Double Bow Interest

kylewwefan

The best link I can find for Bow/Bow

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/381498/everything-needed-to-know-about-bow-bow-in-pve-dragonhold-update/p15

I really enjoy playing the underdog class, and mag warden has been my favorite for some time...but the double bow build really seems to take the cake. At least for me. Don’t worry, I’m enjoying the challenge!

I’ve got my character geared to the teeth. Well at least I thought it was wearing Relequen and Tsovkins, I got the warband bow that I was very excited for. Then I see Lokke is now the BiS.

Converted my StamSorc to double bow because it was my least played character and trying to create an interest in it.

I get to the point of hitting a little north of 30k 6mil dps and figured “this thing might be cool” So it’s time to go terrorize the group finder pugs with it! It’s a terror alright. I’m terrible with this character. How TF can I hit 32k on a dummy and suck this bad in dungeons?

You know these unsuspecting dungeon delvers we’re cringing the first snipe they heard go off. It’s every bit as bad and noticeable as a sorc whomping out daedric mines every 5 seconds.

I waited for it and sure enough here it comes. Your group members voted to kick you from the party. I don’t blame them. It was pretty bad. But why? How is it so bad? My ice warden hits 29k dps and wrecks stuff, blazing through content no problem. This double bow felt like it did 12k outside the dummy. Wtf. Maybe I possibly need to learn how to play it better? For now, I just left a lasting impression that most every double bow player I’ve ever seen is flipping terrible and I added to that statistic.

I have heard going with a necromancer or warden is better, but I’m trying to get some interest in this stam sorc, for me personally.

Rocking Relequen/Warband/Stormfist VMA backbar

Hail,Pi, SoulTrap : swap, lethal arrow bound armaments proc. Clan fear and atro ultimate

Sounds simple right. It is. It got what I generally consider good enough damage on a 6 mil dummy. Then I go to play it and it really bad. Why? Think I may have a Lokke bow lying around I can try hoping it may make some difference.

MudcrabAttack

It's all about practice, I think, and getting used to the playstyle, and figuring out what works best at every moment of an encounter. At first it's like riding a bike backwards and using a mirror, but after a long time of playing a bow blade, it's my favorite character by far.

Don't forget about acid spray, 20 m cone damage spammable, it can hit more mobs than literally anything else. And yeah I'm sorry to say it, but acid spray might get you kicked even faster. It's just a really good skill to spam on loads of mobs though. I haven't been kicked on PC before, though, maybe because lots of elites use combat metrics and see that I'm pulling my weight, or just assume the other DPS is carrying me with ubermad skills or whatever.

Here's my basic setup, and acid spray does the lions share of the damage:

https://www.esologs.com/reports/7zp8QTwM9dtCZKNF#fight=last&type=summary

I wouldn't bother going into random 4 player dungeon pugs with Relequen, even on an archer. Since I'm on PC I can swap to Relequen at bosses that stand still when the group pauses long enough, but on console you might consider VO or Lokke, they're both pretty good alternatives.

kylewwefan

Thanks! I typically can’t stand Relequen, but it added 6k damage for me on the dummy. Though it feels like complete trash to use in dungeons. Even FG1.

I’m not done with double bow yet, but that dummy can kiss my but.

I’ll give the acid spray a try and probably throw on some VO and maybe leviathan IDK?

Iskiab

Warden is the best double bow class, keep practicing.

MellowMagic

My gf used to be a magnecro but she hated the sustain, she plays a kahjiit so I respeced her into a stamcro. However she didnt like playing in melee range, so I helped her transition to a bow / bow build after we farmed a tzvogins bow. At first she struggled because she liked using the posion skull over snipe but once she got used to the cast time and learned her rotation a bit she starting to do better then ever. Currently shes using briarheart + tzvogins + slimecraw +vma bow and her dps is better than it has ever been because she doesnt struggle with sustain at all and staying at range let's her nail her rotation easier. She was barely scrapping 25-30k dps before the change now shes at around 37k on 6m and 60k on a 21m dummy. I think once you get more used to your rotation you'll start performing better.

Toc de Malsvi

For every good Archer there are 8-9 bad ones. Toxicity and bias cannot be removed from a population.

When Archers were OP, most trials guilds still only allowed them for certain fights. Archers were quickly brought into line, fastest fix I have ever seen from ZOS, and the bias remained. Point is even in a world where stacking Archers was ridiculously OP for certain content, players were not quite ready to embrace Archers because the bias still existed.

It’s a better place for Archers now, disregarding the singular time when they were OP for Asylum Sanctorium. You will get better at what you practice. Just know the ceiling for Archers is lower than traditional Stamina dps setups.

Danksta

kylewwefan wrote: »

Thanks! I typically can’t stand Relequen, but it added 6k damage for me on the dummy. Though it feels like complete trash to use in dungeons. Even FG1.

I’m not done with double bow yet, but that dummy can kiss my but.

I’ll give the acid spray a try and probably throw on some VO and maybe leviathan IDK?

Relequen is complete trash in dungeons.

InRetrospect

By bow/bow do you mean both slots using a bow? I haven’t played my warden archer in awhile but mine is a wood elf so naturally... I could have done dual wield as my other slot but one slot is for warden summoning subclass and the other is for bow skills, for me anyway. I never had a problem but I haven’t played that character in awhile

dazee

I want real double bow, dual wield them like Rambo!

Grianasteri

kylewwefan wrote: »

You know these unsuspecting dungeon delvers we’re cringing the first snipe they heard go off. It’s every bit as bad and noticeable as a sorc whomping out daedric mines every 5 seconds.

Err, what is wrong with daedric mines? They hit multiple targets, really hard. I have no idea what anyone could have against them in PVE, can you explain yourself?

Snipe is single target, its totally different and yeah some folk seem to have an irrational dislike of what is a very effective skill when used right.

Beyond this bow/bow is great fun and entirely viable depending on how you build, so long as you dont get hung up on what is "meta". If you build for dummy humping I can see how wrong that could go in a dungeon. My advice would be to use Arrow Spray more or less as your spamable for trash mobs etc, then switch to snipe & poison arrow on bosses. I often use another skill between my Arrow spray weaving so that the dot also has time to hurt, again something that hits multiple targets like Soul Splitting Trap or Silver Shards. There are also a number of class based skills (obviously dependent on your class) that hit multiple targets. So... buff up, put down your aoes/dots then have at it with spam/LA weaving, repeat.

My favourite PVP character is my bow/bow, which is naturally built quite different than for PVE, but still viable if I change out the sets and a couple of skills, hey presto, PVE ready for pretty much anything.
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OG_Kaveman

Kicked for double bow? You just got some bad teammates, I have ran 100s of dungeons on my Bowden, never once been kicked.

kylewwefan

OG_Kaveman wrote: »

Kicked for double bow? You just got some bad teammates, I have ran 100s of dungeons on my Bowden, never once been kicked.

It’s possible that you’re actually good with your double bow build. I’m not ashamed to admit that I was probably really bad on mine but trying to figure it out.

I’d hesitate to call the pug teammates bad, but perhaps not strong enough to carry a struggling guy like me along with them while I work things out. By all means, I know I wasn’t carrying my weight and with a dedicated healer that does approximately zero damage, it was too much to overcome. This group needed a lead dps on point.

The dummy test was very poor indication to how this build is gonna play for me.

SodanTok

Check the list below if you were kicked from dungeon coz of using bow/bow

• Using snipe? People have irrational hate towards snipe be it that its the go to skill for many noobs or PvP PTSD - solution use any of the other spammables. Slightly less dps doesnt matter in pug dungeon anyway. Instant/AoE spammables might even make it better when avoiding mchanics.
• Standing behind healer or generally far away? Thats on you then, using bow/bow doesnt give pass to roleplay snipers. ESO combat is very stack on spot as close without being in danger based. Solution is obvious.
• Low DPS? Again thats obv mostly on you but arguably it should be easier to have more of your dps as bow/bow than melee setups (assuming combat where they have to move or do mechanics). Yeah using relequen on anything but single boss is big red alert. Given that rele addds like 6k dps on regular dummy then yeah it can be quite big loss when not getting to use it if you do less than 30k dps on dummy. Only solution is to improve DPS. Using AoE skills like Acid Spray for multiple enemies is obviously gonna help too.

P.S. Lokke is also very bad idea for pugs. Don't just mindlessly use gear that builds or guides (including mine ) tell you. Properly check what the gear is doing and consider if its good for you or not.
Relequen takes 20 light attacks to get to full power, it should be clear its not good set if enemies die withig first 30s of combat.
Lokke - needs synergies to active, its still not totally common to get even one orb every 20s from pug healers. Other synergies usually dont exist.

Grianasteri

kylewwefan wrote: »

OG_Kaveman wrote: »

Kicked for double bow? You just got some bad teammates, I have ran 100s of dungeons on my Bowden, never once been kicked.

It’s possible that you’re actually good with your double bow build. I’m not ashamed to admit that I was probably really bad on mine but trying to figure it out.

I’d hesitate to call the pug teammates bad, but perhaps not strong enough to carry a struggling guy like me along with them while I work things out. By all means, I know I wasn’t carrying my weight and with a dedicated healer that does approximately zero damage, it was too much to overcome. This group needed a lead dps on point.

The dummy test was very poor indication to how this build is gonna play for me.

As well as my earlier comment with general observations and suggestions, I thought I would add some gear suggestions. If your light attack weaving in between skills is on point, try Tzogvin paired with something like Relequen. If you dont have Relequen access (trial gear) or your light attack weaving is "poor", then certainly drop Relequen and pop somethng like Briarheart, Toothrow, Leviathan, or if you have access to crafting, even Hundings rage or even better, New Moon Acolyte. Mix n match with all that, you cant go too far wrong. Monster sets, any of the usual stam friendly will work.

OG_Kaveman

kylewwefan wrote: »

OG_Kaveman wrote: »

Kicked for double bow? You just got some bad teammates, I have ran 100s of dungeons on my Bowden, never once been kicked.

It’s possible that you’re actually good with your double bow build. I’m not ashamed to admit that I was probably really bad on mine but trying to figure it out.

I’d hesitate to call the pug teammates bad, but perhaps not strong enough to carry a struggling guy like me along with them while I work things out. By all means, I know I wasn’t carrying my weight and with a dedicated healer that does approximately zero damage, it was too much to overcome. This group needed a lead dps on point.

The dummy test was very poor indication to how this build is gonna play for me.

Hardly, i barely get 25k on the 6 million. i run stormfist/spriggan/warband and my bowden is a wood elf. the group that kicked you is bad. if they cant carry a single "bad" teammate, they are bad. even with my 25k on the dummy, 80%+ of the time my dps is still the highest in a group finder pug. you just need to keep playing and not blame yourself, clearly the pugs you were playing with were the ones with the problem.

Grianasteri

Is it worth highlighting for the OP and anyone else as yet unaware, that the average DPS for players in ESO is less than 20k.

I think some time ago it was around 15k or something, though I have not seen any more recent stats.

It is absolutely vital for newer and less experienced players to understand that a lot of folk on these forums who discuss really high DPS, are actually part of a small minority of players who can pull these numbers. The same goes for content providers.

There are a wide range of factors that go into achieving high DPS, not least of which is practice and skill, but there is actually a lot more to it than that so please do not stress out if you are doing what may be considered "low" dps on these forums!
.

BeamsForDemacia

the "average " dps might be low in comparison to what the build creators do but no offense anyone wanting to improve or seriously Play this game should not be satisfied with 15-20k becuse its easily achievable if u have the Right gear like op apparently has (kinda) ,
relequen is not really good for dungeon fights imo so better use something else

kylewwefan

I switched things up a little bit last night and it went much much better. Also the Daily’s were super easy so that helped.

Went with VO/Tsovkins/Stormfist. I swapped to a heavy helmet that still had health glyph and used the gold Artaeum food. That gave me around 16k health, 1500 stam recovery and 900 health recovery. I’m not a vampire.

My Tsovkins bow is transmuted to Nirnhoned, I’ve no idea what the best trait would be? Using an absorb stamina enchant and being Redguard, I never had an ounce of sustain issue. Might throw on some poisons later.

Dropped the clanfear, put on acid spray and changed snipe out for silver shards and put Camo Hunter on just because. It’s so much better! I would see these puny numbers spring up from the clanfear (like 170dmg, 262 dmg) this guy didn’t seem worth keeping around?

Now my back bar is like: endless hail, Caltrops, poison Inject, Vigor, Camo Hunter; front bar is : Silver Shard, Acid Spray, Soul Trap, Bound Armaments, Camo Hunter.

Snipe was messing me up pretty good and it needed to go so silver shard made for an excellent replacement spammable. I’m probably doing it wrong aren’t I? Getting the extra dots from acid spray and caltrops seems to help pretty good too. Spamming acid spray also makes for a really strong aoe damage at times.

I haven’t tried whacking a dummy yet as I was also leveling up the Silver Shard, Camo Hunter and Acid Spray last night.

Interestingly, I had a %150 exp scroll rolling and getting a no death, speed run, hard mode in Spindleclutch netted me 1.1 mil experience. It would be even more during one of them double XP events. That might not be so easy for a newer player.

Using bound armaments seemed to do pretty good damage and makes stamsorc act very nightblade esque’

I’m enjoying it now much more than when I started

BeamsForDemacia

nice that u could improve if u feel fine like that Keep it, just my opinion: i would go warband front and on Body probably nma/or lokke vo is bit worse and if u have no Sustain issues vo is not really useful, in Theory you should not Need caltrops/Acid spray for boss fights cuz the dots are weak but if it increases ur dps ofc Keep it, u only Need camo hunter frontbar , really good to use it cuz miost of the time u wont have good Combat Prayer uptime, and the fighter Guild skill as spammable is also viable

Grianasteri

kylewwefan wrote: »

I switched things up a little bit last night and it went much much better. Also the Daily’s were super easy so that helped.

Went with VO/Tsovkins/Stormfist. I swapped to a heavy helmet that still had health glyph and used the gold Artaeum food. That gave me around 16k health, 1500 stam recovery and 900 health recovery. I’m not a vampire.

My Tsovkins bow is transmuted to Nirnhoned, I’ve no idea what the best trait would be? Using an absorb stamina enchant and being Redguard, I never had an ounce of sustain issue. Might throw on some poisons later.

Dropped the clanfear, put on acid spray and changed snipe out for silver shards and put Camo Hunter on just because. It’s so much better! I would see these puny numbers spring up from the clanfear (like 170dmg, 262 dmg) this guy didn’t seem worth keeping around?

Now my back bar is like: endless hail, Caltrops, poison Inject, Vigor, Camo Hunter; front bar is : Silver Shard, Acid Spray, Soul Trap, Bound Armaments, Camo Hunter.

Snipe was messing me up pretty good and it needed to go so silver shard made for an excellent replacement spammable. I’m probably doing it wrong aren’t I? Getting the extra dots from acid spray and caltrops seems to help pretty good too. Spamming acid spray also makes for a really strong aoe damage at times.

I haven’t tried whacking a dummy yet as I was also leveling up the Silver Shard, Camo Hunter and Acid Spray last night.

Interestingly, I had a %150 exp scroll rolling and getting a no death, speed run, hard mode in Spindleclutch netted me 1.1 mil experience. It would be even more during one of them double XP events. That might not be so easy for a newer player.

Using bound armaments seemed to do pretty good damage and makes stamsorc act very nightblade esque’

I’m enjoying it now much more than when I started

Yay, its great to hear you are tinkering and experimenting, thats what its all about!

Some suggestions. Consider dropping Caltrops. Its damage output is generally too low to warrant using it. Caltrops main benefit is as a debuff to enemy resistances... but in a group it is likely someone else, the healer or tank, will be providing this already. Instead if you need multi target damage, consider using Soul Splitting Trap, this can be used by stam or mag characters for some pretty decent multi target damage.

I am by no means an expert and I do not think this is "meta", but here are my bow/bow PVE bars on my Stamden. I made this build entirely myself and it works OK.

I swap out skills in those flex slots as I wish. For instance you can pop Soul Splitting Trap in instead of Cutting Dive or Ice Fortress if you prefer and Camo Hunter can be a good option depending on the build. In fact I only just put the bear on to see how it performs as an ulti, so do not actually know if I will keep that or go back to my previous Flawless Dawnbreaker (for the passives) and Ballista ultis.

Bar 1: Cutting Dive (flex slot), Arrow Spray, Silver Shards, Vigour, Lethal Arrow, Wild Guardian (flex slot)
Bar 2: Poison Injection, Endless hail, Barbed Trap, Bull Netch, Ice Fortress (flex slot), Wild Guardian (flex slot).

For multi target I am basically rotating through Arrow Spray and Silver Shards, while keeping Endless hail and my buffs up. For single target I focus more on keeping Poison Injection on target and rotate between Cutting Dive and Lethal Arrow (again maintaining buffs etc).

Before any meta folks shoot me down, this is literally a build I made from scratch myself for PVE, because I liked the bow/bow play style I have for one of my PVP characters (a very different build). It works, its good fun. Thats all I claim.
.

kylewwefan

I farmed out a dungeon with some buddies (the one with Grundlewolf?) trying to get some motifs. I had to change things up a little, because my guy seemed really squishy so I put on the lightning form and Crit surge.

Back Bar: Endless Hail, Poison Injection, Hurricane, Crit Surge, Vigor
Front Bar: Silver Shard, Acid Spray, Soul Trap, Bound Armaments, Camo Hunter

We did get a no death from the place so it felt like progress! The whole time I was wearing VO/ Tsovkins/ Stormfist. So I guess that setup works pretty good at least for me and my ability. It helps to play with some other strong players rather than the group finder.

The bad part is, fully buffed up my Crit is only at %63.4 and weapon damage only goes to about 3k or so. Crit would be about %70, but I made my bow nirnhoned Instead of precise in an attempt to compensate weapon damage. I’m really not sure which is the best way to go with weapon trait.


So I’m back to tinkering around a bit. Leviathan and Tsovkins brought me up to near %80 Crit but my weapon damage is suck. I tried Briarheart/Tsovkins and got a good deal more weapon damage when proc, but then lose the %5 slayer.

Lokke might be good, but so dependent on getting a synergy IDK if it’s worth the hassle.

Gonna try working on some things with this character over the weekend and see what I come up with

Joxer61

https://xynodegaming.com/yogi/

MrBrownstone

Don't forget that you don't benefit from Lokke on a 6m dummy because you don't get any synergies so you should perform even better in actual content. Go give a trial dummy a try.

kylewwefan

Thanks for the link. I am crossing Relequen off the list though. It stinks for near everything I’m trying to do. Which isn’t vet trials but dungeon running where there’s usually tons of mobs and ad spawns throughout fights.

I’ve seen a few Necromancer’s gone double bow now, and they seem to be doing really well with it. Probably from having a tool kit that utilizes so many class skills, the choice of weapon doesn’t affect their performance as drastically. I suspect warden also does good because of that.

I do have a 2H/Bow stamina Necro that might also go this route. Having too much fun tinkering with things.

Austinseph1

I wouldn't even call it off meta because I can hit 40k+ dps in a non-raid dummy with just gryphon, hundings rage, and stormfist self buffed.. I have never been kicked from a group before. As well as the best aoe dps of anything in the game my BowDen is one of the easiest and strongest builds I've ever played... They are severely underrated and maybe only beaten by the Necro because of the broken ulti. The only character that I can beat it with is my magDK but the BowDen is 10x easier to play

Kel

https://youtu.be/MdVsGGWsYmQ

Edit: Oh, I see Joxer61 posted a link already.
😁

MudcrabAttack

Great turnaround!

If you're in a tinkering mood, I highly recommend trying out the asylum bow. It's pretty underrated in my opinion, but it does seem to be a part of that build in the link above.

Think of it this way, for every time you use Lethal Arrow in a rotation, it represents something like 3-4 kdps -on raid dummy. And yes the skill can drive some people crazy, but if you ever get the hang of it the asylum bow could be adding another 1.5-2kdps for each of those Lethal Arrow casts. Got 3 lethal arrows and 3 acid spray in a rotation? You pick up close to 5kdps.

Ever since snipe got it's latest buff I've been adding Acid Spray paired with Lethal Arrow a few times into a rotation since acid spray isn't far behind in damage when you allow time for a few ticks of damage over time register. And it's instant cast, and doesn't snare, so that's nice. The two skills can be weaved between other things like class skills and endless hail.

Last week when I dropped the monster set and used Asylum front bar I saw an immediate jump in damage on a Necro. It probably works well with any class that doesn't have an execute, since my Night blade just wants to spam killers blade instead of bow skills during execute. Asylum bow also probably synergizes well with a DK since they have a huge cost reduction on poison skill morphs.

Ahtu

Want to go double bow? Go for it. If it interest you then you can make it work as a healer or DPS.

People will not understand what you are doing so prove them wrong by showing them how it's done.

Joxer61

based on your post I went and made a bow necro and it is kicking butt!!! cheers, and go for it!! you can be self sustained and no need to worry about grouping even though healers will yell just ignore em and kill stuff.

kylewwefan

MudcrabAttack wrote: »

Great turnaround!

If you're in a tinkering mood, I highly recommend trying out the asylum bow. It's pretty underrated in my opinion, but it does seem to be a part of that build in the link above.

Think of it this way, for every time you use Lethal Arrow in a rotation, it represents something like 3-4 kdps -on raid dummy. And yes the skill can drive some people crazy, but if you ever get the hang of it the asylum bow could be adding another 1.5-2kdps for each of those Lethal Arrow casts. Got 3 lethal arrows and 3 acid spray in a rotation? You pick up close to 5kdps.

Ever since snipe got it's latest buff I've been adding Acid Spray paired with Lethal Arrow a few times into a rotation since acid spray isn't far behind in damage when you allow time for a few ticks of damage over time register. And it's instant cast, and doesn't snare, so that's nice. The two skills can be weaved between other things like class skills and endless hail.

Last week when I dropped the monster set and used Asylum front bar I saw an immediate jump in damage on a Necro. It probably works well with any class that doesn't have an execute, since my Night blade just wants to spam killers blade instead of bow skills during execute. Asylum bow also probably synergizes well with a DK since they have a huge cost reduction on poison skill morphs.

I can’t see giving up a monster set. Those things are just too strong. Also the maelstrom bow. It ain’t going nowhere. Lol
You’d have to really change the rotation something funky to get use from an asylum bow.

I replaced snipe with silver shard; and it seems like a great spammable in terms of easy to use and hitting multiple targets; not getting you kicked from a group etc.

For sets, VO and Tsovkins seem to be my best setup so far.

Leviathan gave me great stats, but I’d have to work in a trap beast somewhere to equal Tsovkins.
Relequen worked great on the dummy. And that’s about the extent of it.
The sustain help you get from VO is so good, it shouldn’t be undervalued. It’s a night and day difference without it.

I’m far more interested in playing the game than making sweet love to the dummy. The damage numbers didn’t correlate well with a live performance. At least for me and what I was doing.

Grianasteri

kylewwefan wrote: »

I can’t see giving up a monster set. Those things are just too strong. Also the maelstrom bow. It ain’t going nowhere. Lol
You’d have to really change the rotation something funky to get use from an asylum bow.

There are simple bow bow rotations that rely heavily on Snipe, with intermittent use of the other skills and buffs kept up. So a simple rotation would follow spray/snipe/spray/snipe etc, with poison arrow following a spray as well and the buffs incorporated as required. For bow bow builds I feel dropping a monster set can be worth it. My pvp bow bow does not use a monster set and among other secrets, I use the asylum bow. Granted this is likely of more benefit pvp than pve.

I am still levelling my pve bow bow warden, but so far its great fun and I plan to get hold of another asylum bow to try it out in pve.