A Bosmer and a bow.

selig_fay

Hello. I started playing recently and watched a lot of pve guides. And Bosmer is one of the most undesirable classes for PVE. While I was leveling, I took a bow and got a bit of fun out of it. I'm focusing on support and at one point I realized that I can't use the bow anymore, as I need destruction staff for some abilities.
What I'm getting at. What if the Bosmer could get passive and abilities of the destruction staff branch when he use bow? I mean, I don't know how useful or strong it will be. But I think a tank with an ice bow and a support with a bow is something that Bosmer could offer as a unique concept.
I know this sounds crazy, but I would like something useful for PVE.I just want to share this observation.

Everstorm

Bow has it's own very useful skill line.

https://elderscrollsonline.wiki.fextralife.com/Bow+Skills

SidraWillowsky

I do not think it would be useful because Bosmer benefit from extra stam and stam recovery as racial passives and are thus much better-suited for stam builds. Adding spell penetration and elemental damage to bow abilities wouldn't make much sense, since it's very unlikely that you'd use an elemental damage glyph on a bow anyway. The one Bow passive that would make sense to have, however, is more physical penetration because... you're shooting an arrow into someone.

That said, almost all of my stamina characters are Bosmer and they all perform very well- on a target dummy they're probably a few thousand DPS lower than an Orc, but that's honestly no big deal. And on my Bosmer I have zero sustain issues, which isn't the case for the Orcs and Dunmer I've tried. I'll take the extra sustain + smol cuteness at the expense of some extra DPS because I don't think that the difference is great enough that it in any way limits what I can do compared to the BiS classes.

Taleof2Cities

selig_fay wrote: »

But I think a tank with an ice bow and a support with a bow is something that Bosmer could offer as a unique concept.

You can certainly play that way if you like, @selig_fay ... no doubt it's a unique concept.

Destruction Staff and Bow back bar will work fine in the vast majority of content.

Once you get to end game content then you'll have to decide how to modify and adapt to what your raid leader needs.

selig_fay

SidraWillowsky wrote: »

I do not think it would be useful because Bosmer benefit from extra stam and stam recovery as racial passives and are thus much better-suited for stam builds. Adding spell penetration and elemental damage to bow abilities wouldn't make much sense, since it's very unlikely that you'd use an elemental damage glyph on a bow anyway. The one Bow passive that would make sense to have, however, is more physical penetration because... you're shooting an arrow into someone.

That said, almost all of my stamina characters are Bosmer and they all perform very well- on a target dummy they're probably a few thousand DPS lower than an Orc, but that's honestly no big deal. And on my Bosmer I have zero sustain issues, which isn't the case for the Orcs and Dunmer I've tried. I'll take the extra sustain + smol cuteness at the expense of some extra DPS because I don't think that the difference is great enough that it in any way limits what I can do compared to the BiS classes.

Yes, it's really true that the Bosmer has a good stam regen. I even made a few per stam abilities to offload my magic a bit.

But on the other hand, as I described above, I do not do stam dps. And when I go solo, I use the bow with elemental enchantment + the ability of the Psijic order, because why not. When my mana runs out, I just switch to restore stuff for heavy attack.

But you are right. Bows do physical damage, which can be ineffective. But maybe this concept can be applied not to the Bosmer, but to create three separate bows that convert physical damage into magic damage and can use destr stuff and bow abilities at the same time. Maybe it's about set, I don't know. But I think it would have played in some niche builds. As I said above, I have good stamina regeneration, so even if the destr stuff skill is partially cost stamina but less mana, it might help a little. Of course, I know how to solve this problem, but you know. More options will come in handy.

Everstorm

selig_fay wrote: »

SidraWillowsky wrote: »

I do not think it would be useful because Bosmer benefit from extra stam and stam recovery as racial passives and are thus much better-suited for stam builds. Adding spell penetration and elemental damage to bow abilities wouldn't make much sense, since it's very unlikely that you'd use an elemental damage glyph on a bow anyway. The one Bow passive that would make sense to have, however, is more physical penetration because... you're shooting an arrow into someone.

That said, almost all of my stamina characters are Bosmer and they all perform very well- on a target dummy they're probably a few thousand DPS lower than an Orc, but that's honestly no big deal. And on my Bosmer I have zero sustain issues, which isn't the case for the Orcs and Dunmer I've tried. I'll take the extra sustain + smol cuteness at the expense of some extra DPS because I don't think that the difference is great enough that it in any way limits what I can do compared to the BiS classes.

Yes, it's really true that the Bosmer has a good stam regen. I even made a few per stam abilities to offload my magic a bit.

But on the other hand, as I described above, I do not do stam dps. And when I go solo, I use the bow with elemental enchantment + the ability of the Psijic order, because why not. When my mana runs out, I just switch to restore stuff for heavy attack.

But you are right. Bows do physical damage, which can be ineffective. But maybe this concept can be applied not to the Bosmer, but to create three separate bows that convert physical damage into magic damage and can use destr stuff and bow abilities at the same time. Maybe it's about set, I don't know. But I think it would have played in some niche builds. As I said above, I have good stamina regeneration, so even if the destr stuff skill is partially cost stamina but less mana, it might help a little. Of course, I know how to solve this problem, but you know. More options will come in handy.

By your own admission you just started and it's clear you still have to fully grasp how the combat system works. Hybrids magicka/stamina builds sound fun but in practice there is usually a way that you can do what you want while focusing on one aspect and reach a much better damage output. Bosmer racials better suit stamina builds but nothing is stopping you from making a Bosmer caster. Making a hybrid can certainly work in easier content but even then you will want a decent amount of CP, unlocked skills and know how about the combat system.

lozq

selig_fay wrote: »

Hello. I started playing recently and watched a lot of pve guides. And Bosmer is one of the most undesirable classes for PVE. While I was leveling, I took a bow and got a bit of fun out of it. I'm focusing on support and at one point I realized that I can't use the bow anymore, as I need destruction staff for some abilities.
What I'm getting at. What if the Bosmer could get passive and abilities of the destruction staff branch when he use bow? I mean, I don't know how useful or strong it will be. But I think a tank with an ice bow and a support with a bow is something that Bosmer could offer as a unique concept.
I know this sounds crazy, but I would like something useful for PVE.I just want to share this observation.

What exactly do you need the destro staff for?

You can tank with a bow on the backbar, instead of elemental blockade you can use endless hail with a crusher enchantment. Most people use a staff because it saves stamina and has a few other perks, though it’s by no means mandatory. Especially for easier content. If you’re talking about healing, I guess you’re talking about elemental drain? Depending on your class you may be able to access magickasteal some other way.

Race is a minor factor in the grand scheme of things. You can balance around it with sets, mundus, food and skills. It’s only if you’re trying to min/max that you really need to consider it.

If you’re just running normal dungeons then build how you want, as long as you’re filling the basic requirements of the role. For tanks, have a taunt, some crowd control and enough health and armour to not die. If you’re healing, heal. If you’re dealing damage, deal damage. If you start feeling ineffective, you’ll know it’s time to try a different (probbaly more ‘meta’) approach.

selig_fay

lozq wrote: »

What exactly do you need the destro staff for?

Wall of Elements For more group damage and off balance. Volley can also increase damage due to electrical enchantment, but it cannot in off balance.
Weakness to Elements reduces magic resistance and gives magicsteal. I use Focused Aim to reduce physical resists, which may be good for the stam group, but if there are mages or if there is a mage dps and stam dps, then I need destrstuff because I have almost no reason to hold a bow.
As I said, this is more of a problem of aesthetics versus efficiency. Well, plus, to have Wall of Elements, Weakness to Elements and Focused Aim on one bar I find it interesting, combined with passive bow and destrstuff. But I'm still dealing with it. Maybe the bow can have good support potential. But I'm not sure yet if it's a good thing if the group or raid isn't focused on stamina.

Starlight_Whisper

🤔 remember when they promised that stealth detection would be useful?

WTB fixed bosmer passives

MudcrabAttack

Don't forget about bombard. If you're playing a tank that wants to aggro everything within 20 meters in front of you and immobilize them all at the same time. Just be the first one to hit all the enemies and it works out ok

BXR_Lonestar

Honestly, all they need to do is tweak with Bosmer's passives a bit and it would be a great racial kit. If they gave the Bosmer extra armor penetration (say around 2,000-3500) while a bow is equipped rather than giving you 1500 armor penetration for 6 seconds after roll dodging, I think they instantly become the favored race for bow/bow builds, and even though bow/bow builds tend to lag behind bow/melee builds in terms of DPS, the extra armor penetration should help close that gap. And its really lore friendly IMO.

I don't see any reason why this just shouldn't be a thing.

selig_fay

BXR_Lonestar wrote: »

Honestly, all they need to do is tweak with Bosmer's passives a bit and it would be a great racial kit. If they gave the Bosmer extra armor penetration (say around 2,000-3500) while a bow is equipped rather than giving you 1500 armor penetration for 6 seconds after roll dodging, I think they instantly become the favored race for bow/bow builds, and even though bow/bow builds tend to lag behind bow/melee builds in terms of DPS, the extra armor penetration should help close that gap. And its really lore friendly IMO.

I don't see any reason why this just shouldn't be a thing.

Not forgetting about magic penetration. I understand that destr stuff will still be better for mages, but having 3k + armor and magic penetration simply because you are using a bow. Maybe. Interesting.
If Elemental Weapon worked on a weapon ability, I think it might be useful. Using volley, even if all elemental weapon damage is divided by the number of ticks, could be useful for creating elemental effects on enemies. Then I could replace glyph of shock with glyph of crushing for example. It might be really interesting.
On the other hand, I'm a little worried that magic penetration might be removed and then it would actually be worse for me than it is now.

Wandering_Immigrant

BXR_Lonestar wrote: »

Honestly, all they need to do is tweak with Bosmer's passives a bit and it would be a great racial kit. If they gave the Bosmer extra armor penetration (say around 2,000-3500) while a bow is equipped rather than giving you 1500 armor penetration for 6 seconds after roll dodging, I think they instantly become the favored race for bow/bow builds, and even though bow/bow builds tend to lag behind bow/melee builds in terms of DPS, the extra armor penetration should help close that gap. And its really lore friendly IMO.

I don't see any reason why this just shouldn't be a thing.

This would actually be really cool. Both DW and 2H have an option to boost penetration through hammers. Giving bow a similar option but only through Bosmer passives would give some credence to Bosmer. They took away their stealth specialization so giving them a genuine bow specialization seems fair. And wouldn't be unbalanced because you'd still be losing out on the more general damage boosts you get from other races.

Grianasteri

Nah, bow is a stamina weapon, staffs are magica.

There is very little cross over or hybrid builds. So you are gimping yourself if you try to use bow and staff, unless for some specific pvp builds and even then its usually a melee weapon with a staff back bar.

Id encourage you to focus on either stam or magica. You can have great fun with hybrids and just messing about, but not once you engage with more demanding content, it starts to become far far less viable. Focus on one.

selig_fay

Grianasteri wrote: »

Nah, bow is a stamina weapon, staffs are magica.

There is very little cross over or hybrid builds. So you are gimping yourself if you try to use bow and staff, unless for some specific pvp builds and even then its usually a melee weapon with a staff back bar.

Id encourage you to focus on either stam or magica. You can have great fun with hybrids and just messing about, but not once you engage with more demanding content, it starts to become far far less viable. Focus on one.

I understand that right now, maximization will be the best choice, but I don't think it will be forever.

On the other hand, I don't rule out the fact that there might be a mythical bow that works like a magic one. I mean, it's not that hard to do. It's just like you say "now it just costs mana and depends on mana and it has a certain elemental damage, because it's a special bow that has no other effects than being this".
I am considering many options for how this can be achieved, but this is a request for the Bosmer to be able to use the bow regardless of the role. I think linking it to dest stuff is the best option, because destr stuff is the best choice for support at the moment, and frost stuff is what's good for tank. And of course, we do this for magic DPS. But perhaps more things, sets of abilities, and mechanics could contribute to this.
At the moment, I just don't see a way to do this, because bow looks like something that only stam DPS can use. On the other hand, mages with a sword is not something new for other games. Of course, maybe we should lose something for this and it shouldn't be publicly available (hard to get), but these things could be in the game. That's what I think. But if it is blocked by lore or something else, then yes, it is not worth adding.

lozq

selig_fay wrote: »

lozq wrote: »

What exactly do you need the destro staff for?

Wall of Elements For more group damage and off balance. Volley can also increase damage due to electrical enchantment, but it cannot in off balance.
Weakness to Elements reduces magic resistance and gives magicsteal. I use Focused Aim to reduce physical resists, which may be good for the stam group, but if there are mages or if there is a mage dps and stam dps, then I need destrstuff because I have almost no reason to hold a bow.

There's lots of ways to proc off-balance - nightblade's surprise attack, warden's cutting dive, 2H dizzying swing, necro's scythe...and lots of others that proc on interrupts. The tank will almost always be using Pierce Armour, which gives both Major Breach and Major Fracture. Nightblades, templars and the resto staff all have access to magickasteal as well.

I feel like you're focussing a bit too much on being 'optimised'. There's certainly nothing wrong with aiming to supply your group with lots of juicy buffs, debuffs and support skills - it's very thoughtful, in fact. But the problem is that unless the rest of your group is ALSO optimised and coordinated then it's unlikely to be as useful as build guides make it out to be. The 10% extra damage you can offer the group by keeping up off-balance makes a big difference if group damage is already 200k DPS. If it's only 10k DPS, it's not going to do much. It also requires 75 points of blue CP invested, so anyone under 225CP won't benefit. Likewise with magickasteal - if doesn't stack, so if someone else is using it you've wasted a skill slot.

selig_fay

lozq wrote: »

There's lots of ways to proc off-balance - nightblade's surprise attack, warden's cutting dive, 2H dizzying swing, necro's scythe...and lots of others that proc on interrupts. The tank will almost always be using Pierce Armour, which gives both Major Breach and Major Fracture. Nightblades, templars and the resto staff all have access to magickasteal as well.

I feel like you're focussing a bit too much on being 'optimised'. There's certainly nothing wrong with aiming to supply your group with lots of juicy buffs, debuffs and support skills - it's very thoughtful, in fact. But the problem is that unless the rest of your group is ALSO optimised and coordinated then it's unlikely to be as useful as build guides make it out to be. The 10% extra damage you can offer the group by keeping up off-balance makes a big difference if group damage is already 200k DPS. If it's only 10k DPS, it's not going to do much. It also requires 75 points of blue CP invested, so anyone under 225CP won't benefit. Likewise with magickasteal - if doesn't stack, so if someone else is using it you've wasted a skill slot.

An increase in DPS is in any case an increase in DPS.

Perhaps the problem is that I still can't figure out why I should use a bow other than the convenient Hasty Retreat in pvp.

lozq

selig_fay wrote: »

An increase in DPS is in any case an increase in DPS.

Perhaps the problem is that I still can't figure out why I should use a bow other than the convenient Hasty Retreat in pvp.

The only two bow skills that provide utility as opposed to flat damage are the Minor Fracture from Snipe and the 'Slows whatever you hit for 4 seconds' of Bombard, which is nice for trashpacks. As I said above you could also slap a Crusher enchantment on the bow and apply it with Volley (although you might be doubling up on the tank's crusher enchant). It's far from meta but totally viable for lots of content.

Cundu_Ertur

BXR_Lonestar wrote: »

Honestly, all they need to do is tweak with Bosmer's passives a bit and it would be a great racial kit. If they gave the Bosmer extra armor penetration (say around 2,000-3500) while a bow is equipped rather than giving you 1500 armor penetration for 6 seconds after roll dodging, I think they instantly become the favored race for bow/bow builds, and even though bow/bow builds tend to lag behind bow/melee builds in terms of DPS, the extra armor penetration should help close that gap. And its really lore friendly IMO.

I don't see any reason why this just shouldn't be a thing.

So long as the useless detection garbage goes away and the bonus to hiding is restored, this would be awesome.

selig_fay

Cundu_Ertur wrote: »

So long as the useless detection garbage goes away and the bonus to hiding is restored, this would be awesome.

I would like to keep this bonus. But I don't see any reason why we can't have both.

erio

Its probably one of the best races for stamblade in pvp though.

KniteShayd

Th OP is basically suggesting a way to create an Arcane Archer subclass.
The closest thing to that, is a NB using the Spectral Bow from the Grim Focus skill.
I too, have suggested magic/Elemental bows, along with magic/Elemental based 1h/DW weapons for mag builds, since launch.
After 6 years, you'd think they'd have added some mechanic(s) to add more combat content...