bow as main weapon

barbarian340 · February 2018

i think we all have lived with it so long, that we have just accepted it as a norm...but it really is unfair that there is a ranged magicka option that is completely viable in all content, and there isn't one for stamina...bow needs a serious rework so those of us who want to play as an archer can do so and still be welcomed into groups and perform right up there with the best ranged magicka folk...

give bow what it needs! we all know why bow builds underperform...so lets FIX it this year! matter of fact all we need is a month's worth of changes, and put it out for testing...we are not dealing with rocket science here...and we arent asking for something illogical

Lysette · February 2018

Well ZOS had a chance to make bows outstanding - when they introduced poisons - but instead they gave every weapon, even staves, the ability to apply poisons at range - a wasted opportunity to get this right and highly illogical on top of it.

Jade1986 · February 2018

Agreed. It does need a major rework. You can make it work now with the update, but it is still subpar.

Queue the " its only a support weapon " toters.

Ladislao · February 2018

barbarian340 wrote: »

i think we all have lived with it so long, that we have just accepted it as a norm...but it really is unfair that there is a ranged magicka option that is completely viable in all content, and there isn't one for stamina...bow needs a serious rework so those of us who want to play as an archer can do so and still be welcomed into groups and perform right up there with the best ranged magicka folk...

give bow what it needs! we all know why bow builds underperform...so lets FIX it this year! matter of fact all we need is a month's worth of changes, and put it out for testing...we are not dealing with rocket science here...and we arent asking for something illogical

If you had a choice only between inferno, ice and lightning bow, then the bow would be viable in all content. Do you understand what I'm leading to?

Jade1986 · February 2018

Ladislao wrote: »

barbarian340 wrote: »

i think we all have lived with it so long, that we have just accepted it as a norm...but it really is unfair that there is a ranged magicka option that is completely viable in all content, and there isn't one for stamina...bow needs a serious rework so those of us who want to play as an archer can do so and still be welcomed into groups and perform right up there with the best ranged magicka folk...

give bow what it needs! we all know why bow builds underperform...so lets FIX it this year! matter of fact all we need is a month's worth of changes, and put it out for testing...we are not dealing with rocket science here...and we arent asking for something illogical

If you had a choice only between inferno, ice and lightning bow, then the bow would be viable in all content. Do you understand what I'm leading to?

Id rather have cross bow, bow, longbow.

Ladislao · February 2018

Jade1986 wrote: »

Ladislao wrote: »

barbarian340 wrote: »

i think we all have lived with it so long, that we have just accepted it as a norm...but it really is unfair that there is a ranged magicka option that is completely viable in all content, and there isn't one for stamina...bow needs a serious rework so those of us who want to play as an archer can do so and still be welcomed into groups and perform right up there with the best ranged magicka folk...

give bow what it needs! we all know why bow builds underperform...so lets FIX it this year! matter of fact all we need is a month's worth of changes, and put it out for testing...we are not dealing with rocket science here...and we arent asking for something illogical

If you had a choice only between inferno, ice and lightning bow, then the bow would be viable in all content. Do you understand what I'm leading to?

Id rather have cross bow, bow, longbow.

Well, yes, it sounds more interesting. But we are talking about something else.

VaranisArano · February 2018

If I'm looking at my PVE damage recap based on damage done, you'd think my bow was my main weapon.

Nearly every serious stamina build uses a bow. Oh, they just use it for DOTs? At least on my stam sorc, DOTs are pretty much all I do, including with my dual wield bar. The only reason I heavy attack on my dual wield bar instead of bow is because DW is quicker and more controllable due to ZOS making bow heavy attacks fire automatically.

If I'm looking to do really good stam DPS, what do I need? A Maelstrom or a Master bow.

In PVP, bows are fantastic ranged weapons. I play a stam warden, and sure, I've got a 2handed bar, but I probably play 90% of the time on my bow bar from range. Poison Injection? Nasty. Not quite as nasty as my now dodgeable birds, but nasty.

Now, if you only use bow, yeah, you are going to be missing some damage sources from your rotation. But if you can still pull enough DPS without those to complete whatever content you are in without being carried, go for it.

JobooAGS · February 2018

Ive been wanting something like this since I started playing eso

Jade1986 · February 2018

VaranisArano wrote: »

If I'm looking at my PVE damage recap based on damage done, you'd think my bow was my main weapon.

Nearly every serious stamina build uses a bow. Oh, they just use it for DOTs? At least on my stam sorc, DOTs are pretty much all I do, including with my dual wield bar. The only reason I heavy attack on my dual wield bar instead of bow is because DW is quicker and more controllable due to ZOS making bow heavy attacks fire automatically.

If I'm looking to do really good stam DPS, what do I need? A Maelstrom or a Master bow.

In PVP, bows are fantastic ranged weapons. I play a stam warden, and sure, I've got a 2handed bar, but I probably play 90% of the time on my bow bar from range. Poison Injection? Nasty. Not quite as nasty as my now dodgeable birds, but nasty.

Now, if you only use bow, yeah, you are going to be missing some damage sources from your rotation. But if you can still pull enough DPS without those to complete whatever content you are in without being carried, go for it.

With optimal gear and a really tight rotation, you can hit 35 k dps with bow bow warden in pve.

However, it does need a slight buff, the initial damage from poison injection is laughable, the damage from magnum shot is also laughable, and the dot for poison spray is 4 seconds shorter than most dots.

klowdy1 · February 2018

I have a feeling the thing keeping them from making bows stronger in order to make them a main weapon is PvP. For once, I would love to see a game like this say, before launch, "This is a PvE game. If PvP is introduced, it will be as an afterthought, and have no bearing on balance. PvP at your own risk."

How many things in PvP are n erfed because of PvE? I don't recall any. It may have happened, I'm just not remembering any.

Jade1986 · February 2018

klowdy1 wrote: »

I have a feeling the thing keeping them from making bows stronger in order to make them a main weapon is PvP. For once, I would love to see a game like this say, before launch, "This is a PvE game. If PvP is introduced, it will be as an afterthought, and have no bearing on balance. PvP at your own risk."

How many things in PvP are n erfed because of PvE? I don't recall any. It may have happened, I'm just not remembering any.

This games main selling point at launch was massive scale AvAvA, so yeah, if you were looking for what you described, you def picked the wrong game

VaranisArano · February 2018

klowdy1 wrote: »

I have a feeling the thing keeping them from making bows stronger in order to make them a main weapon is PvP. For once, I would love to see a game like this say, before launch, "This is a PvE game. If PvP is introduced, it will be as an afterthought, and have no bearing on balance. PvP at your own risk."

How many things in PvP are n erfed because of PvE? I don't recall any. It may have happened, I'm just not remembering any.

There are a lot of things that are nerfed because of both.

Morrowind sustain nerfs happen because of both perma-blocking high sustain, high damage tanks in PVP and because of trials groups cheesing ZOS' hardest trials with high damage.
Armor skill changes happened because of Shuffle on heavy armor tanks in PVP and shuffle on Tava's Blessing ulti-gen tanks in PVE.
Block cost changes happened because of perma-blocking tank builds in PVP and PVE.
Proc sets no longer critting happened because of high burst damage in PVP and high overall damage in PVE.

Often things have different effects in PVP and PVE, but they are done for both.

With the bow, if ZOS wanted to empower bow in PVP, they'd increase the single target damage. If they wanted to empower bow for PVE, they'd increase the AOE DOTs. However, look at the meta and everyone uses a bow for AOE DOTs in PVE and everyone in PVP uses a bow for single target damage. So there's nothing you can buff for bow that doesn't improve on or the other when its already the go-to weapon for both areas on stam builds with some ranged capability.

Elijah_Crow · February 2018

I like what they did with multiple light attacks building stacks to increase damage. I would be all for each type of bow attack building a second stack of an ability which also increased damage, so if you were constantly using nothing but varied bow attacks throughout a fight you would get a 10% to 15% bump in DPS.

This would make it much more viable as a main DPS PvE weapon.

Actually I would prefer they add this bonus on a 5pcs gear set. So if you wanted to focus on Bow DPS, you would have to give up something that might increase melee damage.

Aisle9 · February 2018

Bow/Bow builds are plenty viable for endgame content.

Have been for a while now.

Of course, as for every single endgame stamina builds, you will need a Maelstrom Bow for your back bar.

For the main bar, I personally like the Master bow, but I've seen builds with the Asylum bow.

Multiple guildies of mine tried bow/bow builds on a stamblade and a stamplar and could reliably parse 40k+ with non-cheese builds. I may be wrong about that, but IIRC they tried on a stamsorc too.

You will parse higher with a classical DW/Bow build (like 3 - 4k higher), yes, but saying that Bow/Bow builds are not viable because of the Meta(TM) is grossly inaccurate.

Now, saying that you may have issues getting into pugs trials, well, can't help you there, some pugs are notorious for not allowing anything other than specific classes/builds, and even going as far as asking to link gear and such. That's not the norm, and people like them should be avoided if possible.

Hope this help.
Safe travels.

klowdy1 · February 2018

Jade1986 wrote: »

klowdy1 wrote: »

I have a feeling the thing keeping them from making bows stronger in order to make them a main weapon is PvP. For once, I would love to see a game like this say, before launch, "This is a PvE game. If PvP is introduced, it will be as an afterthought, and have no bearing on balance. PvP at your own risk."

How many things in PvP are n erfed because of PvE? I don't recall any. It may have happened, I'm just not remembering any.

This games main selling point at launch was massive scale AvAvA, so yeah, if you were looking for what you described, you def picked the wrong game

I wasn't saying that's what I expected this to be, just in general, that would be nice. This game had PvP before I started playing it.

Valykc · February 2018

Switch Rapid Fire with Snipe, making Rapid Fire the weapon line main dps and spammable, and Snipe that ultimate. Adjust the damage values and costs as needed. Remove ballista morph and give that too Snipe Ultimate instead of Focus Aim. Give a morph to Rapid Fire that provides Major Brutality/Does more Damage to enemies under 20% Health, and the other would be Toxic Barrage, a decent initial blast dps and DoT dps for PvE classes. It fixes so many issues. Gives Bow a good dps spammable, boosts DPS, makes bow combat more fun then waiting for snipe to go off, and relieves snipe spammers in PvP. Someone else suggested this in a previous thread (just without the morph ideas) and I’ve been repeating it because I support this idea that much. And I think if we get enough support maybe Zenimax will notice.

@ZOS_GinaBruno
@ZOS_Wrobel
@ZOS_BrianWheeler
@ZOS_RichLambert
@ZOS_JessicaFolsom
@ZOS_TristanK
@ZOS_Holden
@ZOS_KaiSchober

Aisle9 · February 2018

Valykc wrote: »

Switch Rapid Fire with Snipe, making Rapid Fire the weapon line main dps and spammable, and Snipe that ultimate. Adjust the damage values and costs as needed. Remove ballista morph and give that too Snipe Ultimate instead of Focus Aim. Give a morph to Rapid Fire that provides Major Brutality/Does more Damage to enemies under 20% Health, and the other would be Toxic Barrage, a decent initial blast dps and DoT dps for PvE classes. It fixes so many issues. Gives Bow a good dps spammable, boosts DPS, makes bow combat more fun then waiting for snipe to go off, and relieves snipe spammers in PvP. Someone else suggested this in a previous thread (just without the morph ideas) and I’ve been repeating it because I support this idea that much. And I think if we get enough support maybe Zenimax will notice.

@ZOS_GinaBruno
@ZOS_Wrobel
@ZOS_BrianWheeler
@ZOS_RichLambert
@ZOS_JessicaFolsom
@ZOS_TristanK
@ZOS_Holden
@ZOS_KaiSchober

No... why...

no...

Valykc · February 2018

Aisle9 wrote: »

Valykc wrote: »

Switch Rapid Fire with Snipe, making Rapid Fire the weapon line main dps and spammable, and Snipe that ultimate. Adjust the damage values and costs as needed. Remove ballista morph and give that too Snipe Ultimate instead of Focus Aim. Give a morph to Rapid Fire that provides Major Brutality/Does more Damage to enemies under 20% Health, and the other would be Toxic Barrage, a decent initial blast dps and DoT dps for PvE classes. It fixes so many issues. Gives Bow a good dps spammable, boosts DPS, makes bow combat more fun then waiting for snipe to go off, and relieves snipe spammers in PvP. Someone else suggested this in a previous thread (just without the morph ideas) and I’ve been repeating it because I support this idea that much. And I think if we get enough support maybe Zenimax will notice.

@ZOS_GinaBruno
@ZOS_Wrobel
@ZOS_BrianWheeler
@ZOS_RichLambert
@ZOS_JessicaFolsom
@ZOS_TristanK
@ZOS_Holden
@ZOS_KaiSchober

No... why...

no...

Why would you want snipe as the spammable, it’s terrible

aubrey.baconb16_ESO · February 2018

Jade1986 wrote: »

klowdy1 wrote: »

I have a feeling the thing keeping them from making bows stronger in order to make them a main weapon is PvP. For once, I would love to see a game like this say, before launch, "This is a PvE game. If PvP is introduced, it will be as an afterthought, and have no bearing on balance. PvP at your own risk."

How many things in PvP are n erfed because of PvE? I don't recall any. It may have happened, I'm just not remembering any.

This games main selling point at launch was massive scale AvAvA, so yeah, if you were looking for what you described, you def picked the wrong game

The games main selling point al launch for many was that it is Elder Scrolls and was a stopping point along the long route to TES VI.

Many of us had zero MMO experience and the AvAvA that you perceive as being important was in fact irrelevant to many.

The AvAvA selling point was to hook the traditional, none TES, MMO player.

What the proportion between TES players and MMO players was at start-up is anyone's guess but I suspect that it was solely the Elder Scrolls branding that sold many of those original copies.

Aisle9 · February 2018

1) Snipe is not terrible.

2) Snipe is a staple of a number of builds.

3) Ballista is an awesome ultimate for burst damage, largely because you're not actually channeling it, and you can keep going about your rotation after dropping it.

4) You made an argument about making snipe an ultimate, and removing ballista, plus a bunch of other things, I never said I want snipe as a spammable (even though a bow/bow build using snipe as a spammable can reliably parse 40k+).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loaded_question

Hope this clarifies.
Have a nice day.

JobooAGS · February 2018

VaranisArano wrote: »

klowdy1 wrote: »

I have a feeling the thing keeping them from making bows stronger in order to make them a main weapon is PvP. For once, I would love to see a game like this say, before launch, "This is a PvE game. If PvP is introduced, it will be as an afterthought, and have no bearing on balance. PvP at your own risk."

How many things in PvP are n erfed because of PvE? I don't recall any. It may have happened, I'm just not remembering any.

There are a lot of things that are nerfed because of both.

Morrowind sustain nerfs happen because of both perma-blocking high sustain, high damage tanks in PVP and because of trials groups cheesing ZOS' hardest trials with high damage.
Armor skill changes happened because of Shuffle on heavy armor tanks in PVP and shuffle on Tava's Blessing ulti-gen tanks in PVE.
Block cost changes happened because of perma-blocking tank builds in PVP and PVE.
Proc sets no longer critting happened because of high burst damage in PVP and high overall damage in PVE.

Often things have different effects in PVP and PVE, but they are done for both.

With the bow, if ZOS wanted to empower bow in PVP, they'd increase the single target damage. If they wanted to empower bow for PVE, they'd increase the AOE DOTs. However, look at the meta and everyone uses a bow for AOE DOTs in PVE and everyone in PVP uses a bow for single target damage. So there's nothing you can buff for bow that doesn't improve on or the other when its already the go-to weapon for both areas on stam builds with some ranged capability.

So you improve the passives in such a way that bow users can utilize them and bow support users wont. Ie changing the longshot passive to something that is tied to survivability and the number of hawk eye stacks you have (as one important drawback of bow builds is survivability). Alternatively, you can rework some of the bow skills, making snipe a powerful ult and rapid fire a spammable with obvious adjustments including adding some group ultility of rapid fire or at least one of its morphs

JobooAGS · February 2018

Aisle9 wrote: »

1) Snipe is not terrible.

2) Snipe is a staple of a number of builds.

3) Ballista is an awesome ultimate for burst damage, largely because you're not actually channeling it, and you can keep going about your rotation after dropping it.

4) You made an argument about making snipe an ultimate, and removing ballista, plus a bunch of other things, I never said I want snipe as a spammable (even though a bow/bow build using snipe as a spammable can reliably parse 40k+).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loaded_question

Hope this clarifies.
Have a nice day.

How many bow/bow builds do you see in leaderboard trials? And Id like to see the parse, on a 6M preferabily

sampol212 · February 2018

The most important thing is that bow shouldn't be a second bar support tool. There should be an viable option to play as an archer without going into any other weapon swaps. Period.

JobooAGS · February 2018

sampol212 wrote: »

The most important thing is that bow shouldn't be a second bar support tool. There should be an viable option to play as an archer without going into any other weapon swaps. Period.

Funny how every other mmo made it work

Jowrik · February 2018

JobooAGS wrote: »

How many bow/bow builds do you see in leaderboard trials? And Id like to see the parse, on a 6M preferabily

I like Snipe as a spammable bow skill. That said I wouldn't mind it having a place on the ultimate bar instead too.
I parse 35k with a sloppy-ish rotation & pretty optimal-but-not-entirely gear. I'm sure people with a slick rotation & gear could get 40k. I've done vMA recently with a bow only and it's pretty strong actually. Mirage + Vigor and Reaper's Mark. Nuff said.

Anotherone773 · February 2018

They should remove slot poisons from all weapons except bow. Make it no longer suppress your main proc and reduce the effect of poison that goes in your poison slot by 50%. So you still get your main proc and a secondary poison proc that stacks with it but has half of the current effect.

Gilvoth · February 2018

as a Bow Main user i need to keep people AWAY from me.
eso does not provide that ability for us Bow users.
that basicly kills Bow as your main weapon.

Jowrik · February 2018

dwemer_paleologist wrote: »

as a Bow Main user i need to keep people AWAY from me.
eso does not provide that ability for us Bow users.
that basicly kills Bow as your main weapon.

That's mainly PVP right? As a pvp bow stamsorc I always like bolt escape & draining shot, combined with briarheart, high crit and crit surge. You're quite fast and you heal a lot off ur crits

sharquez · February 2018

dwemer_paleologist wrote: »

as a Bow Main user i need to keep people AWAY from me.
eso does not provide that ability for us Bow users.
that basicly kills Bow as your main weapon.

There is Beast trap, Magnum shot, Barrage, Expedition from Dodge-roll, Bows have the tools, we are all just fools. :P

JobooAGS · February 2018

sharquez wrote: »

dwemer_paleologist wrote: »

as a Bow Main user i need to keep people AWAY from me.
eso does not provide that ability for us Bow users.
that basicly kills Bow as your main weapon.

There is Beast trap, Magnum shot, Barrage, Expedition from Dodge-roll, Bows have the tools, we are all just fools. :P

With a "spammable" that snares you and is easily dodged when compared to force pulse

Pseron_Wyrd · February 2018

aubrey.baconb16_ESO wrote: »

Many of us had zero MMO experience and the AvAvA that you perceive as being important was in fact irrelevant to many.

It was worse than irrelevant to me. It was the reason why I didn't buy the game at launch.