Resto staff or bow?

pavelcherepanskyrwb17_ESO · May 2014

Hi all!

My main toon is level 38 DK and I've decided to go for my first respec. I don't really have major need for it but I have plenty of gold and I want to change some wrong choices I've made in early play.

Anyway, I use 2-h as my main line and S&B as secondary. I've tried DW but didn't like it too much and one of the main targets of the respec is a choice of different 3rd weapon skill line. At the moment I'm contemplating between bow and resto staff.

Advantages I see in taking resto staff line:
- My build is mainly magicka based so mag recovery with resto staff will help a lot.
- Off-healing in addition to tanking in group setting sounds fun
- Increases survivability of the build

Advantages of bow:
- Ranged damage
- Extra stuns and AoE
- I like bows

What do you guys think I should take?

Tabia · May 2014

I'm a nightblade, bow primary and resto staff secondary. I used my bow exclusively then added the staff later since I was struggling on some of the harder solo encounters. They each have their benefits. I need my bow for cc, quick high damage kills, or to keep a mob off of me but the staff is great for long endurance fights. Using the staff and silver bolts against Daedra is a lot of fun.

Lazarus_Long · May 2014

I would say go with the bow. As much as I love R staff, if you are already magic heavy then you will most likely get more use out of a stamina skill line. OTOH, the prot bubble for R staff combined with the magicka regen could turn you into one hell of tank/dps combo.

pavelcherepanskyrwb17_ESO · May 2014

Lazarus_Long wrote: »

OTOH, the prot bubble for R staff combined with the magicka regen could turn you into one hell of tank/dps combo.

Yeah, I was also thinking among those lines. And also I wanted to keep all my stamina for blocking/dodging/interrupting. If I go magicka-heavy and use stam only for those I'd be able to both dps/heal/cc more and block more. I think I'm going to try the staff

ArRashid · May 2014

for 1-50 levels, Bow is all you need.. Though you'll certainly get to PuGs more reliably as a healer.

in VR levels however, Bow (and generally any physical weapon) gets gimped hard, since you STILL deal almost zero damage, while it takes forever to kill VR targets (remember, they have a few times more HP and damage - mobs generally have around 2k HP (elites 10x more) and it takes forever to kill them by shooting for 150-200

) - and even if you CC a group of mobs, rangers will deal REALLY high damage to you (2 unblocked/unavoided spells and you're dead, even when resist capped).
From what I've seen so far, the only viable weapons in VR are resto staff and fire staff. Shield for PvP. But that's about it. Only a couple of really brave (or really stupid) people even try to use bow/2h/dual.

ALSO, DK with a bow doesn't make any sense at all. You don't have a single ranged ability as DK. You'd have to come close to use some, which negates whole bow playstyle.
Resto DK is not too good either (bad passives for healing), but at least provides whole group with great utility (Molten Weapons, Ash Cloud, Petrify/Talons, Standard)

Best DK is a pyromancer with inferno staff.

pavelcherepanskyrwb17_ESO · May 2014

ArRashid wrote: »

ALSO, DK with a bow doesn't make any sense at all. You don't have a single ranged ability as DK. You'd have to come close to use some, which negates whole bow playstyle.
Resto DK is not too good either (bad passives for healing), but at least provides whole group with great utility (Molten Weapons, Ash Cloud, Petrify/Talons, Standard)

Thanks for the advice! Still, I tried the resto staff and love it so far. Great fun and my survivability went up by so much by just being able to restore magicka mid-fight. Works great for single targets. Just now I killed some trolls in Eastmarch. Normally I'd have to use ultimate in a fight with them or will be in very bad shape by the end of the fight, but here I am with almost 100% health, almost full stam and half-full magicka. Simply being able to use magicka-based skills more works amazing for me.

Not so well for groups, though. Although I will find a way of making it work

Lazarus_Long · May 2014

pavelcherepanskyrwb17_ESO wrote: »

...Not so well for groups, though. Although I will find a way of making it work

When fighting groups try casting your heals early, since they are HoT.