No, you are explaining how to be a pure Power Gamer...

Stamina has its uses, if you fight multiple opponents who are moving Eagle Eye comes in handy. If you also don't exploit smithing, you won't one-shot everything.

Well i just created an Assassin/Archer, i'm focusing on Sneak Archery and Illusion, I'm puting 20,40,40 health, stamina, mage

Try Illusion out. There are some great spells to help you out while sneaking.

The best spells Illusion has for an archer are the crowd control spells,frenzy,fear and calm.
Muffle you can get with sneak perk and invisibility you can get through alchemy.

My stealth archer wears light armor and is an avid alchemist so Illusion isn't nessecary for her.

However Illusion would be great for an archer that dosn't wear much armor or isn't supported with alchemy.

While you have a point, you also must admit that a huge HP or Mana pool become obsolete when your archer's sneak skill becomes high.

You aren't getting hit a lot, if at all. My archers Light Armor skill is at like 52 or 53 and he's level 61 and he's using light armor since the opening dungeon. That's how little you get hit.

So why pump Health into the 5xx range when you can be effective with like 200 base HP?
600+ carry weight + endless sprinting > huge HP pool that never gets used.

The skills you use really depend on if you want to play an archer, hunter or sniper (ranged assassin).

Either way you want health and stamina at either a 2 to 1 or 3 to 1 ratio.

For Archer:

Archer
Heavy Armor
Alchemy


You'll probably want the Atronach stone.
The focus is increasing base damage for the bow and maximizing damage mitigation. Since you won't have a lot of magic, focus on alchemy for healing and you can even use it for poisons, especially paralyze and slow.

For Hunter:

Archery
Light Armor
Sneak
Alchemy

I'd go with the Lord stone.

The idea here is that you are an Archer who ambushes. You sneak in to get situated and get a few sneak hits off before they zero in on your location. Upping your base damage and sneak attack multiplier is the focus here. Base before sneak.

Ranged Assassin:

Archery
Light Armor
Alchemy
Sneak

The Shadow stone. The focus on alchemy here is poisons and invisibility. Every shot should come from being unseen and so the focus here is sneak attack multiplier then base damage. Use your sneak skill first and foremost but if caught, be sure to keep stocked with a few invisibility potions. The shadow stone power is there for emergencies.


Smithing is always something to take but I, personally, find it a waste to go up the light side. Go up the heavy side so you can focus on making the best weapons and more importantly upgrading them.

I just keep a ring and necklace enchanted w/carry weight increase for if I ever need to haul more loot than usual - which is rarely, never had to put any points in stamina on my archer. I did put points in magicka though, but I was kind of an archer+mage not pure archer.

Loot and gold ends up being worthless eventually anyway. I ended up with over 100k on my most complete character, and had nothing to spend it on.

As a "pure" archer there's not much reason not to stack health.

I think the strongest build for an archer is archery+sneak+illusion+conjuration though. Summons keep things away from you so you can constantly fire on them since you rarely will have to kite. Illusion plus sneak makes you practically a ghost and you'll kill most things before they see you.