Lower Speed Cap in Combat with Battle Spirit

NuarBlack

I know this idea sounds blasphemous, cause everyone wants to go fast, but I think it is the main imbalance between melee and range at the moment. While the melee range increase helped, desync is still an issue for melee in pvp and high speed exacerbates this issue tremendously.

Plus, I miss the give and take dance of gap closers and gap creators. While now the only one worth using is streak and that is for reasons other than the movement primarily. Cast times of many skills makes them unusable in a meta with such high speed. And it isn't just skills with stated cast times. Simple animation frames make skills feel clunky when players can reach glitchy level of jukes due to just passive speed. It makes the already lackluster combat feel even more incongruent.

Urzigurumash

Every piece of Heavy worn should increase your Damage Done with Melee Direct Damage following the use of a Charge skill

Just like Orc's Swift Warrior passive once upon a time

Because Momentum = Velocity x Mass

Lystrad

I agree though I think the problem is less the levels of speed that can be reached and more the difficulty of shutting that speed down. Just in a general sense I feel like escape abilities are more rewarding to cast then engage abilities. it's very difficult to get an engagement ability that applies soft or hard cc to lock a target down unless you're playing a specific class, but it's very easy to get escapes that increase your movement speed and/or give you immunity to soft cc.

What I would suggest instead of lowering the movement speed cap is to instead remove most forms of immunity to snares, and convert snare abilities into a new major/minor debuff that is the opposite of expedition, then have all melee light attacks apply the minor version as a default, while all gap closers apply the major version.

That way players can still be rewarded with bursts of speed for playing well and timing their escapes, but it's less maintainable.

Bashev

I agree but lets be fair, there are only 2 classes who takes massive advantage of this.

I bet one of them is not the Templar where they have to stay in their house

mmtaniac

Templar is introvert class. But i would like to able to use camper and move my home.

NuarBlack

Lystrad wrote: »

I agree though I think the problem is less the levels of speed that can be reached and more the difficulty of shutting that speed down. Just in a general sense I feel like escape abilities are more rewarding to cast then engage abilities. it's very difficult to get an engagement ability that applies soft or hard cc to lock a target down unless you're playing a specific class, but it's very easy to get escapes that increase your movement speed and/or give you immunity to soft cc.

What I would suggest instead of lowering the movement speed cap is to instead remove most forms of immunity to snares, and convert snare abilities into a new major/minor debuff that is the opposite of expedition, then have all melee light attacks apply the minor version as a default, while all gap closers apply the major version.

That way players can still be rewarded with bursts of speed for playing well and timing their escapes, but it's less maintainable.

Not a bad alternative solution as it achieves a similar goal. Right now active movement skills feel underwhelming, at least for their movement aspects because the distance is negligible compared to someone speed capped.

My only concern to your solution is snow treaders exist. They would become default BiS

xylena_lazarow

The speed cap itself is fine, it's the easy access to speed buffs that they've been giving away like candy. It takes minimal build investment to be moving over 160% in combat and capped at sprint, and not much more to go even faster. Celerity cp doesn't need to exist at all, it just speed creeps the entire game by 10%, speed passives don't need to exist either. I'd go so far as to say using a defensive weapon (SnB, Ice, Resto) should also reduce movement speed in PvP.

LPapirius

Urzigurumash wrote: »

Every piece of Heavy worn should increase your Damage Done with Melee Direct Damage following the use of a Charge skill

Just like Orc's Swift Warrior passive once upon a time

Because Momentum = Velocity x Mass

actually it's mass x velocity squared = energy

NuarBlack

xylena_lazarow wrote: »

The speed cap itself is fine, it's the easy access to speed buffs that they've been giving away like candy. It takes minimal build investment to be moving over 160% in combat and capped at sprint, and not much more to go even faster. Celerity cp doesn't need to exist at all, it just speed creeps the entire game by 10%, speed passives don't need to exist either. I'd go so far as to say using a defensive weapon (SnB, Ice, Resto) should also reduce movement speed in PvP.

Speed is still an issue outside of CP pvp. Celerity is 10% compared to 21% you can get via swift jewelry for instance. Only thing lower might be the bosmer passive.

Plus, movement speed hacks still exist. Took me 2 minutes to find one with comments from August saying it was still working. Lowering the cap should allow for easier detection based on how the hacks work. If you exceed a certain speed it makes it easier to spot. None of the apologetics about how if you build for speed you can achieve it. Not if there is a hard cap that is more reasonable. You know the cap is too high when it starts distorting the animations.

LittlePinkDot

xylena_lazarow wrote: »

The speed cap itself is fine, it's the easy access to speed buffs that they've been giving away like candy. It takes minimal build investment to be moving over 160% in combat and capped at sprint, and not much more to go even faster. Celerity cp doesn't need to exist at all, it just speed creeps the entire game by 10%, speed passives don't need to exist either. I'd go so far as to say using a defensive weapon (SnB, Ice, Resto) should also reduce movement speed in PvP.

Unless you want to delete streak from the game entirely, every other class needs a way to be fast enough to catch a sorc.

StarOfElyon

NuarBlack wrote: »

I know this idea sounds blasphemous, cause everyone wants to go fast, but I think it is the main imbalance between melee and range at the moment. While the melee range increase helped, desync is still an issue for melee in pvp and high speed exacerbates this issue tremendously.

Plus, I miss the give and take dance of gap closers and gap creators. While now the only one worth using is streak and that is for reasons other than the movement primarily. Cast times of many skills makes them unusable in a meta with such high speed. And it isn't just skills with stated cast times. Simple animation frames make skills feel clunky when players can reach glitchy level of jukes due to just passive speed. It makes the already lackluster combat feel even more incongruent.

I said long ago that Swift needs to be nerfed by about 2%. So from a maximum of 7% per trait, it would be a maximum of 5%. Three swift would then be equal to minor expedition. If you want to move faster, it'll take more investment.

Urzigurumash

LPapirius wrote: »

Urzigurumash wrote: »

Every piece of Heavy worn should increase your Damage Done with Melee Direct Damage following the use of a Charge skill

Just like Orc's Swift Warrior passive once upon a time

Because Momentum = Velocity x Mass

actually it's mass x velocity squared = energy

Now you're talking, the Damage Done bonus should increase exponentially based on the distance traveled by the Gap Closer, and should also restore Resources.

Now that BRP Sword and Board makes sense to me, never could quite figure out the logic on that one.

LittlePinkDot

StarOfElyon wrote: »

NuarBlack wrote: »

I know this idea sounds blasphemous, cause everyone wants to go fast, but I think it is the main imbalance between melee and range at the moment. While the melee range increase helped, desync is still an issue for melee in pvp and high speed exacerbates this issue tremendously.

Plus, I miss the give and take dance of gap closers and gap creators. While now the only one worth using is streak and that is for reasons other than the movement primarily. Cast times of many skills makes them unusable in a meta with such high speed. And it isn't just skills with stated cast times. Simple animation frames make skills feel clunky when players can reach glitchy level of jukes due to just passive speed. It makes the already lackluster combat feel even more incongruent.

I said long ago that Swift needs to be nerfed by about 2%. So from a maximum of 7% per trait, it would be a maximum of 5%. Three swift would then be equal to minor expedition. If you want to move faster, it'll take more investment.

I think if people just couldn't immediately break free of stuns it would go along way towards catching people.

But nerfing swift just nerfs particular classes more than others. What is it you expect my Arcanist to do?

There's also snares to slow people down. Rather than nerfing swift I would rather just have better counters.

NuarBlack

LittlePinkDot wrote: »

Unless you want to delete streak from the game entirely, every other class needs a way to be fast enough to catch a sorc.

Gap closers completely counter streak. Further distance and no cost multiplier. You should not be able to counter streak for free. Also, sorcs have the same access to that speed too.

NuarBlack

LittlePinkDot wrote: »

I think if people just couldn't immediately break free of stuns it would go along way towards catching people.

But nerfing swift just nerfs particular classes more than others. What is it you expect my Arcanist to do?

There's also snares to slow people down. Rather than nerfing swift I would rather just have better counters.

No, not being able to play your character is bad. It doesn't feel good. More CC won't make combat feel better, the opposite actually. Cause it will widen the gap between being CC'd and not.

Also, arcanist has plenty of tools. They can slot a gap closer from a number of skill lines. They also have a movement skill that is good or would be good if passive speed was brought more in line.

LittlePinkDot

NuarBlack wrote: »

LittlePinkDot wrote: »

Unless you want to delete streak from the game entirely, every other class needs a way to be fast enough to catch a sorc.

Gap closers completely counter streak. Further distance and no cost multiplier. You should not be able to counter streak for free. Also, sorcs have the same access to that speed too.

Not every class has gap closers or the bar space to use them.

LittlePinkDot

NuarBlack wrote: »

LittlePinkDot wrote: »

I think if people just couldn't immediately break free of stuns it would go along way towards catching people.

But nerfing swift just nerfs particular classes more than others. What is it you expect my Arcanist to do?

There's also snares to slow people down. Rather than nerfing swift I would rather just have better counters.

No, not being able to play your character is bad. It doesn't feel good. More CC won't make combat feel better, the opposite actually. Cause it will widen the gap between being CC'd and not.

Also, arcanist has plenty of tools. They can slot a gap closer from a number of skill lines. They also have a movement skill that is good or would be good if passive speed was brought more in line.

If you are talking about that apocryphal gate skill. It's buggy if the ground isn't flat. It also should just be 1 click like streak. Instead of like a ground effect that you then have to run through after.

But not everybody wants to use a weapon with a gap closer. Dual wield doesn't have a gap closer for example and it's got the best damage passives.

If stuns and snares aren't impactful then what's the point of having them in the game?
Particularly snares, something that slows you down is a direct counter to swift.

I also think all cast times on melee skills should be removed.

Tommy_The_Gun

NuarBlack wrote: »

Gap closers completely counter streak. Further distance and no cost multiplier. You should not be able to counter streak for free. Also, sorcs have the same access to that speed too.

It is only a Soft counter, so it does not counter the use of the skill. You still moved away and one player can follow you if they have gap closer slotted, but it is not guaranteed and hard to pull of (if sorc streaks 2 times or streaks away & move behind obstacle). It is also not a "free" counter as skills cost resources. It does not have ramping cost as it requires a target to cast.

The only thing that has Hard counter & can be countered completely is stealth & invisibility. Detection skills, potion & sets are this Hard Counter as not only those prohibit the use of the skill & crouch stealth but those also do remove the effect and even if the player re-casts the skill or uses potion it immediately removes the effect again. Hence why for example streak, roll dodge, or the new Vault skill has ramping cost - cuz those only have soft counters. If they had hard counter, then there would exists something would cancel the use of the skill or make it impossible to even cast & you would only keep wasting resources trying.

NuarBlack

Tommy_The_Gun wrote: »

NuarBlack wrote: »

Gap closers completely counter streak. Further distance and no cost multiplier. You should not be able to counter streak for free. Also, sorcs have the same access to that speed too.

It is only a Soft counter, so it does not counter the use of the skill. You still moved away and one player can follow you if they have gap closer slotted, but it is not guaranteed and hard to pull of (if sorc streaks 2 times or streaks away & move behind obstacle). It is also not a "free" counter as skills cost resources. It does not have ramping cost as it requires a target to cast.

The only thing that has Hard counter & can be countered completely is stealth & invisibility. Detection skills, potion & sets are this Hard Counter as not only those prohibit the use of the skill & crouch stealth but those also do remove the effect and even if the player re-casts the skill or uses potion it immediately removes the effect again. Hence why for example streak, roll dodge, or the new Vault skill has ramping cost - cuz those only have soft counters. If they had hard counter, then there would exists something would cancel the use of the skill or make it impossible to even cast & you would only keep wasting resources trying.

Never said it was a free counter. I said all the passive speed in the game is. The sorc also had to slot streak and got stacking cost as well. You still come out ahead. If they double streak then that is two globals, aka you got outplayed.

This idea that you should just be able to run down a streaking sort is wild. It's also why arcanist gate and vamp mist feel bad cause by time the animation ends you are still being ran down. Remove the speed and those skills will feel a lot better I guarantee it.

NuarBlack

LittlePinkDot wrote: »

NuarBlack wrote: »

LittlePinkDot wrote: »

Unless you want to delete streak from the game entirely, every other class needs a way to be fast enough to catch a sorc.

Gap closers completely counter streak. Further distance and no cost multiplier. You should not be able to counter streak for free. Also, sorcs have the same access to that speed too.

Not every class has gap closers or the bar space to use them.

Sounds like a build problem. You want your cake and eat it too it sounds like.

NuarBlack

LittlePinkDot wrote: »

If you are talking about that apocryphal gate skill. It's buggy if the ground isn't flat. It also should just be 1 click like streak. Instead of like a ground effect that you then have to run through after.

But not everybody wants to use a weapon with a gap closer. Dual wield doesn't have a gap closer for example and it's got the best damage passives.

If stuns and snares aren't impactful then what's the point of having them in the game?
Particularly snares, something that slows you down is a direct counter to swift.

I also think all cast times on melee skills should be removed.

Gate feels bad in the current speed meta. 10 years ago gate would have felt awesome. Slow the game back down and it will again.

Quick cloak used to feel really impactfull as well. That was the tradeoff of using dual wield is you got major movement speed while 2h got a gap closer. Lower the speed cap and you will be able to track down streaking sorcs just fine, cause they will be slower too.

LittlePinkDot

NuarBlack wrote: »

Tommy_The_Gun wrote: »

NuarBlack wrote: »

Gap closers completely counter streak. Further distance and no cost multiplier. You should not be able to counter streak for free. Also, sorcs have the same access to that speed too.

It is only a Soft counter, so it does not counter the use of the skill. You still moved away and one player can follow you if they have gap closer slotted, but it is not guaranteed and hard to pull of (if sorc streaks 2 times or streaks away & move behind obstacle). It is also not a "free" counter as skills cost resources. It does not have ramping cost as it requires a target to cast.

The only thing that has Hard counter & can be countered completely is stealth & invisibility. Detection skills, potion & sets are this Hard Counter as not only those prohibit the use of the skill & crouch stealth but those also do remove the effect and even if the player re-casts the skill or uses potion it immediately removes the effect again. Hence why for example streak, roll dodge, or the new Vault skill has ramping cost - cuz those only have soft counters. If they had hard counter, then there would exists something would cancel the use of the skill or make it impossible to even cast & you would only keep wasting resources trying.

Never said it was a free counter. I said all the passive speed in the game is. The sorc also had to slot streak and got stacking cost as well. You still come out ahead. If they double streak then that is two globals, aka you got outplayed.

This idea that you should just be able to run down a streaking sort is wild. It's also why arcanist gate and vamp mist feel bad cause by time the animation ends you are still being ran down. Remove the speed and those skills will feel a lot better I guarantee it.

Get rid of needing to select a point on the ground before running through the apocryphal gate. It's janky on PS5 which is what I play on. It should operate more like streak.

If you want to nerf speed I would rather nerf major expedition.
Not everyone is rich and can afford the gold mats to gold all their jewelry just make swift relevant. Most jewelry I never get past purple unless I bought it from the Golden vendor.

Urzigurumash

NuarBlack wrote: »

Tommy_The_Gun wrote: »

NuarBlack wrote: »

Gap closers completely counter streak. Further distance and no cost multiplier. You should not be able to counter streak for free. Also, sorcs have the same access to that speed too.

It is only a Soft counter, so it does not counter the use of the skill. You still moved away and one player can follow you if they have gap closer slotted, but it is not guaranteed and hard to pull of (if sorc streaks 2 times or streaks away & move behind obstacle). It is also not a "free" counter as skills cost resources. It does not have ramping cost as it requires a target to cast.

The only thing that has Hard counter & can be countered completely is stealth & invisibility. Detection skills, potion & sets are this Hard Counter as not only those prohibit the use of the skill & crouch stealth but those also do remove the effect and even if the player re-casts the skill or uses potion it immediately removes the effect again. Hence why for example streak, roll dodge, or the new Vault skill has ramping cost - cuz those only have soft counters. If they had hard counter, then there would exists something would cancel the use of the skill or make it impossible to even cast & you would only keep wasting resources trying.

Never said it was a free counter. I said all the passive speed in the game is. The sorc also had to slot streak and got stacking cost as well. You still come out ahead. If they double streak then that is two globals, aka you got outplayed.

This idea that you should just be able to run down a streaking sort is wild. It's also why arcanist gate and vamp mist feel bad cause by time the animation ends you are still being ran down. Remove the speed and those skills will feel a lot better I guarantee it.

This is the essential weakness of all Gap Closers in this speed meta including Duel Wield's Gap Closer, Flying Blade. NB's Ambush has the same problem. By the time you've landed a speed capped player would've already been there WITH the luxury of spending the resources and GCD on a buff, Shalks, FoO, etc.

I'm not surprised many players don't even know about Flying Blade, you'd think the No Mobility Skill and formerly No Brutality Skill Necro would've run it once in a while. If its range matched Blastbones maybe it could work:

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/626827/return-hidden-blade-range-to-28m

NuarBlack

LittlePinkDot wrote: »

NuarBlack wrote: »

Tommy_The_Gun wrote: »

NuarBlack wrote: »

Gap closers completely counter streak. Further distance and no cost multiplier. You should not be able to counter streak for free. Also, sorcs have the same access to that speed too.

It is only a Soft counter, so it does not counter the use of the skill. You still moved away and one player can follow you if they have gap closer slotted, but it is not guaranteed and hard to pull of (if sorc streaks 2 times or streaks away & move behind obstacle). It is also not a "free" counter as skills cost resources. It does not have ramping cost as it requires a target to cast.

The only thing that has Hard counter & can be countered completely is stealth & invisibility. Detection skills, potion & sets are this Hard Counter as not only those prohibit the use of the skill & crouch stealth but those also do remove the effect and even if the player re-casts the skill or uses potion it immediately removes the effect again. Hence why for example streak, roll dodge, or the new Vault skill has ramping cost - cuz those only have soft counters. If they had hard counter, then there would exists something would cancel the use of the skill or make it impossible to even cast & you would only keep wasting resources trying.

Never said it was a free counter. I said all the passive speed in the game is. The sorc also had to slot streak and got stacking cost as well. You still come out ahead. If they double streak then that is two globals, aka you got outplayed.

This idea that you should just be able to run down a streaking sort is wild. It's also why arcanist gate and vamp mist feel bad cause by time the animation ends you are still being ran down. Remove the speed and those skills will feel a lot better I guarantee it.

Get rid of needing to select a point on the ground before running through the apocryphal gate. It's janky on PS5 which is what I play on. It should operate more like streak.

If you want to nerf speed I would rather nerf major expedition.
Not everyone is rich and can afford the gold mats to gold all their jewelry just make swift relevant. Most jewelry I never get past purple unless I bought it from the Golden vendor.

Not a complete solution but there is a setting that makes gate cast instantly. I was a long time Playstation player myself. I still use a ps5 controller on PC cause I don't like to hunch over keyboard these days but that setting improves it's functionality tremendously.

I understand why ZoS wants delays on skills like that because it allows reaction time for counter play. All well and good till passive speed is so high you can cover that distance and more before the cast and animation ends.

Nerfing major expedition makes no sense, especially if you are saying gold jewelry is cost prohibitive for most players. Sources of Major expedition are not. Plus I think you should be rewarded for using a global more than something you can get from selling crowns. As that is my whole point, using a global for a movement skill should feel impactful. Instead you can get more speed passively from swift jewelry and celerity CP star.

StarOfElyon

LittlePinkDot wrote: »

StarOfElyon wrote: »

NuarBlack wrote: »

I know this idea sounds blasphemous, cause everyone wants to go fast, but I think it is the main imbalance between melee and range at the moment. While the melee range increase helped, desync is still an issue for melee in pvp and high speed exacerbates this issue tremendously.

Plus, I miss the give and take dance of gap closers and gap creators. While now the only one worth using is streak and that is for reasons other than the movement primarily. Cast times of many skills makes them unusable in a meta with such high speed. And it isn't just skills with stated cast times. Simple animation frames make skills feel clunky when players can reach glitchy level of jukes due to just passive speed. It makes the already lackluster combat feel even more incongruent.

I said long ago that Swift needs to be nerfed by about 2%. So from a maximum of 7% per trait, it would be a maximum of 5%. Three swift would then be equal to minor expedition. If you want to move faster, it'll take more investment.

I think if people just couldn't immediately break free of stuns it would go along way towards catching people.

But nerfing swift just nerfs particular classes more than others. What is it you expect my Arcanist to do?

There's also snares to slow people down. Rather than nerfing swift I would rather just have better counters.

Who are these people who can immediately break free? I need to learn this magic. Sometimes I can't break free at all.

Turtle_Bot

LittlePinkDot wrote: »

xylena_lazarow wrote: »

The speed cap itself is fine, it's the easy access to speed buffs that they've been giving away like candy. It takes minimal build investment to be moving over 160% in combat and capped at sprint, and not much more to go even faster. Celerity cp doesn't need to exist at all, it just speed creeps the entire game by 10%, speed passives don't need to exist either. I'd go so far as to say using a defensive weapon (SnB, Ice, Resto) should also reduce movement speed in PvP.

Unless you want to delete streak from the game entirely, every other class needs a way to be fast enough to catch a sorc.

This sort of thinking is why sorc got the current version of hardened ward in the first place.

Other classes refused to accept that to catch a sorc they needed to slot a gap closer or speed ability or build for speed because that is how sorc was designed to defend itself against the other classes, by being faster and more mobile.

Now we are seeing the consequences of that refusal to adjust (current ward) and now we all have to deal with those consequences (whether we adapted or not).

How does that saying go?
Congratulations, you played yourself.

Durham

LittlePinkDot wrote: »

xylena_lazarow wrote: »

The speed cap itself is fine, it's the easy access to speed buffs that they've been giving away like candy. It takes minimal build investment to be moving over 160% in combat and capped at sprint, and not much more to go even faster. Celerity cp doesn't need to exist at all, it just speed creeps the entire game by 10%, speed passives don't need to exist either. I'd go so far as to say using a defensive weapon (SnB, Ice, Resto) should also reduce movement speed in PvP.

Unless you want to delete streak from the game entirely, every other class needs a way to be fast enough to catch a sorc.

Sorcs are out of balance but 50% of the PVP population is Nightblades. They can do anything in the game.

xylena_lazarow

StarOfElyon wrote: »

I said long ago that Swift needs to be nerfed by about 2%.

We had exactly that a few years back, Swift was 5% and nobody used it. Maybe 6% is the spot.

NuarBlack

xylena_lazarow wrote: »

StarOfElyon wrote: »

I said long ago that Swift needs to be nerfed by about 2%.

We had exactly that a few years back, Swift was 5% and nobody used it. Maybe 6% is the spot.

See I don't think you need to nerf anything. There should be lots of ways to get to the speed cap. It increases build variety. The problem is you can stack too many of them. Plus, it allows for abuse by a certain hack that exists out there.

Swift is a sacrifice in that you can't use infused or protective. The problem is Swift on top of major expedition and other things makes for the best defense hands down.

NuarBlack

Turtle_Bot wrote: »

This sort of thinking is why sorc got the current version of hardened ward in the first place.

Other classes refused to accept that to catch a sorc they needed to slot a gap closer or speed ability or build for speed because that is how sorc was designed to defend itself against the other classes, by being faster and more mobile.

Now we are seeing the consequences of that refusal to adjust (current ward) and now we all have to deal with those consequences (whether we adapted or not).

How does that saying go?
Congratulations, you played yourself.

This was one of the things I was driving at myself. The mobility creep swallowed sorc identity and they had to over compensate sorc with the new Harden ward. If something isn't done it won't be the only weird compensation that happens either.

LittlePinkDot

StarOfElyon wrote: »

LittlePinkDot wrote: »

StarOfElyon wrote: »

NuarBlack wrote: »

I know this idea sounds blasphemous, cause everyone wants to go fast, but I think it is the main imbalance between melee and range at the moment. While the melee range increase helped, desync is still an issue for melee in pvp and high speed exacerbates this issue tremendously.

Plus, I miss the give and take dance of gap closers and gap creators. While now the only one worth using is streak and that is for reasons other than the movement primarily. Cast times of many skills makes them unusable in a meta with such high speed. And it isn't just skills with stated cast times. Simple animation frames make skills feel clunky when players can reach glitchy level of jukes due to just passive speed. It makes the already lackluster combat feel even more incongruent.

I said long ago that Swift needs to be nerfed by about 2%. So from a maximum of 7% per trait, it would be a maximum of 5%. Three swift would then be equal to minor expedition. If you want to move faster, it'll take more investment.

I think if people just couldn't immediately break free of stuns it would go along way towards catching people.

But nerfing swift just nerfs particular classes more than others. What is it you expect my Arcanist to do?

There's also snares to slow people down. Rather than nerfing swift I would rather just have better counters.

Who are these people who can immediately break free? I need to learn this magic. Sometimes I can't break free at all.

Well I've certainly seen them. They break free before I can finish casting the painfully slow Snipe ability.