Deadly Arrow - Stamina Sorcerer vMA Bow/Bow Build (Homestead Ready)

Masel

Heya, it’s me again with another vMA Build, this time for a Stamina Class, the Stamsorc. The specialty of this is that it is a Bow/Bow build, so we’re using bows on both Bars. After having played Nos’ Bo’ Bo’ Build on my Stamblade, I had the idea that it should work great in vMA on a stamsorc. This is rather a fun Build in vMA, but I have to say that it works a lot better than I actually thought and you can get through in a very short time after getting used to the playstyle (~45-50 minutes). The Healing through crit surge and vigor is awesome and the damage is good enough to get through the arena flawlessly while ignoring several mechanics with ballista burst. I ran the arena thrice with it now and I got through without a death once. AS always, just adapt the build to your playstyle and have fun with it!

Race:

Khajiit for maximum damage, Redguard for additional sustain. My Stamsorc is a khajiit, but for learning the arena, you might be better off using a Redguard, as the sustain comes in handy. Bosmer and Imperial work good too, Bosmer for sustain and imperial for addition survivability.

Stats (with Surge on):

Gear (without a vMA clear and Bow):

Gear (with a vMA clear and Bow):

You can go for a sharpened Spriggan bow and 5 VO on both bars too, that will give you more sustain but less damage while on the back bar. Especially caltrops get a lot cheaper with VO, you’ll notice it.

Why Spriggan?

Spriggan gives us a flat ~8.5% damage buff when full penetration is not achieved. As stamina doesn’t have a penetration passive as Magicka characters have, we got nearly the same value by using this set. Bow’s are pretty cheap (I bought mine for 12k) and thus we can achieve this easily.

Why Vicious Ophidian?

8% Cost reduction, 2100 Stamina on kill, minor slayer and 258 Weapon Damage plus 3% crit, why the hell not? I don’t think I need to say anything more.

Why Kragh/Velidreth heavy piece?

One heavy piece gives additional health, sustain through constitution passive and another 2k penetration/ 129 weapon damage. With Kragh you’ll be over penetrating on 9.1k resistance mobs, but against all other mobs with higher resistance, this is the best 1 piece bonus you can have. You can go medium too, but I prefer the heavy one-piece.

Why Maelstrom Bow?

Because the enchantment is just amazing. That Hail hits rock hard with it.

Bar setup (Without potions):

You can also drop hunter on the back bar for dark deal to get additional sustain, but I found that it isn’t needed. With major savagery potions, use the bar setup down below.

Bar setup(with potions):

Let’s go through the skills quickly:

Poison Injection: 10 second DoT, Hits hard, especially on low health mobs (16k crits). Charge Heavy Attack, Poison injection afterwards and focus on another enemy. Put this on as much enemies as possible.

Focused Aim: Gives us another 1320 Penetration and higher range. You can use Lethal Arrow too if you prefer the poison DoT.

Lightweight Trap: Place this under spawns that need to be focused. Immobilizes melee enemies, hits hard (even after nerf) and gives you minor force.

Resolving Vigor: Strong heal, with this and surge you basically don’t die.

Camo Hunter: Give sus major savagery and 3% weapon damage.

Bound Armaments: Run this if you plan to use savagery potions. 1320 Physical Resistance, 11% HA Damage and 8% more stamina.

Flawless Dawnbreaker: 8% more Weapon Damage, Strong AoE Damage and DoT. Don’t use in Bossfights.

Critical Surge: This skill is plain awesome. Average 3.6k heal per second and major brutality.

Endless Hail: Hits hard, 10 second AoE DoT, especially with a vMA Bow it kills.

Razor Caltrops: 30 Second DoT, crazy range, hits hard and snares. Clear YES.

Hurricane: Hurricane on a Ranged Build? Yes, Major Resistance Buffs and strong AoE helps a lot in there. Remember to NOT activate this on stage 7 menders or they’ll die

Ballista: This thing is crazy. Hits amazingly hard, bursts down things very fast. Use this on Minibosses and Bosses!

CP Distribution:

Green Tree:

100 in warlord
90 in mooncalf
5 in tumbling
5 in Tenacity

Red Tree:

10 Spell shield
10 Medium Armor Focus
Rest evenly Spread out between thick skinned, hardy and elemental defender

Blue Tree

90 in mighty
50 in precise strikes
10 in piercing
5 in Bow expert
5 in Blessed
40 in Thaumaturge

Here's a full run Video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L8khSH3fqR8&feature=youtu.be

Masel

Updated with full run Video.

Keep_Door

I want to hate but you play this well. I feel like this build would have a nasty learning curve and any casual to mid level player would have a hard time playing it.

But all in all looks pretty good bravo

Masel

Keep_Door wrote: »

I want to hate but you play this well. I feel like this build would have a nasty learning curve and any casual to mid level player would have a hard time playing it.

But all in all looks pretty good bravo

I don't think so, I haven't played a stamina character in there since a few weeks after 1T and it was pretty easy for me to do it. But it's rather a fun build for someone who did the arena already, as I hate doing vMA with the same character and gear over and over, I prefer testing other things to make it a challenge.

DocFrost72

Take a well deserved awesome as I contemplate making a stam sorc just to try out bow-bow xD

devilfish79

@Toc de Malsvi have you seen this yet?

jakeedmundson

There's a similar build out there that uses a mal bow AND a master bow. I wanna say the dps parse (on a stationary target skeleton though) was right around 40k dps. Not saying at all that your build isn't original... i'm just saying that its fun we're starting to see bow builds.

I think bows are starting to become a good main weapon. Obviously still second to DW and 2H. You could always get through the story stuff with it.. but it never worked well for dungeons/trials. I made a stam sorc recently... and i have plenty of vma bows even in sharpened. So i might have to give this a shot.