Help a newbie ranged Nightblade

Praefator

So I bought the game a couple of weeks ago, before the housing update.
I started as a ranged Nightblade and it all was nice and dandy until the update. That damn update!
This update moved the Poison Arrow to the bottom of the skill line, basically taking away my only skill that helped me do some damage.
Since then I was unable to figure a proper rotation of my skills that would allow me to be effective with the bow.

I would really appreciate any suggestions from the more experienced players.

PS: I tried the videos on YouTube but they're all outdated and do more harm than help.
Following one of those guides got me dying a lot more than before.

Jitterbug

Yeah it was a great leveling skill. I think the one where you "fire 3 arrows" is go to now as a spammable. Otherwise but bow skills on another weapon bar and level it up passively till you get poison again. Like putting Snipe on a 2H bar if that's your secondary weapon and just level with Carve or whatever.

Praefator

Jitterbug wrote: »

Yeah it was a great leveling skill. I think the one where you "fire 3 arrows" is go to now as a spammable. Otherwise but bow skills on another weapon bar and level it up passively till you get poison again. Like putting Snipe on a 2H bar if that's your secondary weapon and just level with Carve or whatever.

That's the thing. This is the first character I am leveling (currently lvl 19) and the bow is my primary weapon.
ATM I am using Lethal Arrow as a subsitute. It's somewhat spammable and has a poison effect but it's not as good as Poison Arrow.
For now I am using only Lethal Arrow to do damage and Draining Shot to keep the enemies at distance.
The other three are class skills, which I don't use that much (if at all).
On the second bar I am keeping two dual wielding skills and the same three class skills.

Darth_Savage

I just want to start off by saying play howe ver makes you happy bud. Now I will offer some advice based off of what I have found through playing. First, while leveling up its good to keep a skill from each of your skill lines on each bar so they all level at the same rate.
I also found that bow seems to be more of a supplemental weapon, like I would cast my dots with bow, switch to dual wield, go in and get some hits in, and then switch back to bow to get dots back up. I would echo the arrow spray suggestion from above, take the poison morph of it, and keep that and arrow barrage up all the time. You will do way more damage switching back and forth between dw and bow compared to just shooting arrows in between bow skills.

davey1107

I'm going to assume you have the first three skills unlocked in any class/weapon skill line, or can unlock them relatively fast (not counting ultimates). So that should create a suggested skill bar you can actually build.

Bow was always a challenge in solo lower level pve, and losing poison inject is going to make it more so. It's actually a relatively hard weapon to use on your attack bar. The reason is that enemies get through it and it's hard to kept them away, and because it takes a long time...and usually a lot of champion points...to get its damage up.

My advice would be to try using a dual wield attack bar for a while. The dps is higher, and kinda designed for a stamblade. One possible setup: bloodthirst, surprise attack, ambush, killers blade, mirage/mark/whirlwind.

Another option would be to use your old bar, but fill the poison inject slot with silvermshards from the fighters guild line. It costs more, but it's a good range spammable attack.

But based on your post, one big problem is that you're relying on one skill to do most of your dps. ESO is designed to work best if you find skill rotations that work for you. Like poison inject is good...but not THAT good. It's mostly useful as an opening attack...but then rotate out to hit them with ambush then surprise attack a couple of times then killers blade. Just spamming it has much lower returns than stacking attacks from different skills.

Xvorg

Praefator wrote: »

So I bought the game a couple of weeks ago, before the housing update.
I started as a ranged Nightblade and it all was nice and dandy until the update. That damn update!
This update moved the Poison Arrow to the bottom of the skill line, basically taking away my only skill that helped me do some damage.
Since then I was unable to figure a proper rotation of my skills that would allow me to be effective with the bow.

I would really appreciate any suggestions from the more experienced players.

PS: I tried the videos on YouTube but they're all outdated and do more harm than help.
Following one of those guides got me dying a lot more than before.

If you want to use bow as main weapon you need to know:

1- There's one bar for ranged and one bar for melee
2- You will use the melee bar most of the time
3- Your skills in he melee bar should include scatter shot, Ambush and surprise attack.
4- Your skills in the ranged bar should include snipe, silver bolts and arrow spray (mobs) until you get poison arrow.

Once you get lvl 50 in the bow bar, you can either keep the ranged/melee division or try a single target/AoE distribution... or go for another main weapon.

Some usefuld skill for maining bow:

melee: scatter shot, ambush, SA, mass hysteria, Killer's blade power extraction, rearming trap, DBS, Incap, VoB
ranged: snipe, poison arrow, silver bolts, cripple, agony, lightweight trap, meteor, soul strike, Rapid fire
Both bars: Vigor, arrow spray, cloak, mark, relentless, etc

randomkeyhits

If you just want to have a relatively simple bow starter then

most charactistics into stam obviously

from bow
poison arrow and morph to poison injection when you can,
draining shot for the range + stun + heal you already have, keep

from the shadows path
path of darkness for significant mobility, can morph for extra healing.

from siphoning path
strife for extra healing

from assassination
blur initially then switch to mark target

Poison for your dot and pop draining if too close and get the heal at the end.
Using path is fun because you can just run around many enemies and be out of range of their AoE with ease.

Keep several different bows, flame, electric and so on and pick the right one for your current foes and just keep upgrading your gear. Use blue food HP+ST boost for any real fights.

Also do get used to switching to your alt bar. I'm testing out all sorts of different DW things at the moment but not found a setup I really like yet.

This should get you through the story missions and by then you should have a stronger idea on how you want your toon to proceed at which point you can worry about getting strongish named sets and stuff.

Xvorg

randomkeyhits wrote: »

If you just want to have a relatively simple bow starter then

most charactistics into stam obviously

from bow
poison arrow and morph to poison injection when you can,
draining shot for the range + stun + heal you already have, keep

from the shadows path
path of darkness for significant mobility, can morph for extra healing.

from siphoning path
strife for extra healing

from assassination
blur initially then switch to mark target

Poison for your dot and pop draining if too close and get the heal at the end.
Using path is fun because you can just run around many enemies and be out of range of their AoE with ease.

Keep several different bows, flame, electric and so on and pick the right one for your current foes and just keep upgrading your gear. Use blue food HP+ST boost for any real fights.

Also do get used to switching to your alt bar. I'm testing out all sorts of different DW things at the moment but not found a setup I really like yet.

This should get you through the story missions and by then you should have a stronger idea on how you want your toon to proceed at which point you can worry about getting strongish named sets and stuff.

@randomkeyhits posion arrow now is the last skill in the line. It starts with snipe

Praefator

Xvorg wrote: »

If you want to use bow as main weapon you need to know:

1- There's one bar for ranged and one bar for melee
2- You will use the melee bar most of the time
3- Your skills in he melee bar should include scatter shot, Ambush and surprise attack.
4- Your skills in the ranged bar should include snipe, silver bolts and arrow spray (mobs) until you get poison arrow.

Once you get lvl 50 in the bow bar, you can either keep the ranged/melee division or try a single target/AoE distribution... or go for another main weapon.

Some usefuld skill for maining bow:

melee: scatter shot, ambush, SA, mass hysteria, Killer's blade power extraction, rearming trap, DBS, Incap, VoB
ranged: snipe, poison arrow, silver bolts, cripple, agony, lightweight trap, meteor, soul strike, Rapid fire
Both bars: Vigor, arrow spray, cloak, mark, relentless, etc

Isn't the scattershot a bow skill?
Anyway, I don't have yet all the skills unlocked but I will try to improvise.

Praefator

OK so I reset my skill points to the following:

- Bow: Lethal Arrow; Draining shot, Silver Bolts, Arrow Spray, Agony
- Dual Wield: Draining Shot, Arrow Spray, Teleport Strike, Veiled Strike, Killer Blade

When I was done reasinging my skills I realized I didn't have any DW skills on my DW skill bar... *mega facepalm*
I guess I'll have to wait for some spare gold to do another re-spec.

Anyway I tried the skill combo you all suggested with some adjustments to the skills I don't have yet and... it's awful.
The bow skills obviously do not work with my dual-wield daggers. (thanks for that @Xvorg
In close combat with dw I am dead meat and with my bow I have to constantly retreat. Pressing S and spamming skills started hurting my fingers after ~15 min.

Aside from that the skills don't seem to do much damage and there's no obvious rotation I can use.
The worse thing is that I don't understand what am I doing wrong and how to fix it.

I am officially starting to hate this game...

DeathlurkZ

I went through same issue with my bow stamblade.. I fixed it by switching to a magplar (which I love)

Im gonna try playing my bow nb tonight though and play around with some skills and rotations.

I know this comment provided no help, but your not alone...

Praefator

DeathlurkZ wrote: »

I went through same issue with my bow stamblade.. I fixed it by switching to a magplar (which I love)

Im gonna try playing my bow nb tonight though and play around with some skills and rotations.

I know this comment provided no help, but your not alone...

Well at least it's not just me that has the feeling that (low level) NB is broken.

I'll make another character and wait for better times for my NB.

randomkeyhits

Xvorg wrote: »

randomkeyhits wrote: »

If you just want to have a relatively simple bow starter then

most charactistics into stam obviously

from bow
poison arrow and morph to poison injection when you can,
draining shot for the range + stun + heal you already have, keep

from the shadows path
path of darkness for significant mobility, can morph for extra healing.

from siphoning path
strife for extra healing

from assassination
blur initially then switch to mark target

Poison for your dot and pop draining if too close and get the heal at the end.
Using path is fun because you can just run around many enemies and be out of range of their AoE with ease.

Keep several different bows, flame, electric and so on and pick the right one for your current foes and just keep upgrading your gear. Use blue food HP+ST boost for any real fights.

Also do get used to switching to your alt bar. I'm testing out all sorts of different DW things at the moment but not found a setup I really like yet.

This should get you through the story missions and by then you should have a stronger idea on how you want your toon to proceed at which point you can worry about getting strongish named sets and stuff.

@randomkeyhits posion arrow now is the last skill in the line. It starts with snipe

is that on PC as for the PS4 it still shows as snipe unlocking at 38.

If its part of the homestead update then I doubt I'll be a happy bunny tomorrow.

Praefator

randomkeyhits wrote: »

Xvorg wrote: »

randomkeyhits wrote: »

If you just want to have a relatively simple bow starter then

most charactistics into stam obviously

from bow
poison arrow and morph to poison injection when you can,
draining shot for the range + stun + heal you already have, keep

from the shadows path
path of darkness for significant mobility, can morph for extra healing.

from siphoning path
strife for extra healing

from assassination
blur initially then switch to mark target

Poison for your dot and pop draining if too close and get the heal at the end.
Using path is fun because you can just run around many enemies and be out of range of their AoE with ease.

Keep several different bows, flame, electric and so on and pick the right one for your current foes and just keep upgrading your gear. Use blue food HP+ST boost for any real fights.

Also do get used to switching to your alt bar. I'm testing out all sorts of different DW things at the moment but not found a setup I really like yet.

This should get you through the story missions and by then you should have a stronger idea on how you want your toon to proceed at which point you can worry about getting strongish named sets and stuff.

@randomkeyhits posion arrow now is the last skill in the line. It starts with snipe

is that on PC as for the PS4 it still shows as snipe unlocking at 38.

If its part of the homestead update then I doubt I'll be a happy bunny tomorrow.

It is indeed a part of the homestead update. Sorry, mate.

Metafae

I wish I could tell you how to make your bow build work, but I can't.

It's unfortunate, but Bow as a primary weapon just isn't good in this game. If you've been experiencing issues trying to get it to work, its mostly because it just doesn't work at all.

The only viable ranged Nightblade is one that is based on Magicka skills using Destruction staves.
I know this isn't what you want to hear, but it is something I should point out. Depending on your race, you may want to consider changing to a Magicka Nightblade, as it is a very fun class to play.

As for Stamina based Nightblades, I recommend making Dualwield your new main weapon type, and use Bow on your back bar to boost your overall damage through dots such as Volley, Arrow Spray and eventually Poison Injection when you unlock it again.

What I usually do on my Stamblade is put Endless Hail (morph of Volley) on the group of enemies, switch to Dualwield and jump into the middle of them and spam Steel Tornado (morph of Whirlwind). For single target, put Endless Hail on the enemy, use Poison Injection (Acid Spray morph of Arrow Spray will work here until you get Poison Injection unlocked again), switch to Dualwield, apply another dot like Bloodcraze (Twin Blade morph) and do a weave with Surprise Attack (Stamina morph of I think the first Shadow skill) and Light Attacks until the dots are about to expire, then just reapply the dots and repeat.

It's just a basic rotation though.

bowmanz607

makes me mad they switched it without giving it to playhers who maxed out all skills. Bow was first weapon i leveled during early access of this game for pc. Yet the update moved poison arrow to last spot and only had rank 1 complete of unmorphed version. FFS zos. your telling me that i have not made enough xp to level up that ability. that really triggers me.

davey1107

I would guess at some possible issues you're aging even after adjustments, but these are guesses:

1. If you're that starved for skill points, are you not spending in passives? You should always unlock every class, racial, armor and weapon passive you have available. If you're short points, get some sky shards. With One Tamriel you can nab all the easy above-ground shards and always have pockets full of skill points.

2. Your DW bar error had you stumble onto an ESO secret. Yeah, if an arrow ability is equipped with dual wield weapons the button won't work. But the xp you earn will level that skill and bow. If you want your poinson inject back, waste a button w an arrow skill on all bars and you'll level faster. (Or turn in all quests on your bow bar with all bow skills and it'll be even faster).

3. Your new bar setup is good, just get flurry and whirlwind on your dual bar and you'll be in a pretty good place.

4. Stamblades are one of the tricker classes to learn. Be patient...you're not broken, you're just not as off-the-assembly-line ready for solo pve like a magplar. Being a successful stamblade means learning your skills and building bars that give you power, heals and wards. And here's the guarantee...if you learn to play a stamblade well as your first character, you will understand the game better than 95% of players, and any character you build in the future will be better. People who play magplars first get lazy. Breath of life...jab...breath of life...jab. Then when it's time for hard pve, pvp or another class they stink.

5. If you're struggling, consider what content you're playing. As a youngling nightblade, it might help to travel in a pack a bit more. This could mean playing with friends, but it might also mean staying away from dark alleys alone, lol. Go play some dolmens, which are always busy. Go play busy public dungeons. Trail "older" characters...no one cares because the xp isn't split and it actually speeds up everyone's question/killing. You'll level up your skills, unlock new abilities and get stronger.

6. If you haven't, as a new player I recommend you turn on your combat text. Seeing how much damage you're doing will help you learn the game. Which abilities do what damage? How often do you crit? What helps you hit harder? When they rolled combat text a lot of us got ten times better by using it.

Curtdogg47

Going bow as main weapon while leveling is very tough. Since you are level 19 use 2H or DW for a second attack bar. This will help. Plus you may as well level other skills as you go. It will give you more options to work with down the road.

Anti_Virus

Wait till the Warden releases it will be the ranger class of the game.

GriMTriAd

<.<
>.>
-.--

According to this thread I'm apparently I'm doing something wrong.

I've been leveling Bow as my main and largely only weapon the entire time. I wanted to respond to this thread a week ago but getting a forum account is apparently hard...

Anyway:
I'm currently level 40 but I got here by going with Shadow Cloak and morphing it into Shadowy Disguise. I honestly avoided most of the bow skills to start because I didn't need them for the first 15 levels (just cloak and use the free crit with your Heavy basic attack, most things die quickly) I also had a friend. When my friend became less interested around level 15 I actually had to learn how to play so I grabbed Silver Bolt from the Fighter's Guild tree to clip the animation of my Heavy Attack.

This works really well against most mobs in the game. To start a fight, try to be at max range and crouching. You charge your first heavy shot and hold the key for Silver Bolts. Once you've finished charging your Heavy Attack, release it and then immediately let go of your Silver Bolts key. You'll want to quickly follow up with Shadow Cloak again and if you get the timing right you'll hit the target twice and then stealth again stunning all mobs in that pack. Once shadow cloak is most of the way through it's animation start charging your next Heavy attack. You'll get about 4-5 of these on average before your mana runs out with no mana gear. This is generally enough to kill 1 mob, or 2 if you morph Silver Bolts to Silver Shards. You should be repositioning by strafing in a circle around the enemies the entire time as mages will drop fire in your vicinity as this makes it harder for the group to approach you. If you do this right, it will feel like you're playing a complicated chord on the piano.

It's worth noting that I tried this with Arrow Spray once that unlocked but there's a delay after Arrow Spray fires off before Shadow Cloak can trigger and that can get you killed so I swapped back to Silver Shards which has a faster animation.

Note: You can't do this if you have Volley or Poison Arrow running as the stun will break as soon as you deal damage to them and then the mobs will be able to see you even while stealthed so you can't even recover after the poison dot drops off.

This also works well against stronger mobs (the ones with purple diamonds on their health bars) as you should get about 50% of their health down before the fights "starts."

Until about level 25 I could straight up kill "boss" mobs that way alone. Around 25 the boss mobs starting hitting hard enough that I needed to use Draining Bolt on nearby mobs for a heal. Note, it takes two shots to heal, however, if you're taking a lot of damage you can put Draining Bolt on several mobs, and use silver shards to full heal. There's an 8 second gap before that enemy can be CC'ed again, and you only get the heal from the disorient breaking on the mob so be careful about using Draining Bolt when you won't get a heal off it.

At around 35 I started needed Draining Bolt to fight normal packs that contained a hard hitting sorc if I wasn't paying attention to their casting. I like to run around the casters just close enough that I can break their big attacks with Draining Bolt.

Once you hit 38 in bows, snag Poison Arrow but remember it's a liability to use it too early if you like the hit and run tactic. Yeah it's big damage but that's pointless if you're dead. Once I run out of magick I clip light attacks with poison arrow on each mob as it's a good way to break the disorient on Draining Bolt when

GriMTriAd

I need to use that quickly. Sometimes I avoid it if I need to keep mobs CC'ed though as I can cycle Draining Bolts on mobs that get too close to minimize incoming damage and provide a consistent strong heal.

I can solo Dolomens this way but I stopped being able to solo world bosses around level 20 because it's too hard to keep all of my gear even level.

Also, I use Werewolf Transformation for really hard fights. Mixing it up with the stuff above works well, just wolf out on the last stealth, let the melee run towards you, leap past them to the ranged mob and go to town.


I know this isn't an optimized build, but it's fun most of the time (when my gear isn't retardedly low level because you can level pretty fast doing quests and suddenly your level 35 still wearing a pair of level 16 bracers to complete a set bonus...) but it is a way to level as a primarily bow based Nightblade.

I've been doing Aldmeri Dominion quests and stick to set gear with Stam/Health/Stam Regen/Health Regen bonuses as much as possible. Health in the early levels and start phasing that out as you get Draining Bolt to work for you.

I'm running almost full leather (one piece cloth and one piece armor to continue to level them) and I only use 4 abilities (swapping Poison Arrow and Volley based on mob group composition) so I can level other trees with the fifth slot.

I've picked up almost all of the passives for my class, and most of the bow passives as well as all medium passives. I'm running an Imperial so I've also snagged all of those passives (Red Diamond is nice for werewolf).


Hope all of that was helpful, it's a pretty solid wall of text;
_WAter_

Praefator

@GriMTriAd, hm... interesting. I'll have to try this on my bow nightblade. Would be nice if you could post a detailed description/guide to how to main Bow on NB, for other people to see, as it seems I am not the only one wanting to do this and failing hard.

Waiting for the Morrowind update to see what the Warden class will have to offer in terms of range and bow use, that @Anti_Virus mentioned. For now it looks like a basic druid you'd see in other MMORPGs, meaning two haded tankish healer pet class. I hope I am wrong. Would be nice to see a vanilla ranger class in this game.

Anti_Virus

Praefator wrote: »

@GriMTriAd, hm... interesting. I'll have to try this on my bow nightblade. Would be nice if you could post a detailed description/guide to how to main Bow on NB, for other people to see, as it seems I am not the only one wanting to do this and failing hard.

Waiting for the Morrowind update to see what the Warden class will have to offer in terms of range and bow use, that @Anti_Virus mentioned. For now it looks like a basic druid you'd see in other MMORPGs, meaning two haded tankish healer pet class. I hope I am wrong. Would be nice to see a vanilla ranger class in this game.

In some interviews Rich explicitly stated that he hopes people can make a proper bow dps out of the class since its not an option atm, according to him the 'Animal Companions' skill line will have lots of ranged stamina dps skills( Cliff racer for example)

Lastly if you watch the latest Morrowind Trailer they hinted at some form of ranger with the redguard using the bow.

Here's my post about it.
https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/324114/possible-ranger-warden-in-morrowind-chapter

Reefo

PVP or PVE?

Seraphayel

I really suggest you to look for some alternatives. After playing Magicka builds for years I tried Bow builds on my DK and NB. Survivability on Nightblade is horrible with a Bow Build except your really focused on that.

JinMori

Bow isn't really good for front bar, dw is much better.

Seraphayel

JinMori wrote: »

Bow isn't really good for front bar, dw is much better.

DW is not ranged. And no bow.

Edziu

if you end leveling I have 1 advice...stamina ranged dps doesnt exist in this game

SpazzmanNDQ

Just use silver bolts in the fighters guild line as your spamable its not as strong as poison injection but it has the same range almost the same cost and it slows up to 5 enemies plus you get extra damage for having

GriMTriAd

<.<
>.>

I have a build:
This probably sucks...

I'm working on getting the final abilities leveled, another 57 CP so I can start crafting my final gear, and once that's done I'll get some DPS numbers for this build. Unfortunately, I'm pretty slow about this so I don't know when that will be. On the bright side, in sub-par leveling gear it doesn't feel bad. I'm having problems keeping my gear updated, especially with enchantments as I'm leveling all of the crafting at the same time. (This is my first build.)

My current playstyle is to continue using the auto crit from Shadowy Disguise on Silver Shards to start combat, abusing the stealth stun mechanic as much as possible for a couple more free crits (looks to cap at 3 based on end game mana pool) and then dropping Venom Arrow on them to start it ticking while I have hawkeye fully charged. If I'm taking too much damage I get Draining Shots out instead, and as I'm currently using Whitestrakes for the damage shield while soloing this is working out well. I see the shield pop, I immediately start spamming draining on all of the nearby mobs. I'll know what end game sets I'm using as soon as I hit CP 160 and see what I can afford to swap out based on jewelry.

For boss fights, I use Shadowy Disguise to get the first crit, swap to bar 2 and get my (de)buffs off (Reaper's Mark, Double Take, and Relentless focus) hit with Silver Shards/Light attacks (Venom Arrow if they are a caster) Camo if they stealth on me, and as they get low cycle back to the second bar, make sure my buffs are up then ambush to get close and finish with executioner.

At this point I have toxic barrage but I'm not sure I like it enough to keep it, I'll know more as I have more opportunities to use it but in normal play things are either dead or I'd rather keep werewolf in reserve as that cleans up a lot of messes.

For fights where range isn't working (because sometimes the devs seem to think ignoring movement speed debuffs on mobs with attacks that reach twice as far as their animations is good...) I get as many shots off in range as I can, take a couple of hits while spamming whatever I can, swap to the 2h bar get my (de)buffs off pop werewolf (you're invulnerable during the transformation AFAIK) pop hircine's rage to fix short term health issues, leap on the target, poison claw, howl of despair, Rousing Roar (at this point your pets should be on the target as well) and then love the fact that Imperial gets you health back from melee attacks and spam Howl of Despair until your poison falls off. Re-apply poison every 10 seconds, and rousing roar every 20.

And that's how I've been playing for about 20 levels and 100 CP currently;
_WAter_