I have been finding that there is a complete lack of finding useful bows for my current character.

I've been using this elven bow of fire for while now. The only other bow I've found (aside from the usual hunting/long bows found everywhere) is a unenchanted glass bow. Good grief, Charlie Brown. I'm thinking of justifying enchanting use by saying I'm "paying" a wizard to enchant a bow for me. I may go with an imperial or hunting bow.

I'm also hardly finding any other equipment I've found in my other play throughs that would help me out, light armor boots or gauntlets, etc.

Anyone else experienced this? You can find every item under the sun except something related to your character build.

I guess the problem is that you can create better equipment then anythign you can find...

lol, yeah, whenever I'm playing an Archer I always find plenty of cool battleaxes; whenever I'm playing a two-hander I always find great daggers or swords.

Only way to circumvent this is to play an all-rounder character, like a generic fighter for example.

I have found a few good bows, though... I'm sure of it.

Weird. We have different experiences. I stumbled upon enchanted items relative to my peferred skills more often than those relative of any other skill. My first one, if I recall correctly, were leather bracers that increased the damage dealt with two-handed weaponry. I sacrificed it, to my own personal dismay, so I can learn the enchantment-effect. I soon stumbled upon another, even greater than the previous, leather bracers of the same enchantment.
Maybe some are fixed, and you're going to all the wrong places. Or loot is random in this case.

My mage is constantly finding great bows, including a soul-stealing ebony bow today. I hope to have that same luck when I get around to starting an archer once the 1.5 patch hits PS3.

Yes - I just make anything I need, clothing or weapons.
However (at Level 50 +) you will begin to find Dragon armor and Daedric stuff in loot chests.
Plus Draugrs often have Ebony stuff, and Draugr Deathlords always do....
It kills me to leave it all behind (could never carry it all!) but what can ya do.
I wear Fur Armor (the variety with sleeves) which you cannot make, you cannot buy - you must take off recently deceased bandits.
It looks gorgeous with Light Dragon everything else, gloves/boots/helm etc.
Bow?
The Nightingale Bow is tough to beat; join the Thieves Guild to acquire it.
(Hopefully that's not too big a spoiler...)
Regards

I found some great bows on my Thief/Assassin but it's not like you really need some super duper bow on an archer anyway. The perks alone make a hunting bow overpowered.

I've to agree with the OP.

I was lucky early on to find a nord bow in a dungeon, which lasted till I found a Falmer bow in another dungeon weeks later.

My character's current weapon is an ebony bow, dropped by a draugr overlord - about six weeks ago. Nothing better since, and I do a great deal of dungeon crawling.

What hurts me also is that I play a permanent level one character, no increases in health, magicka, and stamina. That also eliminates skill trees and perks, smithing, and enchanting.

Since skills still level, I have the basic 2X sneak damage for archery, no enchants, just basic damage.

It's fun to play this way, but finding a better bow would be nice. I just have to be careful going into fights with multiple enemies on how I remove them from the battlefield without losing control, and going into melee fights.

I have not notice anythng being relative to my character build.

The slain enemies all tend to drop random enchanted items. i use only electric spells, two handed weapons, and a knife. Restoration to heal as well. Nothing specific to those tend to drop. I get fire/frost items more often than not, torpor, fear, whatever.

The real issue to me is the paucity of unique bows. I can only think of a half dozen or so and none of them particularly useful. At least one of the Daedric artifacts should have been a bow.

You can find better bows than you can create, its some ancient nordic bows who are improved, however you can not improve them more, but you can improve standard bows so they become even better than this.

I find a lot of enchanted bows, then again, I just seem to find a lot of enchanted equipment anyway. It's always heavy armor though...

This, there is really no need to explore for gear anymore.

My mage is at 20, and I have found mostly hunting bows and an occasional orc bow. Thing is, at level 5 I made a beeline to Fort Amol to get the book that teaches the Bound Bow. With the mystic something perk, the other one for soul capture, and a couple tossed into overdraw in archery, it's streets ahead of anything I could find at my level. I have no intention at this time of putting perk points into smithing, not on a mage, so self-made gear is out.

Going for a high speech skill on my current rogue/thief character, so I'm buying all my bows. I'm also not doing any smithing and the only way I'm raising my enchanting is thru the filled soul gems I find. Level 40 and the shops are stocked with Ebony bows with great enchants - I just trade in my "used" bows for fresh ones - filled soul gems are quite rare. I have found some decent bows, but it's not important.

Yeah, I think the best unique bow there is only rates about the same as a hunting bow, of all things. It really saddens me that the uniques in this game blow chunks so bad, while the ebony and deadric stuff can easily be found/made and smithed up into godly weapons with very little effort. It should have been the other way around. Instead, uniques = pointless.

Best bow is the Daedric bow imo

Current char (of 5'ish) is lvl 60, and today I found my first daedric bow. And I find ebony bows pretty much all over.

I found a Daedric bow when i was level 27. Lucky, i guess.

Leveling your smithing skills can get you great armor and weapons long before you start encountering them randomly in the wild.

Find a pickaxe and mine some iron ore. Smelt the ore into ingots and make a LOT of iron daggers. Improve the daggers with any Iron Ingots you have left. Enchant them with any soul gems you have. This will level up Enchanting as well and you'll be able to sell them for a lot more. If you run out of Iron ore, hunt deer and elk and use their hides to make leather armor. (That will improve your Archery skills, as well).

I'm pretty sure there is a ruin by the labyrinthian or whatever its called where there is a draugr death lord with an ebony bow. It should be there no matter your level but i could be mistaken.

I use Bound Bow. With the right perks, that bow will have a damage of 95 and ability to soul trap + banish Daedra. So useful. Also, with a few armor enchantments, I made it do a damage of 151 max.