What is the counter to blocking?

hassubhai

?

React

Burning them down until they run out of resources.

Power of the light is really good against permanent blockers now too.

Turelus

Anything which hits them many times fast or stamina draining skills.

zammo

Mass Hysteria

Ocelot9x

Well,people will say drain their stam pool,hard cc etc. but to me there's no counter,especially if you're a stam dk/sorc/temp relying on dizzying swing as your cc. Mdk can permablock easily 2-3 people and there's no way to make even an average player finish his stam pool. I started slotting ballista to dry fast their stam,but many of them just run shield ulti in backbar. I think blockcasting (not animation canceling,i love it and i cried when they took away our sweet wrecking blow+heavy attack) need to be addressed.

Joy_Division

If the opponent is a perma-block tank (usually a DK), the best counter and most intelligent play is to ignore them entirely. These builds rely on player being potatoes.

If the opponent has a more well-rounded build and is using block, she won't be able to maintain that block under pressure. NBs (fear), DKs (fossilize), and sorcs (curse) all have attacks that go through block. While wearing down their stamina, I suggest heavy attacking and DoTs so you dont wear out your own resources.

Dral_Shady

Its not really like blocking is killing droves of people in pvp but hey maybe Im wrong.

TheBonesXXX

Smashing their input device with a hammer!

Xeniph

Turelus wrote: »

Anything which hits them many times fast or stamina draining skills.

This is misleading. As block is hard coded to charge 1140 stamina (with no modifiers) every half second, regardless of how many attacks are blocked. Most folks don't know this and assume you can throw caltrops down on a perma blocker and drain resources.

But you can be sure everyone who has built a perma blocker for pvp purposes knows this. I think the cheapest I was able to get block was around 640 every half second. Couple that with heavy armor and a set or 2 that return resources and this is how you get perma blockers.

Truly the 2 best ways to deal with perma blockers are to use non-blockable skills, like mages fury, power of the light ect. Or to just ignore them.
Aoe CC is hit or miss, but can work depending on the blockers ping and amount of folks hitting them at the time block drops.

However, I assure you, you can not run a person speced for blocking out of resources no matter how many are hitting them if they understand the mechanics.

Dread_Guy

I find light attacking works well. The cost of blocking a light attack is the same as blocking abilities so I keep light attacking until they are low on stamina then CC

Reverb

Patience, and Stam draining poisons.

Minalan

Reverb wrote: »

Patience, and Stam draining poisons.

Magicka poisons if they're a blockplar.

Dral_Shady wrote: »

Its not really like blocking is killing droves of people in pvp but hey maybe Im wrong.

No but there's always that one ***-head that caps all of the resources around a middle keep and thinks it's hilarious to have 15 guy wailing on him.

The counter is poisons. Slot one on your second bar. If ZOS won't balance *** like this it's time to do it ourselves.

Wreuntzylla

Xeniph wrote: »

Turelus wrote: »

Anything which hits them many times fast or stamina draining skills.

This is misleading. As block is hard coded to charge 1140 stamina (with no modifiers) every half second, regardless of how many attacks are blocked. Most folks don't know this and assume you can throw caltrops down on a perma blocker and drain resources.

But you can be sure everyone who has built a perma blocker for pvp purposes knows this. I think the cheapest I was able to get block was around 640 every half second. Couple that with heavy armor and a set or 2 that return resources and this is how you get perma blockers.

Truly the 2 best ways to deal with perma blockers are to use non-blockable skills, like mages fury, power of the light ect. Or to just ignore them.
Aoe CC is hit or miss, but can work depending on the blockers ping and amount of folks hitting them at the time block drops.

However, I assure you, you can not run a person speced for blocking out of resources no matter how many are hitting them if they understand the mechanics.

The point of caltrops or any other fast ticking AoE isn't to run them out of stamina by itself, it's to drain stamina through block while you use skills that don't result in a block cost but force your opponent to use stamina on other things, like break free or heals. It can take a couple minutes (1-2 potion cycles), but if you know the mechanics you can solo a blocker.

There is a non-soloable flavor of perma-blocker that goes the whole nine yards by enchanting 1-3 pieces of jewelry with block cost reduction, specs very high into CP block cost reduction and wears all sturdy. They either do so little damage you can ignore them or are killable in the space of the break free animation by a couple players due to the lack of impenetrable.

Here is a very detailed dev post on the mechanics. [url] https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/265399/detailed-explanation-of-block-cost-changes/p1[/url] The minimum cost you can achieve is 400 stam.

Note that I have yet to run into a frost staff tank that also uses 1h/s, so my comments have nothing to do with that particular form of cancer.

CyrusArya

If they are a useless permablock tank, the best thing is to just ignore em cus they are a non factor if ppl pay em no mind.

For more potent block based builds, skills that go through block are the obvious counter. But what really shreds a block build is a spec based on dots and bleeds. A glass cannon dual wield stamina dk, sorc, or templar will tear a block build asunder.

NBrookus

Joy_Division wrote: »

If the opponent is a perma-block tank (usually a DK), the best counter and most intelligent play is to ignore them entirely. These builds rely on player being potatoes.

If the opponent has a more well-rounded build and is using block, she won't be able to maintain that block under pressure. NBs (fear), DKs (fossilize), and sorcs (curse) all have attacks that go through block. While wearing down their stamina, I suggest heavy attacking and DoTs so you dont wear out your own resources.

Also EoTS.

In the case of MagDKs, most of whom rely heavily on blocking for damage mitigation -- since we don't have strong shield -- a negate + heavy damage will usually kill them.

But yeah, if they are blocking and doing nothing else, ignore them until last.

arkansas_ESO

Petrify, resource poisons, fear, root spam (Encase, Talons) to make them use stam dodge rolling to reposition, Eye of the Storm, etc etc. Permablock's annoying but there's definitely counters.

Xeniph

Poisons don't effect block cost, just so y'all know.

Now if they are stupid enough to spam stam abilities, maybe you will drain them. Worth a shot I suppose.

arkansas_ESO wrote: »

Petrify, resource poisons, fear, root spam (Encase, Talons) to make them use stam dodge rolling to reposition, Eye of the Storm, etc etc. Permablock's annoying but there's definitely counters.

Most perma blocker use shuffle or the 2h root immunity. So no dodge rolling.

Metemsycosis

Dral_Shady wrote: »

Its not really like blocking is killing droves of people in pvp but hey maybe Im wrong.

I just imagined armies of argonian dragonknights night capping pvdooring and maintaining 99% of cyrodiil for the next year because nobody can clear them from a single flag.

olsborg

Shame the blocking builds dont rly rely too much on stamregen at all, they get their stam back through constitution or other means that give stamreturn. Ppl can block (if they build for it) way too easily these days.

Feedinginsanity

While these suggestions may all seem like they could work, it is actually a lot harder than that. For poisons, I have extended ritual, I have immovable pots, and a lot of recovery with my Templar build, mass hysteria doesn't really even affect me because of how little it costs me to break free. 40 points into tumbling, 4 heavy attacks and I am back to full stamina once again. Not to mention that my main point being is that I would end up killing you way before you start hurting my health bar, if it's a nightblade they die in 2 seconds regardless of their setup.

For a stamsorc I have 4 self heals, my health bar is always looking good, and I use Wrobles Revenge so if I just wanted to perma block and not end you in 2 seconds, you would know.

For stamdk you have the best resource management in the game. Whose bright idea was it to say that DKs have no burst and that only nightblades succeed in this game?

Stamplar, I have extended ritual, a lot of recovery with my build, and I have so much tankiness in medium armor because of bloodspawn.

Nightblade, I have a mountain of stamina with siphoning attacks and I only hold block to make my heals more effective.

All of this "perma blocking tanky characters" that you speak of do not hold block forever because that is pointless. The whole purpose of using a sword and board is so that people can have a lot of damage mitigation while healing to make heals more effective.

DHale

Fear for night blade, luminous shards for Templar, fossilize for DK, negate for sorcs (doesn't drop block but seems to do the trick).