Hawkeye

ZOS_Hadeostry · July 2022

Greetings,

After further review we have decided to move this thread to a category we think is more appropriate for this topic.

Thank you for your understanding.

Necrotech_Master · July 2022

in pvp, ive found snipe better purely due to the increased range

even the shorter variant of snipe, lethal arrow, has a solid +8 meters on top of what shards can do

and to top it off lethal arrow will proc poison status effect (occult overload trigger by you or someone else when killing them)

however if there is a lot of lag, i would say silver shards is better as cast time abilities are unreliable in higher lag, and if your wearing something like plaguebreak, silver shards does make it easier to "spread the love" in a sense lol