NB damage is not the problem. Performance and artificial combat delays are the problem.

xylena_lazarow

A while back, artificial cast times and travel delays were added to NB burst skills supposedly to give casual players a better chance to respond in time.

One problem here is the way lag interacts with these artificial delays. It's pretty miserable for both the NB and their target. The sounds and animations fail to line up, you don't know if or when exactly your skills will fire or land, and it's incredibly difficult to anticipate between the inconsistency of the delays and how it breaks the normal rhythm of combat by default. Stronger NB players can overcome the disadvantage and still sound good on a broken instrument, but it becomes hard inaccessible for casual NB players to learn.

On top of that, stronger NB players will learn how to animation cancel medium attack weave combos such that the entire combo can fire without any animation at all during lag, so every casual player who gets hit by this invisible lag combo nonsense still has no idea how to counter it and thinks it's hacking. Yes I have done this, no I could never do it reliably, I'm not sure it can be done reliably given the random nature of Cyro lag. There's also heavy attack into cast time ult combos on NB and other classes that can sometimes do this.

Being hit by massive burst damage with no animation sucks, but it's not the fault of the damage itself. You probably wouldn't eat that hit if NB and Cyro worked properly.

Chori

Some things will just never change Xy. I got back into the game a couple weeks ago after almost 4 years being out.

Eventho the playstyle changed, the meta changed, new classes were added.. and now everything is hybrid.. the delay interaction with the lag didn't change.

We might get too old waiting for that to happen.

Jabbs_Giggity

Chori wrote: »

Some things will just never change Xy. I got back into the game a couple weeks ago after almost 4 years being out.

Eventho the playstyle changed, the meta changed, new classes were added.. and now everything is hybrid.. the delay interaction with the lag didn't change.

We might get too old waiting for that to happen.

That is kinda the OP's point...natural delays, due to lag, are cast time enough...I can't even imagine that PVE players aren't still sore about cast times.

Cast times basically null and voided the very aspect of ESO that set it apart from every other MMO with cast time and cool downs.

It was just very unhealthy for the game to cater to casual PVPers. We were all once new and/or casuals in PVP - we grouped with more experienced players and learned the PVP curve. And believe me, PVP in ESO is a big learning curve.

Jabbs_Giggity

xylena_lazarow wrote: »

A while back, artificial cast times and travel delays were added to NB burst skills supposedly to give casual players a better chance to respond in time.

One problem here is the way lag interacts with these artificial delays. It's pretty miserable for both the NB and their target. The sounds and animations fail to line up, you don't know if or when exactly your skills will fire or land, and it's incredibly difficult to anticipate between the inconsistency of the delays and how it breaks the normal rhythm of combat by default. Stronger NB players can overcome the disadvantage and still sound good on a broken instrument, but it becomes hard inaccessible for casual NB players to learn.

On top of that, stronger NB players will learn how to animation cancel medium attack weave combos such that the entire combo can fire without any animation at all during lag, so every casual player who gets hit by this invisible lag combo nonsense still has no idea how to counter it and thinks it's hacking. Yes I have done this, no I could never do it reliably, I'm not sure it can be done reliably given the random nature of Cyro lag. There's also heavy attack into cast time ult combos on NB and other classes that can sometimes do this.

Being hit by massive burst damage with no animation sucks, but it's not the fault of the damage itself. You probably wouldn't eat that hit if NB and Cyro worked properly.

Agreed. I don't play my NB as much as I want simply because of this. Just trying to use Concealed Weapon in PVP emits steam from my nostrils...Ambush delay is the most frustrating skill in the game to use...

xylena_lazarow

Jabbs_Giggity wrote: »

It was just very unhealthy for the game to cater to casual PVPers. We were all once new and/or casuals in PVP - we grouped with more experienced players and learned the PVP curve. And believe me, PVP in ESO is a big learning curve.

The sad part is it just made the game worse for everyone. Tryhard NBs still delete casual players with invisible combos, while a casual NB player faces an even more brutal learning curve than ever, having to master artificially induced lag in their combos on top of the normal lag and an unforgiving obtuse metagame.

It's part of the general trend of blanket nerfing damage to try to help casual players survive, only to make the tryhard ball groups and tower lovers that troll and grief them even more "unkillable" than ever.

Jabbs_Giggity

xylena_lazarow wrote: »

Jabbs_Giggity wrote: »

It was just very unhealthy for the game to cater to casual PVPers. We were all once new and/or casuals in PVP - we grouped with more experienced players and learned the PVP curve. And believe me, PVP in ESO is a big learning curve.

The sad part is it just made the game worse for everyone. Tryhard NBs still delete casual players with invisible combos, while a casual NB player faces an even more brutal learning curve than ever, having to master artificially induced lag in their combos on top of the normal lag and an unforgiving obtuse metagame.

It's part of the general trend of blanket nerfing damage to try to help casual players survive, only to make the tryhard ball groups and tower lovers that troll and grief them even more "unkillable" than ever.

Definitely made tankier builds more relevant. As more builds build to withstand mediocre damage, it takes more and more players to kill. I guess 1vXers got their solo gameplay back...

xylena_lazarow

Jabbs_Giggity wrote: »

Definitely made tankier builds more relevant. As more builds build to withstand mediocre damage, it takes more and more players to kill. I guess 1vXers got their solo gameplay back...

You can wreck groups of disorganized casuals just as easily as ever, but against average to tryhard players, encounters are dominated by stalling, tanking, healing, stalling, and stalemates. The average zerger is a 38k hp Pariah tankhealbot, probably running in a group of other such builds all spamming heals on each other. And don't even get me started on the competitive ball groups with 9/12 healer comps. It's really bad like, don't even bother showing up, your time will be wasted even if you eventually win, so many fights are literally decided by one side getting bored and leaving the objective.

Jabbs_Giggity

xylena_lazarow wrote: »

Jabbs_Giggity wrote: »

Definitely made tankier builds more relevant. As more builds build to withstand mediocre damage, it takes more and more players to kill. I guess 1vXers got their solo gameplay back...

You can wreck groups of disorganized casuals just as easily as ever, but against average to tryhard players, encounters are dominated by stalling, tanking, healing, stalling, and stalemates. The average zerger is a 38k hp Pariah tankhealbot, probably running in a group of other such builds all spamming heals on each other. And don't even get me started on the competitive ball groups with 9/12 healer comps. It's really bad like, don't even bother showing up, your time will be wasted even if you eventually win, so many fights are literally decided by one side getting bored and leaving the objective.

Yeah, current state of PVP isn't much different than when I left ESO. The only difference is now you have mythics that mitigate 40% of initial damage, insane heals across every class (sets make this worse) and 75% mitigation from mist form. Not much is new, just the overkill on self healing and ease to build tankier.

I remember when you had to build for either Health, Magicka or Stamina. Building for M or S corresponded to damage output by sacrificing survivability. Now with the excess of nearly every class being able to outperform Templar in healing, you have massive ball groups that just won't go down.

I have seen ball groups barely flinch against entire server pops inside Sej and Bleaks. Recently, I have seen the two-three man groups of Vamp DKs that just mist 95% of the time and 12 man groups can't even take them down. I use double resource poisons now and even those do nothing against these Vamp DK's.

DrNukenstein

I love the cast time on Deathstroke. I hope they never take it away because I would have a much harder time dunking noobs without that second skill that comes out virtually as soon as the ult finishes casting. That .4 cast time is the "delayed burst" of the Nightblade kit.

MetallicMonk

I mean there are definitely larger issues at play in the game at the moment but NB is by no means balanced lol

Vulkunne

xylena_lazarow wrote: »

A while back, artificial cast times and travel delays were added to NB burst skills supposedly to give casual players a better chance to respond in time.

One problem here is the way lag interacts with these artificial delays. It's pretty miserable for both the NB and their target. The sounds and animations fail to line up, you don't know if or when exactly your skills will fire or land, and it's incredibly difficult to anticipate between the inconsistency of the delays and how it breaks the normal rhythm of combat by default. Stronger NB players can overcome the disadvantage and still sound good on a broken instrument, but it becomes hard inaccessible for casual NB players to learn.

On top of that, stronger NB players will learn how to animation cancel medium attack weave combos such that the entire combo can fire without any animation at all during lag, so every casual player who gets hit by this invisible lag combo nonsense still has no idea how to counter it and thinks it's hacking. Yes I have done this, no I could never do it reliably, I'm not sure it can be done reliably given the random nature of Cyro lag. There's also heavy attack into cast time ult combos on NB and other classes that can sometimes do this.

Being hit by massive burst damage with no animation sucks, but it's not the fault of the damage itself. You probably wouldn't eat that hit if NB and Cyro worked properly.

Nothing can be done. Hey, I respect what you're saying here for certain... (and to some extent after playing PvP once again over the last few weeks) I can understand your frustration. I've run into quite a few NB (and even some Necro) bombers and while I understand its part of the game, it gets old real fast because it seems there is no reasonable counter to them. Note this was not a problem in the no-proc Cyrodiil Servers where I personally think the game was much more enjoyable without bombers or most procs at all.

But the NB class, for those of you out there who remember it back from launch, has been torched horribly. Yes it is true that in recent times they have turned down the heat a little and given the NB some tweaks, but anyone playing a NB is going to tell you two things...

a) We only get one shot. If we skunk our shot we're usually dead and unable to cloak.
b) NB healing sucks... Especially if you want to keep invisibility cloak and then along with that, factor in all the nerfs to healing recently and you can understand how NB is in a really bad place outside of hit and run situations.

NB needs to be able to purge cloak again and get extra benefits from pots, like the Argonian has now, as was originally intended. Otherwise you're going to either have to lose invisibility and play like a DK or keep invisibility with terrible healing options and have a contentious, lousy experience either way.

Obviously for people comfortable with NB there are more options which I'm not going to discuss here but that is the exception, not the rule. My point is, NB attacks can be annoying, but those are mostly from bombers... *from bomber builds* and is NOT the fault of the Class itself... There is a big difference here and it needs to be realized instead of taking the NB back to the meat grinder *again* and *again* and *again* and trying to hack at something that now really is mostly bone and fat.

xylena_lazarow

Vulkunne wrote: »

But the NB class, for those of you out there who remember it back from launch, has been torched horribly.

MetallicMonk wrote: »

I mean there are definitely larger issues at play in the game at the moment but NB is by no means balanced lol

NB was so beautifully fast and fluid before all the artificial lag nerfs, no amount of 28k spectral bows will ever make the class feel as good as it once did for me. Its current strength in the meta can thank all the blanket nerfs that destroyed most other forms of PvP damage, and its degenerate survivability with all the busted generic defensive tools available.

Zekka

Vulkunne wrote: »

But the NB class, for those of you out there who remember it back from launch, has been torched horribly. Yes it is true that in recent times they have turned down the heat a little and given the NB some tweaks, but anyone playing a NB is going to tell you two things...

a) We only get one shot. If we skunk our shot we're usually dead and unable to cloak.
b) NB healing sucks... Especially if you want to keep invisibility cloak and then along with that, factor in all the nerfs to healing recently and you can understand how NB is in a really bad place outside of hit and run situations.

Yeah, the class with the most powerful disengagement tool in the game is so risky to play...
And the healing is so bad... it's not like it received the second best self heal in the game after coag on top of all the other heals like refreshing path, bow proc heal based on its damage which routinely hits for 5 digits, siphoning strikes etc... just so bad.
But "muh frail glass cannon class " when the nbs you see these days are better brawler than even the designated bruiser classes, with cloak still silencing and canceling a bunch of *** and the class even has class access to rare buffs like major evasion.

Vulkunne wrote: »

NB needs to be able to purge cloak again

lmao.
Nb players live on another realm that isn't Nirn, but don't worry you'll get it with GilliamTheSpreadsheeter around.
With incap bricking your opponent's PC at 120 ult in U38.

baselesschart

Zekka wrote: »

Yeah, the class with the most powerful disengagement tool in the game is so risky to play...
And the healing is so bad... it's not like it received the second best self heal in the game after coag on top of all the other heals like refreshing path, bow proc heal based on its damage which routinely hits for 5 digits, siphoning strikes etc... just so bad.
But "muh frail glass cannon class " when the nbs you see these days are better brawler than even the designated bruiser classes, with cloak still silencing and canceling a bunch of *** and the class even has class access to rare buffs like major evasion.

.

It is still a risky class to play with a high learning curve. If you've never played nightblade before or you are inexperienced you will struggle. I will agree that the healing on refreshing path could be toned down a little but as far as raw damage mitigation via passives, nightblade doesn't have it that good. Shadow barrier is the best that it has to offer for mitigation and survivability.

Also major evasion is not that hard to get. Elude/shuffle provides it and anybody in the game has access to that regardless of class.

PhoenixGrey

baselesschart wrote: »

Zekka wrote: »

Yeah, the class with the most powerful disengagement tool in the game is so risky to play...
And the healing is so bad... it's not like it received the second best self heal in the game after coag on top of all the other heals like refreshing path, bow proc heal based on its damage which routinely hits for 5 digits, siphoning strikes etc... just so bad.
But "muh frail glass cannon class " when the nbs you see these days are better brawler than even the designated bruiser classes, with cloak still silencing and canceling a bunch of *** and the class even has class access to rare buffs like major evasion.

.

It is still a risky class to play with a high learning curve. If you've never played nightblade before or you are inexperienced you will struggle. I will agree that the healing on refreshing path could be toned down a little but as far as raw damage mitigation via passives, nightblade doesn't have it that good. Shadow barrier is the best that it has to offer for mitigation and survivability.

Also major evasion is not that hard to get. Elude/shuffle provides it and anybody in the game has access to that regardless of class.

Why do you need damage mitigation if you have cloak, shade and a battle spirit exempt heal? You can literally avoid all damage instead of mitigating it lol.

If you struggle to survive on nb then pvp probably isn’t meant for you.

xylena_lazarow

PhoenixGrey wrote: »

If you struggle to survive on nb then pvp probably isn’t meant for you

NB has a brutal learning curve. You're underestimating your own skill and experience, while also underestimating how hard it has become to learn NB for inexperienced players (Dunning Kruger effect). You seem to forget who the easiest targets in any of this game's PvP modes are: casual NB players. You know, all the "18k hp bow/bow snipe spammer" memes.

baselesschart

PhoenixGrey wrote: »

Why do you need damage mitigation if you have cloak, shade and a battle spirit exempt heal? You can literally avoid all damage instead of mitigating it lol.

If you struggle to survive on nb then pvp probably isn’t meant for you.

The majority of the time I don't need raw mitigation if I have LoS. But if I'm in an open field, I'm more than likely done for. Cloak has so many counters to it, shade works best when placed next to LoS hence why I'd be at a severe disadvantage in an open environment.

I don't really have an issue staying alive on nightblade cause i've put nearly 3k hours into the class. But I had a steeper learning curve to conquer than someone who started on a warden or necro.

Nightblade has all the deadly tools at its disposal but a mediocre player is going to have trouble utilizing them effectively.

MEBengalsFan2001

Sounds to me like the game is in need of a full revamp from the ground up. This includes everything in the game.