Nightblade will be the most busted class in U46

MashmalloMan · April 25

SkaraMinoc wrote: »

There's not enough Crit Resist in the game for Update 46.

Hasn't rallying Cry been BIS and objectively overloaded since launch?

That set alone gives 25% crit resist and 300 w/s DMG for easy 100% uptime, can also share the bonuses with allies for a bit less value, but in that scenario you could include group sets like Transmutation.

A player with 7 Impen (14%), CP slottable (10%), Rallying Cry solo (25%), and base stats (20%) has a total of 69% resist. If we're saying group, Rallying goes down maybe 5% on avg, but add Transmutation for 21%, total 85% resist.

At that point, you're back to the base 1.5x crit DMG taken in comparison to your initial example of 2.3x. Notably the build doesn't include the Siphoning line, so they're either a 1 trick glass cannon countered by a detect pot that will run out of resources the moment they're challenged...or they've sacrificed a bunch of damage stats to become more sustainable, thus lowering their total crit damage dealt vs a build without Aedric Spear from live.

All that said, I'd agree if Rallying Cry wasn't so OP. Then I'd buff Impen from 2% to at least 3% to make it more accessible.

SkaraMinoc · April 26

MashmalloMan wrote: »

SkaraMinoc wrote: »

There's not enough Crit Resist in the game for Update 46.

A player with 7 Impen (14%), CP slottable (10%), Rallying Cry solo (25%), and base stats (20%) has a total of 69% resist. If we're saying group, Rallying goes down maybe 5% on avg, but add Transmutation for 21%, total 85% resist.

At that point, you're back to the base 1.5x crit DMG taken in comparison to your initial example of 2.3x.

This is all true. But as you're probably aware, crit damage is subtracted from crit resist and then compared with the crit cap. So if your crit damage is in the 140-160% range you're still going to have lots of crit damage after Rallying/Transmutation is applied. Also, you'd need something like 6000-7000 crit resist to counter 140-160% crit damage with Farstrider.

I won't dive into the theorycrafting but in U46 it's definitely possible to have so much crit damage that there's just nothing a target player can do to avoid 80, 90, or 100%+ final crit damage taken.

Alchimiste1 · April 26

Major_Toughness wrote: »

FoJul wrote: »

Major_Toughness wrote: »

SkaraMinoc wrote: »

They're both good but I wouldn't say you need to get your head checked if you take Aedric Spear. That's a bit much.

Burning Light is around 5% of damage in PvP.
Balanced Warrior translates to roughly 360 wd/sd and 1800 armor for your average build.
Piercing Spear's 12% crit damage without having to slot anything is pretty damn good.

Animal Companion passives did get a buff as you mentioned but not every build runs shalks or needs the sustain.

Burning Light is 5% of what?
Running how many dots? How many of you are zerging the target so you can get consistent ticks off?
That's also currently on a Templar and not with Subclassing. How could you possibly say it does 5% damage when all fights are different.
If I "one shot" someone with Incap and Bow I don't think Burning Light will do any damage.

Aedric Spear has no delayed burst which is critical is killing good and/or tanky players.

Sure the Spear stun is good but so it hitting 15k Shalks at the same millisecond as a 20k bow and freeing up a bar slot. Not having to run Ice Staff for ele sus.

Honestly it's a no-brainer.

I'll break down my build for you so maybe you can understand, but firstly I'll say, Animal Companions is good yes, but your original comment was tell people who use aedric spear to get there head checked.

So I'm not going over everything, but I'll do the basics.

Gravelord/aedric/stormcalling.

145% crit damage (over cap to kill ppl with rallying cry) 100% crit healing, 42% crit chance (goes to 67% in execute phase since buff to death knell passive) 18k pen with breach, around 6k spell dmg.

33k resistances, 4k crit resistances, 2500 mag recovery 2200 stam recovery "with sustained by suffering active"

Ele weapon/mystic siphon/blastbones/javelin/hurricane/meteor

Ele susc/crit surge/vigor/race against time/scribe burst heal with major vitality.

Setup is simple, make sure hurricane and mystic siphon are up.

Blastbones ele weap javelin. That's 15k-20k burst every 3 seconds.

Add burning light/and spell orb those are additional burst tools, it adds to thst 15k-20k since they are both still direct damage.

Most die before needing meteor, but you can see where this is going.

I'm sitting at 500 meteor half the time because they die to fast.

I still get all my essential buffs. My healing is still absurd, defense usually doesn't matter because it's so offensive, but it has great defense.

Last but not least, the combo is inevitably unavoidable. With some other secret sauce I'm not mentioning.

No one with a brain is dying to that build.

Also the thread is about Nightblade. You listed zero NB skill lines.

I can see why you might die to your own build.

Respectfully, you are underestimating how good the aedric skill line is. yes, animal companion is probably the best subclass but multiclassing with plar is really strong against good players.

Prionyx · April 26

SkaraMinoc wrote: »

Shadow for stealth
Assassination 10% crit damage
Aedric Spear 10% crit damage plus Burning Light (buffed in U46) and Balanced Warrior
Monomyth Reforged 20% crit damage
Scribing for heals

That's 40% crit damage right out of the gate on top of Khajiit (12%), Shadow (11%), Minor Force, Minor Brittle.

Total: 83% crit damage + 50% base = 133% crit damage

Doesn't include Medium armor bonus or Farstrider debuff.

There's not enough Crit Resist in the game for Update 46.

The fact that you want to use assassination+shadow+aedric spear over assassination+animal companions+shadow or assassination+animal companions+restorting light(with warden as base class to get warden's class mastery)just shows your absence of game knowledge

Major_Mangle · April 26

SkaraMinoc wrote: »

MashmalloMan wrote: »

SkaraMinoc wrote: »

There's not enough Crit Resist in the game for Update 46.

A player with 7 Impen (14%), CP slottable (10%), Rallying Cry solo (25%), and base stats (20%) has a total of 69% resist. If we're saying group, Rallying goes down maybe 5% on avg, but add Transmutation for 21%, total 85% resist.

At that point, you're back to the base 1.5x crit DMG taken in comparison to your initial example of 2.3x.

This is all true. But as you're probably aware, crit damage is subtracted from crit resist and then compared with the crit cap. So if your crit damage is in the 140-160% range you're still going to have lots of crit damage after Rallying/Transmutation is applied. Also, you'd need something like 6000-7000 crit resist to counter 140-160% crit damage with Farstrider.

I won't dive into the theorycrafting but in U46 it's definitely possible to have so much crit damage that there's just nothing a target player can do to avoid 80, 90, or 100%+ final crit damage taken.

Sounds good to me, damage should always be significantly stronger than defence or else PvP becomes a defensive nightmare filled with too many stalemates.

xylena_lazarow · April 26

Assassin tree is absolutely broken and not just the double spec bow. The passives blow away every other offensive tree. Veiled Strike and its morphs consistently hit players for 8-9k plus a 2-3k status proc, more than most ultimates or cast time skills, on top of secondary effects. Plus they have a bad habit of registering the hit on the server before the animation plays, making it look like you're hit from across the screen. Wasn't that the reason they added cast times to NB ults?

SkaraMinoc · April 26

Prionyx wrote: »

SkaraMinoc wrote: »

Shadow for stealth
Assassination 10% crit damage
Aedric Spear 10% crit damage plus Burning Light (buffed in U46) and Balanced Warrior
Monomyth Reforged 20% crit damage
Scribing for heals

That's 40% crit damage right out of the gate on top of Khajiit (12%), Shadow (11%), Minor Force, Minor Brittle.

Total: 83% crit damage + 50% base = 133% crit damage

Doesn't include Medium armor bonus or Farstrider debuff.

There's not enough Crit Resist in the game for Update 46.

The fact that you want to use assassination+shadow+aedric spear over assassination+animal companions+shadow or assassination+animal companions+restorting light(with warden as base class to get warden's class mastery)just shows your absence of game knowledge

Oh look, another forum warrior🤣

The fact that you need Warden's class mastery or Restoring Light to PvP just shows your absence of game knowledge.

Duke_Falcon · April 26

Nightblade is hands down the strongest class in the game already. I can't see subclassing hurting it at all. lol Enjoy the power nightblades! lol

Prionyx · April 26

SkaraMinoc wrote: »

Prionyx wrote: »

SkaraMinoc wrote: »

Shadow for stealth
Assassination 10% crit damage
Aedric Spear 10% crit damage plus Burning Light (buffed in U46) and Balanced Warrior
Monomyth Reforged 20% crit damage
Scribing for heals

That's 40% crit damage right out of the gate on top of Khajiit (12%), Shadow (11%), Minor Force, Minor Brittle.

Total: 83% crit damage + 50% base = 133% crit damage

Doesn't include Medium armor bonus or Farstrider debuff.

There's not enough Crit Resist in the game for Update 46.

The fact that you want to use assassination+shadow+aedric spear over assassination+animal companions+shadow or assassination+animal companions+restorting light(with warden as base class to get warden's class mastery)just shows your absence of game knowledge

Oh look, another forum warrior🤣

The fact that you need Warden's class mastery or Restoring Light to PvP just shows your absence of game knowledge.

A sheer fact that NA player says this is very funny

Zyaneth_Bal · April 27

Crit damage already dominates pvp on live and with the bump in power it got on pts it is overwhelmingly powerful. Most will builds will still turtle until they have their combo ready but what’s going to happen is builds that don’t lean into crit will no longer be competitive making pvp even more stale.

FoJul · April 28

Prionyx wrote: »

SkaraMinoc wrote: »

Prionyx wrote: »

SkaraMinoc wrote: »

Shadow for stealth
Assassination 10% crit damage
Aedric Spear 10% crit damage plus Burning Light (buffed in U46) and Balanced Warrior
Monomyth Reforged 20% crit damage
Scribing for heals

That's 40% crit damage right out of the gate on top of Khajiit (12%), Shadow (11%), Minor Force, Minor Brittle.

Total: 83% crit damage + 50% base = 133% crit damage

Doesn't include Medium armor bonus or Farstrider debuff.

There's not enough Crit Resist in the game for Update 46.

The fact that you want to use assassination+shadow+aedric spear over assassination+animal companions+shadow or assassination+animal companions+restorting light(with warden as base class to get warden's class mastery)just shows your absence of game knowledge

Oh look, another forum warrior🤣

The fact that you need Warden's class mastery or Restoring Light to PvP just shows your absence of game knowledge.

A sheer fact that NA player says this is very funny

I haven't died on pts to anyone using warden skill lines.

The stacking animal companions and restoring light does seem to be "meta" already.Especially the players that like to turtle up.

I've noticed that they are sacrificing quite a bit of damage when they do this. So to me it doesn't feel like an issue.

The warden charm is cancer to fight, but I'm on a range build with major and minor expedition and snare immunity. So it's usually avoidable.

Cleanses aren't going to matter when you get hit by a 20k bow 20k incap and then another 20k bow.

katorga · April 28

FoJul wrote: »

Prionyx wrote: »

SkaraMinoc wrote: »

Prionyx wrote: »

SkaraMinoc wrote: »

Shadow for stealth
Assassination 10% crit damage
Aedric Spear 10% crit damage plus Burning Light (buffed in U46) and Balanced Warrior
Monomyth Reforged 20% crit damage
Scribing for heals

That's 40% crit damage right out of the gate on top of Khajiit (12%), Shadow (11%), Minor Force, Minor Brittle.

Total: 83% crit damage + 50% base = 133% crit damage

Doesn't include Medium armor bonus or Farstrider debuff.

There's not enough Crit Resist in the game for Update 46.

The fact that you want to use assassination+shadow+aedric spear over assassination+animal companions+shadow or assassination+animal companions+restorting light(with warden as base class to get warden's class mastery)just shows your absence of game knowledge

Oh look, another forum warrior🤣

The fact that you need Warden's class mastery or Restoring Light to PvP just shows your absence of game knowledge.

A sheer fact that NA player says this is very funny

I haven't died on pts to anyone using warden skill lines.

The stacking animal companions and restoring light does seem to be "meta" already.Especially the players that like to turtle up.

I've noticed that they are sacrificing quite a bit of damage when they do this. So to me it doesn't feel like an issue.

The warden charm is cancer to fight, but I'm on a range build with major and minor expedition and snare immunity. So it's usually avoidable.

Cleanses aren't going to matter when you get hit by a 20k bow 20k incap and then another 20k bow.

Wrong warden skill line, Winters embrace, spam frost staff crushing/LA into 20K bow x2 ....threads of war/draugrkin. All ranged.

Your are making it too complicated.

Or just stack penetration sets. You will get more than enough crit/damage from subclassing. 30K pen plus over 50% crit, over 100% crit damage is going to be devastating.

xylena_lazarow · April 28

FoJul wrote: »

Cleanses aren't going to matter when you get hit by a 20k bow 20k incap and then another 20k bow

This is the objectively correct take. You don't even need an optimized build.

FoJul · April 28

YandereGirlfriend wrote: »

Free 9% Crit Chance for flanking is beyond broken. Even more so in the context of the rest of the skill line.

That should be reverted back to Pen ASAP.

Id rather have pen anyways, to stack with Gravelord. The crit chance nerfs suprise attack.

xylena_lazarow · April 28

FoJul wrote: »

Id rather have pen anyways, to stack with Gravelord. The crit chance nerfs suprise attack.

Crit chance is a lot harder to source than pen. They give pen away for free these days.

FoJul · April 28

xylena_lazarow wrote: »

FoJul wrote: »

Id rather have pen anyways, to stack with Gravelord. The crit chance nerfs suprise attack.

Crit chance is a lot harder to source than pen. They give pen away for free these days.

Well the only reason i dislike the change, is because my stamblade playstyle relies on Suprise attack, and now the pen flanking bonus is now crit chance, which suprise attacks are guranteed crits already from the flank.

Suprise attack is still useful, but the passive doesn't make sense for a Stam blade style build.

There is no real alternative to suprise attack for the traditional stamblade build.

katorga · April 28

FoJul wrote: »

xylena_lazarow wrote: »

FoJul wrote: »

Id rather have pen anyways, to stack with Gravelord. The crit chance nerfs suprise attack.

Crit chance is a lot harder to source than pen. They give pen away for free these days.

There is no real alternative to suprise attack for the traditional stamblade build.

Traditional builds have been obsolete for a while. Whenever I trot out my old school MagSorc build, i just feel like I have to make too much effort, too many GCD buffing, lining up burst and shielding to stay alive for a single kill. Other builds are faster, more efficient and more effective.

ArctosCethlenn · April 28

We're allowing for over-generating stacks for this ability, so missing activation on the final stack don’t severely reduce the effectiveness of this ability - which adds up over the course of the fight. Now it allows for more wiggle room, letting you chamber up to 2 shots if you reach max stacks - which also allows for more creative use as well

As everyone has said, letting assassination bank two merciless procs to fire back to back is a massive mistake for pvp. If the goal is to add a bit of wiggle room to make it harder to waste stacks, just change it to 7 or so stacks while still consuming 5; some wiggle, but no obscene burst capability. Especially considering the risk of folks comboing the merciless procs around a delayed burst proc like shalks, curse or backlash.

FoJul · April 28

ArctosCethlenn wrote: »

We're allowing for over-generating stacks for this ability, so missing activation on the final stack don’t severely reduce the effectiveness of this ability - which adds up over the course of the fight. Now it allows for more wiggle room, letting you chamber up to 2 shots if you reach max stacks - which also allows for more creative use as well

As everyone has said, letting assassination bank two merciless procs to fire back to back is a massive mistake for pvp. If the goal is to add a bit of wiggle room to make it harder to waste stacks, just change it to 7 or so stacks while still consuming 5; some wiggle, but no obscene burst capability. Especially considering the risk of folks comboing the merciless procs around a delayed burst proc like shalks, curse or backlash.

Man didn't even mention the Cro/bow one shot burst @Gopher

katorga wrote: »

FoJul wrote: »

xylena_lazarow wrote: »

FoJul wrote: »

Id rather have pen anyways, to stack with Gravelord. The crit chance nerfs suprise attack.

Crit chance is a lot harder to source than pen. They give pen away for free these days.

There is no real alternative to suprise attack for the traditional stamblade build.

Traditional builds have been obsolete for a while. Whenever I trot out my old school MagSorc build, i just feel like I have to make too much effort, too many GCD buffing, lining up burst and shielding to stay alive for a single kill. Other builds are faster, more efficient and more effective.

Obsolete or not, my Stam blade is still strong on live. This change is a slight nerf to my playstyle. In the end, I prolly wont notice a huge difference.

With a skill line like Gravelord, or Herald, or whatever I may chose, I can prolly still make up for that little bit of flanking pen loss.

Or, zos can recognized that suprise attack is a spammable, and is prolly going to be the main ability hit from the flank. They could make suprise attack apply major breach or even a unique penetration on top of sundered.

IDK tho, just opinions.

ArctosCethlenn · April 28

I still also think merciless/relentless damage should be separated into an initial hit + short duration dot, personally, from 100% direct to like 66% direct 34% dot over three or four seconds. Same damage per cast and pve basically uneffected, but slightly reduces the oneshottiness of the skill in pvp, if only to cut down on complaints about getting instantly killed.

xylena_lazarow · April 28

ArctosCethlenn wrote: »

I still also think merciless/relentless damage should be separated into an initial hit + short duration dot

Make it so slow it bleeds into a 2nd gcd too. They must know StamSorc pain.

FoJul · April 28

ArctosCethlenn wrote: »

I still also think merciless/relentless damage should be separated into an initial hit + short duration dot, personally, from 100% direct to like 66% direct 34% dot over three or four seconds. Same damage per cast and pve basically uneffected, but slightly reduces the oneshottiness of the skill in pvp, if only to cut down on complaints about getting instantly killed.

I wont lie, as I'm more of a pressure rangeblade playstyle, this change would actually be hilariously strong for my build. I'm down with this.

FoJul · April 28

FoJul wrote: »

ArctosCethlenn wrote: »

We're allowing for over-generating stacks for this ability, so missing activation on the final stack don’t severely reduce the effectiveness of this ability - which adds up over the course of the fight. Now it allows for more wiggle room, letting you chamber up to 2 shots if you reach max stacks - which also allows for more creative use as well

As everyone has said, letting assassination bank two merciless procs to fire back to back is a massive mistake for pvp. If the goal is to add a bit of wiggle room to make it harder to waste stacks, just change it to 7 or so stacks while still consuming 5; some wiggle, but no obscene burst capability. Especially considering the risk of folks comboing the merciless procs around a delayed burst proc like shalks, curse or backlash.

Man didn't even mention the Cro/bow one shot burst @Gopher

katorga wrote: »

FoJul wrote: »

xylena_lazarow wrote: »

FoJul wrote: »

Id rather have pen anyways, to stack with Gravelord. The crit chance nerfs suprise attack.

Crit chance is a lot harder to source than pen. They give pen away for free these days.

There is no real alternative to suprise attack for the traditional stamblade build.

Traditional builds have been obsolete for a while. Whenever I trot out my old school MagSorc build, i just feel like I have to make too much effort, too many GCD buffing, lining up burst and shielding to stay alive for a single kill. Other builds are faster, more efficient and more effective.

Obsolete or not, my Stam blade is still strong on live. This change is a slight nerf to my playstyle. In the end, I prolly wont notice a huge difference.

With a skill line like Gravelord, or Herald, or whatever I may chose, I can prolly still make up for that little bit of flanking pen loss.

Or, zos can recognized that suprise attack is a spammable, and is prolly going to be the main ability hit from the flank. They could make suprise attack apply major breach or even a unique penetration on top of sundered.

IDK tho, just opinions.

Blastbones+Merciless and other dots.

I call it the Cro and Bow
credits to @Gopher

xylena_lazarow · April 28

No that's not gonna fix it lol. Still crazy busted. Whole thing needs to be nuked.

necro_the_crafter · April 28

xylena_lazarow wrote: »

No that's not gonna fix it lol. Still crazy busted. Whole thing needs to be nuked.

Seems like some ZoS employess want to have fun with double spec bow on live.

If I was a responsible for class balance in this game, you would see necromancers have triple blastbones as a base skill, a collosus that follows a target and smashes it every 2 seconds for meteor worth of damage, skulls that paralyse every third hit, and consuming a cropse would grant you a 1000 weapon and spell damage for 10 hours stacking up to seven times.

katorga · April 28

necro_the_crafter wrote: »

xylena_lazarow wrote: »

No that's not gonna fix it lol. Still crazy busted. Whole thing needs to be nuked.

Seems like some ZoS employess want to have fun with double spec bow on live.

If I was a responsible for class balance in this game, you would see necromancers have triple blastbones as a base skill, a collosus that follows a target and smashes it every 2 seconds for meteor worth of damage, skulls that paralyse every third hit, and consuming a cropse would grant you a 1000 weapon and spell damage for 10 hours stacking up to seven times.

Those are some great suggestions for Necro improvements!

I'm still steamed that ZOS slowly but surely destroyed my favorite class to play in ALL mmos.

Still haunting curse + BB into Bow....while surrounded by a swarm of body blocking pets.

Mayrael · April 28

Hey, you know what? This is going to bring balance to the class skill lines faster than we can imagine, especially with all the overpowered combos out there. And the best part? Nerfs won't be inevitable anymore. If something gets nerfed too much, we can always look for alternatives.

Balance will emerge once the chaos settles.

Tommy_The_Gun · April 28

xylena_lazarow wrote: »

No that's not gonna fix it lol. Still crazy busted. Whole thing needs to be nuked.

With all due respect, they would have to nuke pretty much EVERYTHING so that sub-classing or multi-classing system would not produce game breaking results. It is not the fault of class skills. Those were never designed to be paired in combo with skills or passives sourced from the other class. And it is not just stacking crit chance or penetration or raw spell / weapon damage. Currently, you can also stack sustain skills & passives or damage reduction. Like for real, on PTS you can actually make something that is close to perma-streak build by using sustain skills that sorc was never meant to have (just like NB was never meant to have templar skill line & vice versa). Worst part is that ZOS instead of backing out from this idea & making it limited to a certain degree is making this system with pretty much no penalties & drawbacks and (most likely) they 100% know that it will destroy any balance that is left in this game and will cause a wave of nerfs that will follow. And it is not like one patch will fix it, oh no. People will find whatever next is the most broken combination and use that. It will be repeated a couple of times till we are left with a useless class skills and sub-classing will be a necessity rather than something optional - which is something it should be in a 1st place - something optional and not something that will launch the meta into the orbit.

JobooAGS · April 28

Looks like they’re keeping the double grim focus proc. Well, I guess we all know what every dd build will have -_-

xylena_lazarow · April 28

Tommy_The_Gun wrote: »

With all due respect, they would have to nuke pretty much EVERYTHING

No just Assassin. Nothing else is doubling up on 20k nukes, nothing else is spamming 8-12k hits with pen proc, and the most loaded offensive passives of any tree by a mile. Take away subclassing and now we're back to an awful NB meta instead of an awful Sorc meta.