The Snipeblade

Armor Types

Gear and Item Set Info

Main sets to use : 5 Hunding's Rage OR Night Mother's Gaze, 5 Marksman's Crest (For PvP) or Hawk's Eye (PvE) OR Morag Tong (Either), 1 Master's Bow front, 1 Maelstrom bow back.

Hundings rage gives you a lot of crit, some max stam, and a high amount of weapon damage - Good for bursting squishies from a distance, that's what you're aiming(kek) for.

Marksman's Crest gives you a lot of stamina regen, some weapon damage, and 5% reduced stamina cost, while also increasing damage of your bow abilities by 8%. Very powerful, if you were to burst someone for 20,000 damage before you'd now burst them for 21,600, that could be the difference in getting a kill or not.

Hawk's Eye gives you 2x max stam, some weapon damage, and reduces the cost+increases the damage of bow abilities by 5%. I choose Marksman over this in PvP because while they do roughly the same amount of damage (Hawk's Eye max stam gives you more damage as well) to players, Marksman gives a VERY large amount of sustain. 8% reduced cost on ALL stamina abilities, not just bow abilities (Trap, Focus, Vigor), plus two set piece bonuses of Stam regen. You want to be a bosmer with all of this extra regen, and you'll rarely find yourself starving for stamina.

You could also use Morag Tong in as a second set with hundings, as you do have three spammables AND an ultimate that does poison damage. You won't have as much sustain, but you will see quite a bit of damage increase from your Lethal Arrow, Poison Injection, Acid Spray and Toxic Barrage abilities. Would use this if you plan on ganking primarily, or if you want more damage to nuke people.

Night Mother's Gaze is an interesting take on this because, since you have a bar with two very wide AoE abilities, you could actually apply this debuff to a very high amount of targets in group/zerg fights, effectively increasing everyone's stam-based damage taken by something like 5%. Though you'll certainly lower your own damage output by quite a bit. It does give you the same crit as hundings and a little weapon damage though, so it's not a huge loss.

You want everything impenetrable, obviously, your large pieces enchanted with tri-stat and smaller pieces enchanted with either stamina or health, depending on how much health you want to have. Nirnhoned both bows if possible, otherwise sharpened, or precise. If you don't want to run poisons, Infused is also an option, with both weapons being disease damage enchants (Or disease front weapon power back). I would use poisons though, ravage health + gradual ravage health. You can also add ravage magicka if you want, to make it more expensive for sorcs to stack shields against you, and dragonknight/templar tanks to spam their shields and dragon blood.

We're going 5 medium 2 heavy for this build, because 5 medium gives you a lot of increased crit and weapon damage, as well as sustain, speed, and reduced sneak/sprint cost. All of these are very important for a ranged damage dealer. Why not 1 heavy 1 light? Though you may get a little more stats by adding in 1 light, I personally think that the extra resistances from having 2 pieces of heavy armor and 0 light armor will prove more useful overall.

General Info

For food, we're using Dubious Camoran's throne for its great sustain. It really is just the all around best stam food for PvP. Your goto potion will pretty much always be Brutality+Savagery+Stamina pots, they increase your damage output tremendously as well as your sustain. If you want to sacrifice damage for survivability, go for health+speed+immovable pots. You can also use Orzorga's Tripe Trifle Pocket food for survivability as well, but again, your damage will suffer a little.

Your main objective in a PvP scenario is to 1, Gank. And 2, spam everyone from a distance in group fights, while singling out magsorcs/any other casters if you find one within your range. You may notice the front bar is pretty much all single target to focus down one specific person, the back bar is where all of your AoE is. Arrow barrage, acid spray, and dawnbreaker of smiting. You may not do a whole lot of damage at once with your aoe spam, but you can keep constant damage out there and slowly chip away at everyone's health while your group fights them. And if you throw on morag tong, you can apply that to everyone you hit with acid spray. Same with night mother's.

Some options to run for skills are Lightweight Beast Trap, if you want to just chuck it for more damage rather than using it for self-peel. You can use Mass Hysteria instead of Leeching Strikes, since you won't be light attacking quite as much as you would be in say, PvE. The fear could keep you alive, although Smiting Dawnbreaker and Rearming Trap are there for this purpose as well. If you REALLY want to be able to get away from someone, Magnum Shot will make a lot of distance and disorient them, hopefully allowing you to escape. Again though, you might not want too much cc, you have a little already and Dawnbreaker is capable of almost killing someone on its own, plus trap, you could potentially already kite and kill anyone who chases you.

Champion Point Tips

Disclaimer: Make sure not to put anymore points into something than what it takes to get it just above a whole number. Your CP %s are always rounded down, so if you have something at 16.9%, it will act as if it's only 16%, wasting the points sent on the other 0.9%

Thief: Lots and lots of points into Befoul. Any time you're focusing a target, your Lethal Arrow will be applying major defile to them. This, with Befoul at a high level, will make it VERY hard for anyone to heal up if they're being focused down. You'll want 75 Mooncalf for the stamina recovery, and the rest of your Thief points into mostly Befoul, some into Tumbling, and some into Warlord.

Mage: You want a lot of mighty, because ALL of your damage benefits from this. Master at arms should be a little higher than Thaumaturge, your burst damage comes from direct damage abilities (Snipe, Relentless Focus), as does Acid Spray. Everything else though is damage over time, including your big hitter, Toxic Barrage. You definitely don't want to have low Thaumaturge, keep it maybe 1% behind Master at arms. Your last few points should go into Precise Strikes, as you are guaranteed a crit out of stealth and being a nightblade gives you some crit damage already, so you can really burst someone hard if you catch them from stealth. The downside is, you can't crit damage shields. You can't penetrate them either, and Piercing overall is very weak and I wouldn't put any points into it unless you can't get a 1% increase on any of your other cp trees.

Warrior: Lots of Resistant. Aside from that, entirely personal preference. All depends on what you want to take less damage from. Getting bursted by magsorcs and blades? Lots of ironclad and elemental defender. DKs giving you a hard time? Throw some in Thick skinned. I do suggest that you get 120 points in The Lady, though, for the Unchained passive.

Build Rating