Question for experienced Bow Nightblade Assassins...

MacCait · August 2022

I currently run all infused jewelery with weapon damage on all for a Stamblade Archer. It hits ok, but I need to do 2-3 lethal arrows followed by a poison injection to get the kill... meanwhile shielded oponents running at me lol. I am good at escape so np, but looking to improve my fast kills...

I am wondering if I might be better to go all bloodthirsty with weapon damage to get more damage out of my setup for the 2nd and maybe 3rd shots?

In your experience do you find all bllodthirsty superior to all infused in Cyrodill fights? Or should I just stick with infused?

I use differnt gear so no point me naming sets, its really just a question on infused or bloodthirsty for max assassination damage.

Thanks for any answers

geonsocal · August 2022

good question...with the execute phase in mind, i've used bloodthirsty with dual wield (spin to win) and 2H (executioner), never thought to use it with the bow (snipe)...

the bow is the way to go in a lot of pvp situations...

i'd be interested to hear what the math is, since i have absolutely no idea...also - how it "stacks"...

xxslam48xxb14_ESO · August 2022

What I used to do with my bow build prior to switching to melee gank was I would execute with bombard. Its not technically an execute, but lots of times you will only need that one last shot. Its nice because its undodgeable, medium range, and does enough damage to kill someone who is panic rolling away. I imagine with all bloodthirsty it could become very lethal for executing rollers. Could even use acid spray instead for a bit more damage. Pretty sure I only used bombard at the time because of hrothgars chill, but immobilizing isn't useless. Rolling is usually a safe way to survive a bow user, so its pretty common to execute people like that in my experience.

Zodiarkslayer · August 2022

I'd say Infused all the time. Self healing is still too high in PvP.
I'd wager if you switch to Bloodthirsty, you will need more than 2-3 shots of Lethal Arrows.

And a lot of players just outheal your damage when they see it coming. So you want as much as possible in as short of a window of time as possible, to reduce the reaction time. But you probably know that. For that the first shot needs to hit as hard as the delayed or later shots. That kinf of excludes Bloodthirsty already, imo. Plus Infused scales with major Brutality (and minor Brutality, if you can get it), while Bloodthirsty doesn't.

I tried Snipe too at first, but it was the problem. Hitting targets reliably was an issue. And cast time was an issue. It just took too long to hit.
I switched to Plaguebreak and Acid Spray as Spammable. Works like a charm. I even tried Silver Shards and Evil Hunter as counter to Gankers. Worked in its way better than both Snipe Morphs.
And Nightblades have Impale as ranged execute ability. You can always fall back to that.

But the best single target option was Crushing Weapon from the Psijjic skill line. By a "long shot" ...