I want to be a Wood Elf, a Mage that use Summon Bow and such when I assassinate and will be using traps from Destruction school to make the most out of this playstyle, but will it svck for me later? I will only wear cloth.

Any tips? No spoilers here!

Assassin mage
Beside hard start you got one of must fun builds around

What I don't like about bound weapons, especially the bow, is that you can't upgrade via the smithing skill. Besides the mythic perk in conjuration and the 4 marksman enchants you can use (up to 47%) you can't get the full effect of a bow. With the best smithing and archery perks the best damage I've gotten with an Ebony bow is 645. You'd be hard pressed to get a bound bow about 250. That's the only thing I can see. I do like the Destruction/Rune idea and if you're good enough with a bow you don't even need armor so cloth should do just fine.

Illusion will probably help, especially to get Quiet Casting perk. Sometimes your spells will blow your stealth. Especially until you get Rune Master and can cast runes farther away. Plus, runes may become less useful later in the game due to only doing 50 damage. (I assume they are affected by the +fire damage perks so 75 damage after those. Could use fortify destruction potions too)

edit: too bad they don't have bound dagger so you can get the 15x damage multiplier.

Oh yes I agree with this. Illusion is super handy or otherwise use Invisibility potions (shouldn't be using archery without alchemy anyways) and the perk for increasing the affect of fear spells in Illusion gives a small bonus to Fire destruction spells as well due to the fear debuff all fire spells have.

Unfortunately- runes are not buffed with the elemental focus perks. You can dual cast them, but they dont scale (unless you mod it) so they do loose their usefulness.

Bound bow with mystic binding will do plenty of damage with appropriate perks and buffs. From above: 650 damage is wildly more than you ever need, unless you like 1-2 shotting everything (1shotting from sneak)

Even with quiet casting, runes make noise, and unfortunately, that noise is centered on your current location. Rune master helps to cast them out of sound range.

If your are a nightblade, then noise can help draw targets in 1 at a time, but it is not so good for an archer who wants distance. You may want to just slap runes on your current position, begin firing, and retreat for a free rune hit on pursuers. This would never require rune master.


I posted on this style a couple months ago, it would probably be under a search for "assassin"

650 damage is barely enough when facing an Elder Dragon on master difficulty. They have 3000 health. I need a 130% fortify Archery potion just to kill one in 3 hits. In that time he could have already breathed me to death despite the 97% percent elemental resistance potions I use.

So, 1 sneak shot for 1800, and 2 more shots? And you are having trouble against these things?
Not to mention, this example is a 3 shot.. Against the highesr HP in the game, so an anerage dungeon is 1 shotted the whole way through.

It isnt necessary to have damages nearly that high on master to succeed easily. YMMV but that doesnt mean bound bows cant easily cut it.

I rarely ever sneak shot them, in fact I don't even have dragons activated on my best archer they're a terrible game element. And I don't need sneak attacks for dungeons either. A draugr deathlord will take up to three arrows from me without a fortify potion. My advantage is the stagger perk. Sure a bound bow will cut it but where's the fun in not using a cannon? You can even improve a hunting bow to 580 damage. You say "why," I say "why not?"

Very well.

My only point was that the OP need not be discouraged from using bound weapons.