Picking a bow for a no-sneak archer

Post » Tue May 14, 2013 6:51 am

I have been playing a no-sneak archer character for a while and I will soon have a choice as to what my end-game bow choice will be. I currently am using Zephyr, but have access to dwarven cross bows.

My decision comes down to 3 bows/crossbows. The dwarven crossbow, Auriel's Bow, or a Dragonbone bow. Auriel's bow fires the fastest of the three, and has the highest DPS as far as physical damage is concerned. The dwarven crossbow can be beaten by the dragonbone bow as though it has 2 more base damage, it has weaker ammunition. A dragonbone bow shooting elven arrows can match it. The dwarven crossbow does have a higher stagger chance per shot, and there isn't as large of a delay between target acquisition and firing. The dragonbone bow is slower than Auriel's bow, but has higher base damage and can be custom enchanted.

So, I'm kind of torn between the three weapons. Note that I do not plan to go crazy with smithing and enchanting exploits, and only plan to smith to legendary, and enchant without the whole crazy alchemy+enchanted item chain for insane enchantments.

Also remember that this is a no-sneak archer which means I do not take sneak shots and usually fight at mid to close range. I never even carry a backup melee weapon as I never need it. It's actually a lot of fun, and as time goes on I will have a massive health pool as I only raised stamina to 200, and then everything else goes to health.

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Ezekiel Macallister
 
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Post » Tue May 14, 2013 5:24 pm

Coming from someone who doesn't play a lot of archers I would choose the Dwarven bow. As you said, you will be shooting stuff at ranges of mid to close. So I would think the Dwarven bow with its higher stagger amount with some decent enchants would be the one to use. That way when stuff gets crazy, you can stagger your opponent and run back a bit to get off another couple of shots before their recovery.

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Guy Pearce
 
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Post » Tue May 14, 2013 8:59 am

Are Explosive Bolts available for Dragonbone Bow, or Auriels Bow?

It is nice to be able to do Frost Damage to a Fire Dragon, or Fire Damage to a Frost Dragon by just swapping Ammunition. Keep in mind that I am partial to Crossbows.

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JR Cash
 
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Post » Tue May 14, 2013 12:30 pm

there are not any explosive arrows without mods, but the elemental damage from explosive bolts is rather tiny imho.

The one thing the bows have over the crossbow is quicker followup shots. Great for when you have multiple falmer after you in close quarters. I have the ranger perk so reloading doesn't slow me down, but the reloading is so slow. I am almost at the point I can take the quick draw perk so I'll have to try out the crossbow after that. Doing some comparisons I found that comparing Auriel's bow at legendary smithing (+10 to base damage) to a legendary smithed dragonbone bow and then multiplying each by their draw speed revealed that the dragonbone bow actually does only 0.5 base dps less than auriel's bow. That combined with the ability to custom enchant it makes it quite competitive. I can actually enchant it with a stronger enchantment than Auriel's bow. Auriel's bow would have the advantage when facing undead, and it does have the special feature to make the sun go nuts and smite my enemies outdoors however. Also, Auriel's bow is better looking.

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Emma Parkinson
 
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