Snipers, bane of every FPS game. Praised by their teammates for well-placed shot or taking out precise targets or hated by… anyone else for “lack of skill”. It’s no different in Elder Scrolls Online. Building a reliable sniper build is a little bit tricky and requires more than just “spam snipe”.
Choose your race
There are two most common choices for building archers. Bosmer have amazing stamina recovery, extra damage from stealth. Khajiit is another viable option with its 8% extra weapon critical on top of bonus sneak damage.
But for current PvP meta there is a third option: Argonian. Our favorite lizards used to have one of the worst racial passives out there, since Morrowind patch that has changed giving those Black Marsh folk amazing versatility. With their resource regeneration whenever drinking a potion, health and healing bonuses Argonians are made for PvP.
Regardless of which class you decide to play with, it’s good to roll with stage 4 vampirism for that extra resource recovery and massive speed boost while in stealth, altho it might be risky in melee encounters but the entire idea behind this build is not getting too close.
Gear and rotation
5x Morag Tong
5x Marksman’s Crest
The entire premise of this build is boosting the damage of our Lethal Arrow. The math behind this relies heavily on maintaining a very precise rotation. Open up with Lethal Arrow, the animation of that skill is quite long so we have a brief moment before it lands to hit our target with Acid Spray. This combination will grant our Lethal Arrow a boost from Asylum Bow before it lands, our Marksman and Morag Tong sets will boost our damage even further (+8% bow skill damage and +10% poison damage). The effect stack will cause our Lethal Arrow to cause massive damage almost one shotting enemy players.
Alternatively you could replace Morag Tong with Hawk’s Eye set for even more bow damage bonus. Having a precise asylum bow would help but in most cases that’s just overkill since the 45% damage boost is massive. Since the entire build revolves around the Asylum Bow bonus there are no alternatives here.
Champion Point Distribution
The Ritual - 56 Precise Strikes/48 Mighty/50 Piercing/20 Thaumaturge
The Atronach - put remaining points in Master-At-Arms
The Shadow - 56 Befoul/40 Tumbling
The Lover - 56 Mooncalf / 38 Tenacity/ 39 Arcanist
The Tower - 11 Warlord
The Lady - 50 Hardy / 50 Elemental Defender / 21 Thick Skinned
The Steed - 56 Ironclad / 53 Resistant
Skill Bar:
Note: This is my personal preference due to keyboard shortcuts I use. Feel free to modify this however you like.
Skill Bar I
1. Lethal Arrow
2. Acid Spray
3. Rearming Trap - Currently rearming trap is a must-have for any damage dealing build both PvP and PvE, i sometimes swap this with Piercing Mark from second bar.
4. Dark Cloak - That’s basically why we play Nightblade, the ultimate emergency button.
5. Relentless Focus - Adding another damage boost to the stack.
Ultimate: Flawless Dawnbreaker - Obvious first bar choice for its passive damage boost, also good tool against other vampires
Skill Bar II
1. Poison Injection - to maintain damage or just quickly finish off your target, to boost that even further you can use Master’s Bow on your second bar instead of Asylum.
2. Manifestation of Terror - Our main nightblade CC
3. Shadow Image
4. Resolving Vigor
5. Piercing Mark - Debuff increasing damage done to our target even further
Ultimate: Ballista (high dmg, easy to dodge) Soul Tether (for that extra aoe CC)
Very good build. I will be trying to play with it and still waiting for more!
ReplyDeleteDo you have something cheaper?
ReplyDelete