“The Man with the Machine Bow” / Laguna Loire in ESO

Armor Types

Gear and Item Set Info

As a stamina ranged DPS, we're relying on Bows and Medium armor to have the best balance between durability and attack power, especially in PvP scenarios.  For this, we're going to take a 5/5/2 approach.

For your crated set, you will want to take 5 pieces of Eternal Hunt, found in the Thieves' Guild DLC.  Eternal Hunt is a 9-piece set, so you will have to seek out a master craftsman, but the effect is well worth it - you get superior offensive stats, and your dodge rolls leave behind a poison rune that incapacitates.  As an Bowman, you'll get benefit from dodge rolling due to the Hasty Retreat passive.  Make sure you get a Heavy chest and a Light belt, to maximize the armor bonus, while minimizing the downsides of having a light armor piece.

On your weapons and jewelry, what you should take depends on what you're doing.  For most play, Night Mother's Embrace from Deshaan is really good and easy to get.  It gives you a significant amount of firepower and makes your stealth better.  The jewelry can be farmed from Dolmens; the two bows will require more involved farming to acquire. 

For PvP, however, you should take Fortified Brass, from the Clockwork City DLC, as your second 5-piece set.  This will super-charge your defenses, making you as tanky as many Heavy Armor-wearers.  As this is crafted, the jewelry will be much more challenging to acquire, but the weapons will be easier.

Lastly, our head and shoulders slot call for the Valkyn Skoria.  In this build, we have quite a few DoT skills, and we need some Health bonuses.  VS solves both of those problems, with aplomb.  If you don't want that, another strong choice is Molag Kena, which will tax your resources, but make you yet more powerful for a short time.

Our power has a consequence however - fragility and lack of sustain!  To solve these problems, you will want to glyph your armor with Health until you've reached the bare minimum 20k health threshold, after which point it's safe to start putting Stamina on the remaining pieces. 

For your jewelry, I recommend Stamina regeneration on all three pieces - you get plenty of power from the sets you're packing in this build.  This build's skill loadout throws in a few Magicka abilities to try to help you not require so much Stamina, but chances are good you'll need to keep an eye on your Stamina in combat.

Your primary weapon should use a Disease enchantment so that you're applying Minor Defile - this in combination with Lethal Arrow will ensure that you can reliably drop opponents.  Your secondary bow should use either Lightning damage to apply Minor Vulnerability, or the Crusher enchantment to undo some of your enemy's defenses.  If sustain is a serious problem, you can safely take Stamina Drain as well, though that's very much a tertiary option.

If you're going to be PvEing a lot, I recommend taking Infused on your chest and legs to maximize the enchantments' contribution, and Divines on all other pieces to get better Mundus bonuses. 

If you're doing PvP, though, don't do any of that.  Get Impenetrable on all of your armor pieces!  PvP is a crit-fest.

For your weapons, your main bar should be either Sharpened or Nirnhoned, while your back bow should use Infused to get the most out of the support enchantment, regardless of what content you're tackling.

Finally, jewelry.  If you think your build needs better defense, take Protective; the trait can be obtained by completing the Summerset main quest line and the Psijic Order quest line.  Otherwise, I recommend Infused in order to get better sustain out of your jewelry, which is found regularly from Psijic Portals.

General Info

About the Build...

The Laguna Loire build is based off of Laguna Loire, a primary character from Final Fantasy VIII.  Known sometimes as "The Man with the Machine Gun" - also the name of his battle theme - Laguna is a Galbadian soldier whose adopted daughter is kidnapped by a tyrannical sorceress of a technologically advanced country.  Setting out with his trusty friends - and terrible sense of direction - he seeks to right wrongs, fight evil, and sometimes even write newspaper stories!

Our Laguna is a bit different.  He's an Imperial, with long black hair and the prettiest features you can give him.  Basically, if you walk through town and the girls and the guys are giving you catcalls, you're sufficiently pretty for this build. 

Wood Elf can also work if you don't really care so much about appearance cleaving to the source material, as can Redguard or Nord.  I don't recommend Bretons for this build, as mechanically they're too Magicka-focused.

However, Laguna's beauty belies his potent martial training.  He's a Warden who has all Warden class passives, all Imperial passives, and all Bow passives.  Laguna should be a master of the Fighter's Guild, with all passives from that too.  Laguna's training relies on Medium armor, which he should have all passives for.  Additionally, the first three passives in Heavy Armor and Light Armor are a very good idea.

Additionally, it would a great idea for the Laguna build to have 3/3 points invested into Medicinal Use, which requires 50 Alchemy, and 3/3 in Gourmand and Connoiseur, which if you take both requires 47 Provisioning.  If you do the main quest line of the vanilla game, take the time to get Soul Summons 2/2 and Soul Lock 2/2.  Lastly, Improved Hiding 4/4, which requires Legedemain 16, is an incredibly useful passive, especially in PvP.  Get that if at all practical.

Being a ranged Stamina fighter, becoming a Werewolf or Vampire simply adds little benefit, so stay mortal.

General Strategy

The Laguna build is all about masterfully-placed traps, withering firepower, and having friends near to hand.  You're going to be at your best when launching a sneak attack - a fight you start is a fight you stand a better chance of winning.  Additionally, you'll want to focus on keeping either friends between you and your target, or having an open path of retreat - while this build has skills to deal with melee attackers, short range combat is a danger that you should be constantly avoiding.

A reason that we take Eternal Hunt as our crafted set is so that we can use our Dodge Roll to place one of our two traps, the Poison Rune.  The other trap is our Lightweight Beast Trap on our back-bar.  Between these two traps, you gain significant control of the battlefield in 2v1 or 1v1 situations.

Laguna, being a soldier, has gadgets - lots of them.  We use Silver Shards  to get some powerful burst AoE.  As the original Laguna was a Gunblade user - a weapon that sadly does not exist in ESO - we instead take Dawnbreaker of Smiting on our back-bar as a reserve weapon for CQC situations.  Similarly, if Dawnbreaker is down, we take Magnum Shot to deal fair damage while repelling an enemy.  Razor Caltrops are an effective damage source and area denial tool that will help to funnel enemies towards our traps or into other hazards as we see fit.  Lastly, Laguna's marksmanship with his mac...erm, bow, is powerful.  We rely on Light and Heavy attacks in this build, but we also use Lethal Arrow to help ensure that we drop our targets before making a quick getaway.  In the most powerful situations, Laguna switches his bow to full-automatic fire with Toxic Barrage.

Lastly, Laguna is a friendly guy.  With this build, you should be too.  You can use Bursting Vines to place a powerful Heal over Time on a friend, while moving to them and getting Ultimate, thus putting you in the thick of the fighting.  You can also help your friends get to you by placing Frozen Retreat portals, making you an ideal scout and infiltrator when necessary.  Green Lotus allows your attacking to provide some backup healng to your allies and yourself.  Lastly, Bird of Prey lets you get around more quickly and hit a little harder.

Consumables

For your food, Dubious Camoran Thrones are a pre-req, as a Stamina build.  If you need more health/sustain, though, Ozorga's Smoked Bear Haunch, a gold recipe obtained from a relatively easy quest chain in the Orsinium DLC, has some odd (and rare) ingredients, but will give you the boost you need.

For potions, I recommend Tri-Potions made from Columbine/Bugloss/Dragonthorn.  I also recommend bringing an Assault potion made from Blessed Thistle/Dragonthorn/Water Hyacinth.  Lastly, your GTFO potion is made from Blue Entoloma/Namira's Rot/Blessed Thistle or Scrib Jelly.  Use potions liberally!

Glamours

This character is based on a modern-day-ish soldier, sort of, so the outfit choices are tough.  I made sure both of my bows are glamoured as Apostle Bows, since they're machine-bows; it's the closest we can get to machine guns in this game.  For the armor, I took Reguard Cuirass 1, Imperial Gloves 1, and Outlaw Helmet, Shoulders, and Boots.  As is the norm for me, I took the best looking racial girdle I could, and since this character is an Imperial, I went with Imperial Girdle 4.  All told, this build will cost you close to 17,000 gold to glamour properly if you want it to look like Laguna Loire from FFVIII, including dyes.

Champion Point Tips

As always a disclaimer - I don't like CP; I prefer Battlegrounds for my PvP, which have none.  Also, I dislike being reliant on CP for sustain.

However, if you really want suggestions...

I recommend playing the strengths of this build in your CP loadout.  At a minimum, I recommend 120 points in The Steed, 120 points in The Atronach, and 120 points in The Shadow.

High-value stars to invest in are Tumbling (reduces Dodge Roll cost), Master-at-Arms (improves Direct Damage), Physical Weapon Expert (Light/Heavy attacks with your Bows do more damage), Medium Armor Focus (extra Physical Resist while wearing 5pc. Medium Armor), Resistant (Reduced Direct Damage), Spell Shield (better magic defense), and Resistant (more Crit resist).

Nice-to-have stars include Expert Defender (reduced Light/Heavy attack damage taken), Piercing (better Physical penetration), Thaumaturge (better damage-over-time damage), Mighty (better Physical-family damage), Healthy (better Health recovery), Mooncalf (better Stamina recovery), and Befoul (better healing reduction).

Build Rating