Molten Whip is out of control

SkaraMinoc

2 DKs with unhealable levels of pressure.



No healer on green and they clapped both of the other teams. (Deathmatch)



I haven't seen damage like this since pre-nerf Dark Convergence + Hrothgar.

SkaraMinoc

In addition, the defensive property of Corrosive Armor is unacceptable.

xylena_lazarow

SkaraMinoc wrote: »

unhealable levels of pressure

Good, the game needs more encounters where you can't just out-heal indefinitely but need to kill them before they kill you. Now the defensive buff on Corrosive, maybe you have a point, but instead of nerfing Corrosive maybe we could buff the sort of DoT pressure builds that are good against it...

SkaraMinoc

xylena_lazarow wrote: »

SkaraMinoc wrote: »

unhealable levels of pressure

Good, the game needs more encounters where you can't just out-heal indefinitely but need to kill them before they kill you. Now the defensive buff on Corrosive, maybe you have a point, but instead of nerfing Corrosive maybe we could buff the sort of DoT pressure builds that are good against it...

The time-to-kill against DKs is off the charts but that's only part of the problem. Even if they had very little survivability, those 12-16k spammable whips are still unacceptable. Oakensoul is partially to blame but Corrosive Armor is the primary reason.

taugrim

xylena_lazarow wrote: »

SkaraMinoc wrote: »

unhealable levels of pressure

Good, the game needs more encounters where you can't just out-heal indefinitely but need to kill them before they kill you.

It's not a counter to just mindlessly spam a spammable ability. There's zero counterplay on the part of the healer.

divnyi

I believe Corrosive could have less protection than other morph just because how strong is offensive tool it provides. Something like 5% hp cap instead of 3% hp.

divnyi

As for the whips, you need to understand that huge number whips on death screens are often lucky crits from medium armor users with no crit chance boosts. So like +10% from armor, +20% from oaken Major Force...

OBJnoob

While it may point to something unhealthy that the green team had no healers but still won… or that you put out 3m heals and refer to their damage as unhealable pressure… let’s note that this game still ended up timing out with the winners not even reaching 400. It’s not like people were dying left and right, is it?

That being said… still fully agree Corrosive is a culprit on its own and even worsens some of our other new culprits. I don’t think the defensive capabilities need to be nerfed though. As someone else said on another thread… “it’s called corrosive armor not corrosive weapon.” Let’s nerf the offensive instead.

React

Corrosive definitely needs a nerf. The oakensoul ring, which is what is enabling some of these huge numbers right now, also needs a nerf.

Honestley, I think at this point in time corrosive should lose the defensive portion entirely. To compensate, increase the damage of the aoe dot by a large margin (such as 1.5x or double it's current damage). It'll still be basically the strongest offensive ult in the game, but won't have the ridiculous mitigation it does currentley to boot. Magma shell morph would then become the defensive morph for people that want that option.

The oakensoul needs the heroism and the force removed completley, at least as far as pvp goes. The ring is way overloaded currentley, and builds like the "90% uptime corrosive/10-15k whip spam" setups should not be possible within the game.

merpins

React wrote: »

Corrosive definitely needs a nerf. The oakensoul ring, which is what is enabling some of these huge numbers right now, also needs a nerf.

Honestley, I think at this point in time corrosive should lose the defensive portion entirely. To compensate, increase the damage of the aoe dot by a large margin (such as 1.5x or double it's current damage). It'll still be basically the strongest offensive ult in the game, but won't have the ridiculous mitigation it does currentley to boot. Magma shell morph would then become the defensive morph for people that want that option.

The oakensoul needs the heroism and the force removed completley, at least as far as pvp goes. The ring is way overloaded currentley, and builds like the "90% uptime corrosive/10-15k whip spam" setups should not be possible within the game.

The ring is in the right place for PVE. For PVP, it could use some tuning. ZoS needs to balance PVE and PVP separately, else an item like Oakensoul, which is designed to help players that need help, will be a dead item.

In PVP, Heroism is overtuned. But it's more the fact that DK is overtuned, and the heroism makes DK's op mostly due to corrosive armor. I think the ring should be balanced in PVP, which is to say it should have heroism disabled in PVP or at the very least reduced to minor while in PVP. Nothing else needs changing really. Then DK's corrosive armor's ulti cost should be increased to 350 if not 400. These two changes would put the ring where it needs to be in PVP; an item that helps people rather than an item DK's can abuse, and it would help tone down the indestructible DKs that appear in BGs.

React

MovesLikeJaguar wrote: »

React wrote: »

Corrosive definitely needs a nerf. The oakensoul ring, which is what is enabling some of these huge numbers right now, also needs a nerf.

Honestley, I think at this point in time corrosive should lose the defensive portion entirely. To compensate, increase the damage of the aoe dot by a large margin (such as 1.5x or double it's current damage). It'll still be basically the strongest offensive ult in the game, but won't have the ridiculous mitigation it does currentley to boot. Magma shell morph would then become the defensive morph for people that want that option.

The oakensoul needs the heroism and the force removed completley, at least as far as pvp goes. The ring is way overloaded currentley, and builds like the "90% uptime corrosive/10-15k whip spam" setups should not be possible within the game.

The ring is in the right place for PVE. For PVP, it could use some tuning. ZoS needs to balance PVE and PVP separately, else an item like Oakensoul, which is designed to help players that need help, will be a dead item.

In PVP, Heroism is overtuned. But it's more the fact that DK is overtuned, and the heroism makes DK's op mostly due to corrosive armor. I think the ring should be balanced in PVP, which is to say it should have heroism disabled in PVP or at the very least reduced to minor while in PVP. Nothing else needs changing really. Then DK's corrosive armor's ulti cost should be increased to 350 if not 400. These two changes would put the ring where it needs to be in PVP; an item that helps people rather than an item DK's can abuse, and it would help tone down the indestructible DKs that appear in BGs.

Well this thread is primarily about corrosive & dk, but I'll share my thoughts on the ring aswell.

There is quite a lot more wrong with the ring in pvp than just the corrosive spam setup.

Gankers are dealing 1.5x more damage than before, and are tankier w/ better sustain than they've ever had. I truly haven't seen this many gankers present in pvp in the game's entire history, and the reason they're doing it is because the ring is making it easy to do.

One bar magplars are dealing ridiculous amounts of damage because of all the modifiers the ring grants. At the same time, the main counterplay of bursting them on their front bar is moot, as they've all got access to their burst heal instantly on their one bar. In xv1 or outnumbered scenarios, these players have become nearly unkillable.

There are also some extremely problematic defensive ult spam setups that are making groups/individuals unkillable. Ults like warden trees, resto ult, and templar practiced incantation are being used with 70-80% uptime in certain scenarios. There have been some necro tanks that have figured out they can be flat out unkillable on one bar, with enough ult gen to have resurrection ultimates ready every 30-40 seconds - making their groups more or less unbeatable.

Arcanasx

Maybe they could change the molten whip morph so instead of adding damage directly to the whip itself, it would apply a DOT that spreads the extra damage out over a duration. For example, landing a molten whip with three stacks, the DOT would theoretically do as much damage as the direct damage portion but spread out over six seconds with three separate ticks of damage. Also casting the whip regardless if it lands or not should use up the stacks.

This would also be more thematically fitting since dragon knights were made to be a more pressure focused class as well.

As for corrosive, it might be too strong now, but back then after they removed the full penetration from DOTs and before hybridization, DKs were rarely using it, overwhelmingly preferring leap instead.

A large part in corrosives somewhat recent popularity was the result of it starting to work with magicka skills, like whip. Another thing to consider has been the increase of the average health pool in PvP over time, and when combined with easier access to the evasion buff (medium armor changes), it makes sense that these changes have also resulted in an indirect nerf to leap, which by itself would push more DKs to use corrosive.

Then of course there's brokensoul on top of that, which is perhaps the most broken thing ever implemented.

Basically, maybe corrosive does need an adjustment still, but imo I think making changes to whip, and removing both major force and heroism from the one mythic to rule them all first, and then making the necessary adjustments to corrosive after if it still needs some would be more prudent.

divnyi

React wrote: »

The oakensoul needs the heroism and the force removed completley

Major Force gives less DPS on average than Major Berserk, unless you stack your crit up to ~60%-ish.

OBJnoob

Dk, whip, and corrosive were all a problem before oakensoul. Why can’t we as a community ever seem to discuss one without the other? I’m really worried that we’re gonna nerf the crap out of something that really isn’t that bad just because we can’t keep our eye on the ball and frankly we’re having knee jerk reactions to some very normal things.

This thread for instance… it doesn’t look like any single person got butchered. The worst score is 4-8. It doesn’t look like anyone is unkillable. The best score is 11-2. The winning team didn’t even manage to reach 400 let alone 500. It looks like a normal bg from a losers perspective to be honest. One person who only died 3 times shows one of their recaps with a couple of strong whips and that’s supposed to be a balance problem? Meh.

Make molten whip increase damage by 25% not 33, stack 4 times (divide the extra spell damage to make 4x equal what 3x used to equal also,) and lose its stacks when cast even if it misses.

Add 50 ulti cost to corrosive and also make it last 2 seconds less.

Remove major heroism and major force from oakensoul and give minor heroism and force instead.

Then let’s see where we stand. That’s a lot to implement all at once— anything more and we’d be guilty of what we all like to accuse zos of (being heavy handed.)

SkaraMinoc

OBJnoob wrote: »

It looks like a normal bg from a losers perspective to be honest.

All I play is Battlegrounds and I've played over 1000 Deathmatch games. I can tell when something is broken.

What you don't see in the screenshot is how sweaty this game was. Green team had complete control of the game due to their raw damage output from Oakensoul and Corrosive Armor. We had to backpedal the entire game or it was a wipe. There were very few opportunities for us to apply pressure because of the uptime on Corrosive Armor.

I lose battlegrounds all the time. It's no big deal. This game was something else.

SkaraMinoc

OBJnoob wrote: »

it doesn’t look like any single person got butchered

Maybe you're used to random Deathmatch games where PvE players go 0-15 but this wasn't one of those games. This was a very high level BG at the top of MMR where everyone had hundreds of hours of Deathmatch experience.

Purple team had a player with 7 deaths and another with 8. That qualifies as butchered. The Stam Sorc on my team with 5 deaths was highly unusual. That is a very good player and one of the best on PC NA. The player names are redacted but purple and orange teams have very good players. The healer on purple is extremely good and their team got ran over.

In high level competitive Deathmatch, it's a big deal when anyone on your team dies. When you have 2, 3, or 4+ deaths per player against a team that has no healer then something is clearly wrong.

EF321

React wrote: »

I truly haven't seen this many gankers present in pvp in the game's entire history, and the reason they're doing it is because the ring is making it easy to do.

Any BG I join appears to be at least 50% gankers on enemy teams

CameraBeardThePirate

divnyi wrote: »

React wrote: »

The oakensoul needs the heroism and the force removed completley

Major Force gives less DPS on average than Major Berserk, unless you stack your crit up to ~60%-ish.

But DPS means nothing in PvP, burst does. Yes major berserk gives a higher average DPS, but the reason you're seeing people run around with oakensoul 1-tapping people is the major force. When it crits (or whenever they want in the case of nightblades), a burst combo with major force deals an absurd amount of damage.

xylena_lazarow

taugrim wrote: »

It's not a counter to just mindlessly spam a spammable ability

Like every fight that gets stalemated by endless burst heal spam? If we're going to nerf DKs, hit Coagulating Blood spam and the mitigation on Corrosive, not their damage. Stop nerfing damage. Players need to die. Fights need to end.

taugrim

SkaraMinoc wrote: »

OBJnoob wrote: »

It looks like a normal bg from a losers perspective to be honest.

All I play is Battlegrounds and I've played over 1000 Deathmatch games. I can tell when something is broken.

What you don't see in the screenshot is how sweaty this game was. Green team had complete control of the game due to their raw damage output from Oakensoul and Corrosive Armor. We had to backpedal the entire game or it was a wipe. There were very few opportunities for us to apply pressure because of the uptime on Corrosive Armor.

I lose battlegrounds all the time. It's no big deal. This game was something else.

SkaraMinoc plays in high(er) MMR and is one of the more skill PVP healers I've faced.

This isn't some noob complaining, it's someone who has a lot of experience.

OBJnoob

I don’t play on the same platform as him but I’m aware of his reputation and I respect it. It doesn’t mean he’s always right. In this case my disagreement would be that he thinks two teams didn’t get beat but were in fact “butchered” and “rolled over again and again,” but in fact the game timed out.

I’m sorry but I firmly disagree and a bunch of people coming to vouch for someone else’s opinion isn’t going to change that.

I guess some of you would feel better if the game had ended 75-100-125 or whatever… me I’d prefer someone reach 500.

So therein lies the difference of opinion. I’ve already agreed with what is overpowered and offered my own two cents for nerfing it. I’m simply suggesting that maybe a little bit of insurmountable damage isn’t a bad thing.

And thinking your team is the best and so and so never dies so 5 deaths is a lot or whatever… oh come on. That’s just ego talking. The worst score on any team is 4-8. Nobody got butchered. You may have gotten butchered in a comparative sense because you’re not used to losing or because you normally lose by less… but take it from me, your high mmr experience isn’t helping you on this it’s hurting you. That’s not getting butchered. You just haven’t been butchered enough to know what it is.

FangOfTheTwoMoons

xylena_lazarow wrote: »

taugrim wrote: »

It's not a counter to just mindlessly spam a spammable ability

Like every fight that gets stalemated by endless burst heal spam? If we're going to nerf DKs, hit Coagulating Blood spam and the mitigation on Corrosive, not their damage. Stop nerfing damage. Players need to die. Fights need to end.

While I agree with the sentiment, no other spammable has the damage output of molten whip at the moment. Partly due to corrosive and oakensoul.

If we're gonna advocate for higher damage like 10k+ molten whips, other classes need to be able to achieve this as well with their spammables.

xylena_lazarow

SkaraMinoc wrote: »

In high level competitive Deathmatch, it's a big deal when anyone on your team dies. When you have 2, 3, or 4+ deaths per player against a team that has no healer then something is clearly wrong.

There's nothing wrong with skilled players dying. It's about time. PvP healing should be hard. It's fine to argue that Corrosive (backed by Coag spam) doesn't give an adequate opportunity to kill the DK before it kills you, but high level players actually killing each other is the best possible thing for this game's PvP. I doubt I'm the only one who lost interest in BGs due to the dominance of healing and defensive comps dragging every competitive match out to timer with a sub-300 victor.

duckdown

molten whip isnt the problem. Its oakensoul with heroism buff is the real problem.

OBJnoob

FangOfTheTwoMoons wrote: »

xylena_lazarow wrote: »

taugrim wrote: »

It's not a counter to just mindlessly spam a spammable ability

Like every fight that gets stalemated by endless burst heal spam? If we're going to nerf DKs, hit Coagulating Blood spam and the mitigation on Corrosive, not their damage. Stop nerfing damage. Players need to die. Fights need to end.

While I agree with the sentiment, no other spammable has the damage output of molten whip at the moment. Partly due to corrosive and oakensoul.

If we're gonna advocate for higher damage like 10k+ molten whips, other classes need to be able to achieve this as well with their spammables.

Molten whip isn’t a spammable for one thing and I’m pretty sure assassins will hits for that much does it not? A procced crystal frag? These are the comparable skills, not spammables.

divnyi

CameraBeardThePirate wrote: »

divnyi wrote: »

React wrote: »

The oakensoul needs the heroism and the force removed completley

Major Force gives less DPS on average than Major Berserk, unless you stack your crit up to ~60%-ish.

But DPS means nothing in PvP, burst does. Yes major berserk gives a higher average DPS, but the reason you're seeing people run around with oakensoul 1-tapping people is the major force. When it crits (or whenever they want in the case of nightblades), a burst combo with major force deals an absurd amount of damage.

Oh but it does matter. DPS that happens in 2GCD, that is.
You can't guarantee crits on 2+ hits. 30%*30% = 9%. If 9% is a chance to kill someone with well-aligned burst, fine, it's not that bad.
You don't kill in one hit, unless you are fire heavy DK gimmick.
Not even NB's guaranteed crit is better than just going Heavy + Skill damage-wise. And regular unbuffed heavy is far from broken.

Dem_kitkats1

xylena_lazarow wrote: »

taugrim wrote: »

It's not a counter to just mindlessly spam a spammable ability

Like every fight that gets stalemated by endless burst heal spam? If we're going to nerf DKs, hit Coagulating Blood spam and the mitigation on Corrosive, not their damage. Stop nerfing damage. Players need to die. Fights need to end.

I'm all for countering healing, but for 2 DKs to completely outperform 2 teams who have millions in healing is the inverse of healing metas; it's not anymore balanced because it's damage. The other teams were not exactly lacking in damage either, so without actual healers, something on the green team was outmitigating damage quite a lot...For 1 class to have that much damage and still be able outmitigate other classes that much without healers means something is op. Damage is good and fine, but it needs to be balanced on all classes.

divnyi

FangOfTheTwoMoons wrote: »

xylena_lazarow wrote: »

taugrim wrote: »

It's not a counter to just mindlessly spam a spammable ability

Like every fight that gets stalemated by endless burst heal spam? If we're going to nerf DKs, hit Coagulating Blood spam and the mitigation on Corrosive, not their damage. Stop nerfing damage. Players need to die. Fights need to end.

While I agree with the sentiment, no other spammable has the damage output of molten whip at the moment. Partly due to corrosive and oakensoul.

If we're gonna advocate for higher damage like 10k+ molten whips, other classes need to be able to achieve this as well with their spammables.

Molten isn't spammable, it is burst damage stacking skill, like NBs Merciless Resolve and Sorcs Bound Armaments. Hits for exact same numbers. Actually NBs hit for higher if you eat merciless out of cloak, I've got 17k hits.

Should DK even have this kind of skill? This is a better question.
So far @Arcanasx makes the most sense with his proposal to convert that damage to DoT.
DK should be about close range pressure, not oneshots.

Theignson

One thing about Death recaps is the numbers are often wrong, at least compared to Combat Metrics. Often I've seen outrageous numbers of damage on death recap that are much lower than CM. When I've tested, Combat Metrics numbers are reliable.

I've now run 9 different builds with Brokensoul.

For mDK with Oakensoul, I had 7400 weapon damage, infinite penetration (Corrosive), 111% critical damage, but my Molten whips were hitting for 6-8k on average. No one shots, and it is hard to see how to get much higher numbers. Maybe all my opponents are blocking. I know I got a couple 10ks, but those are not the average hit.

xDeusEJRx

Theignson wrote: »

One thing about Death recaps is the numbers are often wrong, at least compared to Combat Metrics. Often I've seen outrageous numbers of damage on death recap that are much lower than CM. When I've tested, Combat Metrics numbers are reliable.

I've now run 9 different builds with Brokensoul.

For mDK with Oakensoul, I had 7400 weapon damage, infinite penetration (Corrosive), 111% critical damage, but my Molten whips were hitting for 6-8k on average. No one shots, and it is hard to see how to get much higher numbers. Maybe all my opponents are blocking. I know I got a couple 10ks, but those are not the average hit.

Try bloodthirsty to easily get 10k+ whips non crit. I run mostly bloodthirsty with cost reduction glyphs and you can drop 10k easily with no crits with Oakencheese. On normal end I hit maybe 8k molten whips and from low hp it's almost always 11k-12k+ whips non crit and I don't even use corrosive armor like every other DK does which is the funny part. I use shooting star for my ultimate

xDeusEJRx

divnyi wrote: »

FangOfTheTwoMoons wrote: »

xylena_lazarow wrote: »

taugrim wrote: »

It's not a counter to just mindlessly spam a spammable ability

Like every fight that gets stalemated by endless burst heal spam? If we're going to nerf DKs, hit Coagulating Blood spam and the mitigation on Corrosive, not their damage. Stop nerfing damage. Players need to die. Fights need to end.

While I agree with the sentiment, no other spammable has the damage output of molten whip at the moment. Partly due to corrosive and oakensoul.

If we're gonna advocate for higher damage like 10k+ molten whips, other classes need to be able to achieve this as well with their spammables.

Molten isn't spammable, it is burst damage stacking skill, like NBs Merciless Resolve and Sorcs Bound Armaments. Hits for exact same numbers. Actually NBs hit for higher if you eat merciless out of cloak, I've got 17k hits.

Should DK even have this kind of skill? This is a better question.
So far @Arcanasx makes the most sense with his proposal to convert that damage to DoT.
DK should be about close range pressure, not oneshots.

Nightblades merciless resolve can def hit way harder than whip can. I've gotten 18k+ and I use dark cloak on my NB not shadowy disguise. Though you lose the stacks after usage


Personally I think DK should have access to an ability that strong, but ZOS needs to make it lose stacks of seething fury when activate it not when you land a hit with it.
I dont know why a dk can miss repeatedly and keep spamming it until they finally hit you fully buffed. NB's can't do the same, nor can Sorc with bound armaments. Once you activate the skill, it's gone until you re-build it. But DK can just spam it mindlessly till it finally lands and hits you.