Same DPS Half the Fun (Bow/Bow NB)

GriMTriAd

Apparently I was capable of significantly higher DPS pre-expansion because just keeping my DOTs up 100% of the time weaving heavy attacks can pull about the same 16k I used to get...

So on a full heavy rotation for my Bow/Bow build I get between 3 and 4k stamina back per heavy attack and my abilities cost between 2400 and 3500 stamina. This means I can occasionally light attack to get an extra relentless focus attack, or activate my ultimate (Ballista) without hurting my rotation, just drop a heavy and insert a light attack/whatever I need.

(and yeah, this gets worse for me because I'm also playing a Night Blade).

So while holding heavy attack with Camo Hunter, Relentless Focus, Lightweight Trap (bow build remember?), Poison Inject, and Volley I can get through 2x lightweight trap, 1x Poison Injection, 1x Volley, and 1x Relentless Focus every ten seconds. This keeps my dots up ~100% of the time and generates about 16k DPS while keeping me full on stamina. For how it plays out I start with RF, and then HA, (rotations starts here) LWT, HA, PI, HA, Volley, HA, LWT, LA, RF, HA, PI, HA, Volley, HA, LWT, LA, Ultimate, LA, RF, LA, (repeat rotation)

So I have no ability to move out of damage anymore because heavy attack makes you stupid slow. But, I have a crap ton of utility on a back bar in case I need it and enough stamina to activate it. This is less fun, as it feels more like Melee at range. Use abilities to mitigate and heal through damage while I just stand there and attack. It's literally why I stopped playing DW/Bow in the first place. I also hate the way Staves look and play so Magicka isn't a good option for me either. To that end, I want to fix and move forward not get stuck hating my situation.

I've tried rotations with Focused Aim and Silver Shards (you can heavy spam with Silver Shards, you cannot with Focused Aim) and I get about 200 DPS more with Focused Aim, but I have to bar swap for my DPS abilities as you can't fit it all. Worse is the fact I have to constantly watch the cast bar for focused aim because it forces a context swapping between all three of Light, Medium, and Heavy attacks. This makes it really easy to screw up the Focused Aim rotation since you're heavy attacking between almost every trigger except before and after you cast focused aim or when you toss out a trap so you can cast your ultimate at full effect. Those situations requires a light/medium attack weave and so I have to context switch from holding the LMB to letting go of the LMB and holding for a short bit, then a quick tap of LMB and then back to holding it because Focused Aim will let you get a medium attack off if you start it after Focused Aim has started casting but the medium attack will only trigger properly if you let go just after the Focused Aim otherwise it will start charging a heavy attack again and you've horked your DPS. Basically the entire weave is a cluster____ of unpleasant context swapping that you're trying to do at the same time you have to avoid blue balls, and red circles, and boss focus, and white portals, and watching for the boss to fly up into the air for his TPK ability. (Can you tell I tried Vet ICP recently?)

As for silver shards, I lose over a thousand DPS over just keeping my AOE's up because the full heavy rotation I use only leaves time for the occasionally extra attack. Assume that for each HA, you can fit "LA, Ability, LA" but not with a bar swap. Bar swap would only get you BS, Ability, BS and so it's relatively expensive DPS wise to do that since you either drop your DOTs for a second or two, loose a HA, or lose 2 light attacks.


I'm running 5x Spriggan's, 5x Hundig's, and 1x Kra'gh's (since I'm all range the 2 piece bonus is complete crap for me) and 280 CP distributed relatively evenly for the three damage increases (heavy/light attacks, Physical attacks, and Damage Over Time).


Even after Ignoring the NB Bow/Bow part, I still feel like I'm doing something horribly wrong. I have a hard time believing that 320 CP and VO are going to be enough to double my DPS. If that's true, ZOS reallllllly f'ed up their balancing...


I want to stay all range as I tend to be very good at dodging things and I have a lot of practice from other MMO's kiting mobs. Pre-Morrowind players with better gear were able to get close to DW/Bow numbers on dummies so I should only be trailing a DW/Bow by about 5% but I feel like I'm trailing by 30% instead.



It's probably worth noting that I test rotations with no food, and no potions. If you do so and are comparing your numbers to mine then I find that they generally add another 10-20% to my DPS when I have both on depending on rotation. I use Potions of Speed (Major Brutality and Major Expedition) and Pork and Radishes CP 160 Stamina/Health food.


And before other people recommend it, I am seriously considering just leaving ESO as well. If it no longer supports the very specific playstyle I enjoy (Fast movement bow builds) then it's just a matter of practicality at this point, not a criticism of development. Before I make that decision though, I should give the game a fair shot by seeing if there's something I can correct to get that playstyle back first. Just to be clear, my criteria is getting back what I had pre-patch. Fast moving NB Bow/Bow with acceptable DPS. I can either do Acceptable DPS or move right now, not both and that's the issue I'm trying to solve. Your help is appreciated.

_WAter_

SodanTok

Why do you test rotations without food and potions? The more base stamina, the more stamina regen (~8k every 45sec from potion and +20% to recovery for whole duration) the less heavy attacks the more DPS the less slow walking.
You did not mention use of siphoning/leeching attacks (that one that restore stamina on light attack) that's another sustain.
Then you can use food (dubious camoran) that gives you huge stamina recovery or put cost reduction/stam recovery on 1 jewelry (imo more not worth it)
Basically, sustain is everything. The more you use heavy attacks the worse DPS you will have. You should try limit it to max 1 heavy each ~10sec (avg time of your rotation because of endless hail)

Also small stupid question... are you testing on dummy and not some boss.

//EDIT:
You are missing caltrops, tho with your current situation probably unsustainable.
Dont silver shards, they are expensive and low dmg
Use more focused aim. It is huge part of bow/bow DPS. Obviously not until you get better at sustain so you dont waste time with HA.
Get more CP. Stupid advice but also one of the most impactful. At 300CP you will have 20% stat bonus and at 620 your DPS will be probably 20% better.

DocFrost72

Try out 5 piece hawk eye (5% less bow ability cost, 5% increased dmg) and marksman (5% stam cost reduction), with one Kragh. That, and switch out one or two jewelry enchants for stam cost reduction if you haven't already.

Those alone will make a world of difference!

GriMTriAd

I did actually mention at least one other rotation but I didn't put that rotation down. In reality, it's not like I only tried one, just the one I found I could most consistently hit the same numbers with was the boring hold LMB spam DOTs. All in all I tested about 15 rotations including everything from just FA - HA and HA+Silver Shards to priority based rotations. FA then Heavy, then FA only does about 1k more DPS but is significantly more annoying to play than hold LMB and spamming silver shards. Note, I much prefer priority based rotations, that's what I played as a very good BM/Survival hunter in LK (in the top 10% - 15% of hunters depending on which boss it was).

The Focused Aim rotation pulls about the same DPS but is significantly harder to keep up. It uses Leeching Siphon. Unfortunately for stam regen, LS is only the difference between one maybe one and a half heavy attacks every 20 seconds. II tried it with Leeching and without and I found that tossing in the extra HA instead of bar swap LA, leeching, LA, BS was about the same DPS and stamina restore as just an extra HA. The utility on Leeching makes me think my final rotation will include for the same reason I preferred Rally to Vigor. With Leeching's duration and ability to spam LA for a quick heal, it is very similar to the way Rally worked in that you could get the fast heal by recasting it after at least two seconds.

With the FA rotation I spend about half of it walking but I fumble the rotation constantly because of the context swapping from HA's to FA+Medium Attack, then LA, then hold LMB for HA's while I press ability buttons again which means I just stop because avoiding obstacles and getting that correct at the same time is difficult. So I tried it on a dummy where I didn't need to move to see if it was worth learning and still found it hard to play. Even then my best execution only gave about a 500 dps increase. I suspect that's the direction I'm heading but hard does not equal fun.


If I can't sustain without potions on the Targeting dummy, I certainly as hell am not sustaining while dodge rolling or sprinting to get in position. Potions are really good for providing that buffer and at 45 seconds between potions (even including the major rejuv) they only give about 175 stam/sec or one extra attack every 15 seconds. Also, I use potions when I'm running dungeons/trials just not when I'm testing or in the over world, since it feels like a waste of gold. The food buff is 5k stam, that works out as like 2% DPS overall and 2 attacks at the beginning of the fight only which is menial. Once you hit sustain, then these become corrections for screwing up and handling the oddities at the beginning of some fights.

I'm not found of the hate for Silver Shards. In open world it's better than Acid Spray by miles unless you run around with a tank that groups up half the region. It's cheaper (WAY cheaper now) than Acid Spray and hits 6 targets for good damage. It also has a better animation, and is easier to use. None of that matters anyway, as I said the Silver Shards rotation was significantly worse, it was just something I tried because it weaves naturally with a boring hold LMB HA spam rotation. That rotation just doesn't allow you to keep your DOTs up. Also, if you know your not going up against large packs, Silver Shards on your bar gives you 3% more DPS on all of your other attacks.

I'm rank 5 in Alliance right now so I only have access to Vigor. Once BG's settle down I'll grind out Caltrops. I plan on using that as well so I'm trying to hold open a spot on my bar for it.


I was hoping to avoid swapping for cost reduction enchants because my Weapon Damage is only ~2700 currently but it looks like that's now more important so I'll try that tonight.

Thanks;
_WAter_

Toc de Malsvi

GriMTriAd wrote: »

I did actually mention at least one other rotation but I didn't put that rotation down. In reality, it's not like I only tried one, just the one I found I could most consistently hit the same numbers with was the boring hold LMB spam DOTs. All in all I tested about 15 rotations including everything from just FA - HA and HA+Silver Shards to priority based rotations. FA then Heavy, then FA only does about 1k more DPS but is significantly more annoying to play than hold LMB and spamming silver shards. Note, I much prefer priority based rotations, that's what I played as a very good BM/Survival hunter in LK (in the top 10% - 15% of hunters depending on which boss it was).

The Focused Aim rotation pulls about the same DPS but is significantly harder to keep up. It uses Leeching Siphon. Unfortunately for stam regen, LS is only the difference between one maybe one and a half heavy attacks every 20 seconds. II tried it with Leeching and without and I found that tossing in the extra HA instead of bar swap LA, leeching, LA, BS was about the same DPS and stamina restore as just an extra HA. The utility on Leeching makes me think my final rotation will include for the same reason I preferred Rally to Vigor. With Leeching's duration and ability to spam LA for a quick heal, it is very similar to the way Rally worked in that you could get the fast heal by recasting it after at least two seconds.

With the FA rotation I spend about half of it walking but I fumble the rotation constantly because of the context swapping from HA's to FA+Medium Attack, then LA, then hold LMB for HA's while I press ability buttons again which means I just stop because avoiding obstacles and getting that correct at the same time is difficult. So I tried it on a dummy where I didn't need to move to see if it was worth learning and still found it hard to play. Even then my best execution only gave about a 500 dps increase. I suspect that's the direction I'm heading but hard does not equal fun.


If I can't sustain without potions on the Targeting dummy, I certainly as hell am not sustaining while dodge rolling or sprinting to get in position. Potions are really good for providing that buffer and at 45 seconds between potions (even including the major rejuv) they only give about 175 stam/sec or one extra attack every 15 seconds. Also, I use potions when I'm running dungeons/trials just not when I'm testing or in the over world, since it feels like a waste of gold. The food buff is 5k stam, that works out as like 2% DPS overall and 2 attacks at the beginning of the fight only which is menial. Once you hit sustain, then these become corrections for screwing up and handling the oddities at the beginning of some fights.

I'm not found of the hate for Silver Shards. In open world it's better than Acid Spray by miles unless you run around with a tank that groups up half the region. It's cheaper (WAY cheaper now) than Acid Spray and hits 6 targets for good damage. It also has a better animation, and is easier to use. None of that matters anyway, as I said the Silver Shards rotation was significantly worse, it was just something I tried because it weaves naturally with a boring hold LMB HA spam rotation. That rotation just doesn't allow you to keep your DOTs up. Also, if you know your not going up against large packs, Silver Shards on your bar gives you 3% more DPS on all of your other attacks.

I'm rank 5 in Alliance right now so I only have access to Vigor. Once BG's settle down I'll grind out Caltrops. I plan on using that as well so I'm trying to hold open a spot on my bar for it.


I was hoping to avoid swapping for cost reduction enchants because my Weapon Damage is only ~2700 currently but it looks like that's now more important so I'll try that tonight.

Thanks;
_WAter_

The bold is just not true, unless you are purely looking at damage on opening attacks. It is entirely not true when looking at damage on multiple targets.

Passives Hawk Eye, and Long Shots both affect Acid Spray while having no effect on Silver Shards. Shards does half the damage on everything but the primary target. Acid Spray has a DOT effect that will give you at least one tick when the next Acid Spray is applied even if spamming Acid Spray.

The only time Silver Shards would be better is for targets greater than 20m away or single target before you get 3 light attacks in. Otherwise Acid Spray is equal to better from 3 to 5 light attacks and on, and is massively better for two targets or more.

SodanTok

To add on what Toc de Malsvi said, silver shards is really way way way worse for AoE than both morphs of arrow spray (and way way way worse single target than both morphs of Snipe) and while Acid Spray is slightly more damage (you will spam it, so the dot will proc like once for ~500 dmg) for your style the bombard would be way better, you could root enemies every 5sec (or how long the immunity last), thats less time you are getting hit by melee mobs.

For the rest. Never sprint in pve unless you have to (huge aoe or someone is charging and you need to rush to bash him). Plan your dodge attacks properly (it is better to tank some damage or block than do 3rd dodge roll in a row given the stacking cost increase). Try using Major Evasion for some passive dodge (Mirage/Blur on NB or Evasion from medium armor tree).

The rotation looks still like big part of your problem. Something will work better for you than for me so I wont say directly it is better but personally I find using Focused Aim as the DPS. It deals more damage than anything else you can spam, it is buffed by 25% and 12% from the tree and it applies Minor Fracture further increasing all your damage all while taking less time to perform than heavy attack. Many people say using it as spam ability is weird, clunky, ... but in the end its more about getting used to.

For the sustain if potions are giving you only 175 reg (the 20% buff) that means you have something around 900 regen. That is old patch number. That number means you have to use heavy attack rotation. And that mean you deal less damage than you would have. Dont forget you play Bosmer, they have 21% stam regen, 20% from potion, 10% from Relentless Focus, at least 10% from CP, 15% from NB passive, 24% from medium armor passive (you should use 1 heavy piece if you can) that is 100% stam regen bonus => not having any source of regen is actually huge loss of the sustain potential. With Dubious Camoran food you would lose ~2k health, ~4k stamina but gained nearly 600 stam regen. With one stam regenpiece on jewelry you would gained 300 regen.

Btw Silver shards arent increasing your DPS by 3%, they are only increasing your weapon damage by 3%. It is not really that important. And thats with such high WD (even if you think it is low). Most builds usually go for crit and penetration running with less WD (on bow, DW have high WD by the nature of the weapons).
You havent said anything about your frontbar ultimate but I assume it is (as supposed to be) flawless dawnbreaker.

Stannum

Have you tried to use cultrops (they should hit hard after morro)?
And have not you tried use siphoning atacks (stam morph) instead of heavies - that will allow you to spam more lights (that are buffed with this patch) and have more focus discharge.

Toc de Malsvi

Potions and Food are used for all top dps times as well as any dungeon environment. You will not see the same number nor will you be able to support the same rotation without them. Adding Siphing Attacks will help with sustain.

I would swap out Spriggans for Hawkeye this will help some with sustain, especially when weaving with Snipe.

GriMTriAd wrote: »

I'm running 5x Spriggan's, 5x Hundig's, and 1x Kra'gh's (since I'm all range the 2 piece bonus is complete crap for me) and 280 CP distributed relatively evenly for the three damage increases (heavy/light attacks, Physical attacks, and Damage Over Time).

CP is a bit more complicated now but you are definitely missing out on stars. Master-at-Arms(direct damage), Precise Strikes(crit damage), and Piercing(penetration), should all be added to your CP spread. You won't hit top numbers with only 300 CP, but you should definitely be able to get higher than 20k.

Light Weight trap is not a 5 second DOT, its 6 seconds with a 1.5s re-arm time. This means it should be treated more as a 12-15s DOT than 10s, which makes an optimal rotation with it a bit more complicated. It's rather hard to work with, and you do not necessarily need it for decent dps.

Ideally you want to light weave DOT applications, and then when you go into your Snipe you can weave a fully charged heavy after the first Snipe before going into more light weaves and more Snipes. You should be able to weave 3-4 Snipes between DOT applications.

Lastly add Caltrops to your rotation.

kylewwefan

I've not played a double bow toon but one player I saw was alright. I would note he looked to be working very hard to get alright damage, but that's how wanted to play so...

I saw caltrops was mentioned and it looks to be having a pretty healthy buff upcoming in morrowind.

As nightblade though, you have some pretty tremendous class skills that could help out a bit. I use a bow and S/B on mine and never use any S/B skill.

Despite what you read on forums, not everyone hits 30k DPS. I don't get that on any toon and I'm doing alright.

Trashkan

My dps is better now if I use nothing but light attacks,re arming trap,elemental drain. I was able to pull 22 to 25k with just using this and ultimate lol.

Trashkan

I am a tank by the way I don't dps that often.

DocFrost72

kylewwefan wrote: »

Despite what you read on forums, not everyone hits 30k DPS. I don't get that on any toon and I'm doing alright.

Preach. Average dps is 15-20k, anything therein being enough to do the vast majority of content with a little preparation on the healer and tanks' sides. Veil and nova were powerful before the warhorn meta, and they still are for a lot of engagements. Especially pug engagements.

GriMTriAd

I appreciate all of the advice and you guys have been awesome, but I'm not new to this (I just intentionally make some non-optimal choices for playstyle and enjoyment reasons) so I'll give a bit more context:
I have 71% Crit, 2700 Weapon Damage, And 12.5K penetration. My crit would be higher but my gear is Purple with all divines/sharpened and stamina and weapon damage enchants. It will stay purple until I finish my divines VO set as I tend to give away too much stuff to guildies so I'm always broke (I only have 20k gold right now).

I play Imperial, this means I only get 10% extra stamina.

My back bar Ultimate is WW because it amuses me. If it ever stops amusing me I'll run Dawnbreaker on the front and Ballista on the back. Yes, that's a 5% buff I lose but it's really gratifying turning into a werewolf and eating that mob that annoyed the hell out of me. Also, fully self buffed against targets that are standing still I do 20k DPS so going to 21K is not make or break for the character.

I used Focused Aim as a major part of my pre-patch rotation, I find it hard to get FA into the rotation in a way that actually improves my DPS in the current patch. Yes it does the most damage of any ability I have sans Relentless Focus. You can check this yourself just from the tooltip (for me it's almost 14k per activation) you should find that Relentless Focus hits harder so it's more worthwhile and easier to get those procs off than trying to squeeze in a Focused Aim shot. If adding a FA instead of a using another HA/LA costs me an RF proc (usually by taking long enough that I can't activate the RF proc in time) then it's a DPS loss. I really miss the bonuses from using Focused Aim though so I'm still trying to figure that out.

Light Weight Trap is the one you can throw and is not Re-Arming Trap, it only lasts 6 seconds, my original 5 second comment was a typo. The arming time is pointless as you cast it once every 6 seconds to keep it up, and casting it doesn't drop the current dot so it won't overwrite the current application until the trap goes off. Also, I don't care about the damage from the dot, as much as I care about keeping minor force going as that's a huge part of why just keeping the dots running does more DPS.

Caltrops takes a lot of PvP to get. I only recently got Vigor, so I have another 4-8 hours of mindless PvP grinding to get Caltrops. It's in my current plan as it fills out the rest of the rotation but I can't test with it currently. I honestly expect to hit 17-18k with no food or potions, and 21-23k self buffed (no major fracture)

I tried Cost Reduction Jewelry, stamina issues where mostly mitigated for the LA rotation but I was only doing 12-14k DPS. Regen as a stat is badly balanced. I have ~900 regen currently, that's 450 per second or 3-5 seconds per extra light attack. I need to explore the regen/CR stuff more but my initial testing showed that every piece I swapped netted 500 DPS less.

My DPS is fine for the type of play I currently do, that's not my problem. I just want to be able to move around more and that might just be learning to drop the heavy rotation for a LA rotation when I need to move and going back to HA when I don't. I have plenty of stamina as a reserve and it builds back up pretty quickly with pots and a HA rotation so it's probably best to get my rotation down and then try it in the real world.

As for my Full CP allocation, I only gave one section to start as I'm at work and can't look at my distribution. For CP I have just enough in Penetration that when combined with sharpened, Spriggans and Kragh's (11k) that I get to within a hairs breath of being full penetration as long as the tank keeps Major Fracture up. I moved points around to make up for the loss of Minor Fracture. I can still test the difference though as I don't have Major Fracture applied to the dummy either.


I USE all of: Silver Shards, Focused Aim, and Acid Spray depending on situation. in my current single target rotation none of them are used because I don't have time for them.

As for the people wondering about the no food/potions thing for testing DPS. I'm not testing my DPS against yours, that's not the point of this thread. Since I'm testing mine against mine I'm keeping the variables the same so I can consistently test base values. Combat in the wild is not combat on the dummy so getting everything perfect on the dummy means I have less leeway in real world situations for mistakes. Potions and Food not being included gives me a better impression of what numbers I should get against normal bosses.

Again, I appreciate all of this, I'm testing the suggestions as I have the ability to do so thank you again.
_WAter_

Arenguros

Hi there,

I'm in a similar boat as you.
I'm also playing bow/bow atm and have a similar gear setup (5 Hunding, 5 Spriggan, 1 Molag Kena, Weapon damage on jewelry, no access to master/maelstrom bow).
I'm having a bit higher CP (close to 400) and I'm using stam/health food on my dummy tests, so the results should be a bit higher.

Before Morrowind I could pull 20k on dummy with a classic rotation with no sweat
(Hail + Poison with Siphoning and Focus up, spamming FA/LA in between. No ressource problems).

Now this is down to 18k with some HAs needed, but generally there is space for FA and FA ist the hardest hitting ability going for 23k on average.

Now i did some testing with your setups and my experiences were the following
Lightweight Trap would make abilities hit harder (FA goes up to 25k on average), but the Trap has such a short duration, so there really is barely any time for FA and my dps actually went down to 17k. It's also easy to miss, so I won't be using it.
Caltrops is a great skill for aoe, but for single target just too expensive. The 2k dps you gain from this skill you'll pretty much instantly lose from less FA and more HAs.
Both together lead to no space for FA and no need for leeching, but also a boring rotation and about the same dps.

What you should keep in mind:
If you plan on using siphoning: You need to change the morph to leeching, otherwise it's useless.
Pots are now more valuable than before, as the stamina restore is now actually important.
A pot restores ~ 7500 stam instantly and another 4000 as regen. This equals 5 uses of FA every 45sec or 2k+ dps. You'll also get major brutality of course.
HAs with bow have been sped up, but the animation apparently hasn't - you need to cancel it...
You could get for Dubious Camoran Throne as food for more regen.

In the current patch, you'll need to be a god to hit 30k on a bow stamblade. My tests on pts showed, than neither gear nor CP will increase the damage that much. You'll need to weave perfectly, but even then there's no chance to reach the meta builds.

GriMTriAd

Arenguros wrote: »

Both together lead to no space for FA and no need for leeching, but also a boring rotation and about the same dps.

This is literally the point of the thread. I can pull the same DPS I used to have prep-Morrowind but it's all keeping dots running and heavy attacks, I finally got to use this in the real world, I'll update about that after responding to your next section.

Arenguros wrote: »

What you should keep in mind:
If you plan on using siphoning: You need to change the morph to leeching, otherwise it's useless.

I use Leeching, but very rarely as I can't fit it into the rotation and the difference between activating leeching and getting one more heavy attack is negligible. I change my priorities for high incoming damage though and let my DPS slip a bit to keep Mirage and Leeching Strikes up, vigor as well in insanely high damage like during the starfall attack from the Warrior in HRC.

Arenguros wrote: »

Pots are now more valuable than before, as the stamina restore is now actually important.
A pot restores ~ 7500 stam instantly and another 4000 as regen. This equals 5 uses of FA every 45sec or 2k+ dps. You'll also get major brutality of course.

All of that still just makes up for using LA's to account for missed traps/caltrops/endless hail, or while I have to dodge a lot. Testing with them might improve my DPS on the two Trial bosses I can stand still and shoot but I'm far less worried about the easiest bosses to drop than the variety of ones that require me to be regularly moving for various reasons.

Arenguros wrote: »

HAs with bow have been sped up, but the animation apparently hasn't - you need to cancel it...

Yeah, there's multiple issues with the Heavy Attack animation. Something I'm doing can also cause it to stop recycling as well so I have to start clicking for every attack. I pretty much lose 2k DPS as soon as that happens as I now have to manually trigger every heavy attack. I'm going to start a new thread in the bug report forum and I'll include that it's taking too long as well.

Arenguros wrote: »

You could get for Dubious Camoran Throne as food for more regen.

I've been watching general Stamina NB videos to see what I can take from them for my build. This drink has come up often.

Arenguros wrote: »

In the current patch, you'll need to be a god to hit 30k on a bow stamblade. My tests on pts showed, than neither gear nor CP will increase the damage that much. You'll need to weave perfectly, but even then there's no chance to reach the meta builds.

That doesn't discourage me. I'm not after top of the world numbers. Honestly for the content I do my numbers are fine. Anything else I can pull out number wise just makes it easier to carry guild mates so it's icing on the cake. Right now I am not a burden on normal trial runs and that's where I want to be. I've pulled off some absolutely amazing builds before, maybe I can do it again.


Now, the real world play report:

By this I mean more than just testing at the dummy. I spent a day this weekend getting caltrops so my rotation is complete. Though, calling it a rotation now is wrong, I'll explain that in a bit. I'm going to spend tonight redistributing my CP (now just over 300) so that's it's almost entirely buffing dot damage and light/heavy attacks which should net a pretty large DPS increase.

As far as real world damage goes I'm going to talk about four different areas I tested in: PvP (without caltrops as I was PvP'ing to get caltrops), Overland, Dungeons, and Trials, (I'm the raid leader for my guilds normal Trial runs so my DPS can suffer from that and we run non-optimal casual friendly).

Before we start on that, there's a couple of things that I noticed. Holding the HA button while triggering skills often netted me Assassin's Scourge procs after only three attacks. Something about the way that worked caused Heavy Attacks to count twice. This is consistent on the dummy at max range, and inconsistent when the boss moves around a lot but it's easy to miss a heavy attack or trap in that case. Hopefully ZOS decide they like this behavior and always make heavy attacks count as two procs.

Next was that while holding HA, there are periods where you start running again and so you're not moving slowly the whole time. It was actually amusing to play.

It turns out Focused Aim applies the same movement debuff to your as HA does, so I really don't care about putting it back into the rotation... I should have remembered that but it was the occasional FA in the old rotation that slowed me down, now with constant HA's it's just painful to try and keep it. This was most of the issue I had with maintaining fun when I first tried adapting to the Morrowind patch.

PVP (With Focused Aim instead of Caltrops): the build is great for putting pressure on players from the center of a murder ball (zerg) or on the parapets defending a keep. The Mass quantities of AoE allow you to easily split open a group and then single out bad players with traps holding them from getting back into the group allowing your zerg to murder them. It's a great support build but unless you're amazing, you'll run out of stamina first. Note, I literally used the build unchanged in PvP and did alright with it.

PVE: Swapping Caltrops in after I got it made my AoE a bit better.
Over World: Leeching Strikes, Mirage, Relentless Focus, Caltrops, Acid Spray, Acid Spray, usually don't need the third one but another Acid Spray. On "boss" mobs in delves use full rotation, usually dead before the end of it.

Dungeons/Trials: depends on the encounter. Easy ones (usually trash pulls) are the same as above, harder ones are usually Caltrops, Endless Hail, Acid Spray, Acid Spray, Acid Spray, Acid Spray, Pick up shard, repeat for trash. Bosses depend on how much the boss moves. Because of this, it became a priority system instead of a rotation. For this purpose I'll describe different priorities for different types of fights.

Boss is stationary or has predictable movement, incoming damage is light:
All Damage: Assassin's Scourge, Relentless Focus, Trap, Barrage, Poison Injection, Endless Hail, Razor Caltrops. HA between each dot, LA for triggering AS. HA when you trigger/refresh RF will hit after the buff starts so it will count as two ticks towards your next AS thus it's generally preferable to HA + RF.

Modifiers to the above:
Moderate incoming damage:
Add Leeching Strikes between RF and LWT.

Heavy incoming damage:
Add Leeching Strikes at the beginning, followed by Mirage, Followed by Vigor if heath is under 50%, LA's between these, HA's still for applying other dots, you probably won't have time for EH or Caltrops. Caltrops is the first item to drop if you're running low on stamina.

Boss moves unpredictably:
Drop trap, possibly drop EH as well. Caltrops is huge area wise so it's generally safe to keep using that even on bosses that move quickly.

Adds densely populated:
Acid Spray and EH are your first priorities. HA + EH, HA into first Acid Spray, LA -> Acid Spray until Caltrops expires, HA + Acid Spray as needed but with a good stamina pool you should be able to get 10 acid sprays off.

Adds Loosely Populated:
Spam PI, Caltrops if it can hit more than 2, EH if it can hit more than 1.


I was consistently pulling 15K+ damage on fights doing the above which kept me at ~40% of the dungeon DPS for my guild, and ~10% of the raid DPS. In raids I saw 18-23k damage for most boss fights.

So what's the verdict for me?
Meh...

The spec is more fun the more I play it. I'm getting better which is allowing me to LA->Skill to keep my dots up while not constantly running out of stamina. I still like this playstyle less than pre-morrowind as it's not as dynamic or fun and it REALLY brings out the nasty issues about trying to lay down ground effects constantly. HOLY CRAP are there some bugs that serious limit my fun.

First and foremost: Heavy Attack breaks regularly. This happened to me multiple times per dungeon and trial. Something happens and HA just stops cycling, it's hard to notice, and hard to fix. I found requipping my weapons usually fixed whatever broken state it got into but it could cost me 2-5k DPS on that encounter depending on how fast I noticed it.

Second: AoE's sometimes just fire off at your feet. You move half an inch to the let or right and they work fine but that spot you stopped on for this round of applying your layers means your trap missed and then your EH missed before you noticed the trap only went two feet...

Third: ground layers suck on high movement fights. F' this. Applying three ground layers as part of a rotation sucks. Trap, Endless Hail, and Caltrops are all ground layers which means you need the boss to walk over, or stay in their effect the entire time. This needs revisited. Caltrops should stay a ground layer. LWT should be deployable but also just hit if you're staring at a target, and EH should follow a target around. At least then that gives us a Cleave dot, a ground layer, and a two castable dots with one having the nice benefit of one being deployable. Or, make dots less of a factor in stamina dps.

Honestly there are too many dots in Stamina builds entirely...

_WAter_

Edit: Replaced the wrong they with ZOS in the original post.

kijima

Arenguros wrote: »

In the current patch, you'll need to be a god to hit 30k on a bow stamblade. My tests on pts showed, than neither gear nor CP will increase the damage that much. You'll need to weave perfectly, but even then there's no chance to reach the meta builds.

This ^ is very true, but just seems to be the bitter pill you swallow if you want to play bowtard. (I play bowtard btw)

Mobility with a bow is an issue with your loadout, you'll need to whack in shuffle or retreating maneuvers (depending on why your mobility is sucking a bag of)

Something I've been playing with is poison enchants and the morag tong set,

(5 items) When you deal direct damage, you cause the enemy to take 10% more damage from all Poison Damage abilities for 5 seconds.

The try playing with the befoul tree with CP. It's interesting when you look at the tool-tips after dumping CP in befoul, and it's been making bow fun again for me.

GriMTriAd

kijima wrote: »

Mobility with a bow is an issue with your loadout, you'll need to whack in shuffle or retreating maneuvers (depending on why your mobility is sucking a bag of)

Something I've been playing with is poison enchants and the morag tong set,

(5 items) When you deal direct damage, you cause the enemy to take 10% more damage from all Poison Damage abilities for 5 seconds.

The try playing with the befoul tree with CP. It's interesting when you look at the tool-tips after dumping CP in befoul, and it's been making bow fun again for me.

It's not that I can't move, it's a matter of keeping DPS up while moving. HA's make that hard but it turns out not as much as I expected from my time practicing on the dummy. The slow stops while casting your skill. However, a HA and FA rotation is a level of hell when it comes to movement that I want to avoid at all costs. Current mobility is acceptable but not great. About 2 seconds of slow, 1-1.5 seconds of fast while holding HA the entire time. Stamina recovery from HA's is high enough I can drop to a LA rotation for short bursts which fixes most boss fights. Some are still a struggle to keep my DPS good enough for me so I'll need to consider different food/pots for them, some good suggestions here that I've taken under advisement.

Morag Tong is on my short list to test, I need to get the set first. It's lower than VO for obvious reasons, and behind Twice Fanged Serpent as well. I would be all over it if it said DOT damage, but it's only poisons so it would only help Poison Injection and Acid Spay at this point. I would have to check if it's worth swapping to the other morph of barrage for Morag Tong. I really hate swapping morphs though as that resets my WW bar which you can only set while a WW...

Trying to find a copy of the current CP trees online (as I'm at work) but I can't. I think befoul is the one I just posted about. Since I'm all DOT damage I was going to front load that one heavily and I expect to get a decent DPS boost from it.

_WAter_

kijima

Heavy attacks are slow without ani cancelling. LA is where it's at, and you'll need stam recovery at around 1-1.1K to make life easy.

GriMTriAd

kijima wrote: »

Heavy attacks are slow without ani cancelling. LA is where it's at, and you'll need stam recovery at around 1-1.1K to make life easy.

Tried it, didn't improve my DPS, made life harder on some bosses as even with 1.1k recovery and some reduction glyphs, and I still ran out of stamina often. When I didn't run out, I lost 2-3k DPS. HA with priorities means I almost never run out of stamina while using all DPS gear, just not as fun to play as the best of both worlds version from pre-morrowind.

Will try animation cancelling on Heavy, but I use the nomenclature HA+Skill for a reason since you clip the skill animation this way instead of the HA. LA -> Skill clips the LA animation but that doesn't work well for Bow/Bow builds so I stopped doing it.

The difference is with LA->Skill you hit LA then the skill immediately, pause, and repeat.
With HA+Skill you hold HA, hit a skill after the charge starts and you'll see the skill go off once the heavy attack does but it will clip the animation as soon as it can. Trying to clip HA's tends to lead to a lot of Medium attacks and a very frustrating playstyle when you weave HA's and LA's as you have to context swap between Hold HA hit skill, let go at the right time, repeat for HA portion, then tap LA tap skill wait, tap LA tap skill. I don't really want to work to play my game so I'm fine with slightly better than Potato DPS number for now.

_WAter_

KingYogi415

Not sure how all this "math" fits into you roleplaying an archer,

But whatever floats your boat I guess...

Arenguros

Thx for sharing your experiences.

GriMTriAd wrote: »

I would have to check if it's worth swapping to the other morph of barrage for Morag Tong.

This doesn't seem to work with your build. You need a window of 3-4 seconds of not applying dots so you only lose the HA and one Acid Spray (?) in exchange for the dot.

This set seems to be balanced around DKs that have poison class skills and/or also wearing viper and an poison proc enchant.

GriMTriAd

KingYogi415 wrote: »

Not sure how all this "math" fits into you roleplaying an archer,

But whatever floats your boat I guess...

Not sure how your comment was expected to be useful, but as you say, "whatever floats your boat"

I practice at a dummy, I get numbers, I try something different, I get numbers, I compare the numbers. The one that comes out highest and fits my playstyle the best is the one I use. I then go out in the real game world and see how that spec actually plays, sometimes this pushes me into a spec with lower numbers, sometimes into a playstyle I don't enjoy as much. At this point I use a lot of HA's as that now bothers me less than everything else I've tried to fix the same issues (resource regeneration). I've been relatively successful with this path and just settled on the game being less fun than pre-Morrowind. That's obviously a personal assessment, fun is not an objective metric.

Asking for suggestions shouldn't be an issue. I'm testing the ones I can, and keeping the ones I can't in mind in case an opportunity presents itself. But hey, if you just want to play meta go ahead, you're not needed here, it's not like the title of this thread is misleading.

As for everyone else that has contributed to the thread in a positive fashion. Thank you, even if I argue with you, I really do appreciate the viewpoints as I'm trying to take all of them into consideration. Sometimes I just feel the need to explain more so the feedback can become more focused. It turns out there are several people who seem to be interested in playing a spec that is not meta

_WAter_

GriMTriAd

Just adding another response to point out some of information found in another thread:
Problems with Heavy Attacks

That information has some interesting implications that I'll hopefully be awake enough tonight to test. Could be fun.

_WAter_

Grinzzer62

so is the bow kinda dead as it sits then would you say I haven't played since eso came out and it seems a lot has changed from what I remember bow was decent. And when I say bow dead I mean is it a carry to have a bowman in group pvp and pve or can they hold there own, was thinking going warden/bowman come morrowind.

GriMTriAd

Grinzzer62 wrote: »

so is the bow kinda dead as it sits then would you say I haven't played since eso came out and it seems a lot has changed from what I remember bow was decent. And when I say bow dead I mean is it a carry to have a bowman in group pvp and pve or can they hold there own, was thinking going warden/bowman come morrowind.

Depends on whom you play with. With my current casual guild I get invited quite often as Bow/Bow DPS because I pull good numbers compared to the average guild member and I'm quick to learn mechanics. I would be left behind on a regular basis in a top guild as good numbers for a normal player are around 15k, good members for a Vet everything player start at 25k. The top guilds would expect you to be closer to 40k. Take those last two with a grain of salt though, I'm not running with them so I'm speaking from the forum elitist post I've read and not actual experience.

Bow/Bow users are often referred to as Bowtards which is the same as nomeclature used for Huntard in WoW. Probably why I can ignore it here as well. Most people that run Bows are really, Really, REALLY, bad because it's pretty easy to dodge and light attack everything in the over world with a bow and so people think that's a valid way to play. This means they have a really bad rap.

Pre-Morrowind bows could pull 90-95% of the DPS that the StamMeta builds could pull. I suspect that is still true but you won't see guides for Bow/Bow from the best players for a while as it's pretty niche right now. The meta crowd needs to stabilize on what they know first, and that will only change if it turns out Bow/Bow is massively disruptive and starts crushing DW/Bow numbers. That doesn't look to be the case right now.

That's going to be difficult without a solid spammable, and the fact that the bow execute is also used on top of a real execute by the DW/Bow crowd. When comparing the two, Bow/Bow is really more about mobility and Range which gives greater ease of DPS (you can stay on the boss longer on high movement fights) but you can't test that on a Dummy and there's no site tracking DPS numbers to see what raid performance actually looks like on a per boss basis.

I.E. it's complicated and not yet known.

_WAter_