Skills malfunctioning - Shooting blanks

raistin87

During my gameplay today, I noticed the following: Sometime skills do no (I mean literally no damage) despite animation and sounds effects taking place and magicka being subtracted from my pool. In short, it feeling like you shoot blanks.

Some additional info a gathered:

• From a first hand experience, the following skills are affected: Veiled strike (NB), Strife (NB), Death Strike (NB)
• While skills do no damage, secondary effect (such stun in the case of Veiled strike) do transpire.
• I only started noticing this after the patch 1.1.2 was brough life.
• After some testing, I concluded that "shooting blanks" is unrelated to animation cancelling.
• More players are experiencing this issue. (References to this issue buriend for example here: http://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/discussion/102125/bolt-escape-nerfed-hard#latest and here: http://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/discussion/100627/nightblade-update/p13)
• This is NOT a NB specific issue (see the ffirst reference in the previosu bullet)

I wholeheartedly hope this is a bug not a feature as it (at least in my case) makes the game significantly less enjoyable or even near implayable. I would dare to say this is even more gamebreaking than the memory leak and/or the unintended buff of veteran mobs.

Please share you experience / comments and theories. The more activity this thread sees, the sooner the issue get noticed (and ultimately fixed) by the developers (assuming this is a bug in the first place).

Baphomet

This happens to me, too. Sometimes when I die in Cyrodiil, none of my attacks will connect anymore and I have to relog in order to fix it.

crislevin

Thanks, bolt escape is one of the victims.

zhevon

Thanks, that probably why my NB has been even less viable than usual.

Crescent

Lightning Flood and Summon Storm Astronarch are the same. I activate it, lose the magicka, but the spell does not go off.

Basically anything with a targeting reticle is having issues.

HazardousNovex

For the night blade skills it has been happening since launch, the dev's apparently fixed it, because they put it in the patch notes, but this seems to disprove that.

Ilterendi

I just recently noticed that surprise attack is actually giving mobs more armor rather than taking it away... All said, I fail to be surprised now by the sweeping number of bugs...

JayDoc

Pack of 3 VR8 trash mobs (bloodfiends), all standing within slapping distance of me - pop Talons, step back...only the furthest one is affected (by root OR damage). This occurred many more times in separate encounters, occasionally holding 2 but never all 3 (or 4?).

I figured, since they shouldn't present THAT much of a threat - I would just 1h/s & flame lash them down...shield charge took a chunk of stamina, character went into a 'charging' pose, sound activated...then just stood there as the 'whoosh' sound kept going. I was able to manually slide (still in 'charging' pose) toward the mob and attack, but /reloadui was needed to fix the animation (activated, no effect). This happened many times, in the MOST inconvenient places (I slotted it for the stun, dammit).

Silver shards now only knock down daedra/undead occasionally, and the worst offender (I have many more) is the light attack delay/lag/stutter. Even IF the mechanic was never supposed to be able to 'weave' light attacks between skills, I can no longer even rely on this when trying to just use light attack repeatedly on its own.

Hopefully it also was NOT intended, but Pulsar will now occasionally pick a mob or two from the pack...and decide that they are just not going to take damage. I can stand spamming Pulsar (while blocking) and watch a mob or two finally die toward the outside of the ring...but the ones closest to me are taking NO damage (but still beating the crap out of me).

Oh..almost forgot - my shield/damage mitigation/blocking passives now only work on occasion. My light armor passives have needed a relog to reactivate after every other death since the beginning, but now I have a new barrage of failing things that were chosen to keep me alive.

I've been experimenting with all of these things in the VR8 area, where mobs have now become ridiculous caricatures of their former selves...I have NEVER, until this past patch, been hit for over 500 damage (WHILE BLOCKING) on a light attack by a SKELETON.

I've tried to stick it out through the VR grind, honestly...but now, I am just levelling a lowbie alt and having a helluva lot more fun. In the VR levels, every missed block, phantom skill effect, failed proc, vacationing passive effect, 3-second weapon swap, activation lag, or arbitrarily selective damages applied - can ALL lead to another death, and missed opportunity.

Evergreen

zhevon wrote: »

Thanks, that probably why my NB has been even less viable than usual.

Yeah I'm glad this is not just a Nightblade issue and something every class seems to be experiencing. I spend magicka on vanish to interrupt an uppercut but nothing happens and I'm pulverized. At VR 7 content its easy to die when your skills go off unreliably. Is Zenimax aware of this issue?

Censorious

Thank (insert deity of choice) that everyone is having similar problems.

If it were just one class/skill having problems we could expect it to be shelved until the devs got round to it but it looks like a lot of skills across all classes are malfunctioning.

I wonder what they screwed up?

sagitter

For all NB:

I've found that "Swallow Soul" skill, is not working properly:
If u start the fight using it for first id doesn t give back the correct ammount of hot,
it's like 4% instead of 25%.

here is a screen shot:
postimg.org/image/wkdvslmbd/

I had this issue before last patch only few times, but now really often.

Tobiz

I sometimes see grayed out abilities as if out of range, e.g. the restoration HoT which targets self, so its not a range thing. I mostly do PVE when this happens.
Can be one or more of my abilities and more often the self targeted.

Halrloprillalar

crislevin wrote: »

Thanks, bolt escape is one of the victims.

happens with C-shards too

zhevon

It also seems to happen less during off peak hours; it might be my imagination or coincidence.

Jeremy

Tobiz wrote: »

I sometimes see grayed out abilities as if out of range, e.g. the restoration HoT which targets self, so its not a range thing. I mostly do PVE when this happens.
Can be one or more of my abilities and more often the self targeted.

This has been happening to me also - and seems to happen most with my healing over time abilities just as you say.
-
Hope they fix it cause it's been driving me nuts.

jambam817_ESO

I've noticed it happens with "Impale" a lot. This is the Nightblade Finisher with a range on it. usually its one shot after 20% and they take a dirt nap, but I've noticed sometimes the animation appears, the sound happens, but the HP bar doesn't move a smidgeon and i must use it again immediately after to have it fire correctly. Even if i fire a bit before 20% i still see Impale take its measley 150ish damage off, so these situations are a bug I'm sure.