My NB build and I can't play the way I like

LegacyDM

Let me start off by saying that I have been playing since beta. I am a capped lvl 14 and have spent a lot of time fine tuning my build. In all the mmos I play, I roll a glass canon burst build. I figured it would be fun to play a stealth assassin NB in pvp and just silently wreck people in Zergs. Silently Get in and get out as quick as possible doing the most damage I can using sneak to my advantage. But because this game is elder shields online, cloak is broken, perm roots, detect invis pots, and sorcerers can blink half away across the map instantly, this build is only good for two things. Ganking people on horseback or killing the dimwits that are attacking to far away from their Zerg group.

In case anyone is interested here is my build.

Wood elf for stealth bonuses.
The Shadow ~ critical Strike Damage

Max attribute points into health.
5/5 Stygian set using two pieces as daggers
5/5 warlock set using one piece for necklace
2 PvP dominion loops for rings with max spell damage on each.
Vampire for speed passive

Bar 1
Impale
Shadow cloak
Piercing mark
Concealed weapon
Ambush
Soul harvest

Bar2
Illustrious healing
Regeneration
Blur
Camaflouged hunter
Swallow soul
PvP Dominion healing staff

Now don't get me wrong, when I do find some unsuspecting player that is not paying attention, I do insane damage. However, in the thick of the battle, this style of play and build is pretty lackluster and mitigated severely for the reasons mentioned above. Let's analyze my strategy for each scenario.

Unbuffed non paying attention player
I load up camoflauged hunter and blur
Ambush target
Pop cloak
Conceal weapon
impale if near death else soul harvest
Dead

Buffed player in thick of battle
Can't do *** because their 360 degree perm shield mitigates any burst glass canon damage possible. Shades doesn't work to drain enough stamina
Can't do *** because as soon as I hit they blink away and or have shields up.
Can't do *** because as soon as I hit they talon me and or have shields up. I dodge away simply to be retaloned again and again.
Can't do *** because in prolonged fights with shields I run out of magic and stamina faster than the guy with the shield.
Can't use fear because the enemy player shield blocks through it, breaks the stun, costs to much, and grants an immunity timer for the enemy.

Ok, so If I am unsuccessful I should just be able to restealth and sneak away to live another day and try again. Nope. Cloak doesn't work. I cloak and for some reason, even if my eye is completly closed, players are still able to hit me (Crushing shock , and etc.) Ok maybe I should try dark cloak to remove negative affects. Nope same result. I've been reduced to stacking blur with cloak to give me an edge in trying to get away. Cloak should be on par with blink or else give us our speed boost back from speed eq stacking.

In conclusion, here are the problems I have with this game.

1. Perm roots
2. 360 shield blocking
3. Perm shield block + casting
4. Skills not working that are critical to play styles.
5. Everyone forced to invest all points into health. If you have less than 3k hp in cyrodil you are cannon fodder.
6. Detect invis and invis pots.

Everyone can stealth in this game. Why should all players have an invis advantage with pots, that works better than NB stealth! Why should all players get to detect NB with pots?! Stealth should be a unique advantage to us! The one thing that sets night blades apart should be cloak and DPS. If neither works well, the nightblade is forced to become a shield, tanking, and healing character forced to invest all points into health, or reduced to only being able to kill those on horseback from stealth.

This is not play the way you like.

I know many people will respond and say, I don't have any problems, L2P. However, even you can't ignore that cloak is broken and shields are OP with 360 blocking and perm damage mitigation. The point of this post is to stress that ZOS has successfully restricted gameplay to shields, tanks, and health. There is little room for nightblade glass cannons outside of ganking the unbuffed.

Gyudan

The game will get a very significant change with update 6 and the champion system, with the removal of the softcaps, the modifications on light/medium/heavy armor and the passives unlocked with champion points.

It is very likely that your build will feel more to your liking soon.

NordJitsu

So basically you want to be able wreck everyone from stealth with no counterplay options for other people to beat you.

NB is crazy good in pvp now.

Suntzu1414

Gyudan wrote: »

The game will get a very significant change with update 6 and the champion system, with the removal of the softcaps, the modifications on light/medium/heavy armor and the passives unlocked with champion points.

It is very likely that your build will feel more to your liking soon.

I agree.. i'm withholding judgement till update 6.

...that being said.
I've found s+b with NB...with the right build, can increase sustainability / survivability against groups "significantly".

Just pick/choose your battles...


Kill Well
ST

Gilvoth

i will be examining the champion system very closely and doing alot of testing and analyzing, i do agree with you that right now nightblade stamina builds are just not worth playing when compared to the other classes. i also have been here since beta so i have had alot of time and experiance in testing all that a nightblade can do. i have every single nightblade skill maxed out at 50 or as high as they can be reached. and i am also a v14.
there were fights i was able to outskill stronger aponents only because they were playing poorly and did not know how to hande me only because they seem to not have played much in pvp, and also in the pve side i did see some improvements. but overall the nightblade is just not a good class right now.
i will look into the champion system very diligently and with great interest and test every aspect of it, and take it from there. will that make me un-sub? "no" but if it still is not working for my nightblade after a few months of deep testing ad number crunching and analyzing and testing testing testing, then i will probably be playing eso alot less, and i can assure you i am not alone in that way of thinking.

LegacyDM

NordJitsu wrote: »

So basically you want to be able wreck everyone from stealth with no counterplay options for other people to beat you.

NB is crazy good in pvp now.

Yeah the NB that use sword and board with force siphon are extremely good right now.

And what is the counter to perm 360 shield block with cast and perm root? Shades? Fear? No. I think balance is extremely in sword and board and tank favor right now. basically neutered burst builds Ristricting them to situational or ganking. Now I agree with other posts. Maybe burst/gank builds will be more viable in update 6. However, unless things significantly change with shields and roots, this game is elder shields online for the win. Perm 360 shield blocking with perm casting neuteres any chance of burst. I think ZOS should take a hard look at shield blocking and sneak mechanics rather than waste time on changing skills that aren't broken (I'm looking at you, haste and spectral bow.

I

Suntzu1414 wrote: »

Gyudan wrote: »

The game will get a very significant change with update 6 and the champion system, with the removal of the softcaps, the modifications on light/medium/heavy armor and the passives unlocked with champion points.

It is very likely that your build will feel more to your liking soon.

I agree.. i'm withholding judgement till update 6.

...that being said.
I've found s+b with NB...with the right build, can increase sustainability / survivability against groups "significantly".

Just pick/choose your battles...


Kill Well
ST

I agree and I do pick my battles. By picking my battles you mean I stand aside, twiddle my thumbs in sneak, and wait for a noob to drop his shield so I can quickly ambush in for a kill and try to get out only for sneak to not work. As it stands right now there is no counter to 360 blocking and casting. All it does is drain my magicka and stamina.

morvegil

I agree. The best pvpers all use shields for a reason. A night blade with a shield sounds dumb as hell and I'm not giving in.

aco5712

seriously shades and fear are your best friends. DKs have a hard time letting go of the block button and within 10 seconds they will have no stamina and then you can go hard. Seriously, shades and fear is a nice combo

miahq

The potions are an ES staple, and I don't see a problem with them at all. 360 degree blocking and being able to cast through a block are stupid, yes. That should've been changed a long time ago.

As for waiting for the champion system, I've a few worries about that being the great savior they hope it will be.

For one, they're limiting stacking buffs. But I can't find anyone who knows if this is just skill buffs or if it also includes armor set and potion buffs as well.

Another is that all the stats are being multiplied by 10. Ok... Well what about costs? You think spamming is a problem now, if they don't also increase the costs of skills then it just becomes ridiculous.

Everyone else is so focused on only getting 30cp and screaming how they've been lied to, I'm more worried about the changes to the game mechanics, as there seems to be a lot to be wary of. You're worried about not being able to do enough damage? That might get a lot worse.

That's not based on nothing, so far that's he direction they've been going, nerfing abilities to increase survivability. And so far they've not been willing to engage on what's going into 1.6 beyond what have essentially been marketing campaigns to get people excited about it

LegacyDM

aco5712 wrote: »

seriously shades and fear are your best friends. DKs have a hard time letting go of the block button and within 10 seconds they will have no stamina and then you can go hard. Seriously, shades and fear is a nice combo

I must be doing something wrong because I have a completly different experience with shades and fear. All DKs I encounter just hold shield until shades expires and then I recast and they continue to hold shield and it becomes an indefinite cycle. Hell I cast shades on DKs in the thick of battle while they are tanking swarms of people it it doest do ***. It's like they have nlimited stamina resource pool. Fear doesn't work all the time and when it does they just block through it or break out granting them an immunity timer. Also fear costs so much just for it to fail! Again they never seem to run out of stamina to drop their shields. On top of that they get magicka damage reducing shield spells which lasts for 20 secs. there never seems to be a window for me to burst in.

Cody

joshdm2001_ESO wrote: »

aco5712 wrote: »

seriously shades and fear are your best friends. DKs have a hard time letting go of the block button and within 10 seconds they will have no stamina and then you can go hard. Seriously, shades and fear is a nice combo

I must be doing something wrong because I have a completly different experience with shades and fear. All DKs I encounter just hold shield until shades expires and then I recast and they continue to hold shield and it becomes an indefinite cycle. Hell I cast shades on DKs in the thick of battle while they are tanking swarms of people it it doest do ***. It's like they have nlimited stamina resource pool. Fear doesn't work all the time and when it does they just block through it or break out granting them an immunity timer. Also fear costs so much just for it to fail! Again they never seem to run out of stamina to drop their shields. On top of that they get magicka damage reducing shield spells which lasts for 20 secs. there never seems to be a window for me to burst in.

perma block builds... gotta love them

LegacyDM

miahq wrote: »

The potions are an ES staple, and I don't see a problem with them at all. 360 degree blocking and being able to cast through a block are stupid, yes. That should've been changed a long time ago.

As for waiting for the champion system, I've a few worries about that being the great savior they hope it will be.

For one, they're limiting stacking buffs. But I can't find anyone who knows if this is just skill buffs or if it also includes armor set and potion buffs as well.

Another is that all the stats are being multiplied by 10. Ok... Well what about costs? You think spamming is a problem now, if they don't also increase the costs of skills then it just becomes ridiculous.

Everyone else is so focused on only getting 30cp and screaming how they've been lied to, I'm more worried about the changes to the game mechanics, as there seems to be a lot to be wary of. You're worried about not being able to do enough damage? That might get a lot worse.

That's not based on nothing, so far that's he direction they've been going, nerfing abilities to increase survivability. And so far they've not been willing to engage on what's going into 1.6 beyond what have essentially been marketing campaigns to get people excited about it

really the only problem I have with potions is the instant invis. Why doesn't our cloak work like that? I agree I'm worried about the mechanics.

miahq

joshdm2001_ESO wrote: »

miahq wrote: »

The potions are an ES staple, and I don't see a problem with them at all. 360 degree blocking and being able to cast through a block are stupid, yes. That should've been changed a long time ago.

As for waiting for the champion system, I've a few worries about that being the great savior they hope it will be.

For one, they're limiting stacking buffs. But I can't find anyone who knows if this is just skill buffs or if it also includes armor set and potion buffs as well.

Another is that all the stats are being multiplied by 10. Ok... Well what about costs? You think spamming is a problem now, if they don't also increase the costs of skills then it just becomes ridiculous.

Everyone else is so focused on only getting 30cp and screaming how they've been lied to, I'm more worried about the changes to the game mechanics, as there seems to be a lot to be wary of. You're worried about not being able to do enough damage? That might get a lot worse.

That's not based on nothing, so far that's he direction they've been going, nerfing abilities to increase survivability. And so far they've not been willing to engage on what's going into 1.6 beyond what have essentially been marketing campaigns to get people excited about it

really the only problem I have with potions is the instant invis. Why doesn't our cloak work like that? I agree I'm worried about the mechanics.

I'd agree the cloak should work just the same as the potion, yes.

LegacyDM

morvegil wrote: »

I agree. The best pvpers all use shields for a reason. A night blade with a shield sounds dumb as hell and I'm not giving in.

That's the problem with pvp. It's too tank heavy. Elder shields online. There's no room for a glass cannon. If your a glass canon your stuck to ganking people on horseback, or a support character who can finish the job when an enemy is getting zerged and will die anyway.

apostate9

It's like sailing on an ocean of tears in here...

timidobserver

Yes OP, you are right you should be able to just stealth around oneshotting competent players because you have an assassin fantasy.

GlassHalfFull

I read your whole post, and the skill choices look rather good to me, except for one. I gave up on Blur about three months ago. I would like to know why you find it is worth using at this present time, I may need to revisit it.

Cody

GlassHalfFull wrote: »

I read your whole post, and the skill choices look rather good to me, except for one. I gave up on Blur about three months ago. I would like to know why you find it is worth using at this present time, I may need to revisit it.

don't use it. Trust me. I have had a NB since beta. DO NOT use Blur. Use another skill

LegacyDM

timidobserver wrote: »

Yes OP, you are right you should be able to just stealth around oneshotting competent players because you have an assassin fantasy.

No. I have a glass canon whose ENTIRE damage is mitigated by a shield. There is a huge inbalance in shield and damage mitigation favor. Stealthy duel wield assassin characters suck in this game.

LegacyDM

GlassHalfFull wrote: »

I read your whole post, and the skill choices look rather good to me, except for one. I gave up on Blur about three months ago. I would like to know why you find it is worth using at this present time, I may need to revisit it.

I flip flop between skills. Sometimes I use dampen magicka other times I use mirage. I have no real good reason for using it other than it slightly improves my ability to get away when using mist form or the famous broken cloak. You really could use what you think is best.

LegacyDM

They need to change mirage to a damage mitigation shield. They need to give NB an enemy stamina debuff skill. Cause currently the only way to drain an opponents stamina is shades. Contrary to what some people say shades doesn't do enough damage and takes to long. The results are lackluster. They need to give NB an instant heal. We are the only class without a big heal.